“Mm.” He was thinking how pretty her mouth was. “Did Trayer give you any trouble?”
“Oh …” She shrugged.
“Did he?”
“Nothing to speak of. Do this.” She pulled her top lip under her teeth. He copied her, and she began to shave under his nose.
When she finished, he said, “You’ve done this before, I see. For your young man?”
She busied herself scraping away at his left cheek. “Certainly not. When my father was living, sometimes he needed help.”
“Why?”
He certainly was full of questions. She decided to tell him the truth. “Sometimes he drank too much. If he’d shaved himself the next morning he’d have cut his throat. There.” She wet the face cloth and wiped away the last traces of soap. “That’s done. Your breakfast is getting cold. Why don’t you lie down—if it pleases you,” she remembered to say, “and let me bring the tray to you. Do you think you can—”
“Never mind that. I want you to help me get dressed.”
“But why?” His black scowl, hostile and supercilious at the same time, made her draw in her breath. “I beg your pardon again,” she got out stiffly. But she couldn’t let it lie. “Forgive me for speaking out of turn, but you have a serious injury. In my”—she wouldn’t say humble—“in my opinion you need to rest in bed. You won’t have a doctor, so the wound can’t be stitched. If it should open again and start bleeding—”
“Damn it, I know all that.” He watched her frown and press her lips together to hold back more advice. Sensible advice. He sighed. “Listen to me. It’s very likely that I’ll be receiving visitors sometime today. I need to get ready for them. For reasons that don’t concern you, it’s important that the nature of my—mishap not become known to them. Do you take my meaning?”
“I understand you don’t want these ‘visitors’ to know that last night you were stabbed in the shoulder. I don’t understand why.”
“Nor do you need to. Now get me a clean shirt. Please,” he added magnanimously.
“Tell me one thing. Is your brother safe?”
He went stiff. “That’s none of your business.”
Lily didn’t move. She waited with the razor in one hand, the bowl of soapy water in the other, and returned his steely glare witìh steady, clear-eyed composure.
Devon shook his head in disgust. If he wanted his shirt, he’d have to tell her about Clay; the woman was like a hound after a fox. “Clay’s fine. Not a mark on him. I was the lucky one.”
Is it true that he captains his own ship and leads a gang of smugglers? she wanted to ask next. But the moment of candor was over, she was certain, and instead she said, “Where do you keep your shirts?”
She got him dressed in a clean shirt and stock and a velvet smoking jacket, once again ignoring the fact of, the very existence of, his breeches. But this time her luck didn’t hold.
“Lily,” he said patiently, perched on the edge of the bed and clinging again to the post, “this maidenly shyness is very charming, but also irritating under the circumstances. I can’t wear these buckskins any longer. Apart from other considerations, they’re in deplorable fashion with my velvet jacket. Even Trayer would be offended, a man not fluently conversant with the bon ton.” He rested his temple against the post, exhausted by his speech, and privately surprised by his own levity. “Find me some breeches,” he finished with his eyes closed. “We’ll contrive a way to get them on without debauching your sensibilities.”
In the end they managed it fairly easily, aided by the fact that his white cambric shirt hung down almost to mid-thigh, sparing Lily the sight of anything so overtly masculine as to distress her. His lighthearted mockery helped; she knew she was behaving like a ninny, and getting her skittish nerves out in the open between them somehow soothed her.
“I think you should lie down now,” she told him as she knelt at his feet and put his stockings and shoes on for him. “If your ‘visitors’ come, you’ll have plenty of warning and can be sitting up before they come in.”
“I’ll greet them downstairs.”
“But that’s absurd!” She saw his expression and ducked her head. “I meant to say, my lord, that you—”
“I told you to stop my-lording me.”
“Yes, sir. I only meant to say that in my opinion that would not be wise.”
“And what gives you the idea that your opinion matters to me in the slightest?”
Lily finished buckling his shoes and rose smoothly to her feet. “Nothing at all. Forgive me. I can’t imagine what I was thinking.”
