Page 79 of The Housekeeper's Secret
‘Eliza, do you know what you’re saying?’ It was the tone of voice she used to talk to Davy Wells. ‘Are you protecting this man because you’re afraid of him? Has he threatened you? Because I can promise—’
Eliza gave a tut of impatience and shifted her weight to the other hip, so the swell of her belly seemed more obvious. ‘He hasn’t threatened me, and if he did, I’d take no notice—Walter Cox is full of big talk that comes to nowt. He doesn’t know anything about it, and I daresay he never will. There’s nowt to be done about it now.’
Walter Cox?
Dear God. Eliza had spoiled her chances for Walter Cox?
Kate rubbed her fingers across her forehead, as if that would help assimilate this unexpected information.
‘Well… I’m afraid something will have to be done. You can’t leave immediately because of the weather, and Christmas… But you can’t stay here—you know that, don’t you? I’d let you if I could, but Mr Goddard and Mr Fortescue simply wouldn’t countenance it. Have you made any plans?’
‘Not as such. I had hopes, but they came to nothing.’ The words were edged with steel, sharpened with blame. ‘I don’t know where I’ll go for the… Well, anyway, I’m not keeping it. I can’t. Afterwards I’ll get back to work as soon as I can.’
Eliza’s tone was offhand, as if she’d barely given it a second thought. As if bearing an illegitimate child and handing it over to the parish was a mild inconvenience, and finding another position afterwards would be a simple matter. Kate saw behind the bravado and understood that Eliza hadn’t thought about it because it didn’t bear thinking about. She hadn’t decided what to do because she had little choice.
She sighed. ‘I’ll do what I can to help. You won’t be alone in this, Eliza. I’ll give you a good character reference. The truth will no doubt come out sooner or later, but for now your secret is safe.’
Eliza nodded and turned her head away. Her mask of nonchalant defiance had slipped, and her throat worked against tears. When she looked back at Kate, it was with swimming eyes and a grudging smile.
‘In that case, so is yours.’
In spite of everything, Christmas still had to be got through, somehow. Neither the weather nor the tension that crackled through the house could alter the fact of it. Instead of the days of amusement and diversion Lady Hyde had envisaged, it now felt more like a series of trials to be endured.
For two days, while the snow fell, Miss Dunn had hurried up and downstairs with trays for Lady Hyde, who had taken the disappointment of the cancelled visits very badly. But by Christmas Eve the sense of being suspended in the glass dome of a snow globe was shattered and brisk purpose returned. The outdoor staff shovelled paths through the snow and scattered soil to make them safer underfoot. Mrs Gatley swung into action in the kitchen, ordering Susan and Doris (who was more tearful than ever at the prospect of Christmas cut off from her family) to make bread sauce and scrub the mud off parsnips. The monster Christmas tree was brought into the entrance hall and it took Gatley and five men to hoist it into place, while the second baronet smirked at their exertions.
Jem too felt galvanised, although reluctantly. Those stopped days, when leaving was impossible, had made him realise it was what he had to do. When he’d stood with Joseph at the edge of the wood, disjointed fragments of information had slotted themselves together in his brain; Mrs Gatley’s words—even as a little ’un he’d let himself out at night and wander—merging with what Mrs Wells had said about Davy being a regular little chatterbox at the time of the last coronation, a few months before Jack came to Coldwell. It suddenly struck Jem that he had been looking for answers in the wrong places, asking the wrong people, when the one person who could have helped him had been there in plain sight.
Until he wasn’t.
And so, he decided. He would wait until after Boxing Day, when their wages had been paid and the servants’ ball was over, and then he would go to Goddard and ask for a character. He would leave as soon as he could and find Davy.
In the meantime, he would try to speak to Kate one more time. She had said it was over, but he couldn’t leave without being sure. He had to tell her that he loved her, and once he’d heard her say she didn’t feel the same, he would move on.
After lunch on Christmas Eve, he and Thomas were sent up to the storage attics to find the box of glass decorations Sir Randolph’s mother had collected from Germany, to hang on the tree. Following his afternoon in the woods serving Sir Randolph’s shooting picnic, Thomas had started a head cold, and plodded disconsolately up the stairs ahead of Jem, trailing self-pity.
‘Mrs Furniss said they should be in the first room on the left’—he paused to blow his nose extravagantly—‘in a packing crate.’
The storage attics were on the other side of the house to the ones the servants slept in, though the layout was the same: a corridor with doors leading off both sides and one at the end. In the glory days of Coldwell there must have been enough servants to fill this half of the attics too. Curious, Jem walked to the end of the corridor and tried the door. It was unlocked, and led to another landing, disconcertingly similar to the one he was standing in, so it was like looking in a dingy mirror.
‘Back in them days this must have been the men’s side of the house and ours was the lasses, or t’other way round.’ Thomas sniffed. ‘So few of us now we can fit in one wing, with room to spare.’
Logically, Jem had known how close the female quarters were to theirs, but it was another thing seeing it like that. After Kate had removed her personal things from the room off the housekeeper’s parlour, it had felt like she was miles away from him, as far beyond his reach as the moon. It was a surprise to see the opposite was true. Only a few feet separated them.
A locked door.
‘Come on—it’s bloody freezing up here. Let’s find these blooming decorations and get downstairs.’
Thomas’s cold had made him tetchy. ‘Bloody hell,’ he grumbled, going into the first room at the top of the stairs. ‘There are loads of crates. They could be anywhere. Old Sir Henry never bothered with Christmas after his missis died so they’ll likely be buried at the back somewhere.’
‘Don’t worry, we’ll find them,’ Jem said absently, stopping to look out of the window on the landing.
The sun was already sinking, staining the sky pink and casting long blue shadows on the snow-covered park. Jem’s eyes raked the trees. He had taken every opportunity he could to look for Davy and had found no trace, but the new keeper had come to the kitchen door yesterday to report that the best part of a loaf and a wedge of cheese had gone missing from his cottage. Mrs Gatley took this as hard evidence that Davy had, as she predicted, found somewhere safe and warm and was fending for himself just fine.
Jem wished he shared her confidence.
‘Are you going to help or not?’ Thomas grumbled, sticking his head round the door. ‘What are you playing at?’
Jem turned away from the window. ‘Just looking. It’s been three days since Davy Wells went missing. No one seems bothered.’