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Reluctantly Miss Dunn handed over the box, which was very new and bore the name of a provincial jeweller Kate hadn’t heard of. Leaving her there, she felt the woman’s eyes follow her down the passage to the stillroom, where Eliza and Abigail were preparing the afternoon tea trays.
Or should have been. Instead, she found them standing at the window, heads pressed together as they craned to look out into the yard, the loaf half-sliced on the table in a mess of crumbs and butter-smeared knives, the cherry Madeira cake still in its tin. They sprang apart at Kate’s icy voice.
‘Miss Addison’s maid is waiting to be shown upstairs. Abigail, go with her to the Kashmir room. Eliza, take this to the butler’s pantry and ask Mr Goddard to put it in the silver cupboard.’
Eliza took the jewellery box, and they sidled out sheepishly. Left alone, Kate moved to the window to see what they’d been looking at. The luggage cart had been unloaded and removed, and the two new footmen were out in the yard, washing in the water trough before changing into the uniforms draped over the laundry line. The London lad—beanpole tall and city skinny—had taken off his shirt to sluice his armpits, revealing skin the colour of milk with all the cream skimmed off it. Kate’s eyes slid over him to the stranger she’d seen from upstairs.
He was stooping over the trough to wash his face, his braces hanging down at his thighs, the muscles of his back rippling as he moved. No wonder the girls had stared. He looked like a different breed from Walter Cox: broader, firmer, better made. Mr Goddard had reported that his character reference described him as ‘honest, hardworking, and strong.’ At least one of those claims was demonstrably true.
She watched as he straightened up, pushing back wet, dark hair and sweeping water from his eyes. New faces were a rarity at Coldwell.
Especially faces like his.
‘Hard at work, Mrs Furniss? I hope I’m not interrupting you.’
‘Oh!’
‘Sorry, I startled you.’
Randolph Hyde’s valet was standing in the doorway, but he came into the room now, looking past her, out of the window. ‘I believe it’s Mr Goddard’s job to keep an eye on the footmen, but you always go above and beyond your own duties. Your thoroughness is commendable indeed.’
Frederick Henderson. She’d forgotten just how unpleasant he was. Or maybe he’d become more so since Mr Hyde’s last visit. He was short but oddly stocky, with oiled hair like patent leather, and his face was shadowed by a neat black beard which was possibly intended to disguise the pockmarks on his cheeks. He observed all the correct courtesies, but there was something insinuating about the way he spoke that turned them into suggestive over-familiarities. Kate remembered that from his last stay; it wasn’t what he said that set alarm bells jangling in her head but the way he said it.
To her irritation, she felt her face heat up.
‘Can I help you, Mr Henderson?’
‘I hope so.’ He held up the garment he was carrying. ‘Mr Hyde’s dinner jacket needs brushing.’ His eyes creased into a mirthless smile above the beard. ‘Chorus girls’ face powder is the very devil to remove.’
He picked a cherry from the cake on the table and popped it into his mouth, and for a second she saw the pink glisten of his tongue. There was a rumour that he’d suffered from smallpox out in India before he’d started working for Mr Hyde, but Kate didn’t know if that was true. There were a lot of rumours about Mr Henderson, and she wondered if—like the beard—they weren’t also designed to distract and disguise. The only things that anyone knew for sure were that he’d been Randolph Hyde’s man for a long time, and his loyalty was unshakeable.
‘Try rubbing alcohol,’ she said coolly, moving the cake from the table onto the workbench.
‘Perhaps you’d be good enough to furnish me with some?’
‘It’s in the storeroom.’
He had positioned himself so that he was blocking her exit. She eyed the doorway pointedly and waited for him to move aside. He did so but followed her along the corridor to the storeroom and leaned against the doorframe (again blocking her way) as she scanned the shelves of linseed and turpentine, beeswax and borax.
‘So… what do you make of all this, then? Sir Henry’s marriage ultimatum. The bachelor brought to heel. I daresay it’ll be strange for you to have a mistress at Coldwell, after all this time.’
She glanced at him. ‘If you’re talking about Miss Addison, aren’t you jumping ahead rather? Unless I’m mistaken, Mr Hyde hasn’t asked her to marry him yet.’
‘He’s going to. Strictly between you and me, of course.’ His voice was teasingly intimate and made the hairs on the back of her neck rise. ‘Why else do you think he’s brought her up here to present for the old man’s approval?’
‘Even so. You don’t know that she’ll say yes.’
He laughed. ‘You’ve seen her. She’s hardly in a position to say no—fast heading for forty and no hint of an offer for years. She’s something of a white elephant, is Miss Addison… father’s a Shropshire ironmonger who made a lot of grubby new money and spent it on piano lessons and deportment for his plain daughter. She’s quite the lady of the manor in Nowhere-on-the-Wold and too refined to be the wife of a local farmer. She must have thought all her prayers had been answered when Mr Hyde turned up at the local hunt ball.’
Kate couldn’t imagine a scenario in which Randolph Hyde would be the answer to anyone’s prayers but kept that to herself.
‘He wasn’t keen on the idea at first, I’ll admit,’ Henderson went on, ‘but with a bit of persuasion, he saw the advantages. The ironmonger’s money will come in handy. The state of this old place—’ He looked around with elaborate distaste. ‘It’ll take a lot of cash to drag it into the modern age and make it fit for civilised habitation again. And there comes a time when the idea of settling down becomes very appealing, even to the most confirmed bachelor.’ Henderson’s fingers brushed hers as she handed him the bottle of rubbing alcohol. ‘Things change, don’t they? Priorities shift. After years of travelling around the world, a man can realise that everything he needs can be found at home.’
A sinister softness had entered his tone. For a moment, Kate had believed that the touch of his fingers had been accidental, but the way he was looking at her—with a narrowed, appraising gaze—withered that hope. She jerked her hand away and buried it in the folds of her skirt, making the silver chains of her chatelaine rattle.
‘If that’s all? I have a lot to be getting on with.’
She locked the storeroom. Without looking back, she walked briskly along the corridor to the stillroom where, over the usual scent of sugar, tea, and nutmeg, the smell of his hair oil lingered.