“None.”
Rose looked astounded. “No brothers and sisters! Not a one? Was your ma ill, too?”
“No. Busy. She and my father divorced. He remarried and has two children by his second wife. So I suppose I do have siblings. A brother and sister.”
“Divorced?” If anything, Rose looked even more astounded. And a little appalled. “I don’t know anyone ’oo’s divorced!”
Kendra realized she was talking too much. Life, societal mores, and people would change in the next two hundred years in ways that Rose could never hope to understand, and that Kendra could never hope to explain.
She was grateful when they arrived again at the kitchen. Cook immediately homed in on them, directing Rose to the pastry room and Kendra to the lower staff dining room. “Eat now, ’cause Mrs. Danbury’ll want everything ready by the lake in an hour.”
The lower staff dining room was down the corridor from the upper staff dining room. At least a dozen maids and workmen were already sitting around the table, eating. As soon as she sat down, a maid materialized with a plate, silverware and—shockingly, Kendra thought—a glass of beer. And not the lite version, either, she realized, as she sipped the fermented brew.
Unlike breakfast, lunch was a speedy affair, with everybody racing through the meal that consisted of boiled potatoes and freshly picked peas, slabs of roast beef, lashings of gravy, and thick, lighter-than-air slices of bread with generous pats of butter. Real butter. Real bread. Not a preservative in sight. The meal was unpretentious and filling, and Kendra was surprised that, like breakfast, she finished it all—and enjoyed it. At this rate, she wouldn’t need Mrs. Beeton to take in her dress; she’d be filling it out in no time.
“So . . . what’s next?” she asked the young maid seated next to her.
“Lady Atwood’s gipsying.”
“Gipsying?”
“Aye. We’ll need to bring the lot down to the lake.”
The lot, Kendra soon realized, was four long wooden tables and several dozen chairs, which were loaded into a horse-drawn wagon, along with enormous wicker baskets carefully packed with starched, hemstitched linens, polished silverware, china, and cut crystal. Smaller linen baskets, laden with food, spices, liqueur, and wine, were carried out under the watchful eye of Mr. Harding and Mrs. Danbury. Kendra found herself in charge of one of them, and joined the procession as it marched out the servant’s door and down a flagstone path flanked by hedgerows, winding its way around one of the many gardens.
For just a moment, Kendra allowed herself to forget about her crazy situation and drink in the sheer physical beauty surrounding her. It was nice to be outside, to feel the sun beating warmly on her face and the faint breeze that carried the perfume of honeysuckle and rose, lilac and peonies. Beyond the ebb and flow of conversation and steady shuffling of feet around her, she could hear the drone of bees, the chirp of birds, the rustling of shrubs, and long blades of grass. It wasn’t silent by any means, but Kendra was keenly aware of the lack of twenty-first-century noise. This was a world with no automobiles or airplanes. No jets would streak across the sky. There was no mechanical thrum of tractors plowing across the fields or cars moving along the country roads. Steam locomotives were in their infancy, with another ten years to go before England developed its first public steam railway. On water, steamboats were just beginning to chug their way into a territory dominated by sails.
Oh, God. Had it only been two days ago that she’d jumped on a Boeing 747, flying 567 miles per hour, touching only clouds?
The flagstone path fell away, replaced by a ten-minute walk up a gently sloping hill before curving down into a forest. Kendra could feel the strain in her muscles as she shifted the wicker basket, but she doggedly kept pace. No one else seemed to find it an effort.
The floral scent of the garden gave way to the more loamy smells of the forest. Shadows, cast by tall pine trees and ancient oak and elm, dueled with the sun’s light. Between the tall, spiky weeds and woods, Kendra saw the gleam of blue, heard the splash and murmur of moving water. She caught herself from stumbling over exposed roots and pushed forward. Again, she shifted the basket to relieve the dull ache in her arms. Two minutes later, they arrived at their destination, a picturesque dell ringed by trees and rock formations and a lake. Water cascaded down sheer rocks at the far end.