Page 81 of The Housekeeper's Secret
‘A cold, Mr Goddard, sir. A real stinker.’
‘You’re not fit to be seen. You’ll have to manage as best you can in the dining room—we can’t be a man down, but Jem will take over upstairs as soon as dinner is over. I won’t have you snivelling into Sir Randolph’s evening brandy.’
Jem’s eyes met Kate’s and skimmed upwards in silent exasperation. She moved swiftly past him, taking the clothes brush with her, and went straight to the scullery, where she took the Chinese vase down from the shelf, tucking the little fold of paper she found inside into her sleeve.
She couldn’t wait to read it, and she couldn’t risk being seen, so she went up the back stairs to her room and lit a candle with a shaking hand. His handwriting leapt off the page in the flickering flame.
I know I have no right to ask anything of you but there are things I need to say. If you unlock the dividing door between the attics, I’ll come to you tonight.
If the door is locked, I’ll know it’s too late, and I’ll understand.
If I’d known then what would happen, I would have put so much more in that note. I would have written it there—I love you—so at least through everything that came after you would know that was true. I would have left the present I’d bought you, and I wouldn’t still have it with me now—a reminder of everything that remained unfinished between us.
There’s a saying, isn’t there—ignorance is bliss. Perhaps it’s better not to know what lies ahead. There’s no blissful ignorance here. I’m so aware of last times—last sunrise, last mug of tea, last glimpse of the moon—in a way I wasn’t then. Even over the noise of the guns I can hear the sand running through the glass.
That’s why I have to write this. It’s now or never. There won’t be another chance.
Chapter 27
The evening seemed to go on forever.
The six-course dinner Lady Hyde had devised for her guests was eaten largely in silence (or not eaten, in Lady Hyde’s case), and every course felt like an eternity.
At the end of each, removing the wine that had been served with it, Jem had paused in the darkness of the hallway and drunk from the bottles, swallowing down Riesling, Burgundy, Sauterne, and champagne with grim defiance. Now, with the house finally quiet and the alcohol warming his blood, he stood outside the back door, dragging on a cigarette and thinking of his first night there. That fool Cox, showing off and getting a dressing-down from Kate for swigging champagne. It made his breath catch to remember how she’d appeared to him then—beautiful and disapproving, intimidatingly remote. Until the moment she touched him.
He inhaled deeply, making the tip of the cigarette glow, then expelled a slow breath which turned to silver in the frozen air. He couldn’t afford to think about her touch. Not yet, not with Hyde still in the library with the drinks tray and his filthy French lithographs spread out over the desk. Earlier, Kate had taken a tray of dirty crockery from Jem and her eyes had met his, a brief inclination of her head acknowledging that she’d got the note. That the door would be unlocked, and she would be waiting.
But for how long?
He’d thought it wasn’t possible to hate Randolph Hyde more than he did already, but it turned out he was wrong. Why didn’t the bastard just go to bed?
At that moment, the bell in the passageway behind him shattered the silence. Usually he hated to jump to a summons upstairs, but tonight he wasn’t going to let anything delay him from getting to Kate. He ground out his cigarette and ran along the passage, taking the stairs two at a time.
The hallway was as cold and dark as the kitchen yard. The huge Christmas tree gave off the resinous scent of the forest, which made him think of Davy again. As he passed, he looked up at the portrait of the second baronet; the man who had taken a boy from his family in India and brought him here to hunt like an animal. A surge of rage washed through him, mingling dangerously with the wine.
Steady… he told himself. He couldn’t afford to do anything stupid. Not until he’d seen Kate. Not until he’d got the last quarter’s wages in his hand.
The library was warm and bright compared to the draughty darkness of the rest of the house. Hyde was slumped in the chair behind the desk, which was littered with the debris of his evening: teetering piles of books, smeared glasses, and a decanter, drained to the dregs. The lithographs were scattered everywhere, some stained with sticky rings of port. Hyde was peering through a large magnifying glass at a cluster of diamonds clutched in his hand. He didn’t look up when Jem came in.
‘Ah, Thomas—’ He grunted. ‘More coal on the fire. Blasted perishing in here.’
God, he was steaming drunk. So that was why he hadn’t gone to bed. He probably couldn’t stand up.
‘It’s not Thomas,’ Jem said coolly, deciding he could afford to dispense with the ‘sir.’ Hyde was in no fit state to do anything about it.
Hyde raised his head stupidly and blinked his small, bloodshot eyes. ‘It’s Thomas if I say it is,’ he snarled. ‘You’re all bloody Thomas to me. Now get that bloody fire going.’
Jem added coal from the box on the hearth and poked the embers to rouse a flame. Straightening up, he looked back towards Hyde and noticed that the safe, built into the panelling by the window, was open. On the pretext of gathering up the empty glasses and removing the decanter, he went across to the desk and stooped to pick up one of the lithographs that had slid onto the floor. A shudder of revulsion went through him as he glanced at the scene of graphic depravity it depicted. He was about to place it on the desk when Hyde dropped the magnifying glass and made a lunge for it.
‘How dare you touch those papers, boy? How bloody dare you? Know your place!’
The diamond necklace he’d been holding slithered onto the desk, and another jewel that must have been taken from the safe skidded across the scattered papers and fell to the floor, lost to the darkness. Hyde’s face was puce as he spluttered helplessly, dropping to his knees and floundering around on the carpet.
‘You bloody fool—look what you’ve done! You’d be horsewhipped for this in my father’s day. You’d have your bloody marching orders, man…’
From where he stood, Jem could see a glint of gold on the carpet. Calmly, he went forward to pick it up, enjoying Hyde’s disadvantage and the spectacle of his impotent, port-soaked rage.
‘Quite so,’ he said blandly. The jewel was set in a heavy gold surround, and he placed it on the desk, beneath the lamp. It cast a pool of clear green light with a dark shadow at its centre. Almost like a…