She kept her eyes downcast, but her lips were stiff with anger. He watched her fingers clench at her sides twice, three times, before she was calm enough to lift her chin and look at him. He admired her self-control; her face was quiet, the green eyes level and composed. But behind their surface placidity he saw fires burning.
The curtsey she bobbed was flawless and utterly without connotation this time. If he didn’t need her any longer, she murmured, she begged to be excused. But she gave herself away when she turned and went to the door without waiting for his permission.
“Lily.”
“My lord?”
They engaged in a brief staring contest.
Lily backed down. “Sir?” she corrected tersely.
Another moment passed. Then Devon said, “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I’ll see them here. Sitting at my desk.”
“Very good, sir.” But what she longed to say was, What gives you the idea that anything you do interests me in the slightest? It would have given her great satisfaction, in spite of the fact that it wasn’t true. “Can you manage breakfast on your own?” she asked impassively.
“Yes. Thank you.”
His voice was civil now, almost kind. It was a truce, of sorts. “Then I’ll leave you. Mrs. Howe will be looking for me. I’ll come back, if you like. As soon as I can.” He nodded. Their gazes held for another second, and then she went away.
It hadn’t seemed to Lily that she’d been gone that long, but when she went into the servants’ hall she discovered that breakfast was over and no one was about except Dorcas and another girl, clearing the table. Dorcas’s usually pasty face was bright pink with excitement.
“Mrs. ‘Owe d’ say you’re t’ come to ‘er room,” she informed Lily as soon as she saw her.
“When, Dorcas? When does she want me to come?”
“Now, miss. She’m ever so mad!” Her lackluster eyes sparkled, but whether with fear or anticipation Lily couldn’t tell.
She scanned the long table for anything that might have been left over from breakfast—a piece of biscuit, a saucer of cold tea—but it was bare; locusts couldn’t have stripped it any cleaner. A wave of fatigue and depression washed over her. And now Mrs. Howe was angry, would doubtless punish her with some tedious chore because she was late, and there was no plausible excuse she could give her.
The housekeeper’s suite was at the short end of the narrow, L-shaped corridor. Being summoned to it was reputedly a harrowing experience, something to be feared and dreaded. It had never happened to Lily, but it had happened to Norah Penglennan, a sixteen-year-old chambermaid who had been at Darkstone only a few months before Lily arrived. Below-stairs rumor had it that her crime was neglecting to change young Mr. Darkwell’s sheets on wash day. The fact that she’d fainted twice that day—from some undiagnosed condition—evidently did not figure in her defense. What went on between the girl and Mrs. Howe was never learned; Norah returned from the encounter trembling and white-faced, but she would not speak of it. A few days later she ran away.
I’m not afraid of Mrs. Howe, Lily told herself as she walked down the corridor. She wasn’t hurrying along, though, she noticed; an impartial witness might even say she was dragging her feet. She sniffed and squared her shoulders. I’m not afraid of her because I’m not someone like Norah Penglennan, a poor, uneducated girl who can be intimidated by threats and harsh words from a petty despot. I am Lily Trehearne. My moth
er was a lady and my father was a gentleman. Most of the time. He had to work for a living, and a few of his occupations might not have been perfectly respectable in the strictest sense of the word. But he was gently reared and tolerably well educated, and to Lily’s knowledge he had never done anything dishonest.
Oh, what nonsense! Her father’s respectability was hardly the issue right now. For that matter, neither was hers. She had to get through an unpleasant interview with a mean-spirited tyrant, that was all. But what if, after having impersonated a servant for more than two months, she’d begun to think like one, feel like one? Nonsense, she thought again. She mentally shook herself, drew her fist back, and gave Mrs. Howe’s closed door three sharp, fearless raps.
“Come in.”
