Find my way back.
Get to Nan’s side before it’s too late.
Give the police everything I know to stop a killer.
* * *
It feels like the middle of the night when Mrs. Wallace bangs her fist on my door. I reach for my phone to check the time and my hand smacks down on an empty nightstand.
“It’s almost five,” she says as she sticks her head in. “Are you going to lay about until dawn?”
“Sorry,” I say, my voice thankfully muffled as I rephrase that. “Apologies, ma’am. I seem to have misplaced my alarm clock.”
Her broad face scrunches up. “Your what?”
“My…” I cough. “My, um…” How do Victorians wake up, if they haven’t invented alarm clocks? “Apologies, ma’am,” I repeat. “’Twill not happen again.”
Her eyes narrow, as if I’m being sarcastic. She shakes it off and says, “Get your lazy bones out of that bed. I’ll expect you dressed and downstairs in a quarter hour, or you’ll not be getting any tea.”
She smacks the door closed. I groan. It’s been clear from our brief interactions that Mrs. Wallace is not a Catriona fan. I don’t know whether it’s a personality clash or simply a product of the times, where women have so little power that they wield it against one another with unnecessary vigor.
Unnecessary vigor? I smile to myself. Even my internal dialogue is starting to sound positively Victorian. That’s the trick, really. Stilted speech. Five-dollar words—thanks to Dad, I know plenty of those. And for God’s sake, do not mention things before they were invented. Of course, the problem is that I don’t know when they were invented. For the thousandth time in two days, I find myself reaching for my phone to look it up. I’ve been able to do that since I was a kid, and now I feel lost without that easy access to a virtual universe of data.
You’re a detective, figure it out.
Yep, think before I speak. Err on the side of caution. I’m a maid. No one will expect me to say much. At least I’ve retained Catriona’s voice and accent. That will help. Otherwise each word should be uttered with care and forethought until I’m certain I’m not referring to an object twenty years before its time.
I do know one thing that hasn’t been invented. Central heating. As I discovered last night, while the house is mostly heated by coal, there are still a couple of wood-burning fireplaces. In my room, there’s a small coal one—a brazier—which I’m sure will do a lovely job once I figure out how to use it.
So my room is freezing, despite me closing the window. There’s no shortage of blankets, thank God, but once I throw back the covers, it’s like stepping into a walk-in freezer. I reach for my bedside lamp … only to remember it’s oil. My shaking fingers struggle to light it.
My room has gas lighting, but Mrs. Wallace caught me using it yesterday and gave me hell. Apparently, having gas lighting and being allowed to use it are two different things, at least if you’re a mere housemaid.
My quarters are the size of a college dorm room, with a narrow bed and tiny window. A dorm or a prison cell. It’s a private room, though, with a locking door, and from what I’ve seen of servants’ rooms in movies, I struck gold here.
I pull on my uniform easily enough. I practiced yesterday, so I wouldn’t take an hour getting ready this morning. The damned corset isn’t even the worst of it. There’s layer upon layer of clothing.
I might have been cursing those layers yesterday, but this morning I happily tug them on. At least they’ll keep me warm. Maybe that’s the point.
Next come my morning “ablutions.” I think that’s the word, anyway. It sounds properly old-fashioned.
I have an old college friend who adores historical-romance novels, and I take every opportunity to remind her that those dashing dukes would have had yellow teeth and stunk of BO. Judging by Gray and his staff, that’s not true, and I don’t know whether Victorian hygiene levels are higher than I expected or they’re just higher in a doctor’s home.
Dental hygiene is not as dire as I feared. Catriona has a bristled brush in her toiletries and a powder that I use to brush with while hoping I haven’t mistaken its purpose and will drop dead of arsenic poisoning. Of course, having no idea what’s even in Victorian tooth powder, I might still drop dead of it, but at least my teeth will be clean.
I finish getting ready with a bristle hairbrush, soap, and clean water. It’d be even better if that water weren’t ice cold but at least it wakes me up.
I’m still washing my face when the downstairs clock strikes the quarter hour.
Shit!
I mean, drat. Er, no, pretty sure that isn’t historically accurate either. In fact, I have the very strong impression that demure young housemaids do not use profanity, at least not out loud.
I race into the hall, only to hear a squeak of surprise and turn to see Alice blinking at me. Okay, apparently demure young housemaids do not tear down halls either. I bend a quick curtsy in apology, and her eyes widen in shock.
Right, housemaids wouldn’t curtsy to other maids. That’s for the master and mistress of the house. Or is curtsying even a thing in 1869?
I wave to Alice, who lifts her fingers hesitantly.
Do people not wave in Victorian Scotland? Goddamn it, this isn’t going to be half as easy as I thought. It isn’t just modern speech and modern references I need to avoid. It’s modern gestures, modern customs, modern everything.
And the longer I fret about that, the later I’ll be for starting work. I suspect Mrs. Wallace wasn’t joking about missing breakfast. I only need to suffer through a day to two “in service” before I’ll have what I need to get home.
I take the stairs down four flights to the basement kitchen. It’s a small room, blazing hot and as clean as a surgery, with a horror movie’s worth of hanging knives. The smell—fresh bread, hot tea, roast ham—gets my stomach rumbling, and I hurry for the door into the “servants’ hall,” where we eat.
“Do you expect to be served your tea, Miss Catriona?”
That’s when I see the tray on the counter. A steaming teapot. Slices of fresh-baked bread, tiny silver and glass bowls of butter and pickled something. There’s also an empty plate for the ham and poached eggs cooking on the stove.
I head for the tray as my stomach growls in appreciation. I’ll say this much for nineteenth-century Scotland, the food has been better than I expected.
I’m reaching for the breakfast tray when Mrs. Wallace says, “I’m not done with that yet. Drink your tea and give me time to finish his eggs.”
His eggs.
This is Gray’s breakfast.
“Apologies, ma’am,” I say, and resist the urge to curtsy. “And where might my morning meal be?”
I follow her gaze to a cup of tea and a chunk of unbuttered fresh bread. I glance from her to the meager meal, hoping I’m misunderstanding.
Nope. Well, at least it’s not stale bread and water.
I devour the food, trying very hard not to wolf it down like a starving beast. Crossing a hundred and fifty years takes a lot out of a person, and that chunk of bread only whets my appetite.
Once it’s gone, I turn to Mrs. Wallace, feeling like Oliver Twist, holding out my plate.
“Please, ma’am, might I have another slice?”
“And let Dr. Gray’s breakfast go cold? You’ll get your meal after the master has had his.” I must look relieved, because she waves at my empty bread plate. “Did you think I’d stopped feeding you? I run a proper household. You’ll need a full belly if you’re going to get through your chores. The mistress comes home in two days, and you’ve been slacking, Miss Catriona.”
“I was unconscious.”
“Not since yesterday.” She scoops the poached eggs into tiny silver cups. “Now get your lazy self off and start working.”
I head toward what I hope is a room in need of cleaning.
She clears her throat. “Are you forgetting something?”