“And you would be an authority on proper conduct, Madame?” Michael said tightly.
Verity was speechless. As if to further incense her, Michael raised Marjorie’s hand and rubbed her knuckles against his cheek. To Verity’s astonishment, Marjorie smiled. In her waking hours, the girl’s expression was invariably as blank as an unpainted wall, her eyes without even the sometimes intelligent look of a cow.
But now, with that smile on her face, with her eyes lowered, her lashes so long that they cast shadows on her cheeks, there was something almost wondrous about the sight of Marjorie, as if she’d been kissed by an angel, her whole person aglow in grace.
Michael gazed at her. “She is so beautiful when she smiles,” he said wistfully.
Verity could scarcely conceive of it, her gorgeous, talented, eloquent Michael loving—even if it was only a brotherly love—Marjorie Flotty, the thick-witted scullery maid born and raised in the parish workhouse.
The same workhouse to which she used to take stews and buns from Fairleigh Park, Michael in tow. And wasn’t it Michael who had first asked if she needed another scullery maid in her kitchen? The next day the workhouse had sent her Marjorie, and she hadn’t had the heart to send the poor girl back.
Marjorie’s smile suddenly vanished, like a candle flame blown out by the draft. The light on her face dimmed, and Verity was once again looking at the dull, uncomprehending serf from her kitchen.
“They told me she wasn’t born this way. Something happened to her in that workhouse and wrecked her. And she had a stillborn baby when she was thirteen—they never found out who did it to her,” Michael said. “She is my age. If my parents hadn’t adopted me, they might have adopted her instead. And then none of these things would have happened to her.”
Verity bit her lip, hard. “You mustn’t think like this. You are not responsible for what happened to her.”
“I know,” he said. “But I can’t help it.”
Verity sighed. He was breaking her heart and she didn’t know if her heart could take any more breaking. “We’d better get her back to her room,” she said. “It’s awfully late and if she doesn’t return soon, Becky might get up and start looking.”
Michael touched Marjorie’s hand to his cheek again, but this time she did not smile. “Come, Marjorie,” he said gently. “You must go to your room now.”
He pulled Marjorie to her feet and relinquished her hand to Verity, but he preceded them up the service stairs and waited in the corridor as Verity tucked an unresisting Marjorie into her cot.
Verity closed the door behind her and stood there, turning the handle of her lantern in her fingers. Shadow-faceted orange light churned across the walls.
“You want some tea?” she asked.
“I’d better go back to bed now,” he said at the same time.
The silence was long and uneasy.
“Well,” she said, “good night, then.”
“Thank you for the madeleines you sent,” he said. Then he turned and left.
“You do Rugby great credit,” said Stuart.
They stood on the platform of Euston Station, a few yards back from the track, where Michael’s train already awaited, intermittently bellowing steam. Earlier in the day they’d attended church together, then dined at the Savoy Hotel, and Michael had impressed Stuart with his extraordinary grasp of the finer points of etiquette.
“Thank you, sir,” said Michael, his satchel in hand. “I do hope that the good people to whom you introduced me will not resent you for it later, when they find out who I am.”
Stuart had introduced Michael as the son of a very fine family from the vicinity of Fairleigh Park, on leave from Rugby to visit Stuart. At the worthy name of Rugby, the other worshippers simply assumed that “fine” meant old and established.
“I’m sure you noticed that I presented you only to those who asked that you be presented to them,” he said.
Even so, there might be repercussions somewhere down the road. But that Michael did not need to know.
Michael shook his head slightly. “I did not notice that.”
“Our situations are somewhat analogous in that I, too, must be careful of how I conduct myself,” said Stuart.
The waiting train whistled, its long hiss forcing a pause in the conversation.
“Your mother has done well in her instruction of you,” said Stuart, when the train had quieted to a more even rumble. “You will have no difficulties moving in Society.”
“My mother has indeed done very well by me. But deportment I learned from Madame Durant,” said Michael.
Each syllable of that name was a twist of pain. It took Stuart a little while to grasp what Michael had actually said.
“You learned how to present yourself in English Society from a French cook?”