She pushed it open and went in. The scent of fresh baking still lingered, no doubt from the scones Mrs. Belt had made this morning and which, of course, no other servant had tasted—with the possible exception of Trayer, Lily amended. The housekeeper was sitting at her desk, poring over what looked like a list of accounts. She didn’t move, and Lily understood that ignoring her was to be the first arrow fired from Mrs. Howe’s sheath. Lily folded her hands and assumed an attitude, probably exaggerated, of polite submission. The seconds ticked by and she began to feel almost amused; she’d expected a tactic more sophisticated, less childish from her adversary.
But something about the shape of Mrs. Howe’s hands on the desk—blocky and crude, nerveless, a man’s hands—made amusement seem inappropriate. Irrelevant. In spite of herself, Lily’s unease deepened.
At length Mrs. Howe laid down her pen and looked up. She stared without speaking for so long that Lily thought she herself might burst out laughing, or blurt out some incoherent confession of nameless crimes—anything to put an end to this silent, nerve-wracking staring. It’s a trick, she warned herself. Designed to bully and harass frightened little girls. Even so, it was hard to imagine those bright black bulldog eyes missing anything. Perhaps at this moment they were searching out the telltale places where Lily’s gown was still damp, or worse, the faint stains of blood that still lingered underneath her apron. Somehow she kept her own gaze tranquil and didn’t look away. But she wanted to. And Mrs. Howe, she knew, wanted her to.
The housekeeper got to her feet, the great cluster of keys at her waist rattling ostentatiously. For a heavy woman, she moved with an unsettling fluidity that struck Lily, in her present mood, as grotesque. “You missed breakfast,” she observed, standing beside her desk, in a voice much too soft to be genuine.
“Yes, ma’am.” Lily bowed her head penitently.
“But that’s against the rules, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Why did it take so long to hand the master his tray, I wonder?”
“I can’t say.”
“Can’t say? Is that because you don’t know?”
Lily’s mind went frighteningly blank. “I… went up to my room afterwards to … I had forgotten my … I changed my stockings.”
“Changed your stockings? Why?”
“I—don’t know.”
“Was it stupidity? Was it because you’re a stupid girl, Lily?”
“No, ma’am, I just—changed them.” God, how she hated this! Anger coiled inside, tensing all her muscles.
“But I told you to come right back and help cook with the baking. Didn’t I?” She still hadn’t raised her voice.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Did you disobey me?”
“I—yes.”
“Why?”
She gritted her teeth. “I don’t know. I forgot.”
Mrs. Howe came closer. They were exactly the same height, and now their faces were inches apart. To avoid her eyes, Lily fixed her gaze on Mrs. Howe’s grim slit of a mouth. Her lips fit together like two halves of a muffin split with a razor. “Forgot?” she murmured. “Because you’re stupid?”
Lily couldn’t answer.
“Are you stupid, Lily?”
“No. No, ma’am.”
“No? Then why didn’t you do as you were told?”
“I… didn’t think.”
“Because you’re stupid?”
Her throat was so tight she couldn’t speak at all.
“Say it,” Mrs. Howe urged, her voice a throaty purr. “Say it.”
Lily’s chest was burning. “Please,” she whispered.
“Say it.”
“I’m not. I’m not stupid.” But a treacherous, icy-hot tear slid down her cheek, and it was worse than an admission. Lily bowed her head in defeat.
The housekeeper backed up soundlessly. On a table beside the desk were two metal buckets. She picked them up, her manner brusque now, her eyes no longer crafty, only cruel. “Stupidity is one of Satan’s disguises. It must be punished, for wickedness hides under it, beneath the serpent’s belly, waiting for the innocent and the undefiled. It must be punished.” She came forward and gave Lily the buckets, one in each hand. They were small; each held no more than a gallon.
“We’ve run out of sand to scour the floors, Lily. I want you to fill both bins in the kitchen garden shed. To the top. Don’t use any but these pails. Don’t stop until the bins are full. If you do, I’ll have to punish you again. Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Impotence had solidified into rage, defeat into hatred. She wanted to do harm to Mrs. Howe with her own hands.
“We’ll cast the devil out together, Lily. Thank me for it.” She came closer. “Thank me.”
“Thank … you.”
“Thank you—?”
