“Every morning,” I mutter, heaving my exhausted body to the edge of the bed and snatching for my phone. It skates away from my fingertips, still warbling about suspicious minds, the noise so, so loud in my attic bedroom. I wince, lunging and finally grabbing it this time, then turn off the alarm with a tap from my thumb.
“Shit.”
The mattress creaks as I collapse back, breathing hard, and stare up at the ceiling. Wooden beams and white paint loom above me, lit by the silvery moonlight creeping around the edgesof the curtains. After a month in this manor, I’ve stared up at this ceiling for enough hours to know every hairline crack and wisp of cobweb.
“Shit,” I say again, digging the heel of one palm into my eye.
It’s early.Grossearly. Like: still dark outside, stars winking through the crack in my curtains, the whole building sleeping like the grave kinda early. No human being should have to drag their ass out of bed at this hour, and yet every morning, Elvis bullies me awake at the same time.
You know what else? These sprawling, old fashioned manors are freakingfreezing.Even with the radiator gurgling to life on the wall, pipes ticking with trapped air, I know from bitter experience that I’ll be covered head-to-toe in goosebumps by the time I’m done hopping in and out of my lukewarm shower.
You chose this, I lecture myself as I toss back the bed covers, lurching upright like a zombie. The floorboards creak beneath my feet, so cold that they chill me even through the threadbare woven rug.No one made you come here.
No, no one did. It’s not a penal colony. I’m not in witness protection, nor on the run from a mysterious past. There was no call to come here at all, except for the dumb little romantic inside me that saw a job opening on a bleak, windswept isle and thought:Oh my god, so gothic! How fun!
Now I’m shuffling around my ice-cold attic bedroom in my booty shorts and tank top, stubbing my toe on the suitcase that I still haven’t properly unpacked, one eye screwed shut like I could let half of my brain keep sleeping the way dolphins do.
Thirty minutes later I’m scrubbed clean, damp hair braided down my back, sitting at the huge oak kitchen table in my housemaid’s uniform. It’s a plain black dress, buttoned to the neck, with a lacy peter pan collar that I can never get to lie flat.
The cook, Mrs Ainslie, clatters around at the hob, muttering to herself. Steam billows from a mystery pan, and her wiry curlspoke out from beneath the starchy white cap she always wears. She’s red-faced from the heat, and after a month here, I know better than to interrupt when Mrs Ainslie is in the zone.
Even though Lord Westmore never has guests, even though ninety percent of her cooking is consumed by the other staff, Mrs Ainslie takes this shit extremely seriously.
Across from me at the table, Mr Jenkins the groundskeeper is bent over a huge bowl of porridge sprinkled with raisins. The giant tablespoon of brown sugar he just added is melting into the mixture, and my teeth ache just looking at it. My own porridge is swirled with honey, but I’m notthatbad.
Then again, I’m not about to spend my day out in the freezing wind and lashing rain, sawing down broken tree branches and hefting wheelbarrows and doing whatever else groundskeepers do. Sure, cleaning the endless rooms of this manor gets tiring, but at least I don’t have to contend with the weather.
“I, uh.” Mr Jenkins clears his throat, still bent over his bowl, and won’t look up at me to meet my eye. As soon as he speaks, though, Iknowwhat’s coming. I stiffen on the scrubbed oak bench, my spoon hovering in the air. “Lord Westmore mentioned…”
The groundskeeper trails off, embarrassed. He hates being the one to give me these lectures, but this whole island operates on a skeleton staff. The three of us here in this kitchen right now are the only full timers; everyone else comes over the land bridge from the mainland for their shifts. An army of maids, gardeners, and handymen, streaming back and forth above the churning water like ants on a log. There used to be a full-time housekeeper, apparently, and I guess lecturing the housemaids would fall to that person, but the post has been open for five months now.
Not many people want to live on a rain-lashed rock with a grumpy recluse for an employer. Weird.
“Go on,” I say softly, trying my best to sound encouraging. “You can say it, Mr Jenkins, whatever it is. I promise it won’t hurt my feelings.”
Lies. This next part absolutelywillhurt my feelings, just like it always does, but I don’t say that. It’s not Mr Jenkins’ fault that I can do no right in our employer’s eyes.
Besides, it’s nuts for me to care this much. Crazy that I let a man who I’ve never even seen in person—who I’ve only ever caught glimpses of as he disappears through doorways, clearly avoiding my company—make my stomach cramp like this with misery.
“Lord Westmore has asked,” Mr Jenkins says, staring into his porridge as he picks his words carefully, “if you could be more mindful of your, uh. Your volume, Maddy.”
Yup. Nothing new there. And honestly, Itryto be quiet as I go through the rooms of this manor, I try so freaking hard. I don’t listen to music, not even through earbuds, and anytime I catch myself humming, I stop. I tiptoe across rugs and avoid the worst-creaking floorboards. The vacuum is loud, sure, but I can’t helpthat.
Let’s face facts: for reasons that only Lord Westmore can know, the guy just straight up hates me. If he didn’t have such a hard time keeping staff on the island, I’d have been tossed out weeks ago.
No one has ever disliked me this much, let alone a man who’s never met me face-to-face. It sucks.
“Also,” Mr Jenkins says, his ruddy cheeks flushing even darker as he stares at the raisins in his bowl. “There’s another issue. Your… scent.”
“Myscent?”
Now it’s my turn to blush, from my lacy little collar all the way up to my hairline. Heat prickles over my throat, my cheeks,my forehead, and I know without checking that I am bright, burning red.
Mr Jenkins jabs at his porridge with his spoon. He finally looks up at me, eyes wide, and gives a jerky shrug.
“I don’t know, Maddy. I’ve never… if it’s any consolation, I’ve never noticed any particular, uh…”
“Stink?” My own spoon clatters to the table and I sit back, head swimming in the muggy kitchen. We’re tucked away down here in the core of the building, but far away in the other end of this manor, there’s a man who thinks Ismell.
