The Last Camellia: A Novel (6 page)

Flora

M
rs. Dilloway greeted me in the drawing room at one. “Hello, Miss Lewis,” she said from the doorway. Could this really be the housekeeper? She didn’t look much older than I. Her light brown hair was pulled back into a tidy bun, without a single hair askew. Her face, with high cheekbones and a regal mouth, looked wiser than her years. She had a formal way about her, and yet there was softness, too. I wondered if we might become friends.

“Hello,” I said.

She smiled at me curiously. “Did you expect someone else?”

“No, no,” I stammered. “It’s just that, well . . .”

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said with a brief smile. “I am quite young to be the head housekeeper of such a great house. But I can assure you that I am well suited for the job. Her Ladyship, rest her soul, would have no one else running things.”

“Of course,” I said. “I don’t doubt that at all.”

Mrs. Dilloway’s face softened, a good-faith attempt to erase our awkward start. “Well,” she said. “I am relieved that you’ve finally arrived. I’m certain that one more day of overseeing the children might do me in.” She smiled again and turned to the staircase. “I’m afraid you have your work cut out for you.”

The light fixture above our heads began to rattle, which is when we heard the thunder of footsteps stampeding down the staircase. I set my hand on the side table to brace myself. “They sound like a pack of rhinoceroses,” I said nervously.

“Rhinoceroses would be easier,” she said under her breath. “Children!” she cried as they clamored their way down the stairs. “You know your father does not permit running in the house! And Mr. Abbott, remove yourself from the banister at once.”

A blond-haired boy peered around the corner.

“Mr. Abbott,” Mrs. Dilloway continued, “please come in and meet your new nanny, Miss Lewis.”

“We don’t want a new nanny!” another boy, this one younger and dark-haired, bellowed from behind his brother.

“Mr. Nicholas,” Mrs. Dilloway said, “that is no way to speak of Miss Lewis, who has traveled a great distance to see you. Please be polite and tell her hello.”

Nicholas stuck out his tongue before sinking into a wingback chair near the window. “I won’t tell her hello. And you can’t make me either!”

Mrs. Dilloway gave me a knowing look. “Miss Katherine and Miss Janie?” A dark-haired, serious-looking young girl appeared, with a towheaded tot waddling behind, a bedraggled doll clutched in her hand. “Will
you
greet Miss Lewis?”

I knelt down in front of the girls and smiled awkwardly. “Hello,” I said to the older one. “Tell me, how old are you?”

“I’m ten,” she said. “And Janie is two.” She sighed discontentedly. “And you are
not
our mother.”

“I’ll leave you now,” Mrs. Dilloway said, smiling to herself as she walked out the door.

Abbott kept his arms folded tightly across his chest.

I stood up and moved to the sofa. “I’ve come here to take care of you, and I hope we can be friends,” I said nervously. I hated misrepresenting myself to these children, especially after what they’d been through and knowing that I wouldn’t be staying long. But I needed their help to find the camellia in the orchard. “Do you think we can?”

“I don’t like to make friends with girls,” Nicholas piped up.

“Neither do I,” added Abbott.

I folded my hands in my lap and sighed. The old grandfather clock on the wall ticked and tocked. “All right,” I said. “I see.”

“I’m your friend,” little Janie said in a sweet voice, melting the icy silence. She walked over to me and planted herself in my lap, running a chubby hand along my cheek. I couldn’t help but smile.

“Thank you,” I said to the little girl.

Katherine shrugged with an annoyed look that far surpassed her ten years. “Janie doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” she huffed. “She’s only a baby.”

“No,” the tiny child protested. “I’m a big girl.”

“Katherine’s right,” Nicholas added. “Janie doesn’t even remember Mother.”

Janie looked at me and then down in her lap, crestfallen.

“It’s OK, honey,” I whispered before turning to the older children. “As you may already know, I’m from America. We’re a little less formal there, so I have to ask you: Must I refer to you as Lady and Lord? I don’t mean any disrespect, but, well, it sounds so stiff and formal. And you’re children, after all.”

“Well, I, for one, hate the title,” Abbott said, finally unfolding his arms from his chest.

“Me too,” Nicholas said, looking relieved, then thoughtful for a moment. “Could you call me Nicholas the Great instead? I read about a comic book character called that.”

“Nicholas the Great it is, then,” I said, smiling.

“You may call me Lady Katherine,” Katherine said with an air of annoyance. “And we don’t need a nanny. We can take care of ourselves.”

Abbott smirked. “Mr. Beardsley arranged for you to come, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” I said. “I believe he did.”

“Mr. Beardsley is a mean old booby!” Nicholas exclaimed, crossing his arms across his chest.

“Now, Nicholas,” I said, trying very hard to stifle a laugh. “I mean, Nicholas the Great.” His smile revealed one missing front tooth. “I don’t think it’s very nice to call Mr. Beardsley a”—I placed my hand over my mouth, but the gesture failed to repress the laughter that seeped out—“a booby.”

Nicholas smiled. “You think he’s a booby too, don’t you?”

The room went quiet in anticipation of my response. I peered over my shoulder to see if Mrs. Dilloway was near; she wasn’t. I smiled, and looked back at the children. “I suppose you might say he has one or two booby qualities.”

The children laughed—all but Katherine, who frowned, busying herself with the ribbons in her hair.

Janie looked up at me from her perch in my lap. “Booby,” she said with a giggle.

I smiled. This wasn’t going to be easy, but so far, so good.

