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It was obviously intended as sarcasm, but she took it literally.
“I was not suggesting it,” she agreed. “But now that you raise the thought, it does not seem impossible. Percival is a good-looking young man, and I have observed Fenella regarding him with appreciation.” Her face puckered and she shuddered very slightly. “I know it is revolting—” She stared beyond him to the dressing table with its cut glass containers and silver-topped bottles neatly arranged. “But there is a streak of viciousness in Fenella—”
He stood up and turned his back to her, looking out of the window, still apparently oblivious of Hester standing in the dressing room doorway with a peignoir over her arm and a clothes brush in her hand.
“You are a great deal more fastidious than most women, Beatrice,” he said flatly. “I think sometimes you do not know the difference between restraint and abstemiousness.”
“I know the difference between a footman and a gentleman,” she said quietly, and then stopped and frowned, a curious little twitch of humor on her lips. “That’s a lie—I have no idea at all. I have no familiarity with footmen whatsoever—”
He swung around, unaware of the slightest humor in her remark or in the situation, only anger and acute insult.
“This tragedy has unhinged your mind,” he said coldly, his black eyes flat, seeming expressionless in the lamplight. “You have lost your sense of what is fitting and what is not. I think it will be better if you remain here until you can compose yourself. I suppose it is to be expected, you are not strong. Let Miss—what is her name—care for you. Araminta will see to the household until you are better. We shall not be entertaining, naturally. There is no need for you to concern yourself; we shall manage very well.” And without saying anything further he walked out and closed the door very quietly behind him, letting the latch fall home with a thud.
Beatrice pushed her unfinished tray away from her and turned over, burying her face in the pillows, and Hester could see from the quivering of her shoulders that she was weeping, although she made no sound.
Hester took the tray and put it on the side table, then wrung out a cloth in warm water from the ewer and returned to the bed. Very gently she put her arms around the other woman and held her until she was quiet, then, with great care, smoothed the hair off her brow and wiped her eyes and cheeks with the cloth.
It was the beginning of the afternoon when she was returning from the laundry with her clean aprons that Hester half accidentally overheard an exchange between the footman Percival and the laundry maid Rose. Rose was folding a pile of embroidered linen pillowcases and had just given Lizzie, who was her elder sister, the parlormaid’s lace-edged aprons. She was standing very upright, her back rigid, her shoulders squared and her chin high. She was tiny, with a waist even Hester could almost have put her hands around, and small, square hands with amazing strength in them. Her cornflower-blue eyes were enormous in her pretty face, not spoiled by a rather long nose and overgenerous mouth.
“What do you want in here?” she asked, but her words were belied by her voice. It was phrased as a demand, but it sounded like an invitation.
“Mr. Kellard’s shirts,” Percival said noncommittally.
“I didn’t know that was your job. You’ll have Mr. Rhodes after you if you step out of your duties!”
“Rhodes asked me to do it for him,” he replied.
“Though you’d like to be a valet, wouldn’t you? Get to travel with Mr. Kellard when he goes to stay at these big houses for parties and the like—” Her voice caressed the idea, and listening, Hester could envision her eyes shining, her lips parted in anticipation, all the excitement and delights imagined, new people, an elegant servants’ hall, food, music, late nights, wine, laughter and gossip.
“It’d be all right,” Percival agreed, for the first time a lift of warmth in his voice also. “Although I get to some interesting places now.” That was the tone of the braggart, and Hester knew it.
It seemed Rose did too. “But not inside,” she pointed out. “You have to wait in the mews with the carriages.”
“Oh no I don’t.” There was a note of sharpness in his voice, and Hester could imagine the glitter in his eyes and the little curl of his lips. She had seen it several times as he walked through the kitchen past the maids. “I quite often go inside.”
“The kitchen,” Rose said dismissively. “If you were a valet you’d get upstairs as well. Valet is better than a footman.”
They were all acutely conscious of hierarchy.
“Butler’s better still,” he pointed out.
“But less fun. Look at poor old Mr. Phillips.” She giggled. “He hasn’t had any fun in twenty years—and he looks as if ’e’s forgotten that.”
“Don’t think ’e ever wanted any of your sort o’ fun.” Percival sounded serious again, remote and a trifle pompous. Suddenly he was talking of men’s business, and putting a woman in her place. “He had an ambition to be in the army, but they wouldn’t take him because of ’is feet. Can’t have been that good a footman either, with his legs. Never wear livery without padding his stocking.”
Hester knew Percival did not have to add any artificial enhancement to his calves.
“His feet?” Rose was incredulous. “What’s wrong with ’is feet?”
This time there was derision in Percival’s voice. “Haven’t you ever watched ’im walk? Like someone broke a glass on the floor and ’e was picking ’is way over it and treading on half of it. Corns, bunions, I don’t know.”
“Pity,” she said dryly. “He’d ’ave made a great sergeant major—cut out for it, ’e was. Mind, I suppose butler’s the next best thing—the way ’e does it. And he does have a wonderful turn for putting some visitors in their place. He can size up anyone coming to call at a glance. Dinah says he never makes a mistake, and you should see his face if he thinks someone is less than a gentleman—or a lady—or if they’re mean with their little appreciations. He can be so rude, just with his eye-brows. Dinah says she’s seen people ready to curl up and die with mortification. It’s not every butler as can do that.”
“Any good servant can tell quality from riffraff, or they’re not worth their position,” Percival said haughtily. “I’m sure I can—and I know how to keep people in their places. There’s dozens of ways—you can affect not to hear the bell, you can forget to stoke the fire, you can simply look at them like they were something the wind blew in, and then greet the person behind them like they was royalty. I can do that just as well as Mr. Phillips.”
Rose was unimpressed. She returned to her first subject. “Anyway, Percy, you’d be out from under him if you were a valet—”
Hester knew why she wanted him to change. Valets worked far more closely with laundrymaids, and Hester had watched Rose’s cornflower eyes following Percival in the few days she had been here, and knew well enough what lay behind the innocence, the casual comments, the big bows on her apron waist and the extra flick of her skirts and wriggle of her shoulders. She had been attracted to men often enough herself and would have behaved just the same had she Rose’s confidence and her feminine skill.
