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“Audrey, I mean quite a separate set of liberties taken,” Aunt Bette clarified. “He has a habit of using women,” she emphasized. “Using not just their talents in the realm of the domestic.”
“You mean he—” the truth dawned finally on sweet Audrey, who gulped down a sudden and startled breath, her cheeks burning bright-red. “A-Aunt Bette, I didn’t know— mean—” she stammered, naivete clear in her stunned expression.
“He enjoys the scandal,” Aunt Bette lamented. “And I’m certain he enjoys the sensation of pliable young bodies against his. I’m warning you of this because it’s not your place to fall in with royalty, Audrey,” Aunt Bette’s voice grew stern. “You can earn much working for royalty - including a good reputation. Should scandal fall on your name, only trouble will follow - and you’ll never be anything more to Lord Parris than a few nights of pleasure. There’s boundless promise before you, Audrey,” she opined whimsically, “and it need not be drowned in a sea of gossip, because of the lewd proclivities of the Duke of McClellan.”
“A-Aunt Bette, please,” Audrey begged anxiously, her voice soft and tiny. “I’m... I’m not the sort, not the sort of woman to... do... that,” she assured her Aunt. A girl of only twenty, Audrey had never indulged in the lust that so often took most men and women her age. Chastened, Audrey had thought occasionally of the night she would spend with a man she loved, and how only then would she give in to temptation - but she had no interest until then. Certainly not with habitual philanderers. Aunt Better regarded her warily nevertheless.
“I don’t take you for the sort to sleep with any man who offers, Audrey,” Aunt Bette warned, “but I do take you for the type to fall in love with a man of charm and forceful personality. Exactly the sort of man Lord Parris is. And fall in love you would, if he said the right words to you - but it would be a one sided love,” she continued, speaking perhaps from sullen experience. “A Duke, and a powerful man, could never give you what you need. You’d be at best a mistress, a toy for him to play with when he wished. You would love him dearly, and you would live miserable, knowing he couldn’t give you the love you want - and deserve, Audrey. You’re young, and sweet, and your heart is soft. Don’t let any man tread upon it, yes?” Aunt Bette pulled her shawl over her shoulders as the wagon took a hard corner, picking up speed along another straightaway.
The sun had begun to set over the broad moors and green fields in the distant edges of the McClellan lands. The carriage driver knocked on the small wooden door separating the two women from the outside world - as the sun fell, rainclouds began to move over the orange glow, casting ominous shadows long across the path ahead.
“Nearing the manor, loves,” the driver informed them, “an’ it looks like a storm’s waiting for us.” Audrey’s mind dwelt on her aunt’s words, worry creeping into her mind.
“I don’t want a man like that,” Audrey swallowed, reassuring her aunt. In truth, young Audrey had no concept of a Duke, ever loving her. Her family had loved her - and the nice boy who worked for the fishmonger had once admitted to loving her, but the concept was only a fairy tale to Audrey; the sort she would read in one of her mother’s heavy tomes, back at the inn, the only heirlooms her parents had left her.
“Because you’re a smart woman, Audrey. Don’t let your heart be used,” Aunt Bette cautioned.
“Aunt Bette, I’ve never...” she swallowed, both proud and a little ashamed at her admission. “I’ve never spent the evening with a man, much less a lord.” She had nary shared a kiss with a man, in fact, and had only held hands with one once, squeezing her friend Brian’s hand as the sun began to fall over the horizon, but that had been years ago. She maintained her innocence, even as the world grew dirty around her with age.
“I hope that you don’t intend to start now, then,” Aunt Bette responded. “Your innocence is a precious thing, girl. Savor it. And if the Duke asks you to a dance, kindly excuse yourself,” she bristled.
“A dance? What harm could come from a dance?” Audrey giggled.
“You’ll be on your own now, Audrey, and you’ll need to learn that when a man tries to spend time alone with you, especially a rake as scurrilous as the Duke of McClellan, his mind is on things other than your sweet personality, or how well you can clean,” Aunt Bette groused. “Now collect your things, lovely, we’ll be arriving at the manor soon.”
“What if his mind isn’t on other things?” Audrey asked anxiously. “Perhaps he’d simply like to share an evening with his staff, once in a while.” She gathered the small linen bags littering the inside of the cart - her clothing and effects, packed tightly, cramped inside the rickety carriage, the only one the family could scrape together the money to afford. “I certainly wouldn’t want to offend my new employer... and refusing such a request puts me in a difficult position.”