“The children take their tea at three,” Mrs. Dilloway said in the servants’ hall later that afternoon. “Nicholas and Abbott have riding lessons straight after, and Katherine and Janie have piano lessons. The lessons are a terrible bore to Katherine, who’d much rather be out riding with her brothers.”

I nodded as she walked out to the hallway. “If you don’t mind my asking, why isn’t she permitted to ride with her brothers?” I asked Sadie, seated beside me.

She sighed. “Lord Livingston won’t allow it. Not since Lady Anna died.”

I lowered my voice. “Did she die in a riding accident?”

“No, no,” Sadie replied. “My stars, if only it had been a riding accident.” She clutched a rosary around her neck and sighed. “Since she passed, Lord Livingston hasn’t been the same.”

“How so?”

Sadie looked left and then right, as if she worried the teacups in the cupboard might be spies. “He’s cross now,” she said. “Closed off. Well, I suppose he’s always been, but now it’s different—much worse. The day she died, the children lost two parents, if you ask me. He hardly pays them any attention. It’s a pity.”

I leaned in closer to Sadie. “How did she die?”

She shrugged. “No one knows, really. They found her body out there.” She paused, lowering her voice to a whisper. “In the orchard.”

I covered my mouth. “That’s just terrible,” I said. “I suppose Lord Livingston must have loved her a great deal.”

Sadie looked conflicted. She took a bite of her roll and didn’t finish chewing it before speaking. “I guess you could say so, but she wasn’t happy here, Lady Anna. Never was. She never warmed to the moors, the isolation. She missed America. Of course, Lord Livingston tried to make her happy.” She gestured toward the window. “He brought in every plant, tree, and shrub you could ever imagine. Rare ones, too. You should have seen the gardeners parading through here with flowers pulled from the depths of the Amazon forest.” She sighed. “And that orchard. He helped her find all of the camellias. My, did she love the camellias. No expense was spared when it came to Lady Anna’s gardens. But, you know, they could never compare to her gardens in America.” Sadie nodded to herself. “I’ll never forget seeing her face one day when she received a letter from America. You’d think her heart was about to break right there.”

“Didn’t she go home to visit?”

She shook her head. “Lady Anna was from a wealthy family. From what I gather, his Lordship needed a fortune to save the manor. And her father wanted her as far away from Charleston as possible.”

“Why?”

“The rumor is that she fell for some boy who was poor and not suitable for her. So they sent her to England. But what Lord Livingston didn’t realize is that you can’t keep a wife, a human being, under lock and key. Not even in the company of the rarest flowers in the world. She longed for her life in Charleston, but Lord Livingston wouldn’t hear of it. And after the children were born, her fate was sealed. She couldn’t leave. It broke her, I think.”

“No wonder the children are so troubled,” I said, shaking my head. “What they must have endured!”

Sadie nodded.

“You said they found her in the orchard?”

“Yes,” she continued. “She and his Lordship had a row that morning. It was a bad one. I know, because I was scrubbing the floors outside of the drawing room. She ran out, and I could see that she’d been crying. She took her tea on the terrace with that awful gardener Mr. Blythe, and then she went for a walk in the gardens. They found her down there that night.”

“What happened?” I gasped.

“No one knows,” Sadie said in a hushed voice. “But it’s never sat well with me. His Lordship fired Mr. Blythe on the spot.” She sighed. “Only the sweet Lord Jesus knows what went on in that orchard,” she continued. “Poor Lady Anna, she—”

“That will be all, Sadie,” Mrs. Dilloway said from the doorway. How long had she been standing there? Neither of us had noticed her.

“Yes, ma’am,” Sadie said quickly, her cheeks reddening. “I was only telling Miss Lewis about—”

“Yes, I know what you were discussing with Miss Lewis—things that should not be spoken of,” she said. “Now, it’s time you get started on the bedrooms. The washing is ready to be collected. Get on with it, please.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sadie said, jumping to her feet.

Mrs. Dilloway cast a disapproving look toward me and then turned on her heel.

“What’s America like?” Sadie asked in the servants’ hall later. It wasn’t really a hall, but that’s what they called it. The room contained a long table with a bench on one side and chairs on the other.

“Oh, it’s fine, I guess,” I said.

“I’ve never been fond of Americans,” Mrs. Marden said, casting a glance toward me. “But I do like the accent. Lady Anna had such a way of talking.” The cook frowned as though recalling something unpleasant. “I take it they don’t eat stew in America?”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” I said, flustered.

“You hardly touched your lunch today,” she added with a smirk.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I haven’t had much of an appetite since leaving home.”

The cook was a large woman, in both height and girth. She wore her gray hair short, and when she smiled, which wasn’t often, she revealed a crooked front tooth. “If you don’t like my cooking, you can just say so. No point in beating around the bush.”

“I don’t mean that at all, ma’am,” I said, flushing. To compensate, I pointed to the breadboard on the table. “That’s a fine loaf you’ve got there.”

Mrs. Marden arched her eyebrows. “And how would
you
know?”

“I know bread,” I said. “I grew up in a bakery.”

“My, my,” she said, as though my comment had added fuel to the fire. “A baker’s daughter has taken up residence in Livingston Manor.”

Mrs. Dilloway cleared her throat. “Mrs. Marden, perhaps she can give you a few pointers on your scones.”

The cook smirked and turned to her bowl.

A large man with dark hair and a prominent Adam’s apple appeared in the doorway of the servants’ hall. He was so tall, he had to stoop below the doorway as he passed through. I watched as he stopped at a basin by the window to wash his hands before joining us at the table. He looked up as he reached for the soap, and our eyes met, but he turned away without smiling. Dirt-tinged water streamed from his hands.