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Henderson’s chair scraped loudly on the flagstones. As he passed Jem, he bent down, placing his mouth close to his ear. Even so, everyone heard quite clearly what he said, hissing the words through his teeth.
‘I’ve got my eye on you, Arden. Watch your step.’
Outside, leaning against the back wall of the stable block, Jem took a deep drag on a cigarette made from the last little bit of his precious tobacco. The taste was tainted by the drifts of more acrid smoke that came from the bonfire, still smouldering in the corner of the weed-choked yard.
The light had almost gone, swallowed up by the swollen clouds that massed above the trees, as if all the smoke from the fire had risen and was trapped beneath the great oppressive blanket of the sky. He tipped his head back and breathed out a long column of his own smoke, watching it dissolve slowly in the still air, undisturbed by any breeze. In his mind he replayed the scene in the servants’ hall.
I’ve got my eye on you, Arden.
It was a threat, but it filled him with a strange exhilaration. After all this time spent moving from place to place, asking questions, telling lies, following a trail of clues and connections so tenuous it had at times vanished altogether, it suddenly felt like he was getting close to the truth.
Dangerously close. Which was why all that remained of it was a pile of smouldering ashes.
He drew on the last bit of cigarette and walked over to the bonfire to drop the butt into its glowing heart. He knew what they had burned there. He had seen the Twigg lads chucking those small blue cloth-covered books into the flames, one after another, and he knew why Sir Randolph and his flunky wanted them gone.
They could try to burn the evidence, but he was onto them now. He knew that the answers he’d been looking for were here at Coldwell. The truth wouldn’t stay buried forever.
Frustration simmered inside him at the thought of leaving for London in the morning. After almost ten years, another ten days hardly made a difference, but it killed him to think of being down there, in close quarters with that bastard Henderson, while here the house would be all but empty.
A pale shape glimmered beyond the bonfire’s smoulder, lurking at the corner of the old joiner’s workshop. Jem squinted through the sting of lingering smoke. He recognised the hunched shoulders and uneven movements of Davy Wells and called his name, only for the lad to dart out of sight behind the tumbledown building.
Jem kicked at the ashes, sending a shower of sparks and dark flakes into the dusk. Watching the rose-gold embers fade, he turned his attention to the idea that had materialised at the edge of his mind, and was slowly beginning to shape itself into a plan.
In her parlour Kate was having a last look at the list of supplies Mrs Bryant had requested and checking them off against the baskets she had packed.
She felt cross and jumpy, out of sorts. The scene in the servants’ hall had unsettled everyone, and the thought of what it would be like after Sir Randolph’s wedding, when Frederick Henderson would be at Coldwell so much, was increasingly difficult to ignore. People would look for positions elsewhere. No one would put up with his aggression, his disagreeableness for long.
Except her, because what choice did she have? If the idea of living with Mr Henderson was unpleasant, the thought of leaving Coldwell and seeking another place—having her face scrutinised, her background examined, her character reference picked over and its fictions exposed—was, well… unthinkable.
Of course, staff resignations meant finding replacements, a perennial problem at Coldwell. They exasperated her, her girls, with their mercurial moods and butterfly minds, but she was fond of them. They had formed, during these past few quiet years, a family of sorts, as servants often did: flawed and at times fractious, but steadfast. Loyal. If one of the girls left, the bond would be broken and the others would surely follow, as would Thomas, who was cheerful and dependable but who hated a bad atmosphere. Even he had his limits. And as for Jem…
There was nothing to keep him here. In fact, he was leaving for London tomorrow—what were the chances that he wasn’t intending to come back? That would explain why he wasn’t making the slightest effort to stay on the right side of Henderson and why he wasn’t afraid to goad him. Jem Arden, the dark horse, who kept himself a little separate from the others and hid his thoughts and feelings behind that handsome mask of courtesy, would no doubt be planning to take advantage of paid passage to London, where any number of employment opportunities awaited a footman with his looks and skill.
It seemed so obvious; she wasn’t sure why it hadn’t occurred to her sooner.
Or why she should mind so much.
The answer came to her in the next heartbeat. It was because she felt safer, having him there. On the nights when her sleepless mind roamed out into the parkland, conjuring watchers in the woods, or hearing Henderson’s footsteps outside her door, it was a comfort to know that Jem had taken Joseph’s place on the pull-out bed by the silver cupboard. On nights when the past came back to her in heart-jolting dreams she was reassured by his nearness. She drew comfort from recalling his voice.
It’s quite safe, I promise.
Well, she should know better than anyone that it didn’t do to rely on anyone, for comfort or for anything else.
She gathered herself, smoothing her skirts in a jangle of keys. Looking briskly around the room, she took her list to check it one last time against the hamper that had been left in the kitchen passage, ready for loading onto the wagon tomorrow.
It was dark—the velvet blue dark of summer—and the lamps had been lit at the bottom of the basement stairs and in the corridor outside the kitchen. Going past the servants’ hall, Kate saw that it was empty, the chairs pushed back as if everyone had left in a hurry. It was stuffy and still, and the smell of the haddock Mrs Gatley had poached in preparation for tomorrow’s breakfast kedgeree lingered in the air. In spite of the heat, it appeared the windows had all been shut.
Hearing voices, she went into the kitchen. The girls were coming back through the door that led to the game larder and the bakehouse, huddled together, talking in low voices. Susan, seeing Kate in the doorway, grasped Abigail’s hand and gave a little shriek.
‘It’s Mrs Furniss, you daft goose,’ Eliza snapped, pressing her hand to her chest. ‘You’re making me jumpy with your squealing.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Jem saw someone,’ Abigail said quickly, keen to be the one to relate such dramatic news. ‘Lurking along the side of the house by the garden corridor.’
‘Poking around in the dark,’ Eliza cut in. ‘Shifty as you like. He thought it was Davy Wells at first, but he realised it couldn’t have been when he saw Davy over by the old joiner’s shop a bit later. He told the stable boys, and Stanley Twigg came to tell us.’
Kate’s heart lurched and seemed to lodge in her throat.