Silence in Hanover Close - Anne Perry [56]
“Well Amelia, I presume you can sew and iron and care for a wardrobe properly, or Lady Ashworth would not recommend you. She has a reputation for being in the height of fashion, without vulgarity, although I cannot recall meeting her myself.”
Emily felt a rush of blood into her face, then an immediate chill as fear washed through her. The chance of recognition had brushed close sooner than she had anticipated. The peril had come and gone in one awful moment, and when it had passed she opened her mouth to thank Loretta for the compliment, realizing with a start that a reply would have betrayed her into the very pitfall she had just avoided. In her new station no comment was expected of her.
“You may begin immediately,” Loretta continued, “and if you prove satisfactory after a month, we shall make you permanent. You will attend my daughter-in-law. You will be paid eighteen pounds a year, and have one afternoon off every second week, if it is convenient, but you will be home again before nine. We have no girls out late. You may have a day off to go home and see your family every three months.”
Emily stared at her. “Thank you, ma’am,” she said in a rush. She had been given the position. It was decided. She felt at once frightened and victorious.
“Thank you, Amelia, that will be all. You may go.” Loretta’s voice brought her back to reality.
“Thank you, ma’am,” she said again, letting the relief show in her face. After all, she really did want the place! She bobbed very briefly and turned to leave, feeling an overwhelming sense of freedom just at being out of the room and past the first obstacle.
“Well?” The cook looked up from the apple pie she was finishing off with carefully cut pastry leaves.
Emily smiled at her more broadly than she should have. “I got it!”
“Then be about your unpacking,” the cook said pleasantly. “Don’t stand around ’ere, girl. You’re no use to me! ’Ousekeeper’s sitting room is second on the left. Mrs. Crawford should be in there this time o’ day. Go and see ’er and she’ll tell you where you’ll sleep—Dulcie’s room, I daresay—and she’ll have Joan, the laundry maid, show you where your iron is, and the like. I daresay someone’ll find Edith for you—that’s Mrs. Piers York’s maid. You’ll be for Miss Veronica.”
“Yes, Mrs. Melrose.” Emily went to the corner to pick up her box.
“Don’t you bother wi’ that! Albert’ll take it up. Liftin’ and carryin’s not your job, ’less you’re asked. On wi’ you!”
“Yes, Mrs. Melrose.”
She went to the housekeeper’s sitting room and knocked on the door. She was told sharply to come in.
It was small, crowded with dark furniture, the smell of polish mixing with the thick, greenhouse odor of a potted lily on a jardinière in one corner. There were embroidered antimacassars on the backs of the chairs and along the sideboard, which was littered with photographs. Two hand-stitched samplers framed in wood hung on the walls. Emily felt overpowered even before she stepped inside.
The housekeeper, Mrs. Crawford, was short and thin, with the face of an irritable sparrow. Gray hair escaped a screwed-back hairstyle that was considerably out of date and crowned with white lace like froth.
“Yes?” she said sharply. “Who are you?”
Emily stood up straight. “The new lady’s maid, Mrs. Crawford. Mrs. Melrose said as you would tell me where I should sleep.”
“Sleep! At four o’clock in the afternoon, girl? I’ll tell you where you can put your box! And I’ll show you to the laundry and Joan can give you your iron and table. I daresay Edith is sitting down; she’s not so well these days. You’ll have met Nora, the parlormaid, and there’s Libby the upstairs maid and Bertha the downstairs maid, and Fanny the tweeny, but a useless little article she is! And of course Mr. Redditch, the butler, but you’ll not have much to do with him, nor John the footman, who valets for Mr. York, and Albert the bootboy.”
“Yes, Mrs. Crawford.”
“And you’ll have met Mary the