Hidden Paradise

chapter SIX



Rob

He flung open the door to the footmen’s dormitory and bellowed, “Hands off cocks and on with socks!”

To emphasize his point, he banged on the gong that stood just inside the door, a Victorian artifact that Chris and Peter had declared absolutely unsuitable for use in the house, but which Rob found invaluable in getting his charges awake. He’d discovered early on that the only way to get his crew moving was to behave like a jerk. As the din faded away, he shouted, “Eleven-thirty, gents. You’re on in half an hour. Clean shirts and neckcloths. Inspection in the butler’s pantry in twenty minutes.”

Tousled heads rose from pillows accompanied by scowls, belches, farts, the sounds of the awaking young male. Another local kid, Ivan, was the first to drop from his bunk, swaggering naked across the room, erection swaying, rubbing his eyes. Rob ignored him. His team of footmen, grumbling and wearing anything from pajamas to boxers, spilled from tangled bedclothes, clutching towels and toilet bags, on their way to the adjoining shower room.

Ivan paused near Rob. “Get any, then?”

“Piss off,” Rob said, avoiding the urge to step back to avoid the waving penis.

“That Di. She’s hot, man. If you won’t do her, I will.”

“Right. She thinks you’re a hairy git. Get going.” Sometimes he wondered if he wore an invisible sign everyone else could see that announced his embarrassing inexperience. Even Di seemed to know and, either because of that or because of her boyfriend back in London, had appointed him her BFF for the summer, which was nice, but not quite what he—or Ivan, it seemed—had in mind. It was endearing, in a way, that Ivan, and probably the others, thought that because Rob had a tiny room to himself that he spent his spare time in wild and indiscriminate sexual pursuits. He didn’t have the heart to tell them the lame truth, that he woke early to read and then most days rode his bike out to see Graham.

“Or that new guest,” Ivan the permanently erect continued. “That Lou or whatever her name is. Looks like a goer to me.”

“Mrs. Connolly to you. Eighteen minutes,” Rob said. He glanced at his wrist where a watch no longer resided, and straightened the cuff of his livery.

“Well, then.” Ivan, having decided the conversation had reached its natural conclusion, ambled toward the shower, scratching his backside.

Rob made his way to the butler’s pantry, an archaic term for a featureless, modernized space that was the meeting room of the footmen, and consulted the list on the bulletin board. The guests, he saw, were having a dance lesson this afternoon after lunch, served buffet-style upstairs. The regular kitchen staff had set out the chafing dishes and Rob and his crew now had to make sure all was well, explain what the food was if necessary and replace any popular dishes. After that, the footmen would get to eat the leftovers, take a few hours’ break and then make themselves available to any of the male guests who needed help with dressing for dinner. He knew it wasn’t anything like the hours footmen had to work two centuries ago but it made for a long day, ending well after midnight. One good thing, though—lifting all those trays and carrying them up and down the stairs from the kitchen was as good as going to the gym.

He ran water into the electric kettle and plugged it in on the kitchen counter at one end of the room. The least he could do was give his lads a cup of tea when they appeared. His lads. He very vaguely remembered meeting his great-grandfather, a veteran of the first world war. He must have been very small, but he remembered sitting on the old man’s lap, fascinated by the frail, knobbly hands that turned the pages of a scrapbook showcasing the faded sepia photographs of young men long dead, hearing the pride and sadness in his quavering voice. My lads, they were. Until now, he’d never appreciated the bonds that arose in a group of men living in close quarters, working for a common goal. He grinned at his own pretension. Sure, exactly the same, but without gas warfare and mud and rats and exploding mortars day and night. Rob wondered what had happened to the scrapbook, hoped it hadn’t been thrown out when his family had left the house.

The door opened and the first of his footmen straggled in, hair wet, jacket over his arm, reaching for a mug and a tea bag. The rest followed. Rob ran over the schedule, warned them against overindulging in the guests’ wine—“finish up the opened bottles only, please, gents”—then had them line up for livery inspection. Another day was to begin.

* * *

“YOU’RE SURE THIS DOESN’T have any animal products of any kind, Rob?”

“Absolutely, ma’am. Saw the chef make it with my own eyes. Olive oil and lemon, a bit of tarragon.”

Sarah poked at the pile of salad on her plate with a fork. “There’s egg in there.”

Then leave it on the side, you silly cow. “I’ll get you a fresh plate.”

“Thank you, Rob. You’re the best.”

He resisted rolling his eyes and handed the plate to one of his lads, who, he was pretty sure, would take the salad to the kitchen, dump it onto a clean plate, remove the egg and stir it around a bit, and take his time returning.

There were two newcomers for lunch, a woman and a skinny guy carrying a violin case, who’d come to teach them to dance. She was short, plump, with flyaway graying hair beneath an elaborate lace cap, and introduced herself as Becky the dance mistress and her assistant as Charlie. Nearly everyone else was here, Mac glowering more than usual and occasionally darting a glance over at Lou, who was in an animated conversation with the others and rather obviously ignoring him. So what had happened last night after Mac had dismissed Rob? He cringed again as he remembered Mac’s dismissive tone last night. No wonder people hated being in service. It was too easy to think about this job as being a glorified waiter or hotel worker. In reality, it was a lot more than that.

