Authors: Charis Michaels
“Hmmm,” mused Miss Grey, “likely he would say the same thing about me. For better or for worse, he will have to shoulder the bulk of our uncordial intrusiveness for some time. I understand his reticence—really, I do—but unless he is being pursued by a pack of lunatic relatives bent on destroying his life, then my situation supersedes his. He is too unwilling to compromise.”
“Compromise, did you say?” asked Jocelyn. She felt the first unsettling lurch of confusion. “Miss Grey?”
“Please,” Piety said, yanking the curtains wider still, “call me Piety.”
“All right, if you insist,
Piety
, but about the earl?”
“Of course I insist!” The drapes hit a snag and Piety Grey frowned. She found the curtain pull and jerked the string in short, frustrated yanks. “What is your given name, Miss Breedlowe?”
You wanted
this, thought Jocelyn. Never once had an employer referred to her by her given name.
“I . . . ah. ’Tis Jocelyn, miss. I’m called Jocelyn.”
“How pretty!
Jocelyn
. Do you mind?”
“If it pleases you.”
Behind them, Marissa coughed. “Should we leave the curtains, miss?” She wrinkled her nose at the heavy, unmoving folds. The cobweb-covered drapes danced and jerked under Miss Grey’s ministrations but refused to budge. Dust puffed forth with every yank.
“Oh, I nearly have it,” Miss Grey said, pulling the cord with all her might. To Jocelyn, she added, “And of course it pleases me.
Jocelyn
.”
She jerked again, and the entire rig—rod and rings and copious, heavy folds of dust-embedded curtains—popped from the wall and crashed to the floor. Miss Grey yelped and dove, barely escaping the falling mass. Jocelyn scuttled backward and Marissa disappeared from the room.
“Well, that’s one way to do it!” Piety laughed, flapping a thick layer of dust from her skirts. “At least now we can see what we’re doing. Let’s have a look.”
She bustled to the far wall, and Jocelyn noticed for the first time the line of shiny black trunks stacked in the far corner.
“As I was saying,” Miss Grey went on, “Falcondale has only just left. But! I didn’t see his manservant, Joseph, accompany him. These are ideal conditions, although who can say how much time we have.
“Marissa?” she called loudly. “Ah, there you are. Begin with the trunks on the end. Do not let the curtains alarm you. They are on the floor now; the danger has passed. We must make haste. Luckily, I have labeled each case according to its contents. If the men who unloaded my carriage followed my directive, they should be stacked in alphabetical order.”
“The men who unloaded your carriage probably could not read,” said Jocelyn softly, intimidated by the younger woman’s confidence and enthusiasm. She could barely keep up. What, she wondered, had she meant by “not much time?”
“For the moment,” said Piety, “we should require little more than old cloth to clean, buckets, soap, whatever hand tools have been left behind, brooms, and the mop. Look in the trunks for any of these. Marissa has already sent water up by the pulley in the kitchen. But take care as you gather; let us bring nothing too heavy, because we only have our three sets of hands.”
“Miss Grey, er, Piety.” Jocelyn attempted to keep up. “Forgive me, but what was it that you said about the earl? And
to the top of what,
exactly? I must admit to some confusion.”
Piety piled a bulging stack of cotton cloth in Jocelyn’s arms, nearly obscuring her face. “Oh, but you
didn’t hear
?” Piety Grey asked, picking up her own burden of supplies and leading the way.
Jocelyn followed, given little choice but to trail behind Marissa. Piety led them out of the room, down the hall, and through the kitchens to the garden. It was only when Piety nudged the kitchen door open with her knee and broached the terrace that Jocelyn finally stopped.
“Miss Grey?” she said to her rapidly progressing back. “Miss Grey?” And finally:
“Piety!”
The younger woman stopped, exhaled heavily, turned around.
“Forgive me,” said Jocelyn with a shaky breath, “but
where
are we going?”
Piety sighed. “Try, dear Jocelyn, to keep an open mind.” She shot her a hopeful glance.
Jocelyn blinked. She felt suddenly as if her entire professional life—in fact her very survival—hinged on this alleged
open mind.
When she spoke, the words came out very slowly. “Forgive me, but about what am I meant to have an open mind?”
