“Then go downstairs. Mrs. Wraxhall has company. There will be cake.”
Alice did not know what to do in a roomful of people who were meant for nothing but cake and idleness. She knew she was supposed to welcome this as her birthright as the daughter of a gentleman, but she’d much rather be put to use scouring pans in the kitchen. No, if Alice went downstairs, she would sit in the hard-backed chair farthest from the fire. She would be silent and still, hoping nobody took any notice of her. This didn’t seem like a very good reason to go downstairs, and it was occurring to Alice that she didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to do. This was not an entirely welcome realization after a lifetime during which her wants hadn’t mattered in the slightest. The laundry had needed hanging, the soup needed stirring, the baby needed rocking; Alice had done her duty, and that was that. The absence of duty left her with nothing other than want as her guiding principle, and the thought made her feel adrift.
“There will be cake,” Molly repeated in a wheedling, singsong tone.
Alice made a dismissive noise. “Bollocks on cake,” she said, borrowing Molly’s phrase.
Molly looked up in mock affront. “Never say that about cake.”
Alice giggled, actually giggled. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done that.
“Well, suit yourself,” Molly said, tossing Alice a gown that needed some beads resewn before it could be worn again. “If you want to do my job, I shan’t stop you.”
They sewed together for the rest of the afternoon, and sometimes when Alice looked across the room, Molly gave her a sly little sideways smile. The first time, Alice nearly dropped her work because that smile somehow put her in mind of secret nighttime thoughts she was trying not to reflect overmuch on. The second time, she returned a smile of her own—not a crooked nighttime-thought kind of smile, but a smile that was meant for Molly. It was the only kind of smile Alice had, and it would have to do.
The third time, Molly moved so they were sitting beside one another on the same settee.
When the dinner hour drew near, Molly rose to her feet and stretched. “A letter came from the Continent today, so that means Mrs. Wraxhall will take her supper on a tray in bed. I’d better see if she needs a warming pan.”
“A letter from the Continent?”
“That’s where Mr. Wraxhall is.”
“Is he on a diplomatic mission?”
“Oh lord no. He’s drying out in some spa town.”
“Drying—what on earth are you talking about?” Alice had an image of Mr. Wraxhall, son of a baronet, husband of an heiress, hanging out laundry somewhere in Belgium.
“He drank. A lot. He’s gone to the Continent so he can get in the habit of not doing that anymore. Not sure why he couldn’t dry out just as well in London, but people who have money like to find ways to spend it, I guess.”
Alice wasn’t sure about that. She could see how breaking a habit might be easier if one wasn’t surrounded by familiar temptations. She had often thought that if only she were able to stop the wine merchant from extending credit to her father, a good deal of their household’s troubles could have been avoided. “Why didn’t Mrs. Wraxhall go with him?”
“Beats me. I think he was embarrassed by some trouble he caused. The poor lady was in a wretched state last summer.” Before Alice could ask about what this trouble was, Molly continued speaking. “If you ask me, she doesn’t think he’ll come back, which is why she gets herself worked up when a letter comes from him. Oh! Before I forget,” she said, reaching her hand into her pocket. “This is for you.” In her palm was a golden guinea, two crowns, and several shillings.
“I beg your pardon?”
“For the handkerchiefs. I sold them.”
“You sold them?”
“You said I could,” Molly protested, sounding offended.
“No, I quite appreciate it. Thank you. I just never thought to get so much money for them.” She reached towards Molly’s outstretched hand but didn’t touch the coins. It seemed impossible that she had money of her own. Money she had earned, not begged off her father, not been given as charity by Mrs. Wraxhall.
Molly took hold of her wrist and dumped the coins into Alice’s palm, where they landed with an impossibly bright clinking. Then Molly clasped Alice’s hand, the coins in between their palms, and said, “You deserve it,” before leaving Alice alone.
Even when things had gone very poorly at the vicarage—even the sort of “poorly” that involved crockery being thrown across the room and the housemaid cowering in the larder—Alice never got angry. There was no point to it. Her father had been angry enough for the two of them, and meeting his anger with some of her own would only have earned her the same treatment as the crockery. She had gotten into the habit of brushing off any inconvenient emotion like she might brush dust off the chimneypiece, and simply getting down to the business of setting things right.
Now that she lived a life of outrageous idleness, in a house with functioning chimneys and meals that appeared on the table as if by magic, she found herself furious over the least things.
When they arrived at Eastgate Hall and she learned that she was to share a room with Molly, she nearly cried with helpless annoyance. As if she hadn’t shared a bedroom nearly every night of her life before coming to Mrs. Wraxhall’s house. As if she didn’t still reach out in the night to comfort a sibling or niece who wasn’t there.
“Her ladyship doesn’t want either of us sleeping next door to her bedchamber,” Molly said as she unpacked the perfumes and salves and combs and ribbons that were required in her mistress’s toilette. They were in the dressing room that adjoined Mrs. Wraxhall’s bedchamber; this was where Molly would have made a bed for herself if Mrs. Wraxhall hadn’t decreed otherwise at the last minute, when it was too late for any arrangement to be made besides the lady’s maid and the companion sharing quarters. “If you ask me,” Molly said, arranging a pair of ivory hair combs on the dressing table, “she has a fellow.”
“Nobody did ask you,” Alice snapped. Molly turned, her mouth an O, her eyebrows nearly at her hairline. She didn’t look insulted, so much as impressed, as if she hadn’t thought Alice had it in her to snap at anyone. Alice had hardly thought so herself.
“That was unkind of me,” she said, falling back on the old habit of contrition. “I apologize.” Besides, who was she to begrudge Mrs. Wraxhall some comfort and companionship? Her husband had been gone for several months and might never return. “I suppose that’s what people do at these parties.” Alice was conscious that any decent woman would come up with some suitable comment about dens of iniquity or some such. Her father certainly would have expected it of her.