“Offense taken or not, you have your dignity and your future to concern yourself with. Use your instincts, Audrey,” Aunt Bette implored. “I should hope I’ve taught you a thing or two worth knowing in the time you’ve lived with me. You’re all we have left,” Aunt Bette’s roughened countenance broke for a moment, letting slip the concern in her heart for her niece. “I swore to my sister I’d make you a happy, smart and successful woman. I think I’ve succeeded,” Bette admitted, a tear on her cheek.
“You have,” Audrey whispered. “You’re right, Aunt Bette. And I’ll do what I have to to make you proud,” she said, a small tear on her own milky-white cheek. “And I’ll make uncle proud. And my parents.”
“Okay, ladies! End of the line!” The call of the carriage driver fell beneath the rumble of a thunderstorm breaking just over the horizon, the shatter of a bolt of lightning crackling into the two women’s ears. Hustling free form the tight carriage confines, Aunt Bette gazed warily at the storm rolling over the sunset-colored sky. With burlap sacks and linen bags full of effects thrown over her shoulders, Audrey stumbled from the wagon, nearly tripping and falling on the carriage’s broken stair.
“This isn’t the manor,” Aunt Bette snarled. Glancing up a long and winding path, up a steep grassy hill, Bette spied the familiar mansion - towering, its facade gleaming bright-white, reflecting the dying sun while harsh charcoal clouds shroud around it. “Carriage driver, can’t you take us up the roadway? It’s going to begin raining—”
“I was paid to drop you off here, and I’m dropping you off here,” the driver, a burly man in a black robe, yowled back at the two ladies. “Besides, storm’s rolling in, and I need to make it to an inn before night comes and it all falls down on top of my head.”
“We have a lot to drag up that hill,” Aunt Bette grumbled. “Can’t you—”
“You’d better get started then, yeah?” he snobbily quipped, crackling his whip against the horses and urging them down the road as another thunderclap filled the air.
A storm coming, heavy bags hanging from her every limb, Audrey Fisher’s first day of her new life didn’t appear to be shaping up very well.
“Let’s go,
” Aunt Bette grumbled sourly, helping to drag some of the bags along the winding path.
Chapter 2
“Hello! Agatha! Agatha!” Aunt Bette pounded relentlessly on the front door to the manor, tall and flanked with stained-glass windows tinted a deep green. Rain soaked through their linens, clothes clinging to skin as the last rays of sunlight fell dim over the horizon and darkness began to seep into every corner of the land. And while the thunder roared and Aunt Bette pounded and cried out for her friend inside the mansion, all Audrey could see and think about and comprehend in her mind was how big everything felt. A bell tower, taller than anything she had seen since London; a mansion plastered a blinding white, with pillars like a Greek temple lending inscrutable class to the seemingly endless structure. With architecture trimmed in gold and marble more expensive than anything her family had ever owned, awed silence struck Audrey, the shock of surprise in her mind muting the loud patter of rain and dulling her feeling of the freezing chill woven up her spine by the rain, coming down in heavy sheets on top of her and her aunt.
The door finally cracks open, inhabitants cautious as specks of rain splash inside the foyer.
“Who’s there?” A stodgy voice called from inside. “We’ve no room for lodgers and travelers in this estate, so—”
“Agatha? Agatha, it’s me!” Aunt Bette exclaimed, relief in her tone. Audrey huddled beneath what little cover the flowerboxes and other attachments hanging from the floors above provided. The cold settled in and the luster of the manor wore thin as she glanced at her linen sacks, full of cleaned clothes - or, they used to be clean. Now, they lay soaked through with dirt-filled rainwater. She frowned. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all, she pondered.
“Oh! Dear, I hadn’t expected you today, with it being so late,” the voice behind the door croaked. “A thousand apologies, Bette - come in, come in! You must be drenched, with the rain.” The doors swing open in a foyer that could charitably be described as opulent. Paneled in carved marble and oak, cut into extraordinary shapes, gargoyles and lions and heroes lined every wall, trimmed in gold and carved carefully into each panel. Sofas upholstered with gold buttons and ornately designed in the finest styles sat casually, cluttered around gold-trimmed coffee tables, flanking a grand staircase carving through the center of the manor. A grand statue of a cherub greeted newcomers to the manse, its marbled surface bisecting the twisting staircase as it met the ground floor. The magic had begun to wear on Audrey, until the foyer reignited her entranced curiosity once more. She could barely catch her breath; the sweet scent of roasted peppers and cinnamon wafted through the hallways, with doors twice as tall as the small maiden lining each wall. Candles danced on each table, casting long shadows in the crevices of the manor, the storm growing rougher as the door slammed shut behind Audrey and her aunt.
