Wentworth Hall

by Abby Grahame

  “No one is as glamorous as Maggie,” Lila protested glumly.

  “My brother, Teddy, certainly thinks so,” Jessica agreed with a sigh. “He’s utterly abandoned me for her.”

  After her last disastrous conversation with Jessica, Lila had come to the conclusion that Jessica was just snooty and looked down on the Darlingtons since she and her brother were about to come into so much greater wealth. Now it struck Lila that maybe she had been right all along, that the girl was shy underneath her seeming brashness. People often mistook Lila’s own shyness for snobbery. And perhaps she wasn’t friendly because she’d always had her outgoing brother to lead the way. But now she was on her own.

  “I know how you feel,” Lila sympathized. “Ever since Maggie returned from her year abroad she’s completely wrapped up in herself. It’s as though she thinks she’s grown and I’m only an insignificant child.”

  “Well, you don’t look like a child right now,” Jessica said.

  “Here are the dresses I told you about,” Nora said, entering the room with two dresses, one gray, the other a navy blue. “Try these.” Nora stopped short when she noticed Jessica sitting there. “Hello, Miss Jessica.”

  Jessica stood up from the bed and approached Nora. “Let me see those dresses, Nora,” she said, taking them from Nora and spreading them on the bed. “Dreadful,” she pronounced.

  “That’s what Miss Maggie says, but I thought they were rather fetching,” Nora disagreed.

  “They were fetching two years ago,” Jessica insisted. “Look at the length of them. They’re to the floor! Everything is well above the ankle this year.”

  Jessica snapped up her red notebook with one hand and grabbed Lila by the wrist with the other. “Come to my room. I have some dresses I can lend you. We’re about the same size.”

  Lila pulled back. “I can’t go into the hallway. I’m not dressed.”

  Jessica yanked the pink satin cover from the bed and wrapped it around Lila’s shoulders. “There! Good enough.”

  Lila felt wild and rebellious as she trailed Jessica down the hall in her bare feet covered only in the blanket. Once in the room, Jessica tossed her notebook down on her bed and flung open the door to her wardrobe. Extracting a silk dress of deep cobalt blue with a dropped waist and ruffled bottom, she held it up to Lila. “This would be divine on you and you wouldn’t even need a corset.”

  Lila held the corset protectively. “No, I want the corset.” She looked at herself in the mirror, dazzled at the prospect of wearing the gorgeous, stylish dress.

  “Try it on,” Jessica urged her.

  When Lila had slipped the dress over her head, she spun in front of Jessica’s gilded mirror, feeling unbelievably glamorous.

  “You could wear it to dinner tonight,” Jessica suggested.

  “I could never,” Lila protested, suddenly worried. “What if I got a food stain on it?”

  Jessica laughed. “I’ve dropped food on it plenty of times. That’s what servants are for.”

  “I suppose,” Lila said, beaming at Jessica. It occurred to her that the two of them had a lot in common. They weren’t far apart in age and they had both been recently abandoned by their closest sibling. Jessica could be a lot of fun. “I think we could become good friends, Jessica,” Lila took the bold step of saying.

  The expression of withdrawal in Jessica’s eyes instantly made Lila wish she hadn’t spoken. What had gone wrong?

  “Yes, I hope we will be,” Jessica agreed without an ounce of sincerity.

  Why was she suddenly so against the idea of their friendship when she had been exuding camaraderie only moments ago? Was the term “friends” too much of a commitment? Had it reminded Jessica that she’d dropped her guard?

  Lila glanced at the red notebook flung on the bed and, for a moment, thought she’d ask Jessica what she was always writing in it, but quickly reconsidered. It was probably too personal. Lila certainly wouldn’t want anyone reading her diary.

  “If you’ll excuse me now, I need to go back to my journal writing,” Jessica said with the faintest cold breeze in her voice.

  Lila caught herself up, trying to return Jessica’s sudden reserve with a distance of her own. She did not want to appear overeager. Still, maybe Jessica was simply fatigued and it was nothing personal.

  “You write in your journal a good deal,” Lila observed as she headed for the door.

