“What is your name?”
“Easter, miss,” said the girl, dropping a curtsy.
“Easter. Both pretty and unusual.”
The maid giggled. “They does tease me, miss.”
“Oh dear, do they?”
“Yes, miss, but I don’t mind.”
The exchange served to make Felicity feel a little more like herself and she smiled at the girl and dipped her head towards the bowl to wash her face.
Presently, wrapped in her large shawl, which the maid Easter unearthed from the commode, she was sitting against the banked pillows in the massive bed, sipping a restorative cup of tea brought up by a footman. Easter, who answered the knock at the door, would not let him in, but took the tray herself.
“You shut that door for me, Andrew,” she ordered primly, and setting the tray down, she set about pouring tea from the pot, fussing over Felicity in a motherly way that amused her. Easter was barely more than a child herself.
“Does everyone who visits here receive such a —” Felicity struggled for a word that would not convey her utter ignorance of this kind of life. “Such a welcome?”
“Oh, no, miss,” said Easter, busy brushing Felicity’s discarded old gown. “Leastways, of course we look after a guest proper, but mostly they have their own servants, miss.”
Felicity felt her cheeks warm. “I see. Mrs Astwick saw that I did not have one.”
“Oh, but you come with his lordship, miss. Mrs Astwick knew straight as you was special. His lordship wouldn’t bring just anyone into the house, miss. ’Sides, Mr Sholden likely tipped the wink to Mrs Astwick as you was an honoured guest. Mr Sholden always knows his lordship’s mind, he does.”
A vague recollection of the flurry of names as she came into the house surfaced. “The butler, is it?”
“That’s right, miss. Mr Sholden has been here for years and years, with the old lord and all.”
Felicity’s fascination increased. “Is it only Lady Lucille who lives here now?”
“Yes, miss, and Miss Wimbush, who is her governess.”
Felicity’s mind went to the chattering girls at the academy. “It must be very lonely for her.”
Easter, who was now carefully folding the gown into a drawer, looked surprised. “Her ladyship don’t complain, miss. She has lots of friends round these parts, coming and going. She’s one as enjoys company, her ladyship does. Lady Lucille ain’t the least bit like his lordship.” Then Easter gasped, putting a hand to her mouth and growing red in the face. “Ooh, I do beg your pardon, miss! Mrs Astwick would have my head, speaking out of turn!”
Felicity was obliged to crush a pressing urge to pursue the subject. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell her.”
But Easter’s confidences were at an end. She became prim all at once, wondering aloud when Jenny would bring the pressed gown and retiring to the commode to look, she said, for anything else that might need pressing.
Sipping her tea, Felicity contemplated the sky outside the un-shuttered windows. From where she sat, she could see only a vista of parkland where the ground rose sufficiently to present a bank of trees, at this distance indistinguishable one from another. She would have liked to look at the nearer prospect, but her view was restricted to the room itself.
On a more leisurely examination, and with the doors closed, it was not as imposing as she had at first thought. The walls were papered in a flowered pattern on a blue background with blue velvet pelmets to the windows, and a couple of landscape paintings provided more colour. Besides the commode, which now had her toothpowder and toiletries atop, and the washstand, there was a small escritoire on the other side of the bed into which Papa’s journal and her meagre collection of books had been put along with the few personal items she possessed. The only other pieces of furniture were the chair by the desk and a long mirror set in the corner, behind which one of the maids had stowed her portmanteau. Felicity was, to all intents and purposes, installed in the room for the duration.
She was just beginning to wonder what sort of accommodation the head of the house enjoyed when Jenny came in with her pressed gown. For the first time since her childhood, Felicity was dressed by another and was shocked to find she enjoyed the attention. Easter requested her to sit down while she brushed and dressed her hair and Felicity, enjoined to look in the long mirror, was startled to see how different she looked in a fashionable gown and with her hair piled on top of her head, a couple of ringlets coaxed to sit either side of her face. She hardly recognised herself and was still feeling acutely unlike Felicity Temple when Mrs Astwick arrived to conduct her to the drawing-room.
“The girls will make up your bed fresh, ma’am. You need not fear damp sheets.”
“Thank you, Mrs Astley, you are very good.”
“It’s no trouble at all, ma’am, and while you are here I hope you will allow young Easter to wait upon you. She’s a good girl and she learns fast.”
Felicity smiled. “I found her quite charming and I should be happy to have her services, although I am quite used to looking after myself, you know.”
The housekeeper’s voice became a trifle pinched. “That will not be necessary in this house, ma’am.”
From which Felicity took it that she would infallibly offend Mrs Astwick’s sense of what was fitting if she insisted upon her independence.
