by M C Beaton
The picture of Andrew Harvey standing at the bend of the road came into her mind only to flee before the exciting thoughts of her new job. Men would probably have no place in her life … no place at all.
CHAPTER TWO
Lucy felt that she had been waiting all day. First she had had to rise at dawn and wait patiently until her mother had put her hair up for the first time, pinning it so tightly and severely that her head ached. Then she had had to wait for Mr. Hopkins and his grocery cart to take her on the long tradesman’s route to the castle. Then there was a two hour wait in the servants’ hall to be received by the countess.
And now she was seated in a hard chair in the countess’s bedroom, waiting for her ladyship to finish reading her mornings’ correspondence.
The castle was old, medieval, with walls nine feet thick, enclosing the inhabitants in a luxurious world of silence. The bedroom was lined with real lace over turquoise-blue. The toilet set on the dressing table was in turquoise and gold. Low cushionlike settees which furnished the room were in pale-blue brocades. The rest of the furniture was painted white, including the huge four-poster bed which was hung with white lace. Huge bunches of white chrysanthemums stood at attention in white vases.
The countess was dressed to match her surroundings in a tea gown of moiré crepe de chine with an overdress of the finest Bruges lace.
Despite the almost oppressive femininity of her room, the countess was a squat, masculine woman with a powerful jaw. Artificial flowers in blue and white were threaded through the countess’s dull brown hair and were pinned in profusion over the bosom of her dress, spoiling its elegant lines. She looked, as Mr. Oscar Wilde would have remarked, like a well-kept grave.
“So you’re the new maid,” she said at last, throwing aside her letters. “Come over here. Know needlework? French? Work hard? Good, good,” she went on, although Lucy had not had time to reply. “M’maid will show you the ropes. I hope you realize it’s a privilege to work for my daughter. She’s a beauty. Not like me, eh?” She let out a short bark of laughter and fell to studying Lucy again, putting one plump beringed finger into one cavernous nostril and picking it with relish.
Lucy lowered her eyes from the spectacle. Picking one’s nose was an unheard of social crime in the lower orders but Lady Mary seemed happily oblivious of any social misdemeanor. There was a polite scratching at the door and a faded and subdued lady’s maid entered. She was curtly introduced as Jones and told to take Lucy away and “instruct her.”
Miss Jones seemed to have worked with the overpowering personality of Lady Mary so long that she had lost any of her own. She instructed Lucy in a hurried whisper, always looking over her shoulder, twitching nervously at every sound.
To Lucy it seemed as if her duties were to be refreshingly simple. She was to be called at seven in the morning by an underhousemaid who would serve her tea and light her fire. In her turn she would have to clean the grate and lay the fire in the schoolroom, tidy, sweep, and dust it, and then go for breakfast in the servants’ hall which would be served to her by the underkitchenmaid. At eight o’clock Lucy would call Lady Angela with morning tea and gather up the clothes she had been wearing the night before. Then she would lay out her clothes for the day and prepare her bath. While Lady Angela was having breakfast, Lucy would busy herself in cleaning out the bedroom and lighting a fire in the schoolroom. The schoolroom was in fact an informal sitting room with easy chairs, bookshelves, games, and a piano. After that she would be expected to accompany Lady Angela everywhere and be at her beck and call. She would not accompany her to parties or dances—a suitable chaperon would be found for that—but she would be expected to wait up until Lady Angela returned. And to fill in her waiting hours, she would be expected to repair Lady Angela’s clothes and make her underlinen. Bolts of cloth had been imported from France, explained Miss Jones in a whisper, and she would be expected to make it up into pants, slips, petticoats, and vests.
She would take her meals in the servants’ hall but join the other upper servants in the Pug’s Parlor, a sitting room-cum-dining room used by the butler, head parlormaid, cook, housekeeper, valet, and ladies’ maids. No, Miss Jones could not explain why it was called the Pug’s Parlor. It had always been given that name as long as she could remember.