“Well, about the stairs, of course.”
“
What
about the stairs?”
“Impassable.”
“Oh.” Jocelyn said this only because she felt compelled to say
something
.
“The seller promised us that the damage had been remedied by the presence of scaffolding. But when we arrived, we found the scaffolding to be tenuous at best. ‘Tenuous’ is a very generous description, in fact.
“To that end,” she went on meaningfully, “I’m endeavoring to strike a deal with Lord Falcondale next door. There is a second-floor passage that connects our two houses, you see. If I could just come and go from the upper floors of my house by way of the
earl’s
stairwell, then my problem would be solved. It will be essential for making repairs before the new stairs are in.”
“You’re
what
?” Jocelyn strained to see her behind the armful of cloth.
“Well, originally,” Piety said, “Tiny and I were meant to
lease
the earl’s empty house and live next door, but then . . . ” She trailed off.
“But then?” Jocelyn prompted.
Piety turned to Marissa and asked her to fetch another broom from the house. When the girl drifted away, she took a deep breath and explained the lot: the
previous
earl, now dead, the cancelled lease and usurped accommodations.
“And you cannot simply wait on the upper floors?” Jocelyn asked, feeling her own bright, new beginning slip away. She gripped the stack of rags so tightly, her fingers burned. “You could wait until your own stairs have been repaired.” The alternative was an impossible,
impassabl
e solution. Surely she could see that.
Piety shook her head. “No,” she said. She set down her basket and bucket. “No, I cannot.”
“But why not?”
Piety ambled a slow circle around her supplies, rubbing two fingers back and forth across her brow.
Finally, she said, “My mother? These vile men, her stepsons? They could turn up here, in Henrietta Place, any day. They can and, mind you, they
will
. And when they come, sooner rather than later, I must look established. Settled. I must look entirely immovable. I need to be in and out of every level of this house immediately, but not just me, carpenters, painters, delivery men with furniture, too.”
“Your mother will come here?” asked Jocelyn. “I hadn’t realized . . . ”
“I have no doubt that they will chase me here. When they discover my precise location and rally their combined conniving spirit, they will come. It could be . . . Really, I suppose, it could be anytime, depending on how soon they managed to sail from New York behind me. That’s the entire reason for my haste. It must look as if—nay, it must
be
that—all the money is spent, sunk irrevocably into this house. The fortune must look no longer available, even to me, save as a property that I now occupy.”
Jocelyn blinked, tabling for a moment the topic of a joint passage shared with a bachelor earl. “But what will your mother do if she arrives to discover the money has
not
been spent?”
“If the money is not tied up, one way or the other, my mother will seize it for sure.”
“But how? If the money is yours? If the house is yours?”
“She would haul me back to America and force me to marry one of her horrid stepsons. There is no
man
in this equation, don’t you see? My father left his clear intentions in the will, but ultimately, I have very few rights. If my mother looks hard enough, she will discover a way to requisition the money.”
“And you feel sure,” Jocelyn asked, “that your mother does not have your best interest at heart? To settle you in a marriage that keeps you close to her care, perhaps, despite your distaste for the prospective groom?”
“Of this I am very sure.” Piety sighed, toeing the weeds of the garden with her boot. “My mother doesn’t want me. All she wants is the money. American dollars. Ready currency for ready spending. She’s struck a deal with the Limpetts. If one of them manages to marry me, she and the husband will divide my money. They’ll want nothing tied up in property, of course, and certainly not a property gutted by carpenters.” She looked up and smiled a sad, tired smile.
Piety shook her head, gathering up her pail and basket. “I gave her my own house, you know. My father willed our New York house entirely to me. It is a lovely home filled with beautiful things, as she well knows. It took her less than a week to install the stocking king and his reptilian spawn throughout—and then to make designs on me. That is when I decided to come here. To select a new home for myself, as far away—and as difficult to wrench away—as possible. I gave myself three months in which to get my affairs in order and then stole away in the middle of the night.”
She jostled the provisions, seeking a better grip. “So there you have it.” She glanced up. “Please believe me when I say that I cannot,
will not
, wait.”
