Of course she would hear the remnants of the old country in my voice. I nodded, taking the stairs gradually, sneaking looks at this uncanny creature who could be a living sculpture of a girl I knew did not exist. But I could feel the warmth of her when her sleeve brushed me; this was a real person. “I had to leave her behind when I sailed for England. That was a hard day. How did you come to be here?”
“My mam did a bit of tailoring and sewing for the master, and he liked her work so well he brought us here from London. It was a good thing, too. She was a proud woman and hated charging pennies for her work. She taught me the needle, and I took her place when she passed last year.”
“What a shame that she’s gone,” I said, feeling unnervingly as if I was once again confiding in my imaginary friend. It felt easy to talk to her, maybe because of how much they looked alike, or maybe because her sorrows were familiar. “I’m sorry.”
“She liked it here, I think, and died happy enough. The master promised to look after me when she was gone, and so far he’s kept his word.”
“I met him briefly.” We lingered outside the kitchen door. I could tell she didn’t want to go in, either, knowing we’d find ourselves faced with new chores that would separate us. How could I feel an affinity for someone so quickly? I felt spiteful now for having chided Lee about trying to force friendships. But this was different, wasn’t it? Mary was like me, abandoned and alone, far from home. . . .
Or this was her home, and the odd Mr. Morningside had become a kind of family. She seemed comfortable. She belonged. Something ached in the back of my throat. Belonging somewhere would be nice. I didn’t know if that place was here, but if so, it would make life simpler.
“He’s ever so kind,” Mary said with a forlorn smile. “And I owe him so much. He pulled us out of the worst part of Shoreditch. It’s not the kind of debt you can ever repay, I think.”
“Nonsense. Every debt can be repaid. You earn your keep, don’t you? He must understand the difficult position your mother left you in.”
Mary shrugged and opened the door to the kitchens for me. Her green eyes were suddenly cold. Far off. “No,” she replied simply. “For, you see, I owe him my very life.”
“Is that so?” I asked, craning my head back in surprise. “I had no idea he was so heroic.”
A little warmth returned to her gaze as she shook her head. “’Tis not too gallant a story, only he made certain I had a place to go and a purpose to bend my thought toward. I couldn’t survive without a place to belong or a kind of family to call my own.”
And here my new purpose was to steal from the house for my own gain. It almost made me feel ashamed. My old imaginary friend Maggie would understand, I knew. Could this girl Mary do the same?
It was a great comfort to retire in my little room at the end of the day. Others might have thought it lonely, but I knew the refuge to be found in the company of only one’s own mind.
An hour or so after supper, Mrs. Haylam had relieved me of my duties and dismissed me. After scurrying under the watchful eyes of the birds hung in the halls, I’d washed up and changed into a simple nightgown, then gratefully fallen into bed. Exhausted though I was from a full day’s work, I had trouble falling asleep. The evening meal had been relaxed, pleasant even. All of us had sat down at the large kitchen table—Mrs. Haylam, Chijioke, Poppy, Mary, and myself, with the hound Bartholomew waiting impatiently under our feet for scraps.
I’d barely spoken, but the conversation had been animated. Chijioke had caught a hare for Mrs. Haylam to cook, and he’d recounted its harrowing capture for all of us, to applause and laughter. Apparently the creature had startled Bartholomew and Chijioke so badly, darting out from under his workbench, that both man and hound had fallen over on their rumps in surprise.
Even Mrs. Haylam had cracked a smile.
And by the end of the meal I’d found myself wishing Mr. Morningside had joined us. I wanted to know more of this unusual young man who pulled seamstresses out of slums and kept hundreds of birds for fun and owned a boardinghouse that he apparently never saw the topside of. It was both sad and easy to imagine him taking all of his meals alone in that office of his. Did he ever keep company? Did he occasionally leave for town?
Now the more I considered him, the stranger he became. In all my reading and experience, I’d learned that the masters of anything tended to live aboveground; not only aboveground but above their servants. Above everything. The rich and the landed were of higher stuff. Loftier. Closer to God.
Surely he must keep quarters of his own somewhere on the higher floors. After all, even the most eccentric of men needed a place to sleep.
I sat up in bed, thinking then that I had done little wandering on the fourth story. Mrs. Haylam had not yet sent me there for any reason, and it occurred to me that it was probably because the master of the house kept his rooms there. And suddenly I had a mind to see for myself. I had stirred myself up with questions, and now I was painfully awake.
It would just be a quick look, I assured myself, a peek around a corner or two to verify that everything in Coldthistle House was operating as expected. There would be some huge, intimidating door with a valet waiting outside. I would feign ignorance of the layout of the house, and then be shooed off back to my own chambers. Curiosity satisfied, sleep would come easier.
And if I got lucky, there would be no valet and no one about. There would be rooms filled with pocket-size trinkets for me to snatch and hide under my bed until the collection grew big enough to fund an escape.
The rich could afford to amass possessions they had no time or reason to count, and then there was me, with everything I owned totaling less than my fingers and toes.
The hall outside the door was so cold, quiet, and dark I could hear a faint ringing in my ears. The corridor stretched out as a pure black tunnel before me, and I retreated to my room to gather the stub of a reading candle I had left burning. Shielding the flame with a palm, I tiptoed out into the hall, shrinking under the watchful avian eyes. Even from the second floor I could feel the tug of the green door down in the foyer. At once, it began singing to me again.
The language of the song filled my head with unquiet thoughts, and my hands trembled, threatening the flame. What strange tongue was this in my mind? Guttural and sharp, both sinister and alluring. . . . It took concerted effort to focus my attention away from the door downstairs and instead travel lightly to the end of the hall and the stairs leading up. Underneath the song I heard quiet footfalls, just a gentle pitter-patter that sounded like it came from over my head, perhaps on the floor above. Was Poppy’s hound loose and wandering, too?