Justine Elyot - Secrets and Lords

The West Wing was indeed, though splendid, a little neglected; its carpets threadbare and its wainscots dusty in places. The unused downstairs apartments were empty of furniture – huge, high-ceilinged bunkers with ornate plaster mouldings and pictures behind dust sheets.

Edie found it quite sinister and was glad to cross the courtyard to the East Wing, which contained the family rooms.

On the upper floor, the younger son and daughter of the house kept their suites.

‘This is Sir Thomas’s rooms,’ said Jenny, briefly opening a door into a neat and unusually plain chamber. ‘We needn’t go in.’

‘Who is Sir Thomas?’

‘Lord, you really don’t know nothing, do you? He’s the younger son. He joined the Army and did very well for himself at first, but after getting shot in the war, he wanted out. Lord Deverell had to buy him out, even though he was injured. Walks with a limp now, always will.’

‘Does he have another occupation now?’

‘No, nothing.’ Jenny shook her head. ‘He can’t settle. They say Lord Deverell’s at his wits’ end with him.’

‘What is he like?’

‘Well, I don’t know him, really. He keeps himself to himself. Spends a lot of time at the races, or out with the dogs.’

They reached the next door.

‘Whose rooms are these?’

‘Lady Mary’s, but I wouldn’t be opening them if I didn’t know she’d gone out. She gets wild if anyone disturbs her in her room.’

Jenny opened them with a furtive, mysterious air then stepped a little way into the light, airy chamber. Everything seemed to sparkle in there. Edie thought, with a sickening pang, of her room at home in London. She had the same cut-glass scent bottle on her dresser. The silver-backed hairbrush looked familiar too, even if Edie’s was not monogrammed like Lady Mary’s. Fresh cut flowers stood on the bedside table and the chest of drawers, and a tangle of stockings and scarves were strewn all over the bed.

‘I suppose she was trying to decide what to wear tonight,’ said Jenny with a laugh. ‘She’s fearful fussy. Ask Louise, her maid. She leads her a merry dance, she does.’

‘A hard taskmistress?’

Jenny whispered, ‘A spoiled little madam,’ and then put a hand to her mouth, giggling guiltily.

‘What is happening tonight?’

‘Didn’t Mrs Munn say? A big dinner, some visitors from London. I don’t know who they are but I think they’re supposed to be important.’

Another surge of panic rose through Edie’s stomach.

‘Will I have to serve them?’

‘I shouldn’t think so, not your first day.’

She exhaled gratefully.

‘I wonder if Lady Mary will announce an engagement soon,’ Jenny prattled on. ‘They say she’s got ever so many admirers in London. But, like I said, she’s fussy.’

‘Neither of the sons are married?’

Jenny sighed. ‘No, and it don’t look likely neither. One’s a womaniser and the other’s a recluse. Come on, shall we go downstairs?’

The windows were bigger on the floor below and the fittings notably more elaborate.

‘Sir Charles’s rooms,’ whispered Jenny, her hand on an antique gold door handle.

‘Should we?’ Edie was suddenly nervous. ‘What if he’s in there?’

‘He went to town,’ she said. ‘With Lady Mary. Come on.’

‘There could be a woman in there.’

Jenny let out a peal of merry laughter. ‘You ain’t met him yet and you’ve got the measure of him already. Come on.’

She opened the door.

No woman was hidden behind it. The rooms were magnificent, crimson and gold, but the style was decidedly masculine and his valet had not yet cleared away his shaving things from the basin in the little bathroom. Edie felt possessed by a sense of the man who used these rooms; the scent of his cologne, mixed with a faint aroma of smoke, crept into her and took up residence in the corners of her consciousness. A dressing gown hung carelessly on a bedpost and his slippers were in the middle of the floor.

‘Who is his valet?’ Edie wondered aloud. ‘Should he not have tidied these things?’ She was proud of herself for remembering that aristocratic men all had valets. Although the social circles she moved in at home were mixed, they rarely involved lords and ladies.

‘He is between valets at the moment,’ said Jenny. ‘His last one resigned a few days ago. He is sharing with Sir Thomas until they can hire a replacement.’

‘Why did the last one resign?’

Jenny pinched her lips and shook her head.

‘I don’t know.’

But Edie thought that Jenny was concealing some further knowledge.

Moving towards the other side of the room, Edie saw a book on Sir Charles’s bedside table and was consumed with curiosity to know what kind of thing this man enjoyed reading.

‘Oh!’ she said, picking it up. ‘ The Moon and Sixpence . I have read this.’

‘Put that down,’ exclaimed Jenny, rushing over. ‘Don’t touch a thing.’

‘We shouldn’t be in here, should we?’

‘No,’ she admitted. ‘Come on.’

She dragged Edie out by her elbow, but Edie was already wondering to what extent Sir Charles might identify with the book’s hero, his namesake, a man who abandons his established life to pursue an impossible dream.

‘His Lordship,’ she said, flapping her hand at another door without opening it, following up a moment later with ‘Her Ladyship’.

‘Oh, can we not go in?’

‘Her Ladyship is in . No, we cannot.’

‘I would so like to see her rooms.’

‘Well, you can’t. So there. Come on, let’s go to the ground floor. Like reading, do you?’

She opened a smaller door at the end of the corridor. It led on to a large gallery, looking down into a treasure trove of bookcases.

‘Oh, a library! Oh, this is huge. How wonderful.’

It occurred to Edie that perhaps she should not be displaying such raptures in her role as a housemaid. But surely housemaids might like to look at a book or two now and again?

‘Do a lot of reading, do you?’ asked Jenny, leading her down the steps to the main room. ‘You can’t have been very busy in your last place.’

‘Oh, I was, but I read on my days off, you know.’

‘Must have been nice for your family.’

‘They didn’t mind.’

Edie barely registered Jenny’s disparaging tone, too engrossed in the endless spines of gold-embossed leather that lay behind the glass doors of each cabinet.

‘At least they had the shelves turned into cupboards,’ said Jenny with a sniff. ‘I hated dusting all those perishing things. Lord Deverell thought we were going to ruin them just by touching them so he locks them away now.’

‘He is a keen scholar?’

‘No, not really. I suppose they’re worth a few bob, that’s all.’

Edie shook her head. The idea of valuing books for their monetary worth was quite beyond her. At home, in her room, her books lay in piles, higgledy-piggledy, with dog-eared pages and dusty jackets, but they were the landscape of her life, to be kept round about her, not shut away in cages.

She was reluctant to leave this wonderland, but they had to move on regardless, to a breakfast room in modern pinks and pale greens, then a comfortable sitting room and a brace of cold gilt state rooms, until they were at the central part of the house.

The splendour of these rooms left even Edie open-mouthed – as huge as the British Museum galleries and several times more ornate. She craned her neck up at pricelessly painted ceilings and then let her eye move downwards to works of Tudor and Stuart art, interspersed with gold leaf twining all over everything. The impression was sometimes sumptuous, sometimes intimidating. It was nothing like a home. How did people conduct their daily business in rooms like these? Reception rooms opened on to more reception rooms; then there were morning, drawing, breakfast and dining rooms, each with a different colour scheme and each groaning with antiques that would need careful dusting and cleaning, over and over again.