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His head was bowed, but he cast her a sidelong glance from beneath his dark lashes. A half-smile.
‘Yes. I want to buy you tea. And when the waitress isn’t looking, I want to peel your glove back and kiss the inside of your wrist.’ His voice was a husky growl. ‘I want to take your arm as we walk down the street and put my hand on your waist. I want to take you home to a place where we can shut the door and be alone. Where we can… I don’t know. Just be.’
Just be. Together. No guilt or fear or weighing up risk. No lies or excuses. No elaborate code system, and notes left in the Chinese vase on the scullery shelf.
‘I like the sound of that,’ she whispered, moving away from the window to stand beside him. ‘A home, where we can shut the door and be alone.’
‘A bedroom with a big brass bed, where I can fall asleep with you in my arms…’
In her head she saw the cottage, with the apple trees and roses in the garden, and found she couldn’t speak anymore.
She had known from the first time she touched him that there was no future for them. It was the nature of service. Occasionally you came across a married couple in the roles of housekeeper and butler, but aside from that, relations between staff were simply not tolerated. As a female servant you either lived a half life in someone else’s home, a shadow in the wings of their three-act play, or you left to get married.
She was married already.
There was no way out. No happy ever after awaiting. It was scraps and crumbs and compromises. That was the deal she had made for her freedom, and she had considered it a good bargain. She had no right to want more.
But she did.
Oh… she did.
We’re all tired. The guns make it difficult to sleep and they are always there, even in your dreams. I’m tired of the waiting too, though I’m not finished writing yet. I have yet to make my confession.
Before I left Coldwell for the last time I went into Goddard’s room and found the photographs that were taken that day on the steps. The one showing the whole staff was hung on the wall, but the others were in a pile of old newspapers and unanswered correspondence on his desk.
There was one of you with Goddard, Mrs Gatley, and Henderson. In it you look beautiful and composed, and only someone who knew you well would spot how you were turning away from Henderson and your mouth was set tight. I cut you out from the rest of the group, so it looks like you’re standing on the steps alone. Your expression seemed softer then. I’ve carried that scrap of photograph with me ever since and looked at it a thousand times. I’m looking at it now.
I left the half with Goddard and Mrs Gatley on the desk amongst the others. I threw Henderson into the fire.
Chapter 18
The photograph, marked with the year and framed in black, had been delivered and hung on the wall of the kitchen passage, alongside the others. It appeared on the day before Sir Randolph was due to return to Coldwell with his new bride; and although everyone was rushed off their feet with preparations for the wedding dance, they still found time to go and look.
Beside the faded faces in the other frames along the wall, they looked sharper and infinitely more modern. Jem stood back while the girls wailed over unflattering angles and unfortunate expressions, instead studying the previous photographs. The last one had been taken in 1900, and his eyes skimmed over footmen with oiled-down hair, grooms and gardeners with fulsome moustaches and muttonchop whiskers, over Mr Goddard and Gatley (the former a little more solid and substantial, the latter with a fuller head of hair) until they came to rest on the boy in the tiger’s livery at the edge of the group.
Mullins must have been about thirteen then; the same age as Jack, but bigger built. His jacket strained over his shoulders and you could see his shirt between the bulging buttons of his waistcoat. Jem studied his face, blurred by time and furred by dust on the glass. It was rounder then, more open. He was smiling, his chin tilted up, as if he was proud of his smart uniform (even if it was too small).
What had happened to change that? To make him leave and want to forget his time at Coldwell?
Mrs Gatley’s sharp voice summoned Susan, and the girls moved away. Jem found himself standing beside Thomas in front of this year’s photograph, life mirroring art.
‘Binking ’eck,’ Thomas said, leaning forward to study himself. ‘We scrub up all right, don’t we? Mind you, the new livery helps.’
Jem made a noncommittal noise. He wasn’t looking at Thomas or himself, or their livery. He was looking at Kate.
Standing in the centre of the group, beside Mr Goddard, she looked as she had when he’d glimpsed her in the window on the day he’d arrived, her face pale and inscrutable, her gaze direct and slightly challenging. Her slim figure was upright, her chatelaine gleaming against the black silk of her skirt as she took her place in the procession of Coldwell housekeepers, preserved for posterity on the kitchen passage wall. Those who came after—generations of servants not yet born—would remark on how young she was for the role, and how beautiful, and they might be curious about who she was and where she’d come from.
No one would know her like he did.
No one would know her story. No one would know that she’d taken her surname from an advertising sign, or that she slept with her hand curled under her chin and was frightened of spiders, or that she had a small birthmark on her hip and smelled of vanilla and nutmeg and roses and that the second footman, standing a few places to her left, was in love with her.
His heart gave a lurch that made his blood feel hot.
‘The group photograph of us footmen is in Mr Goddard’s room,’ Thomas said. ‘Reckon my old mum will be very happy when she gets one of those for the parlour. Are you going to send one home?’
‘Oh. No.’
He felt winded, like he had in the second after Henderson punched him.