***
Sunday dinners were always a jolt these days. Scrubbed and starched, still with the better part of a week’s pay in her purse, Mina squeezed into her old place at the parlor table on the Sunday after MacAlasdair had entered the office. With Florrie’s gold curls to one side and Bert’s tousled brown mop on her other, she ate beef and Yorkshire pudding under the gaze of her mother, her father, and, from the mantel, a much younger Queen.
It was a world away from either Professor Carter’s book-lined office in Gordon Square or Mina’s own whitewashed, bare-floored room on Bulstrode Street. It was also a world she entered back into easily after the first few moments, all the more rewarding now because she knew things could be different.
At least, her return was usually easy.
Mina ate with as good an appetite as ever. She laughed at her father’s jokes and Bert’s stories, and listened as her mother read a letter from George, whose ship had docked in Shanghai a month ago. It was Sunday, Mina was with her family, and these both were excellent things. Still, the memory of Professor Carter’s troubles weighed on her mind, and so did Lord MacAlasdair’s contribution to those troubles, whatever it might have been.
When the conversation settled for a moment, Mina looked across the table at Alice, another of the Seymour daughters who only came home on Sundays. Alice was a housemaid up in Mayfair and frequently brought home stories that the other servants told, circulating the tales in a web of gossip that reached from one great house to another.
Someone like Lord MacAlasdair would certainly have servants.
“There was a gentleman throwing his weight around in the office the other day,” Mina began, “and I was wondering if you’d heard anything about him. MacAlasdair?”
Alice put down her fork and considered the question. Only for a moment, though. Then she grinned, and her green eyes lit up with the joy of knowing Something Interesting. “The Scottish bloke? New?”
“I don’t know how new. But Scottish, yes.”
“Well, if he’s the same one, he took a house in Mayfair a month ago. Came with just a valet and a housekeeper.” Alice leaned forward. “And do you know what?”
Mina grinned back at her sister. “Yes,” she said, as she’d been saying on these occasions for twenty-three years, ever since she’d started talking well enough to tease her sister, “which is why I asked you. I love hearing answers I already know.”
Alice stuck out her tongue and went on. Around them, the family was listening. Gossip from the city was always interesting.
“Ethel”—another of Lady Wrentham’s housemaids—“walks out with a policeman who knows the cook at MacAlasdair’s.”
“I thought he didn’t have a cook,” said Bert.
“He’d have hired one after he came, wouldn’t he?” Florrie shot back, leaning across Mina to do so. “Stupid.”
“I’m not—” Bert was beginning to raise his voice when a glance from Mr. Seymour stopped the incipient fight. Mina, whose best dress would have been much the worse for intercepting flung peas, sent her father a grateful smile.
“Go on, Alice,” said Mrs. Seymour. “Does he still need servants? Your Aunt Rose knows a girl who’s looking for a place in a kitchen.”
Alice shook her head. “No. Well, maybe. Hehasalready hired maids, though, and”—a significant pause—“Mrs. Hennings, the cook, she says he gives all of themtwohoursoffevery night!”
Few Drury Lane actresses could have given a statement more dramatic flair than Alice did with her announcement, and the Seymours, at least, were an appreciative audience. Even Bert, who knew little of domestic service but had heard stories from his sister, whistled—and got a glare from his mother for it.
“Any two hours?” Mrs. Seymour asked, her son’s table manners safely corrected.
“No, just at dusk.” Alice lowered her voice again. “He doesn’t want any of them in the house then. Only he lets Mrs. Hennings stay in the kitchen, as she’s got rheumatism, and any who want can stay there with her. But they’re not to go into the house proper.”
“I bet he’s got a mad wife,” said Florrie, who had been spending her pocket money on penny dreadfuls lately. “And he has to take her out sometimes to…to feed her, I guess, or let her walk around the place, and he can’t let anyone else be around or she’ll tear them to shreds.”
“That’s silly,” said Bert. “Why wouldn’t he just keep her in the attic? Or tie her up?”
“Because…” Florrie hesitated, buttered a roll, and then saw a way out of the problem. “Because he’s still passionately in love with her. Even though she’s mad. And he wants to be kind to her.”
“He didn’t seem the sort to be madly in love with anybody,” said Mina, remembering being calledCerberusand MacAlasdair’s demand that she stop being ridiculous. “And he certainly didn’t seem very kind.”
“His maids probably don’t agree with you there, my girl,” said Mr. Seymour, chuckling. “Still, he sounds like a strange sort.”
“That’s for certain,” Mina said. “Alice, could you talk to Ethel for me? I think I’d like to have a cup of tea with Mrs. Hennings when she has a moment.”
Two
Contrary to all general wisdom about cooks, Mrs. Hennings was neither short nor stout nor elderly, but rather a tall woman of handsome middle age, with the sort of black eyes that novels inevitably called “flashing” and glossy black hair that made Mina touch her own brown curls with envy. Her own figure was undoubtedly voluptuous, but that was as close as she came to the stereotype.
