The drawing of the wedding breakfast still remained in her hand. She set it down. Something caught her eye. Her thumb had covered an orange-blossom wreath placed at an odd angle. For a moment she thought it a whimsy, floating tilted above the wedding party’s table. Then she saw that, no, it didn’t float, but rested atop a filmy heap of bridal veil.
She went to the window for better light. The veil was translucent against the more opaque white of the tablecloth. And unlike other parts of the drawing, it had no faint pencil outline underneath, as if Mr. Marsden had painted it on impulse. And yet, near-invisible as the veil was, he’d done it in exquisite detail. There were diaphanous lumps and creases in the carelessly crumpled veil. Two orange blossoms had been caught underneath a sheer fold. And one corner of the veil had fallen over the edge of the table, casting a transparent shadow against the tablecloth.
It was a piece of art in and of itself, this trifle of an unnecessary detail. She shook her head. Why had he bothered? Why had he taken the better part of a day—a night—to produce something so delicately beautiful and so easily overlooked?
And it certainly did not seem to be what one’d paint when one’s heart was breaking for the want of the groom. No, she’d have said that it had been painted out of an intense longing for the bride.
For her, Lizzy, who didn’t know what to think anymore.
Verity had been puzzled by the small size of the staff at 26 Cambury Lane. She’d thought it was because there was no mistress—no need to finish all the work by noon to impress the house’s orderliness and cleanliness upon the callers who began arriving soon after luncheon. Then Mrs. Abercromby explained to her the significance of the boiler room: central heating.
Except for the attic and the basement, the house was heated by a system of hot-water radiators. No climbing up and down the staircase with heavy baskets of coal all day long to replenish the coal shuttles in the abovestairs rooms. No sweeping out a dozen fireplaces and relighting as many fires every morning. No coal dust and cinders getting everywhere despite one’s best efforts otherwise.
Furthermore, as Mavis informed a fascinated Becky, the boiler also served as a conduit of hot water to Mr. Somerset’s plumbed bath.
“No haulin’ water up or down—they rigged some-fink fancy when they done the heat. The water’s fast up there. I tell you, Becky, it’s the grandest tub in London. You can make tea for an army in it.”
Becky sighed. “I’d like to soak in a tub like that once in me life.”
“I think ’bout it every time I clean it. But I know the missus will catch me at it,” said Mavis, referring to the housekeeper. She lowered her voice. “Or worse, the master!”
Mavis and Becky both giggled. Marjorie, elbow deep in dishes, remained oblivious to the human interaction around her. Verity permitted no chatter when she was in the middle of cooking. But times like this—cleaning up after luncheon—she did not strictly ban silly talk between the maids, knowing how lonely a life in service often was for young women far away from family and not allowed followers.
Mavis lowered her voice even more. “Might be fun, though, if the master did catch me.”
“Mademoiselle Dunn,” Verity said coldly.
“Beg yer pardon, mum,” said Mavis hastily. Then she and Becky took a look at each other and burst into fresh giggles.
They were in high spirits—it was half day for the servants. Mavis was eager to go out dancing and she’d invited Becky. Becky was tempted, but turned down the invitation, as she’d already promised her aunt she’d come round for a visit, Marjorie in tow.
Listening to young women scarcely half her age planning their diversion made Verity feel old. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d visited a dancing pub—her feet and knees would quite kill her in the morning. She no longer had any desire to flirt with men she didn’t already know. And her idea of an evening of fun was trouncing Mrs. Boyce at Russian whist.
But she did go out, in the end: She visited a conveyer of specialty foods to secure a supply of truffles and took a short stroll on Regent Street.
When she’d joined Monsieur David’s kitchen sixteen years ago, she’d wept from fatigue every night, too tired to even think of Michael. In those days she used to take herself on her half days to Regent Street, to look into the windows of all the fashionable dressmakers. It was no doubt a reflection of her shallowness—that in her moments of despair she turned not to the church or to improving books, but to frivolities of satin and brocade in a modiste’s shopfront. But turned to them she had, religiously.
Later, she’d understood that it hadn’t been so much the dresses themselves that had sustained her through those long days and dark nights, but the shining hopes that they’d embodied, hopes of not only the day when she’d be able to own a piece of gorgeous frippery again, but of the day when she’d be together with Michael, when she could afford a decent future for him too.