Servants and employers both advertised in newspapers, which was how we had found our first three; there were also registry offices, but they were sketchier. We had worked together choosing Jencks and Mrs. Smith and Grace, interviewing candidates just after we took occupancy of Hill Street, with the furniture still swathed in white cloths against dust. But now that I had grown more familiar with how this world worked, it was clear that there was a division of labor we had ignored. Men hired manservants: grooms and stewards and valets. Women hired housekeepers, kitchen maids, and laundresses.
“I was planning to look into the carriage situation.”
“That can wait.” Still on the to-do list for impersonating gentry was to acquire a carriage and horses. “But we can’t have a dinner without a footman.”
“Can’t we?”
“With only Jencks serving? I don’t think so.” Jencks was dour and midsize, with a Northern accent and a disapproving manner he reserved in especially strong form for me. He slowly, grudgingly performed all possible duties of a manservant, from keeping Liam’s clothes in order to holding the keys to the wine room. “It takes him forever to clear the table when it’s just us. Imagine him with company here, and three times as many dishes.” I did not suggest that Grace help; a woman serving at dinner had the flavor of poverty. “Go to that coffeehouse where they have all the different newspapers, and see.”
“Hmmm.” Liam poured himself more tea.
“Make sure you get a tall one.” Footmen advertised themselves by height, a marker of status for their employers. A good-looking pair of matching large size was especially prestigious, though two footmen seemed excessive for the scale of our household.
“Shall I focus on handsome, too?” he murmured, and I allowed that maybe Liam did have a sense of humor.
A FEW HOURS LATER, HENRY AUSTEN SURPRISED ME BY STOPPING in. On his way home from the bank, he explained, and chancing to have a volume with him he thought my brother and I might enjoy—
“How kind of you to think of us. What is the book, sir?”
We were in the drawing room, standing by one of the long windows that overlooked the street. He had found me alone; Liam had been gone so long that I was starting to feel anxious.
“Ah,” he said. “It is not so new now; it came out a few years ago. And yet I hoped you had not heard of it, in your Indies, that I might have the credit of introducing it to you.”
“You are very mysterious.”
It was not improper to be alone together, yet it had a frisson: the air hummed with possibility. He seemed almost shy of me, a contrast to the night before.
“I am the very opposite of mysterious, I fear, rather the simplest of creatures.” He had been holding a book behind him the whole time and now put it—medium size, bound in calf—in my hands. “It is only a novel,” he said with a little laugh.
“Only a novel?” I examined it, debating how to react. “Ah, Pride and Prejudice.” Should I admit I had read it and ruin his pleasure in introducing it? If I pretended not to have, did I risk later being exposed by Mrs. Tilson as a liar? Was he going to admit his sister wrote it? “But this is only the first volume.”
“If you like it, I shall furnish the other two.”
“I already know I like it.” I looked up at him. “I must be frank, Mr. Austen; I read this in Jamaica.” Disappointment creased his face, but vanished as I went on: “And loved it. Silverfish were eating my copy; I had to leave it behind. I am very, very gratified to see this book again. It is like an old friend.” I hugged it to my chest; his eyes widened, and I wondered if I was laying it on too thick, but I had gone too far to turn back. “It is so wonderfully clever, so witty, and yet so sound in its moral guidance! I think the person who wrote it must be very remarkable.” Henry Austen’s eyes were bright; his mouth had dropped open a little. “Tell me, do you think it was really written by ‘A Lady’? I trust it is no censure on my own sex to suspect a masculine hand penned this. It has such verve, such majesty, and yet such lightness!”
He was speechless for a moment, but finally managed: “I have it on the best authority that its creator is, indeed, a lady.”
“The best authority?” I asked teasingly. “What would that be?”
He hesitated, smirked, colored, but did not speak.
“If you have met her yourself, and discussed the work with her, perhaps I will allow—”
“Do not say more, or I shall be tempted to be indiscreet.”
We had moved closer together, like planets drawn into each other’s orbits. He brought up a hand, index finger raised, paused like he was about to go on, then, to my astonishment, brought that finger to my mouth as if to gently forbid me from speech. Our eyes met, and I thought that nothing in Preparation had prepared for me for this moment; my close reading of the works of his sister and her novelistic contemporaries was not much help either. Parting my lips, I playfully put the tip of my tongue on his finger.
He gasped and took his hand away, and I thought I’d made a mistake. But when I glanced up, the look in his eyes—amused, hungry—suggested I hadn’t. All he said was “Miss Ravenswood! Forgive me. I do not know what came over—”
“There is nothing to forgive,” I said, and looked out the window in confusion, just in time to see Liam approaching the front door. “My brother is come. How delighted he will be to see you!”
“Oh! Indeed.” And we stood there, properly and quietly but too close, as Jencks opened the door and Liam came up the stairs.
CHAPTER 4
OCTOBER 10
33 Hill Street
IN THE DRAWING ROOM, I WENT OVER IT ALL IN MY MIND. MULLIGATAWNY. Duck with peas. Rabbit smothered with onion. Boiled beef. Beetroot.
A vegetable tart. Ragout with mushrooms. Salad. Smoked eel. Drowned baby.
Dried fruits. Walnuts. Olives. Hock. Claret. Port for the gentlemen.
Tea. Cakes.
Wineglasses. Silver. Linen.
Henry Austen. Mr. and Mrs. Tilson. Mr. Seymour. Mr. Jackson, a widower, and his two oldest daughters. We’d met these last four at tea at Henry Austen’s three days earlier, and I had invited them as well, thinking of that long table, all those chairs. When I told Mrs. Smith more people would be coming, she had lifted her eyes in amazement, but said only “We will do what we can, miss.” Then she sent her sister out in quest of another rabbit and more smoked eel.
“Are you sure I haven’t forgotten something?” I had been pacing the room, fingering my spectronanometer, glancing down into the street, resisting the urge to go consult once more with Mrs. Smith. She’d thrown me out of the kitchen a few hours earlier—polite but firm, exasperated with my meddling.
“You haven’t,” Liam said, but he was nervous too. He was wearing a new coat and kept looking sideways down at himself as if checking the straightness of his seams. “People have prepared for expeditions through the Amazon with less obsession.”
From downstairs, a knock. I looked out to see a carriage stopped below.