***
I wondered if perhaps I should have lied about my name, but it quickly seemed it wouldn’t matter. First names, in this household, went unspoken. I was always Miss Bates. Same went for the others. It was always Miss Godwin and Mr. Madison, Mrs. Severson and Mr. Shelby.
The servants in my grandparents’ house had shared rooms, but here we each had our own, and I couldn’t believe my luck. Each morning, I rose in silence, alone, and had a few moments to myself to work through my exercises, keeping my arms and legs in their accustomed condition, reaching gracefully up to a ceiling higher than I’d ever had at home, though it was less than half the height of some of the rooms on the first floor. On occasion, I was able to steal a few morning moments to dance elsewhere in the house, and they were a great blessing. Executing a blazing fast string of thirty turns across the long open floor of a ballroom let me imagine for the first time that I was on a real stage, and the feeling was intoxicating.
My dancer’s body came in handy. I was stronger than the typical girl of my age, and after my hand healed, I was the most able of all the girls at Biltmore. In the laundry, we repeated many movements over and over—dunking the sheets into the hot vat, stirring them around and around and around in the soap, lifting them out, heaving them into a different vat of cleaner water, stirring again and again and again. Even when we used the mechanical drum washer, it took strength to lift and spread the linens over the racks in the drying room and to fold and carry the dried sheets to closets on every floor. Repetition was nothing new for me. It was almost as if this was what I had spent my life practicing for. I knew it wasn’t, not really. But I also knew that for now, it was good enough.
I found that my strength was not the only thing that set me apart, although I held the secret close. One day, another girl and I reached out for an iron at the same time, believing it cold, but it had already been left on the stove to heat, hot enough to burn. We both seared our fingertips, and they rose up in bright red blisters. Almost out of habit, I wished my fingers would heal quickly. The next day, I was surprised to see the blisters on her fingertips just as red and angry as the day before, while my blisters were already starting to fade. The next day, hers were slightly less red; mine were gone completely. I knew it made no sense that a wish had made the difference, yet I couldn’t see any other explanation. I certainly couldn’t tell anyone. If it sounded impossible to me, to others it would sound like insanity.
It was weeks before I thought to wonder how my deserted family felt back in Tennessee, how worried they probably were about me, and after that brief fleeting thought, I went right back to not thinking about them again. I was convinced I’d been right to go. The bones I’d broken had healed, but that didn’t mean that I’d never been injured in the first place. I didn’t forget that. I never would.
At Biltmore, I discovered I was a quick learner when it counted. Not only did I learn how to use lemon juice to bleach wine stains from a tablecloth and to iron velvet with the nap, never against it, I learned all about people.
All of them kept secrets, and nearly all of them had bad habits. It fascinated me how many people thought they’d managed to keep their vices secret when to the rest of us they were as plain as day. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but people were careless. I learned who had been sent here after dismissal from a convent and who had a brother in prison back in Ireland who she sent all her wages to. I also learned things by observing—happening to notice when certain people tended to absent themselves from company and where they went when they did. Miss Godwin had a weakness for nicking canned peaches from the pantry. Mr. Carlisle snuck cigarettes behind the garden shed.
A few months into my life at the Biltmore, it was because of Mr. Carlisle that I made another important discovery. Mrs. Severson was shouting her cap off for him, swearing he’d promised to make a delivery that very afternoon. I knew of his cigarette habit, and so I snuck off to fetch him. He was, of course, behind the shed, and as soon as I told him the situation, he took off like a shot. I stayed outside and didn’t run after him. Partly because I wasn’t the one in trouble, and partly because I wanted to stand in the sun for a moment and drink in the smell of green spring plants growing.
That was when I saw the young man.
He emerged from the other side of the shed and strode toward the rose garden, which was at that time about three-quarters complete. When it was finished, it would be spectacular, long formal rows in the English style, but the rows had not yet been fully planted. As best as I could tell, he was my height and not far from my age. He had dark hair that looked like it was wet. There was something magnetic about him. He set my arms tingling. I wanted to know more.
The dark-haired young man passed behind the high trellis into the garden. I hustled forward and arranged myself behind a thick cluster of climbing roses, the vines and leaves and buds and blooms obscuring my outline, and made myself be still.
I watched him for half an hour, not even noticing the time pass. I only felt the tingling of my arms, a hotness in my throat, strange shifts in temperature that had nothing to do with the sun. From time to time, I caught glimpses of his face—a sharp cheekbone, an arched eyebrow. He dug down into the dark ground with a spade until he was satisfied with the size of the hole and then carefully, gracefully, he lifted a rosebush from its resting place on the ground and settled its roots inside. He was what I imagined Adam in the garden to be—somehow part of the earth while master over it.
After the new bush was in the ground, he crouched down next to it. He sprinkled water slowly and lightly over the new roots, lowering his hand into a bucket of water and lifting a scooped handful at a time, careful not to displace too much soil. And when he stood back up and drew his forearm over his sweating forehead, the underside of his muscled arm framed against the blue sky, a swarm of buzzing surged up into my temples and I felt faint.
I was afraid to step out from behind my trellis and greet him because I wasn’t supposed to be there, and if he asked me any questions, I was just the kind of girl who would have to answer them.
And I didn’t want to speak to him, I realized, because that might break the spell. He might be stupid or mean or angry. He might not like me, and I wanted him to like me, because I liked him. I felt sure that someone so tender with a plant would be just as careful with a person, but then again, finding out more might mean disappointment. He would have to have some kind of flaw. We all did. And as long as I never spoke to him or saw him again, he’d remain perfect.
And so he did, for a time.