  “Hmm, I do,” Jessica said, picking up the notebook.

  “Yes, well… thanks for the loan of the dress. I’ll have it washed, pressed, and back to you in no time.”

  “Keep it,” Jessica said. “I’m done with it.”

  “I couldn’t. I’ll have it back to you,” Lila insisted. At the door, she flashed a smile. A friendship with Jessica would be nice and it was too soon to give up on it altogether. “Enjoy your journal writing.”

  “Thank you,” Jessica said politely. “I do find solace in my notebook.”

  “What a comfort it must be to you,” Lila said.

  Perhaps someday soon, when they knew each other better, Jessica would share its contents with her.

  Chapter Eight

  THAT EVENING NORA LAY ON HER NARROW bed in the servants’ quarters, dressed in her maid’s outfit, rubbing her bare feet. Was it possible that, at seventeen, her feet continued to grow? It certainly seemed that her shoes were pinching lately. Maybe they were simply swollen from being on them all day.

  Helen came down the hall dressed in her plain white cotton nightgown, her orangey hair in a single braid down her back. She stopped by Nora’s door, hovering outside. “Feet hurt?” she inquired.

  “They’re all swelled up,” Nora reported, lifting them to show Helen.

  Helen held her hands up, spreading her fingers. “With me it’s my hands. Having them in water so much of the day makes my cuticles crack. Hurts like crazy.”

  “My feet have only just started giving me trouble this month, since I have to tend to Jessica Fitzhugh in addition to my regular duties.”

  Helen leaned against the doorjamb casually. “Why don’t they get her a maid of her own?”

  “In this place? Cheapskate manor?” Nora asked with a laugh. “There’s no money for that.”

  “Do you honestly believe there’s no money, or is Lord Darlington just the tightest man who ever lived?”

  Nora considered the question and decided that the money really wasn’t there. The once brilliant colors of the Moorish style ballroom were faded and chipped. The leather couch in the upstairs smoking room had sustained a tear that was getting bigger by the day, yet the couch remained. Fixtures were broken, in places ceilings were coming down, tiles were chipped: The list went on and on. Surely those things would have been repaired if the Darlingtons had the money to do so. “They don’t have it,” Nora told Helen. “Just look around.”

  “Then why don’t they move to a smaller place?” Helen questioned.

  “Wentworth Hall has been in the Darlington family since the seventeen hundreds. They would never give it,” Nora explained. “They’re not like me and you, Helen. They’re rich and they’ve always been rich. They can’t stop being rich just because the money has run out.”

  “I don’t understand,” Helen admitted. “How can they be rich if they have no money?”

  “It’s breeding, Helen. Rich people have been marrying other rich people for so many generations that by now it’s in their blood. They wouldn’t know how to stop being rich.”

  Helen shook her head wearily. “I wish I knew how to stop being poor,” she said. “It’s never going to happen if I keep working here. A person can never get ahead when she earns only her room and board, medical expenses, and such a small amount of pay it’s all gone by the middle of the week.”

  “I know,” Nora commiserated. “By the time you post a letter and buy yourself a cup of tea, it’s gone.”

  Helen yawned broadly as she stretched. “Well, better turn in. Another thrilling day of laundry awaits me in the morning.”
r />   “Sleep tight,” Nora called after Helen as she disappeared down the hall.

  A pang of hunger hit Nora, and the mention of tea made Nora crave a cup. The idea of getting back into her boots was unappealing, so she put on her woolen slippers and made her way down the servant’s staircase to the kitchen.

  The gas lamp glowed softly, and in its light Nora saw Michael hunched over a cup at the table. “Can’t sleep?” she inquired, coming into the room and turning up the light.

  “Naw. Can’t,” he admitted. “You?”

  “I’m so tired I could sleep where I’m standing. Just a little hungry is all,” Nora said as she lit a match to the stove burner. “Do you think we’ll ever get electric lights in this place? Most neighboring estates have been wired for it.”

  “Being in this place is more and more like living back in the Dark Ages,” Michael remarked gloomily.

