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"You'll be amazing. You have no idea how many girls you beat out for this assignment. Gina said, it's almost like—" She pauses, and I blink at her.
"How many?" I ask. I knew my work abroad would help, and I'm just glad that Gina could fudge the background check on me. She knew where I'd been for several years and hadn't needed to call my previous employers.
My secret would die in the ashes of this new job. I would stick around long enough that Gina, and Mrs. Harris, could give me a good reference. I'd be remade. The very thought fills me with so much relief I could cry.
"Over a hundred girls were short-listed, and then there was the final twenty-five. Honestly, it feels a bit like the universe is watching out for you, you know? Finally, something good."
"Right," I said, reaching for my luggage. "Then it's better not to wait around in case something good decides to get gone without me."
She grabs my second and third suitcases, and I look around my crappy bachelor, happy to leave it behind. The cleaning supplies are still on the countertop, and I sigh.
"You're sure you're OK cleaning up here?" I ask. She nods.
"Are you kidding? With the bonus I got for referring you to Gina, I'd clean this and your next-door neighbor, Mr. Fitz's." I wrinkle my nose. Mr. Fitz is a chain smoker, and I'm pretty sure he's also a hoarder.
"Gross. OK, point made. Thank you," I laugh as we pull my bags outside, and the limousine driver hops out, his jacket and cap looking abnormally formal in this broken-down shanty-town place.
"Miss Bell?" He asks, and I nod. "I'm Wilson." That'd be his last name. I've been studying that etiquette book Mrs. Harris gave me. Drivers are always referred to by their last name, without the honorific ofMisterin front of it. "Let me get those for you." He takes the three bags from us, and I turn to Erica, shrugging.
I want to cover up my anxiety with casual behavior. Maybe it's working.
"This is it."
"Best of luck, you'll be brilliant," she promises. "And call me as soon as you're settled in." She hugs me, and the driver waits after stowing my bags. I hesitate and then smile at him. He opens the rear door for me, and Erica waves as I slip inside.
"Won't be more than an hour, Miss," Wilson says, and the door shuts. Erica waits a moment, then rushes back inside my apartment with a final wave. The car moves, dipping as the driver sits in the front, and then we're pulling away.
Leaving this world behind, and bringing me into a whole other galaxy. I look around the limo, the fine black leather seats making me feel grubby and unpolished. I close my eyes.
I can do this.
Everything will be better after this. And I won't need to worry anymore.
The drive isan hour at maximum. Our car is allowed on the private mirroring road along the highway out of the city, meant only for a particular, elevated group of people. I guess I'm in that group now. As we head for the hills, Los Angeles slips behind me, and I turn back to look at the skyline as we go.
The next time I'm on L.A.'s streets, I'll be a part of the duke's household. It's a feeling that has me nervous like I'm drunk and dizzy. I push those feelings aside and let the landscape on the drive up to Wester Hall soothe me.
Mrs. Harris greets me, and ushers me inside the servant's entrance.
"You've arrived, good, leave your bags for the footmen. I've got to show you around to get you acquainted and then start to prepare— his duke is entertaining this weekend, and we've got a house party. You've come at just the right time." She's busy already, and I trail after her, trying not to gawk or look like I don't know what I'm doing.
I'm out of place here, that's for certain. Everyone's in uniform denoting their place in the house. I see at least four maids in neat, deep-blue uniforms with lighter blue aprons over top, and when we go past the kitchens, I see a woman in white, the chef, hollering at her two assistant cooks.
"This way," Mrs. Harris says. "You'll be spending most of your time on the family's side of the house, so we won't spend toomuch time looking at the servant areas." She walks quickly, and I must speed up to keep up with her.
"This is the entry hall," she says as we exit through a tall door, that I realize is disguised to look like wall paneling as soon as we're through it. When it closes shut behind us, it virtually disappears. I suppose that makes it so that the servants seem to appear out of nowhere, and disappear once they're no longer needed.
It's a neat way for the high-born to pretend that servants don't even exist and that the nice things in their lives happen by magic, I guess.
I bury that uncharitable thought under an admiring smile. The entrance hall to the great house is beautiful, two stories tall, with large doors carved all over with the animal from the duke's crest. Two large bears rear up on each door, the sky above them studded with dark metal stars.
"I bet people feel pretty small when they come through here," I say mostly to myself, but Mrs. Harris gives me a side look that tells me she heard me just fine. I bite my tongue. I don't want her to think that I'm against the nobility, or the high-born. And I'm not, not really. They have their place. Their purpose.
It's just already been a bad one in my opinion. There's always been the opportunity to hurt us, because there's so many of us and so few of them. We're replaceable, and we're treated like it.
We walk by some sweeping stairs, splitting on either side of the hall to the second floor.
"The men's wing to the left," Mrs. Harris says, "and the women's to the right." I blink. That's old-fashioned. I've only seen one great house while I was in France, but they didn't separate thegenders like this.