Lily closed her eyes for a second. “Ma’am.” Mrs. Howe smiled. In the pitch depths of her black eyes, Lily saw real wickedness. Shaking, she turned and got away.
The sun at high noon was a blinding lemon-yellow disc in the center of a colorless sky. It beat down on the dark rocks that emerged from the sea like prehistoric beasts. The tide was out, but the sand was wet and foam-covered all the way up to the sand hills and the shingle and the granite cliff’s base.
Lily crouched down at the last of the stone cliff steps and filled her two small buckets with sand. Straightening, she stared across the glittering rollers at the sharp knife edge of the horizon. Perspiration had soaked through the back of her gown; her face was beaded with it. Here by the shore the salt wind blew feebly, but above, behind the house among the outbuildings, not a breath of air stirred.
She grabbed up handfuls of her apron on either side and used them for padding between the buckets’ dun wires and the tender pads of her fingers, but nothing helped much anymore. Blisters had formed hours ago, and now the sores only stuck to the fibers of the cloth and made releasing the buckets at the end of her journey that much harder. Head down, shoulders hunched, she started the climb back up the cliff steps.
There were seventy-two steps. At the twenty-seventh there was a wooden landing. She paused there to catch her breath. The sudden cessation of movement made her dizzy, and she clung to the rough railing with one hand, eyes closed and heart pounding. Fainting would be too easy; she wouldn’t give Mrs. Howe the satisfaction. But one bin in the kitchen garden shed was still empty, the other not quite half full. Elemental arithmetic told her she had about seven hours of sand-hauling left to do.
She wished she could cry. Now that she was alone and no one could see, it would be all right—she would give herself permission. But, curiously, the tears wouldn’t come. She was holding them in, along with her fury and frustration. Or perhaps she was punishing herself for that moment of weakness, of shameful capitulation when she’d wept in front of Mrs. Howe. Sometimes she was able to think about Devon, and wondered what he was doing now, if he was all right, if his “visitors” had come yet. But most of the time she was in too much pain to think about anything. Mrs. Howe had found a vulnerable place inside her—pride or confidence, self-respect—and injured it. She was wounded. She hurt.
She picked her buckets up and started to climb again. The muscles between her shoulders were burning, an
d there was no way to ease the painful ache low in her spine. The sun blazed; her mouth felt as dry as the sand she was carrying. Twelve steps from the summit, she looked up. At first she didn’t recognize the man standing on the top step, holding the railings on either side with both hands and blocking the way. Then, squinting against the bright sun, she brought him into focus. Trayer.
Of course. He’d come to gloat.
Even though her legs felt sheathed in lead, she stepped up her pace, straightened her shoulders, and stuck her chin out. She tried to make her face serene, but she knew it was damp and red, probably freckled—and then suddenly the idea of pretending for Trayer Howe’s benefit repulsed her. Not a bone in her body cared what he thought of her. She trudged on until she was three steps below him, then stopped.
“Excuse me,” she said clearly, wondering how long he would taunt her, how long before he would let her past.
His satisfied grin widened predictably. He didn’t move. “Hot today,” he observed conversationally. “Could be you need some help with those buckets.” He raised his eyebrows but didn’t take his hands off the wooden rails.
“No, thank you. Please let me pass.”
Malice flashed in his black eyes, so like his mother’s they made her shudder. “ ‘No, thank you, please let me pass,’ ” he mimicked, rolling his hips in an exaggeratedly feminine way. Lily looked away in disgust. “Even fetching sand, you think you’re the goddam Queen of England. You don’t look it, though. Right now you look just like the slut you are.”
“Get out of my way.”
“Think you’ve landed in a soft spot, don’t you? Did a spread for the master, and now everything’s going to be easy.” She tried to squeeze past him, but he shifted his bulk to the side, cutting her off. “It won’t work, not for long anyway. But I’ll tell you what would work.”
“Trayer—”
“If you was to give me a bit o’ snug for a bit o’ stiff, now, that would ease things up for you considerably. What d’you say, Queen Lily?”
Lily Page 10