  “I agree with you there,” Nora said, taking a cup down from the cupboard. “I’d hate to move on, though. It’s like home. If anyone knows about that, it would be you. Remember when we used to play out in the back with Wesley, Maggie, and Lila? We were all friends then and it didn’t make a difference who was a servant and who wasn’t.”

  “That was a long time ago,” Michael said.

  “Not so long. It’s not like we’re ancient now,” Nora pointed out.

  “Well, it seems long ago,” Michael insisted. “And even then we’d have to sneak about. Lord and Lady Darlington would have sent us packing if they knew we’d been out playing with their children.”

  The teakettle whistled and Nora turned off the flame. “What’s keeping you awake, Michael?” She sat down beside him with her tea.

  “I’m worrying about having a job,” Michael told her. “The family barely goes riding anymore and they don’t need a whole stable. I’m only nineteen years old and already I’m a dying breed.”

  Nora patted his arm. “It can’t be as bad as all that.”

  “It is!” Michael insisted. “Horses are expensive to take care of and they would bring a lot of money if they were sold.”

  “Hmm,” Nora replied. Michael was feeling so gloomy that she didn’t think that this was the right time to tell him about the letter she’d picked up from Lady Darlington’s desk the other day. It was from the Darlingtons’ eldest son, twenty-year-old Wesley, who had gone off to school at Oxford. He was returning home from America, where he’d been since the end of the school year, and bringing along his American friend before going back to university. Upon his return for the remainder of the summer, one thing he hoped to accomplish, according to his letter, was to enlist Lady Darlington’s help in persuading Lord Darlington to take certain measures to make Wentworth Hall profitable once more, inspired by what he saw while he was in America. One of his ideas was to sell off pieces of the estate. The letter hadn’t explicitly mentioned the stable, but it stood to reason the horses and the groom were on the chopping block.

  “What does hmm mean?” Michael asked.

  “Nothing. I’m just listening to you is all. They’d never let you go, Michael. You’ve been here your entire life, and your father and grandfather before you. They would find a place for you.”

  “It might be for the good,” Michael said. “If I get free of this place, maybe I could make my way in the world, make something of myself instead of always being a servant. I couldn’t leave my father behind, though.”

  “What would you do?” Nora asked.

  “I don’t know. That’s the thing. Maybe I could go down to the racetrack and become a trainer. One thing I know is horses.”

  “That you do,” Nora agreed. “Nobody better with a horse. But isn’t the racetrack a bit… disreputable?”

  “Why should I care about that?” Michael challenged. “It’s not like I have some big reputation to protect. If I could earn some real money, nobody would care how I got it.”

  “By ‘nobody’ do you mean Maggie?” Nora probed.

  “No, I don’t,” Michael said. “I’ve barely spoken to Maggie since she’s been back and that’s nearly two months now. She’s forgotten me and I’ve left her behind as well.”

  Nora sighed, not believing a word of it. Maggie might have moved on from Michael, but he was as stuck on her as ever. Any fool could see that.

  “I know what you mean about not being a servant forever,” Nora said, intentionally changing the subject. “I plan to put money aside until I have enough to open a little tea shop of my own.”

  “That sounds nice, Nora, but how can you put anything aside with the pittance they pay you here? We’re little more than serfs living on the estate like in the feudal times.”

  Smiling confidently, Nora tapped her forehead. “I have a plan and I’ve already begun. I’ve been taking on extra sewing jobs.”

  “From who?” Michael asked.

  “People in town,” Nora explained. “I’ve put up little signs in town and the jobs have already begun coming in. I pick them up and drop them off on my half-day off.”

  “So you never have a moment when you’re not working,” Michael observed.

  “I don’t mind. It’s going to bring me a better future. I don’t want to be sitting in this kitchen like Rose or Mrs. Howard when I’m their age.”

  “Like my dad, working here in the garden all these years,” Michael agreed. “He’d never leave Wentworth Hall, and he’s getting on in years. I don’t know how he’d feel if I left the place. It’s part of what keeps me here.”

