“Och! The bath!” Lucy dashed into the bathing chamber. “It’s all right,” she called out to me a moment later. “I caught it afore it spilled o’er the edge.”
I crossed the bedroom and peered inside the tiled room at my maid, who was balancing against the edge of the tub while she carefully reached in to extract the plug to drain out some of the water. It was filled so close to the brim that I thought for sure just the insertion of her hand would send it cascading over onto the floor, but it didn’t.
There was a pop and a gurgle and she let out a relieved breath. When she extracted her hand, I could see it was red up to her elbow.
“How hot did you make that water?” I asked her.
She glanced at me sheepishly. “I had a bit o’ trouble gettin’ the temperature right. It’ll be cool enough by the time we get ye undressed.”
I frowned at the water level. “Well, don’t let it drain too much. Otherwise we’ll be wasting more of the water from the cistern.”
I turned away and marched back into the bedchamber. I removed the amethyst pendant my mother had given me and stared down at it, watching the deep purple stone flash in the late sunlight shining through the windows. Lucy stepped up behind me and immediately began unfastening the buttons that ran up the back of my riding habit. I could hear her worried thoughts as loudly as if she’d spoken them.
“Are ye really goin’ to send me back?” she finally found the courage to ask.
I set the pendant on the vanity. “I don’t know what else to do, Lucy. I’m worried about you.”
“Ye dinna have to be worrit aboot me, m’lady. I’m a good girl. I ken what men are after and no’ to give it to ’em. My mother and my brothers taught me well.”
“That may be so,” I told her as she helped me peel the fitted garment down over my wrists. “But there are more things at stake here than just your virtue.”
I could see her puzzled look in the reflection of the mirror and endeavored to explain. “The job of a personal maid is far more than pressing clothes and styling hair. In a way, it’s also being a sort of confidante, knowing the secrets you do about your employer. And I’m not just talking about the size of her waist or how much face powder she puts on every morning. Lady’s maids, and valets for that matter, know who their employers are keeping company with, in and out of bed, and often when they are sick or expecting a child before they even do. They are privy to some of their most unguarded thoughts and fears.” I turned to look down at her, seeing the guilt of disloyalty already stamped across her features. “Lucy, I need someone I can trust, and you are proving not to be that person.”
Her gaze dropped to her feet. “I’m sorry, m’lady,” she said tearfully. “I didna mean to tell Donovan anythin’ aboot ye. But he was so kind. And he was the only one who would tell me the truth aboot Lord Dalmay.” She blinked up at me accusingly through her tear-flecked lashes.
“And what was that?”
She hesitated, but just for a moment. “That he spent nine years in a lunatic asylum, and he’s kept under lock and key for everyone’s protection.”
“That’s true.”
She gasped in outrage.
“But did Mr. Donovan tell you that the reason he was kept in that asylum was not because he was mad, but because of his father’s own treachery?”
Lucy’s eyes widened.
“I thought not. He led you to believe exactly what he wanted you to so that you would feel grateful to him for his honesty and angry with me for lying.”
The reality of the man’s deceit slowly began to dawn on her. “But he’s kept locked up . . .”
“More for his own good than for anyone else’s protection. He gets confused sometimes. We all would if we’d been confined to a dark, dank cell for a decade. I’ve visited with him three times since our arrival at Dalmay House, and he’s never come close to anything resembling violent or aggressive. You have nothing to worry about. And I don’t know why Mr. Donovan has decided to make you think so. Unless it’s to get something from you.”
Her gaze was filled with a world of hurt. I sat down on the bench in front of my vanity and bent to begin unfastening one of my boots. A moment later, Lucy kneeled to unlace the other one.
“I feel like such a fool,” she muttered, but I was relieved to hear more anger in her voice than pain. “I kenned a man like Donovan would no’ fancy someone like me. Dinna I say so?”
I scowled. “Lucy, the issue of your attractiveness, which I think you underestimate, is not the matter at hand.”