Lunch was a silent meal presided over by the butler, MacGregor, who sat at the head of the table. He was a tall, thin, elderly man with a cadaverous face, bushy eyebrows, and deep-set black eyes. His sparse hair was oiled and slicked down over his forehead and he wore the hardest and highest collar Lucy had ever seen. Neither Lucy’s mother nor father acknowledged her presence. But as she rose to leave the room with the other upper servants, she glanced back. Her mother’s face was alight with a fierce pride.
The Pug’s Parlor was small but cosy, crammed with elegant but shabby furniture which had found its way from the other parts of the castle. Coffee was poured and Lucy blinked as the formidable MacGregor produced a bottle of rare old cognac and a tray of goblets and proceeded to pour a generous measure all around.
He hitched his thumbs into his lapels and peered at Lucy from under the eaves of his bushy brows. “Well now, this is a real Highland beauty we have here, if effer I saw one.” He had a lilting Highland voice complete with the soft s. “Is” was pronounced “iss.”
Lucy was later to learn that MacGregor had made a meteoric rise from the slums of Glasgow. He had adopted a Highland accent when speaking to the other servants and a cupped Oxford accent when speaking to his masters. He did both remarkably well.
“You’ll be seeing my daughter tomorrow. She’s a beauty, not like me, eh?” MacGregor gave a short bark of laughter. Lucy stared and then began to giggle. The butler had just given an uncanny imitation of the countess’s voice. It was better than that. For that moment he had been the countess.
The other servants—with the exception of Miss Jones—began to relax and Lucy was introduced all around. Apart from Miss Jones and MacGregor, there was the cook, Mrs. Maclean, a thin wispy woman with a red face, the head parlormaid, a sallow Frenchwoman with snapping black eyes, the earl’s valet, Briggs, a taciturn Yorkshireman, and the English housekeeper, Mrs. Benson, a formidable and severe-looking woman. Given another butler at their head, Lucy judged that they would not be so friendly. But there was a sort of mad charm about MacGregor with his imitations, his absurd jokes, and his lilting voice.
“What is Lady Angela like,” Lucy at last ventured timidly. There was a little silence while the others wrestled over the temptations of having a delicious gossip, and loyalty to their masters. Gossip won.
“She’s kind of a nothing,” said MacGregor slowly. “She’ll make you work hard but she won’t even notice if you’re alive. The Lady Angela’s very beautiful, mind you.
“She has blond hair, a creamy skin, and blue eyes. A real little Dresden dolly. But even when she was a wee lass, she’d aye look at you with that cold expression. ‘Fetch your workbasket, Lucy, while I attend to my correspondence, so that I may check your stitching.’ That’s the sort of thing she’ll say.”
When he had been imitating Lady Angela, MacGregor had immediately conjured up for Lucy a picture of a languid beauty with a high, slightly whining voice.
“And you may as well get as much rest as possible,” put in the cook, Mrs. Maclean, “for they’re having a big house party next week and that means eighteen hours a day without any time off, for a whole three weeks.”
“Take my advice,” said the housekeeper, Mrs. Benson, “and learn quickly and then find yourself another position. That one’s miserable to work for. She’s only eighteen and you’d think she was eighty.”
Lucy was to be given an hour to herself after lunch to unpack her clothes and prepare her own wardrobe. The rest of the day was to be spent in making and mending clothes for the countess. Lady Angela was expected to arrive late that evening and Lucy would begin her proper duties first thing in the morning. She had been given a small room in the attics rather than on
e in the servants’ wing so that she could be conveniently on call at all hours of the day. The room was sparsely furnished with one small window set into the deep walls affording a view of the loch which looked surprisingly near. The castle gardens must run down to its edge, Lucy decided.
She mulled over the gossip about Lady Angela and then dismissed it. She was young, Lady Angela was young. They would probably get on very well indeed. Lucy had what the other servants did not—the boundless optimism of youth.
After arranging her scanty wardrobe, she changed into her black dress and joined Miss Jones in the schoolroom to begin her allotted work. Lucy found that she was expected to mend pair after pair of silk stockings, with exquisite darns. She wondered why such an obviously wealthy woman as the countess, who could have afforded to have bought a cartload of new silk stockings without feeling the pinch, should go in for this economy. She spoke her thoughts aloud but Miss Jones only pressed her lips together and twitched and did not deign to answer.
