“Here is the bathroom,” says Lance, pointing at the door to the left of the bed.
Bathroom? This is a spa! There’s an Olympic size bathtub, the shower is so big you could live in it and there’s also a diva vanity table.
“I reckon I’ll start from this room,” I say, examining the bottles of bath products, deliberating which to soak inasap.
“Well, I see that you’re settled and satisfied. I’ll leave you to it and see you at dinner as I have some things to do now.” Says Ashford, leaving the room, followed by Lance.
“Wait a second, what’s that?” I ask, indicating a double door opposite the bed.
Lance turns towards me and answers impassively. “It’s the bedroom we prepared for His Grace, the duke.”
Ashford puts on the expression of someone who has just been woken up with a bucket of frozen water. “Sorry, Lance, what about my room in the west wing?”
“The duchess ordered that we prepared the master apartments for you and your spouse. Obviously you will, um, decide which one to use.” To ease the embarrassment, Lance changes the subject. “We were ordered to prepare all the rooms of the west wing in view of the…” he says, then he lowers his voice and almost whispers: “Royal visit.”
Ashford starts spinning around like a headless chicken. “Everyone has lost their minds! I never said I would move to another room! Have I got any authority left in this house?”
Once again, Lance doesn’t lose any composure. “It made sense.” Ashford crosses my room with long strides and opens the connecting door with a rude gesture. There’s another door which is identical to that of my room, and he opens it with as much anger.
“It’s true then,” he murmurs to himself, irritated, noticing that all his belongings have been taken to that room.
At that very moment I realise with horror that Ashford, who should stay miles away from me, will sleep next door.
Ashford closes the double doors with a violent slam and leaves furiously.
Lance and I stand in the middle of the room exchanging stunned looks.
“If Lady Jemma allows me, I will take my leave. The duke’s mother is waiting for you in her study for a brief interview.”
“Has Lady Bedlam got a name?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Lady Bedlam, Ashford’s mother, has she got a name?”
I can see from Lance’s tense expression that he’s trying to hold back a laugh. “Lady Delphina.”
I’m sure that as he went out he whispered ‘Lady Bedlam’ to himself, giggling.
*
After calling my parents to announce I have moved in here and reassuring them that I will visit as soon as possible, I gather all my inner strength to face Lady Bedlam.
But it takes me forty-five minutes to find the study.
I found out that the staircase we used earlier isn’t the only one: there’s another every twenty steps, and I’m pretty sure that they weren’t there when I arrived.
And the corridors? There are more than at King’s Cross station!
Luckily enough, I bump into Lance, and he accompanies me to Lady Bedlam’s study, rather sympathetically.
He announces me, then he hands me over to Lady Delphina.
She’s sitting in an armchair by the window and a lanky woman with her hair tied in a very tight bun stands behind her. Delphina is impassive. The skin on her face is as tight as a slingshot (plastic surgery, I suppose), the ash blonde, freshly dyed hair is static, petrified by hairspray; the impeccable white tailored suit, which seems carved in plaster, partly covers two skinny legs with pointy knees (I wonder whether she ever eats).
“Jenna,” she invites me to sit in the armchair opposite hers.
“It’s Jemma. With two m’s. I was expected to be a boy and be called ‘Jimi’, as in Jimi Hendrix. Then the midwife announced that I was a girl and Jimi became J-e-m-m-a,” I say, spelling my name.
