A few nibbles of her toast, and she was done. She nodded to the footman stationed outside the dining room, a sign that she had completed her meal, and walked toward her mother’s room.
In the foyer, she straightened her bodice and adjusted her collar before pressing both hands against the front of her skirt in order to inspect her shoes. Even though her mother had not awakened from her unnatural sleep, it would not do to appear in her presence slovenly. The Duchess of Herridge was very conscious of appearances.
Slowly, Sarah pushed open the door, scanning the shadowy room for Hester.
Instead of Hester, however, her husband sat on a chair at the side of her mother’s bed. Her husband. Nor was he engaged in respectful silence. Instead, he was conversing with her mother as if they had been properly introduced.
“…didn’t speak a word for hours. I would think her shy, but the glint in her eyes makes me think that assumption is incorrect.”
“It isn’t at all proper for you to be at an invalid’s bedside,” Sarah said, entering the room and sliding the door closed quietly behind her. “Especially my mother’s.”
“It was proper enough when I came yesterday,” hesaid as if unsurprised at her sudden appearance. Did the man have eyes in the back of his head? “Why is it not today?”
She decided to ignore that question and ask one of her own. “What were you talking about?”
“I was telling your mother about our wedding.”
“She is not to be told,” she said hastily. “It would only disturb her.”
“You’re her only child,” he said, glancing at her. “She would want to know anything that happened to you. Good or ill.”
“She will not hear you,” Sarah said, arranging herself on Hester’s chair at the end of the bed.
“Perhaps she will. Perhaps she’s smiling in her sleep.”
She glanced at her mother, wondering if he were jesting. But there was no change. Yet neither was there a smile on Douglas Eston’s face, only a look of intensity that made her wonder at his thoughts.
“I do not know what I shall do without her,” Sarah said, a bit of honesty she’d not intended to reveal.
He didn’t respond.
For long moments they sat silent together. Ten minutes later, she stood, walked to the other side of the bed, and bent down to kiss her mother’s cool cheek.
“I will be back at noon, Mother,” she said in a low voice, just in case her mother could indeed hear her. She glanced at Douglas. “I have chores waiting.”
“Of course,” he said. A quite amiable answer, but one that didn’t quite match the expression in his eyes.
Was he irritated at her? Annoyed? Or simply curious? How very odd that she couldn’t decipher his mood. She was very good at reading people, but he remained annoyingly mysterious.
She took refuge in silence, leaving the room with undue haste, grateful that it was a sickroom after all, and that he couldn’t call after her.
Douglas sat with the duchess for another quarter hour, feeling a sense of peace in the dim room.
There were some of life’s blows that took a person unawares, some that were too difficult to survive alone. When those times came, as they would to each person, they were easier to endure when standing shoulder to shoulder with another human being.
He’d been eight when his parents had died of cholera, fourteen when Alano had rescued him. A callow boy, not yet a man, but certainly believing himself one. Sarah would have him to lean on, but would she accept him? Or would she ignore his presence as much as she did the fact that her mother was dying?
Chapter 7
Despite the fact that there were numerous tasks to be done during the day, Sarah discouraged the servants from being about their duties before half past six. Anything earlier was an unnecessary waste of coals and candles. The only exception was Thomas, as underbutler, who was balanced between positions in the household. At times he served as butler, and at others, he was head footman, whichever was more necessary to the smooth order of Chavensworth.
The first-floor maids had already opened the shutters and windows of all the lower rooms. Two of the younger maids were in the process of blacking the fireplace in the Chinese Parlor. She nodded in satisfaction when the younger girl—Mary—spread open a cloth over the carpet in front of the fireplace and placed her housemaid’s box upon it, withdrawing the supplies that had been issued to her on the beginning of her employment only two weeks earlier: two small squares of leather for polishing the brass andirons, a selection of brushes for applying black lead as well as the lead itself, emery paper, and a japanned cinder pail containing a sieve and a fitted cover. Once the grate was cleaned, thetwo maids would spread the lead over the bricks, buffing it with the brushes provided.
Sarah began her morning as she did every day, by meeting with Mrs. Williams. She found the housekeeper in the butler’s pantry and watched approvingly as the woman mixed together the ingredients for Chavensworth’s furniture polish. Linseed oil, turpentine, vinegar, and spirits of wine were applied with a soft flannel rag, then buffed with a clean duster. Every month they made furniture paste together, a concoction of beeswax, soap, turpentine, and boiled water, allowed to steep for two days until it was ready to use. The paste was saved for the most valuable of Chavensworth’s furnishings, such as the inlaid chest in the Garden Room, or the French tables in the Chinese Parlor.
She would have to speak to the carpenter this morning if she intended to spend another night in the Duke’s Suite.
A week’s supply of tea leaves, dried, had been saved in a glass jar, to be used to sprinkle over the rugs on the first floor, then brushed away. Each week a different floor was similarly treated, a rotating method used with most of the chores at Chavensworth. As it was, the estate employed over fifty people, but only fifteen in the house. The cleaning never ceased. Nor was it ever completely done.