Jocelyn nodded. It was a terrible tale; impossible, very sad. A greedy mother; an undesired match—or match
es
—so much money and a young woman’s freedom at stake. Still, the plan she described? It could not be.
Marissa ambled up with a second broom and tipped the handle in Jocelyn’s direction. Jocelyn strained around her rags to receive it and leaned in toward Piety. “Assuming you can convince the earl, himself, about this, er,
passage
,” she whispered, “what will his family say? His friends? The marchioness believes he has released the staff, but surely not everyone has been let go. The gossip of only one chambermaid could cause a scandal from which you might not recover.”
“Oh, the earl lives here alone,” Piety said, apparently not caring if the maid overheard. “That’s been the one lucky piece. And so far, the only staff I’ve discerned is a lone serving boy, very loyal. If the old earl had to die—may God rest his soul
—
then he has been replaced by the best-possible relation for my situation. A reclusive bachelor with no family or friends. He may be a little inflexible, but aren’t we all? Before we’ve been made to see?”
Piety resumed her march across the garden. “Shall we?”
Jocelyn watched her go, watched Marissa follow—clearly the maid was wholly on her side—and watched her own new, exciting future disappear, too. Words formed in her throat to call after them, but no sound would come.
“But if the earl is not here?” Jocelyn managed to ask when they reached Falcondale’s kitchen door.
“Oh, he’s gone; you said so yourself, and thank goodness for that. But we shall call upon his boy, Joseph. Marissa? Have you met Lord Falcondale’s manservant, Joseph?”
Jocelyn looked at Marissa, realization dawning. Her service as a maid was slow and begrudging, but she was pretty and young, with powder-blonde hair and blue eyes that now swept down in a coy flutter. Thin, too; lithe rather than underfed. It was a delicate sort of beauty, likely to inspire thoughts of rescue and heroics in certain young men.
Piety knocked on the earl’s kitchen door with one hand and shoved Marissa to the forefront with the other. They heard footsteps. The latch was thrown. A young man, no more than fifteen, stared at the collected women in the garden.
“Hello, Joseph!” said Piety.
“ ’Ullo, miss?” The boy sounded uncertain.
“I’m so sorry to disturb, but would you believe there are matters of utmost importance to which I desperately need to attend upstairs? In my house? I was wondering if you could be so kind as to grant us entry. It’s just the three of us, and we hoped to slip through the shared passage.”
He studied them with wide, worried eyes and then looked over his shoulder and back again. He stammered, “Lord Falcondale said that—”
“Have you met my new maid, Marissa?” Piety asked, nudging the girl forward.
With an alacrity Jocelyn had never seen Marissa apply to housework, the girl instantly affected the look of near collapse, struggling under the weight of the basket of food and pail of soap that she had carried effortlessly across two gardens just moments before.
Joseph lunged to relieve her of the basket.
“Thank you,” Marissa said, her voice husky.
Hesitating only a moment more, the boy unburdened Marissa of the pail and moved out of the way, allowing the three of them to pass.
Heart pounding, hands tightly gripping her stack of cloth, Jocelyn followed Piety, who followed the girl. Her shoulders trembled and her feet felt light, but, God help her, Jocelyn was unable to turn back.
Piety walked straight to a staircase, chattering to Joseph. At her side, Marissa drifted along with an expression of endurance and longing.
If nothing else, at least the earl’s house seemed vacant, Jocelyn thought. But she cringed at the passing of each open door, half expecting a butler or housekeeper or a countess to pop out.
The top of the stair was just as deserted as the bottom, and the boy led the way down the landing, around a corner, and into an empty room with a small door at the far end.
The “passage.” It was an elfin channel that extended no more than five feet through unfinished masonry and exposed brick into the dusty interior of a bedroom beyond. Judging by the size and Piety’s comments about her plans for the room, this was the master bedchamber. It was to be
Piety’s
bedroom.
His house connects to her bedroom?
Jocelyn winced, finding it suddenly difficult to breathe.
Piety appeared unfazed and ducked through. Marissa relieved Joseph of her provisions with a bashful smile and followed. Jocelyn had no choice but to stoop and cross, wobbling in the cramped, uneven space with her arms full of fabric and the extra broom. When they reached the other side, Joseph could be seen standing, bewildered and empty-handed, in the previous room.