Justine Elyot - Secrets and Lords

Seeing everything with a maid’s eye, Edie came to resent all the magnificence, much as her artistic senses were impressed. But really, who needed all this?

Out of the wings, Edie and Jenny now ran across several of their colleagues, all working hard to get the grandest rooms of the house into a fit condition to receive guests. Flowers were being arranged, feather dusters wielded and, in the dining room, a French polisher attended to a scratch on the table.

‘They’ll cover it with a cloth,’ whispered Jenny, whisking Edie past. ‘But Tilly Gresham got in terrible trouble for it all the same.’

A tall, thin, fastidious-looking man in a dark suit and white gloves appeared to be directing the carrying up- and down-stairs of a number of ornamental urns.

‘Jenny,’ he said. ‘Is this the new girl?’

‘Yes, Mr Stanhope, Edie Prior.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Miss Prior.’

‘Likewise,’ said Edie, unsure whether or not to curtsey. She decided against it.

‘Well, I’m sure you have work to do,’ said Stanhope after an awkward pause. ‘On such a day as this. And if not, I’ll be asking Mrs Munn why not.’

‘Don’t mind him,’ muttered Jenny, leading them to the back stairs. ‘He gets himself a bit worked up when there’s a big do. He’s the butler, if you didn’t know.’

They descended to the depths of the house once more, where Jenny collected a trug of cleaning materials before showing Edie to the room where Mrs Munn had ordered them to work.

They passed along endless yards of corridor, under the baleful eyes of the Deverell ancestry, up and down the back stairs and through that busy, bustling series of reception rooms before arriving at the well-named Green Drawing Room.

It was very green, and very golden, and very velvety and very cold – in style rather than temperature. Everything in it was heavy and sharp-cornered. When Edie considered her family drawing room in Bloomsbury, with its cheerful patterns and fringed shawls all over the place, it could not have been more remote.

‘Do people come in here to relax?’ she asked, looking over a two-hundred-year-old spinet in the corner of the room.

‘People hardly come in here at all,’ said Jenny vaguely, sorting through rags and polishes. ‘It’s not much used. Here, I’ll wax the wooden furniture and you can polish the mirror there.’

Edie accepted a rag and a tub of metal polish and made a start on the heavy ormolu-framed square mirror that stood over an unused fireplace.

They worked silently and diligently until Edie was drawn to the window by the sound of a car drawing up in the drive. She would not have admitted it to herself, but she was hoping for a glimpse of Ted.

The 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.

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.’