“I will stay,” she said. “I will start now. This morning.”
Relief flooded his eyes—almost too much. He pressed her hand and was gone from the room before Jane could decide what it meant.
Chapter 2
FEY LIGHT
The enormous estate had all of three servants: the butler Poule (who was also in charge of the grounds and the pre-war motorcar), the cook, and one maid. When Jane, aghast, said: “One?” the maid merely nodded.
“How can you clean this whole house by yourself?” said Jane.
“Can’t.”
“Just the laundry alone—”
“Poule built scrub tank. Nice bits hired out.”
The young maid’s name was Martha, and perhaps she was treasured more for her monosyllabic qualities than her desire for cleanliness. She was tall for a girl, rangy, with ginger hair closely braided to her scalp in defiance of any current fashion. Her dark dress and apron had clearly seen better days, though they were clean and neatly patched. She showed Jane an abbreviated tour of the house. All the open rooms were in the south wing, the undamaged wing. The sapphire curtains opened to a hallway that branched off to drawing room, dining room, sitting rooms. The kitchens were beneath them in the cellar. Martha did not take her through the curtains that led to the north wing, but she explained in words of one syllable that forest green eventually led to Mr. Rochart’s studio, and mahogany only to Poule’s quarters and damage.
Jane’s rooms were on the back of the second floor, down the hall and around the corner from Dorie’s room. It was a family room that had been given over to the governess, so it was bigger than Jane had expected, and hung with a threadbare tapestry depicting a maiden taming a dragon. (A fanciful design, Jane thought critically, as the maiden was blonde, pink, and rather buoyant, but dragons had only existed—if ever—in the Faraway East.) A nearby spiral staircase appeared to go all the way up and down the house, but Jane reminded herself to check that to know for sure.
During the tour, Jane pestered Martha with a flurry of questions about the house and its schedules, but the only time the maid offered more than a grunted yes or no was when Jane asked about Dorie.
“All yours now. We told him no more. Had to get you to keep us.”
“Is she so naughty?” said Jane.
“Not a bad child. It’s what she does when she’s good,” said Martha, and shuddered.
“Can you feel when she’s doing, um … not-quite-human things?”
Martha nodded. “I’m not one to start at naught. Nor Cook. That’s why we’re here when the rest fled. Though some days the blue lights and air dolls make your hair rise.” She gestured at the iron covering Jane’s face. “Could be you’ll fare well. Since you’re a cripple too.”
Jane stiffened at the one word Martha had given two syllables to say, and perhaps the laconic, unimaginative maid saw that, because she fell silent again. More questions brought no more answers, and the only other piece of information Jane could extract was that Dorie’s supper—and thus Jane’s, for today—was at six.
When the maid was gone, Jane unpacked her small pasteboard suitcase. It was not everything she owned, but near enough. Her trunk with her winter woolens and a few books and pictures was still at the boarding house in the rooms she’d shared with her sister—though by the time she returned to the city to retrieve it, it would probably be at Helen’s new home.
As short a time as the other governesses were there, they had left traces of their passing, perhaps due to their hurried departures. A calendar from last year hung on the wall, stopped at November. A scrap of orange wool, a pen nib, a cinema stub firmly wedged between the mirror and frame—that one must be an abandoned souvenir; the films had stopped running in the first year of the war. Hairpins everywhere.
Yet someone had put a snowdrop, surely the first of them, in a tiny cream pitcher on her dresser. Jane looked at its curved white petals as she thought: Well. Someone expected me to stay.