Eventually the water began to cool, and the parts of her above its surface grew chilled. She stood, toweled off her body, and stepped from the tub. She slipped into her night dress, wrapper, and slippers, unplugged the drain, and gathered up her pins. Too exhausted to comb out and repin her hair and replace the tiresome wig, she instead wrapped her head in the towel, careful to be sure all her hair was covered. She rolled the wig and pins into her dress and tucked the bundle under her arm. At the last minute she remembered her spectacles and picked up the foggy lenses from the shelf. Her towel was too tight to allow her to slip the earpieces on, so she simply carried them. The passageway would be dark but for her candle lamp, and she was unlikely to meet anyone this time of night.
Checking to make sure she had gathered all of her belongings and left no blond hairs in the tub, Margaret stepped from the bathroom, hands full with wadded garments and spectacles in one hand, and the candle lamp in the other. She had made it to the foot of the basement stairs when she was startled by footsteps coming down, directly toward her. She looked up in surprise only to quickly wish she had kept her head down. Nathaniel Upchurch was descending the stairs, carrying his own candle.
She was naked. Suddenly naked. Without floppy cap, wig, dark brows, and spectacles to shield her face, her self. What was he doing belowstairs?
“Beg pardon, sir,” she mumbled, forgetting she was to be mute unless spoken to. She moved to the other side of the stairs, head ducked, and climbed quickly from view. She didn’t risk a look back to see what expression might reside on that strong, haughty face: shock that she had spoken to him, shock at her state of dress, or the shock of recognition?Heaven help me either way.
———
Nathaniel Upchurch had decided to go down to the kitchen himself, though he rarely entered the servants’ area these days. He had been too restless to sleep and hungry in the bargain. He thought a bit of bread and cheese might help. Normally, he would ring for a servant. But after his recent encounter with the housemaid, he was reticent to ask anyone to come into his room at such a late hour.
But as he reached the bottom of the stairs, a figure appeared in the shadowy passage below and scurried up the stairs past him. He froze. His mind flashed light and dark. His heart rate accelerated. The woman he had just passed—the voice had belonged to the new housemaid. But the face belonged to the woman who haunted his dreams. Margaret Macy.
It could not be....He sunk to the stairs, sweat pouring from his skin. He was distraught, exhausted, losing his mind. The stress of the fire, the loss of half the year’s profits, the debts. These had taken their toll, and he was now imagining, hallucinating the face of Miss Macy on one of the housemaids?
He shook his head to clear his vision and his mind.Dear God in heaven, help me.The image seemed burned into his brain, unshakable. The oval face with pointed chin, framed so starkly by the towel. The face so young and innocent, without the powder and paint she had worn at the ball when he had glimpsed her last. The blue eyes, wide at seeing him, fearful.
No! He was imagining things. The new housemaid had come to Hudson’s aid near the London docks. Hudson had then recognized her at a hiring fair in Maidstone, and offered her a post out of gratitude. This maid did not speak nor dress like a Macy. Besides, she had dark hair, unless she had dyed it. And she was a maid, for heaven’s sake, though not a good one, he gathered. Proud, conceited Margaret Macy would never so demean herself as to enter service. Besides, he would have recognized her immediately.
Or would he have? He had never really looked at the new maid, any of the maids for that matter, until he feared he’d kissed one of them. And they, in turn, did their best to avoid him. If he were honest, as a younger man he had thought himself too far above the servants to give them a second thought. Since his change of heart, he no longer felt himself better than the people working for him. Still, that did not change the ways ingrained in him since youth. Which was obvious in the fact that he had barely looked at thisnewmaidservant before now.
How strange that he had imagined Miss Macy’s face on the new housemaid. He needed more sleep. He needed to pray more fervently for God to heal his heart, to help him get over her. He thought he had, for the most part. Returning to London and seeing her, though fleetingly, must have brought her to the forefront of his mind again.Botheration.
He rose from the stairs, wishing it were not so late. He was tempted to rouse Hudson from his slumber and demand a rematch of the morning’s fencing defeat. A bout with the foils seemed to help. He felt he could go twenty bouts at that very moment.
Nathaniel decided he would not look at her again, not risk another fanciful likeness, until he had fenced with Hudson, bathed, dressed, read from the Scriptures, prayed, and prayed some more. Then he would be ready to face her. To see that she was merely a housemaid from a rough London neighborhood. A fishmonger’s daughter, perhaps. Or even a merchant’s daughter, for her speech, though accented, carried the vocabulary and syntax of an educated woman. He would see her for what she was and be relieved to find his faculties intact. Might there be some small stab of disappointment that she was not Miss Macy in the flesh?Ridiculous.
The clash of steel striking steel echoed against the garden wall as the two men fenced in the long arcade, hemmed in by its columns. Hudson retreated, struggling to parry as Nathaniel advanced, driving him back and back, closer to the arcade’s end with every lunge. Finally the practice tip hit its mark, and Hudson touched his chest in acknowledgment.
“Touché,” he panted.
Nathaniel stepped back, still bouncing gently on his feet to stay loose.
“Good heavens, sir!” Hudson wiped a sleeve across his brow. “What has got in to you this morning? You’re on fire!”
“Determination,” Nathaniel gritted, breathing hard.
“To kill me? What have I done since yesterday to so vex you?”
Nathaniel’s only answer was to raise his blade once more, and the bout resumed. He advanced, striking again and again. His wrist and fingers began to ache, his thigh muscles to burn from the low stance and grueling pace. Sweat poured down his face and back, shirtsleeves clinging to damp skin. He scored another hit, and the men paused to catch their breaths.
Nathaniel shook the sweaty hair back from his brow. Between pants, he said, “Tell me again why you hired the new housemaid?”
Hudson grimaced in surprise. “I told you, sir. To repay her kindness.”
“You said you recognized her.”
“Yes, from London, the night of the fire. When we lost our way.”
“But had you seen her before that?”
“No, sir. Where should I have seen her before?”
Hudson would not have seen her. He was being illogical again. Miss Macy would have been quite a young girl the last time Hudson was in England.
“Never mind.”
“Do you recognize her, sir? From somewhere else, that is?”
