“Higgins. Where is Captain Eversleigh?”
“The wedding is tomorrow morning at ten. In the chapel,” Higgins replied, ignoring her question. He turned and left the room.
“Wait. Higgins!” She went after him in the corridor. “May I have some tea? Or supper?”
But the butler had all but disappeared.
“Now this won’t do at all.” Birdie frowned. She hadn’t eaten since that sloppy breakfast at the coaching inn early this morning, which had consisted of a thin gruel and an even thinner mug of tea. They hadn’t stopped at any other inn, since there wasn’t any on the way, the coachman had explained.
Her stomach growled. It must be reaching suppertime, Birdie conjectured. She squinted down the dusky corridor and rubbed her arms.
“There’s got to be a kitchen somewhere,” she said aloud.
Kitchens were usuallyon the lower floors. She’d run into a domestic eventually, she figured, then she could ask them for some supper.
She wrapped herself in a shawl, took a candle and lit it, for it was getting dark rapidly, and ventured forth.
Goodness me. Wouldn’t her friend Lucy love this? And Pen, with whom she’d shared a room at Miss Hilversham’s seminary. And Arabella, who was always so proper, duke’s daughter that she was, but one who’d thirsted for adventure as much as any of them. She felt a wave of nostalgia sweep over her. What wouldn’t she give to be with them now? No corner of the castle would be safe with them beside her.
Birdie sighed so loudly; it echoed along the corridor, giving her a fright.
“You really have to stop this,” she scolded herself and pressed a hand over her thudding heart. “Ghosts. Fustian.”
She was in the main hall. Shouldn’t the big oaken table be set for dinner by now? But there was no fire burning in the fireplace, and the table wasn’t set. She went to the main door and tried to open it.
It was locked. A pang of alarm shot through her. Why was the door locked?
“Hello? Higgins? Captain Eversleigh? Is anyone here?” Her voice echoed through the hall.
No answer.
Was Eversleigh even in residence? It looked like not. How excessively odd. Why had he wanted her to come to this castle when he wasn’t here himself? Was he away? Would he arrive in the morning?
“Very well, Roberta Talbot. You can do one of two things. One, panic. Two—” she gulped—“find that kitchen and get yourself something to eat. Which is it to be?”
Her stomach growled in response.
In the end, she found the kitchen by accident. As she returned to the stairs, she spotted a small door in the wall to her right. She opened it. It revealed a smaller set of stairs winding itself down. Servants’ stairs.
“This must be it,” Birdie muttered. Thankful that she’d brought the candle along, she followed the stairs down.
She found herself standing in what must have been the servants’ hall. The kitchen, however, was empty.
“Looks like you have to prepare your own supper.” If there was one thing Birdie knew how to do, it was cooking. She’d spent countless hours in the kitchen of her former home, watching their cook dice, boil, broil, chop, and whisk everything from Yorkshire puddings and mutton cutlets to minced pies and madeira tartlets. Cook’s biscuits were legendary. When Cook was in a good mood, she’d sometimes allowed her to help cut out the biscuits and stamp emblems on the dough with the biscuit stamp. But most of the time, whilst she tolerated Birdie’s presence, she did not approve of her helping in the kitchen.
She’d put her hands against her hips, purse her lips and say, “You’re a baron’s daughter, miss. It’s beneath your station to be here. I’ll let you watch, but you won’t move a finger, you won’t.” Then she’d explain in great detail how to broil a good lamb.
Birdie was grateful for every minute she was allowed to spend in the kitchens. It was her way of avoiding her family whenever she visited: her mother, whom she could never please, her two sisters, whom she did not understand, and her brother, who was a rake and a gambler and perpetually absent.
When she was younger, Birdie sometimes thought that she must’ve been a changeling, swapped at birth, for she had nothing at all in common with her family. All her mother’s beauty and ethereal loveliness had gone to her sisters. Her mother had lamented that Birdie was plump, with devil’s hair and street-boy freckles. Once, her mother had forced her to eat chalk, hoping it would whiten up her skin. She’d had to scrub her face with freckle wash, a mixture of lemon, milk and brandy, which left her skin raw and irritated. She wasn’t allowed to go outside, for she had to stay out of the sun.
It was a relief when her holiday time at her home was over and she could return to Miss Hilversham’s seminary, where no one cared about the colour of her hair or how many freckles she had. She considered the seminary to be her real home. There, too, she’d wheedled the cook to teach her a thing or two about whipping up a good syllabub.
Birdie set the candle down on the centre table and lit a lamp.
The kitchen had a surprisingly modern cast-iron range, which looked unused, as well as a range of copper cookware, pots and pans in the shelves.
She studied the larder, which, to her surprise, contained some food items, predominantly oats and flour, but also a basket full of eggs and blood sausages that hung from hooks. In a drawer, she found some stale bread.