The sun blazed down outside the schoolroom but it was like looking out at a picture, for the thick castle walls allowed no sounds of the outside world to penetrate the room. Lucy had paused in her work to suggest that they might open the window, but the silent Miss Jones had gone into such a violent paroxysm of twitches, that she had dropped the subject.
MacGregor was absent from the dinner table, having taken the evening off. The Pug’s Parlor was silent and there was no brandy served with the coffee.
Later, Lucy was too excited to sleep so she decided to slip away for a walk on the grounds. It was a beautiful evening and the castle gardens still held a few roses, gallant survivors of the disastrous summer. She had entered, upon her arrival, by the tradesmen’s entrance at the back of the Castle and so she decided to creep around quietly and take a look at the front.
A stone bridge spanned what had once been a moat and which was now used as a vegetable garden. Lucy drew back into the shadow of a clump of rhododendrons as she heard the sound of horses’ hooves clattering up the drive. A victoria pulled by two steaming horses clattered over the bridge and through the stone arch that led to the front of the castle.
That must be Lady Angela, thought Lucy, and, overcome with curiosity to see her new mistress, she crept forward, always keeping in the shadow of the bushes, until she could see the main entrance to the castle.
The gaslight blazing over the main door lit up Lady Angela to perfection. She was the most beautiful girl Lucy had ever seen.
Hair like spun gold was gathered into a heavy knot at the back of her neck. She wore a dashing little hat of scarlet feathers with a scarlet wool traveling dress. She was slender with a perfect hourglass figure. To Lucy’s dazzled eyes, Lady Angela was like some fairy-tale princess. Her heart gave a great bound. No one so beautiful could possibly be unkind. She could hardly wait for the morning.
She retreated quietly the way she had come, rounded the corner of the castle backward, and tripped and fell headlong over a body which lay stretched across her path.
She opened her mouth to scream and then closed it again.
Lit by the pale light of the stars, MacGregor lay sprawled among the bushes. An empty whiskey bottle was clasped to his chest and his long, thin mouth was curved in a faint smile. He was fast asleep. Lucy struggled to her feet.
She bent and shook him roughly. He slowly opened his eyes. He stared up at her. “’Tis the fairies come for poor MacGregor at last,” he murmured and with a happy smile he turned onto his side and went back to sleep.
“Mr. MacGregor! Mr. MacGregor!” pleaded Lucy, shaking him harder. “You can’t sleep here. Look! The grass is all wet.”
He came fully awake and sat up with a groan. “Oh, lassie, lassie,” he moaned. “Why could ye not let me be? Why bring me back to this terrible world where a man cannot call his verra soul his own?”
“You are talking nonsense,” said Lucy firmly, helping him to his feet. “Come with me to the kitchens and I’ll make you some coffee.”
MacGregor gave a heavy sigh. “It’s all right. I’ve slept myself sober. Dearie, dearie me. I’m the genie that goes back into the bottle every night I get free. I live in there, Lucy, with my dreams and my whiskey and it’s the one time that old battle-axe cannot chase after me.”
“I think you take a very depressing view of your employers,” said Lucy. “Don’t you know how many families there are that are literally starving? We are housed and fed.”
“’Tis true. ’Tis pity. And pity ’tis, ’tis true.’ But I want more, Lucy. Much more. I would like to travel, to sit in the sun under the plane trees on some Parisian boulevard and watch the world go by. And sleep! I would sleep fourteen hours a night.”
He led the way with lanky, stumbling steps toward the kitchens. “Mind you, I once had one small piece of rebellion. They had a house party which went on for five weeks. Five weeks of bells ringing and ringing and ringing. No time off to go into my bottle and escape. So one night I cut all the wires and for two blessed hours those bells of hell were still. A schoolboy trick. The only thing I could do to kick back after my years of servitude. I’m sixty-seven and my days are numbered.”
Lucy looked at him in alarm., Why, the butler was talking positive treason. Everyone in the world fought and scrabbled for an opportunity to serve their betters.
