Secrets and Lords. Justine Elyot

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СКАЧАТЬ car was not the one she had ridden in earlier, though. It was that same sleek, cream-coloured monster that had twice passed her on the road.

      The rain had abated and its driver got out on to wet gravel, looking up at the house windows as he did so. Edie took a swift step back, her heart pounding. Why did she not want to be seen? Because this must be Charles, the rake of the Deverell’s, and she had no wish to draw his attention to her.

      He was pristine in a pinstriped blazer over light-coloured waistcoat, shirt and trousers. His dark hair was immaculately cut and he was clean-shaven. He didn’t wear a hat, and Edie approved of this, for she had no taste for the current fashion for straw boaters on men.

      His eye was soon drawn away from the house, and he went to the passenger side to open it for a young woman.

      ‘Who is that?’ asked Edie, and Jenny came to look over her shoulder.

      ‘Lady Mary. Oh, don’t look. Sir Charles will see you.’

      ‘She is fearfully lovely.’

      ‘Yes. Come away.’

      But a creeping fascination had overcome Edie, who noted that Mary was exceptionally fashionable and glamorous in a calf-length beige skirt, a lace-collared blouse and a loose belted jacket. Her hat was low on her brow over dark, shiny bobbed hair and she wore three long strands of pearls.

      Jenny tried to tug her away but to no avail. Edie watched Charles take Mary’s arm to help her up the steps, then – disaster! He looked directly at her window. Her throat tightened and she tried to move away but she felt held there by the keen penetration of his gaze. It only lasted a moment, before Lady Mary slapped him on the elbow, as if in reproof, and he turned back to her, laughing.

      But a moment was enough. Edie had been noticed, and now she felt like a marked woman.

       Chapter Two

      Her stomach in knots, she returned reluctantly to her mirror. The surround was devilishly full of sharp points and curlicues and polishing it was a more arduous task than she had imagined.

      ‘Lady Mary, the spoiled beauty. Shouldn’t she be in London for the season?’ she asked, resuming her labours.

      ‘So many questions,’ said Jenny briskly, putting the polish back in the trug. ‘Oh, lor’. Oh, dear me, no.’

      Edie looked around, putting her materials down on the mantelpiece as a stricken-faced Jenny drew nearer.

      ‘What is it?’

      ‘You don’t never use polish on the ormolu. Didn’t you know that? It damages it. You can only dust that down.’

      ‘Oh, I had no idea,’ said Edie, her hands flying to cover her mouth.

      Josie McCullen had never mentioned ormolu. Only silver and plain brass. Oh, there were so many gaps in her domestic education. She would be making huge mistakes all the livelong day.

      Jenny sighed. ‘It’s probably all right,’ she said. ‘But that polish strips the gilt away. The most you can do is dab it with meths and a soft cloth, and then only when you can see some corrosion. Let me look a bit closer. Oh. Oh, dear.’

      A tiny scrap of one of the curlicues had dulled, a tarnished patch amidst the bright gilt.

      ‘We’ll have to tell Mrs Munn,’ Jenny decided. ‘She’ll know how to fix it.’

      Mrs Munn did know how to fix it – or, at least, she knew a restorer who did – but she still pursed her lips and tapped her fingers against the mantel in the servants’ dining hall when the maids made their confession.

      ‘It’ll have to come out of your wages,’ she told Edie. ‘I can’t imagine how you could be so careless. What kind of place have you come from, where they had no ormolu in the house?’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ repeated Edie, feeling like a spot of grease on the floor at Mrs Munn’s feet. ‘I only had charge of the silver and brass at Mrs Winchester’s.’

      ‘Perhaps we should keep you to the corridors and anterooms,’ mused the housekeeper. ‘But if I can’t use you where I see fit, then what’s the good of having you?’

      ‘Please, I promise to do better,’ pleaded Edie, close to tears.

      ‘Come on, have a heart, it’s her first day.’

      The male voice from the doorway belonged to Ted Kempe.

      ‘I’ll thank you to keep your opinions to yourself, Kempe,’ snapped Mrs Munn. ‘This matter does not relate to motor cars, or any other area to which you can be expected to contribute.’

      Ted shrugged. ‘We’ve all made mistakes, the first few days of a new place. Haven’t you, Mrs Munn?’

      ‘Yes, and I was properly corrected,’ she hissed, clearly unappreciative of the chauffeur’s attempts to pour oil on the troubled waters. ‘And thankful for it. You may go, Edie, and I will expect a substantial improvement on this performance tomorrow.’

      ‘Thank you, Mrs Munn,’ whispered Edie, and she ran from the servants’ hall, regardless of the fact that it was almost dinnertime, and into the darkening kitchen garden where she sat herself down on a low wall and burst into tears.

      This was all a crazy, ridiculous mistake.

      She would pack her bags, go back to London, back to papa and back to her circle of friends. Service was perfectly horrid and so was Deverell Hall and so was everything.

      Except Ted Kempe. He was not horrid. He was kind and handsome, and he approached her now from the scullery door, uniform cap in hand, smile of rueful sympathy on face.

      ‘Hey, you’ll be missing your supper,’ he hailed her, coming closer and perching at her side. ‘That won’t do.’

      ‘Oh, please, leave me be. I’m not fit for company and I can’t bear to go in there and have all those eyes on me, knowing what a useless creature I am.’

      ‘Don’t be daft. They don’t think that at all. Here. Dry your eyes. I’m sure you don’t need to blow your nose, a ladylike person such as yourself but …’

      He handed her a handkerchief and she giggled woefully.

      ‘Actually, I do,’ she said. ‘But I won’t, not in front of a gentleman.’

      ‘First time I’ve been called that,’ he said, beaming brightly. ‘I’ll treasure it.’

      ‘Well, you are, you know. Thank you for standing up for me in there. You didn’t need to do it.’

      ‘Mrs Munn needs reining in a bit sometimes, that’s all. She breathes fire on everyone and everything, not realising that, half the time, it just ain’t needed. You don’t need the same amount of flames for a paper tissue as you do for a bloomin’ oak tree.’

      Edie laughed again. ‘Am I a paper tissue then?’

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