  “Oh!” Therese startled at the sight of Michael and Nora as she entered the room. “I didn’t expect anyone to be awake so late,” she said. She was wrapped in a floral robe with pleated lace at the sleeves and delicate blue satin slippers. Her abundant blond curls were loosely tied in a ribbon. “I will go,” she added, backing up.

  “No, no,” Michael said. “Come join the ranks of the sleepless and bothered.”

  “Pull up a chair,” Nora seconded the invitation. Nora didn’t yet trust Therese but maybe she wouldn’t feel that way if she got to know her better. “So what’s keeping you up this night?” she inquired.

  Therese sighed deeply. “They want me to start teaching the girls French in addition to my nanny duties,” she revealed. “I know how to speak French, of course, but I’m not sure I can teach someone else to speak the language. I was hired to take care of the baby, not to be a teacher. What if I fail? I will have to return to Paris.”

  Something about Therese’s response didn’t ring true to Nora. Therese was clearly bothered by something. But what? “Why did you want to leave France?’ Nora asked, hoping she would learn some scandalous secret. Was there a ruined love affair? A crime?

  “My mother,” Therese replied. “She died last year and Paris holds too many memories of her. Everything reminded me of our happy times together. I thought time would ease those memories. But I needed distance, too. And then I got the offer from Lady Darlington and it seemed perfect.”

  Nora probed further. “What about your father? Where is he?”

  “I never knew my father,” Therese revealed. “As I’ve mentioned, my mother worked at Lord Darlington’s sister’s estate. She never revealed to anyone who my father was. She just felt lucky that Lady Daphne let her keep her job despite her condition.”

  “What a scandal!” Nora said, pleased to have unearthed a juicy detail. “Was everyone shocked?”

  “The French are not as easily shocked as the English,” Therese commented. “And Lady Daphne was always kind to her. And to me. When Lady Darlington arrived from Nice with James, Lady Daphne acted as my reference.”

  Nora patted Therese’s hand. “So, you’re a penniless orphan like me, poor thing.”

  “Yes, but I hope to make money working here,” Therese said.

  “Ha!” Nora barked with laughter. “Good luck.”

  “You’re not earning very much, are you?” Michael asked.

  “I have no expenses,” Therese said with a shrug. “Still, Wentworth Hall is not what I expe
cted. I thought I would start a new life here… but I do not see any way for it to begin.”

  “We know how you feel,” Michael commiserated.

  Therese yawned, covering her mouth. “I should check on James,” she decided. “He wakes in the night and her ladyship does not hear him. She is a sound sleeper.”

  Getting up, Therese bid them good night and departed.

  “Nice girl,” Michael remarked after Therese was gone.

  “Hmm,” Nora responded.

  “What? Don’t you think so?”

  “Do you believe that story about Paris having too many memories of her mother?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” Michael asked.

  Nora gave him a look, getting up to bring her teacup to the sink. “If she has such happy memories of her mother, why wouldn’t she want to be near them? Has she no friends or family in Paris that she’d want to stay close to?”

  Michael laughed out loud. “Your mind certainly runs overtime, Nora. Forget your tea shop, you should set up as a private detective.”

  “Not a bad idea, Michael. Maybe you and I could be partners.”

  Michael stretched and pushed his chair back. “Not a chance, Nora. The less I know about people and their dirty little secrets, the happier I am.”

  “You’re wrong there,” Nora disagreed, returning her washed cup to the cupboard. “Knowledge is power.”

  Nora said good night to Michael and headed back up the servants’ staircase. The tea and conversation had made her feel more alert instead of ready to sleep. She decided to work on some sewing but, arriving in her room, she realized she’d left her mending basket in one of the second-floor guest rooms. No one ever used this one—due to excessive water stains on the ceiling plaster, which made the room an excellent place to escape to when things were quiet.

  Heading for the room, Nora was struck by how immense and quiet the estate seemed at night. Moonlight beamed through the high arched and mullioned windows, lighting her way down the high-ceilinged corridors with their gleaming marble floors and bouncing its white glow off gilded mirrors and heavy crystal chandeliers. How grand this place must have been in its heyday! It was majestic with a decaying, kind of antique charm.