Peters gave a crooked smile. ‘Not to worry, ma’am. Don’t look like a place you need to dress up, does it?’
She peered over his shoulder, where the last tendrils of mist were twisting away. Surely not. Surely the village floating into view could not be Fayford?
A row of tumbledown cottages squatted beneath the trees, each with a smashed window or battered door. Holes in the walls had been hastily patched over with mud and dung. Broken thatch made a pathetic attempt to stretch over the rooftops, but it was flecked with mould.
‘No wonder we got stuck.’ Peters gestured to the road flowing before the cottages. It was little more than a brown river. ‘Welcome to Fayford, ma’am.’
‘This cannot possibly be Fayford,’ she told him.
Sarah’s pale face appeared beside them. ‘I think it is!’ she breathed. ‘Oh, heavens.’
Elsie could only gape. It was bad enough to be trapped in the country, but here? Marrying Rupert was meant to lift her above her station, provide her with well-fed cottagers and humble tenants.
‘Stay there, ladies,’ said Peters. ‘I’m going to get this wheel out while the mist is clear.’ He walked back carefully over the mud.
Sarah crept up next to Elsie. For once, Elsie was glad of her presence. ‘I hoped for pleasant country walks, Mrs Bainbridge, but I fear we will have to stay indoors this winter.’
Indoors. The word was like a key turning in a lock. That old, trapped feeling from childhood. How could she take her mind off Rupert if she had to stay indoors?
There were books, she supposed. Card games. It would not take long for them to become tedious.
‘Did Mrs Crabbly ever teach you how to play backgammon, Sarah?’
‘Oh yes. And then of course . . .’ She froze, eyes widening.
‘Sarah? What is it?’
She twitched her head at the cottages. Elsie turned. Grubby faces hovered by the windows. Wretched people, worse than the cow.
‘They must be my tenants.’ She raised a hand, feeling she should signal to them, but her courage faltered.
‘Should we—’ Sarah squirmed. ‘Should we try to talk to them?’
‘No. Stay away.’
‘But they look so miserable!’
They did. Elsie cudgelled her brains for ways to help. Visit them with a basket and read a Bible passage? That was what rich ladies did, wasn’t it? Somehow she didn’t think they would appreciate the effort.
A horse whinnied. She heard a curse and turned to see the carriage wheel burst from the quagmire with an almighty gurgle, spraying mud over Peters.
‘Well,’ he said, casting a wry glance at Elsie’s gown. ‘That makes two of us.’
The carriage rolled forward a few paces. Behind it, Elsie saw the battered ruins of a church. Its spire had disappeared, leaving only a jagged spike of wood. Yellow, sparse grass surrounded it, crammed close with headstones. Someone watched them from the lychgate.
Bubbles fizzed in Elsie’s stomach. The baby. She put one hand on her muddy bodice and used the other to take Sarah’s arm. ‘Come on. Back in the carriage.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Sarah scrambled forward. ‘Let us get to the house as soon as possible!’
Elsie could not share her enthusiasm. For if this rat’s nest was the village, what on earth would they find at the house?
The river whispered to them; a rushing, disembodied sound. Moss-speckled stone formed a bridge across the water – it must be the very bridge from which the house took its name.
It was not like any of the bridges in London. Instead of modern architecture and engineering, Elsie saw crumbling arches teased by foam and spray. A pair of discoloured stone lions flanked the posts on either side of the water. It made her think of drawbridges, the Tower of London – Traitors’ Gate.
But this river was not like the Thames; it was not grey or brown but clear. She squinted, her eyes catching a flick beneath the surface. Dark shapes, swirling. Fish?
When they reached the other side, an old gatehouse sprang up as if from nowhere. Peters slowed the carriage, but no one came out to greet them. Elsie put the window down, wincing at the sensation of her clammy sleeve moving against her arm. ‘Carry on, Peters.’
‘There!’ cried Sarah. ‘The house is there.’
The road sloped down across a range of hills, where the sun was beginning to set. At the very end, crouching in a horseshoe of red and orange trees, was The Bridge.
Elsie put up her veil. She saw a low-slung Jacobean building with three gables on the roof, a central lantern tower and redbrick chimneys looming behind. Ivy poured out of the eaves and engulfed the turrets at either end of the house. It looked dead.
Everything was dead. Parterres lay prostrate beneath the soulless gaze of the windows, the hedges brown and riddled with holes. Vines choked the flowerbeds. Even the lawns were yellow and sparse, as if a contagion spread slowly throughout the grounds. Only the thistle thrived, its purple spikes bristling from amidst the coloured gravel.
The carriage drew to a halt on a gravel sweep, opposite the fountain that formed the centrepiece of the decaying grounds. Once, when the stone was white and the sculpted figures of dogs on top were new, it must have been a handsome structure. No water sprang up from the jets. Cracks wiggled across the empty basin.
Sarah drew back. ‘They’re all out to see us,’ she said. ‘The entire staff!’
Elsie’s stomach plunged. She had been too busy staring at the gardens. Now she observed three women dressed in black waiting outside the house. Two wore white caps and aprons while the third was bare-headed, showing a coil of iron hair. Beside her stood a stiff, formal-looking man.
Elsie looked down at her skirts. They were patched like a rusty iron gate. Mud made the bombazine heavy and caused it to cling around her knees. What would her new servants think if they saw her in such a state? She would be neater and cleaner in her factory clothes.
‘A mistress must meet her household. But I had hoped not to do it caked in mud.’
Without warning, the carriage door swung open. She jumped. A young man stood before her, his slim figure clad in a black suit.
‘Oh Jolyon, it’s you. Thank goodness.’
‘Elsie? What on earth happened?’ His light brown hair was swept back from his face, as if to highlight the dismay written there.
‘An accident. The carriage wheel got stuck and I fell—’ She gestured to her skirt. ‘I can’t see the household like this. Send them back inside.’
He hesitated. His cheeks flushed beside his whiskers. ‘But . . . It would look so strange. What am I supposed to say?’
‘I don’t know! Tell them anything!’ She heard the brittle sound of her own voice and felt dangerously close to tears. ‘Make up some excuse.’
‘Very well.’ Jolyon closed the door and stood back. She saw him turn, the breeze lifting a curl of hair at his collar. ‘Mrs Bainbridge is . . . indisposed. She will have to go straight to her bed. Set a fire and send up some tea.’