After the footmen had cleared away, Rob returned to the room with pitchers of water and lemonade and more glasses. He directed the lads to move the tables from the center of the room and took his station by the drinks. The guests were straggling onto the floor in pairs. Mac seemed to have disappeared.

“You,” Becky said to Rob, “there’s a lady waiting.”

The lady was Lou. They expected him to dance with her? He began to stammer something about being on duty, but Becky, the lace flaps of her cap lifting in the air like an elephant’s ears, bore down on him and grabbed his arm with a grasp of steel. “Yes, you, young man. You don’t leave a lady without a partner.”

He bowed. It came naturally now, and the woman made a clucking sound of approval. “Very nice. Gentlemen, bow to your partners. No, that’s rubbish. Young man—your name?” He answered her and she continued, “Okay, everyone, watch Rob bow.”

He felt like an idiot, but bowed again. He’d come to appreciate bows, how you could express a range of expression with the simple gesture, from genuine appreciation to a hint of incivility, all the way to understated insolence. He supposed it was the same for the women, curtsying. Lou dropped into a graceful sort of bob, a movement that didn’t express much at all. The women apparently did better than the men, as Becky gave a nod of approval.

“And,” Becky continued, “you must all have your gloves on. Absolutely no bare skin contact.”

It reminded Rob of dealing with his lads, the same groaning and complaints as gloves were extricated from reticules and pockets. Made decent to Becky’s specifications, they all lined up again and went through a series of baffling exercises: ballet positions, which the women could all do and the men were hopeless at, and a step that looked graceful when Becky did it—despite her decidedly ungraceful form—and which, as performed by everyone else, made most of them look like a bunch of lurching zombies. “One, two, three. One, two, three—bend your leg on three—one, two, three…”

Chassé. That was easy. Setting, a one-two-three hop, felt ridiculous. They walked through a mystifying combination of taking hands, changing directions, turning, circling.

“So now you have the basics,” Becky said. “Back to your starting position, please. Face your partner and join your right hands. First position.”

It was ridiculous, him standing like a duck and holding the gloved hand of a woman he didn’t know.

Becky came down the line, inspecting them, just as earlier Rob had checked his lads for grease stains, dirty gloves, poorly tied neckcloths. She stopped at Rob and Lou. “And the most important thing of all. Eye contact. Lingering hand contact. This is as close to sex, standing up in public, as you’re going to get in this period. It’s partner swapping and flirtation and naughty goings-on. Remember that.”

Dutifully, Rob met Lou’s gaze and held it.

“Right,” Becky said. “Let’s do it. Bow or curtsy to your partner....”

Charlie played an introductory ripple of notes on his fiddle, and they were off, Becky yelling instructions and pushing them into position.

It wasn’t that bad, although most of the dancing he’d done was at clubs, usually with a beer bottle in one hand. This was different to say the least. More like a football game, lots of footwork that wasn’t that difficult but it was how you performed it, weaving a pattern with your teammates. But even better, you got to touch women in a way that made the brush of gloved hands or the touch of elbows or shoulders much sexier than it should have been; a smile from another woman seemed full of seduction. Occasionally you had to hold a man’s hand, or look into his eyes and hop about, and that wasn’t nearly as gay as Rob would have thought. He supposed it was the equivalent of hugging a teammate after a goal.

Lou smiled at him. He smiled back and their gaze lingered and smoldered as they both turned away, circled, returned, clasped hands once more. “You’re good at this,” she said. Her skirts brushed against his calves.

They came to a stop as Cathy—who, with her husband, Alan, was next to them in the set—made a wrong turn. “I don’t get it,” Cathy said as Lou pushed her back into position.

“Listen to the music,” Rob said, surprising himself. “It tells you what to do.”

“Where should we be?” Alan said. “Cathy, come back.”

“No, this way.”

“You’re going back up the line now,” Lou said. “So you do what the others did before. You’re couple one now.” She and Rob did some more shoving and rearranging before Becky, realizing her charges were falling into disarray, called them to a halt.

“Well played, pardner,” Lou said to Rob, and he found himself glowing with pride. She was slightly flushed and he caught a whiff of her scent, ripe and sexy, feminine sweat and lavender as he led her to the drinks table. The group, relaxed and laughing, exchanged friendly insults at each other’s incompetence.

“It’s like football,” Rob said to Lou.

“Soccer?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting analogy.”

“Yeah, it’s personal, you and me, but it’s also about what everyone else is doing. If we go wrong, we mess up everyone, but we can get back into position. I bet she gave us an easy one to start off with,” he said. “Would you like some lemonade, ma’am?”

“Absolutely right, young man, I did. I’ll have you all bending it like Beckham before long,” Becky said, patting him on the shoulder. “And I’ll have a glass of lemonade, too.”