MacGregor saw the distaste on her face and laughed. “You’ll see, lassie. You’ll see. You’re not like the rest of them. You’ll soon be fretting in your chains. Now off to bed with you. My Lady Angela will have you dead on your feet by this time tomorrow night.”
Lucy went to bed in a temper. MacGregor was a disgrace. Someone as ungrateful as he should not be allowed to hold such an important position.
She was awakened by the underhousemaid next morning and sat up with a glad feeling of anticipation. She scrambled into her clothes and ran downstairs to the schoolroom and started working quickly and efficiently until she was sure it was spotless. After a hurried breakfast, she collected Lady Angela’s breakfast tray and made her way back upstairs with a beating heart. She set the tray down gently beside the bed and drew the curtains. Sunlight flooded into the room and Lady Angela yawned lazily and sat up in bed. She flicked a disinterested glance at Lucy and then drawled, “In future, make up the fire before you wake me.” With shaking hands, Lucy arranged the tray on her lap and then moved as silently as possible over to the fireplace. “Not so much noise, please,” came the voice from the bed, carrying that faint, dissatisfied whine that MacGregor had caught so well.
After the fire started blazing merrily up the chimney, Lucy began to move around the room quietly, picking up the clothes which Lady Angela seemed to have thrown everywhere. She laid out clothes for the day, praying under her breath that she had chosen the right garments, and went to run the bath, thankful that the castle had running water in the bedrooms.
Then it was her job to dress Lady Angela, fastening her stockings and pulling her corset laces as tight as possible. All the time the girl stood like a beautiful statue. Then to her surprise, Lady Angela pulled on a pair of white cotton gloves and began to run the fingers of them across the furniture. Eventually, she triumphantly held up one black finger. “The edge of the mantel has soot on it. Clean it immediately and then make sure the schoolroom is free from dust. I shall check it after breakfast.”
Lucy fled to the schoolroom and dusted and cleaned in a fever of anxiety. She had just finished when Lady Angela reappeared, complete with white gloves, and began a minute inspection of the room, running her fingers along the skirting, the window ledges, and even the tops of the doors. “Not bad,” she said laconically, examining the tips of her fingers. “Go and fetch your hat and coat. I am going into that little burg down the road to look for ribbons.”
Lucy scurried obediently off with her hopes rising. Two young girls out on their own should achieve some sort of rapport. She returned breathlessly to the schoolroom only to find Lady Angela gone.
She descended the main staircase fo
r the first time to find MacGregor standing in the hall. He gave her a mischievous wink and held, open the door of the drawing room. The countess was talking to her daughter and neither looked up when Lucy entered. “See if you can find me an artificial rose in just this shade of pink,” the countess was saying as she held out a piece of material. “Ask the maid,” said Angela in a tired voice. “It’s all too, too boring.”
“Oh, forget it!” snapped the countess. “You—what’syourname—Lucy! You cannot go out in that hat. Most unsuitable.” She rang the bell and Miss Jones appeared with such rapidity that she must have been leaning against the outside of the door. “Hat, Jones,” ordered the countess, with a jerk of her massive head in Lucy’s direction.
Lucy miserably removed her smart new black straw and stood dangling it while all three waited in silence. The countess absentmindedly hitched up her skirts, exposing a great tree trunk of a leg which she began to scratch with obvious satisfaction. Angela removed a primrose kid glove and turned her fingernails to the light, examining each perfect oval with care. The room was full of the sound of clocks, from the great wheezing ticktock of the grandfather in the corner to the racing breathless tick, tick, tick of the French clock on the marble fireplace, where an explicitly nude Proteus disported himself with various marble maidens.
A little apologetic cough sounded in the doorway. A small man, who looked rather like a clerk whose spirit had been broken by years of work, sidled in. His patent-leather shoes squeaked abominably and he started like a rabbit at every sound, hopping and skipping until he reached the countess’s side. To Lucy’s surprise he kissed the countess on the cheek, covering his pursed little lips with a film of gray powder in the process.
“How ye doin’, Charlie?” said the countess, reluctantly dropping her skirts. He mumbled something and squeaked and hopped over to an armchair and then barricaded himself behind a copy of the Daily Mail. This then was the earl.
