“For the time being.”
“Is that an ambition of yours?”
Mrs. Bates hesitated. “It is not, but I can assist until Mrs. Buckley has found the servants she needs.”
“It is I who should take on the extra duties, Mrs. Bates.” Emma crossed toward her. “I should have begun hiring the additional servants earlier.”
“For a home this small we hardly need a housekeeper, Miss Darling. A maid or two will suffice, and a footman, perhaps. Between Platt and me, we can see to managing everything else. Cook is happy in the kitchen.”
“We’ll see about that when we host our first dinner party, I suppose.” They shared a smile. “Mrs. Buckley invited the captain to dine tomorrow evening. She is embracing her move.”
Mrs. Bates led her out of the room and down the corridor. “It is a good change, I think. Though I would have been happy without the dogs.”
“You?” Emma laughed, descending the stairs. “They’ve selected me their queen.”
“It could be worse. They could be the drooling type, like my neighbor had when I was a girl.” Mrs. Bates grinned. Her graying hair was pulled back at the nape of her neck, strands of gray gleaming in the sunlight streaming through the open windows. “I need to mend a sleeve, but I wanted to check on you.”
“The smaller house suits me well. How are you?” Some would consider the move a demotion in her work, but Emma knew how Mrs. Bates cared for Mrs. Buckley.
She glanced up, inhaling. “This little cottage will grow on me. I’d better start on that sleeve. I think I’ll work in the kitchen.”
“I have been working on a pair of mittens. Mind if I join you?”
“Not at all.”
Cook had found her rhythm,placing her things where she wanted them within the space, then moving some of them once she began working on dinner and realized where she would prefer them. The dogs lay haphazardly before the large hearth, the fire blazing and emitting steady waves of heat. Their brown and black coats gleamed against the orange light, long snouts draped over paws and across the cold floor as they dozed.
Emma chatted happily with Mrs. Bates while they sewed and knitted. They spoke of their childhoods and who taught them how to properly use a needle, though the objectives at the time had been vastly different—Emma for the purpose of embroidery accomplishments and Mrs. Bates more practical in nature.
The intimate room and small group of women made it possible for Emma to keep them company. She would not havebeen able to sit in the grand kitchen of Buckley Place in such a manner. Not only because of the way people always seemed to be bustling about, but because her presence seemed to make most of the other servants uncomfortable.
Mrs. Bates had always considered her a friend, though, and Cook did not mind her company. If they acquired maids of the same mind, this home could mean different things for Emma—far more different than she perhaps realized. It could have provided her a place within the household that felt more solid and substantial than she’d had in the last nine years. Instead of feeling as though she floated between worlds, perhaps soon she would know her place—know precisely where she belonged.
It was so enticing, the hope that burgeoned within her, that Emma caught her breath.
“Is everything all right, Miss Darling?” Mrs. Bates asked.
“Please, I’ve asked you to call me Emma.”
“Old habits,” she cited, her well-lined eyes moving over Emma’s face with a modicum of concern. “You seem worried.”
“The opposite, in fact.”
The lady’s maid smiled. “Not to be presumptuous, but I would like to know more. Or if this has to do with any one person in particular,” she said with feeling.
“Who could you possibly mean? Mrs. Buckley?”
“Heavens, no. Agentleman.”
Emma scoffed. “The days of gentlemen callers are long behind me.”
“Speaks as though she’s an old maid,” Cook called, cackling.
Emma’s cheeks warmed. “At eight-and-twenty, I feel justified in admitting that my youth is well and truly in the past. What has put this notion in your head, anyway?” She squeezed the knitting needles between her fingers, thinking of the conversations she’d had with Owen, the times she’d been seen speaking alone with him, the way her heart jumped when he walked in a room.
No one here likely remembered how she had once been held in particular esteem throughout the county. Her engagement to their local baron, Lord Gifford, had been well touted. But it was so long ago, surely it overshadowed any lingering knowledge of her romance with the Buckleys’ penniless nephew.
Mrs. Bates had been here, then. But if she recalled Emma’s heartsick entrance to the Buckley household while her parents were sick with smallpox, she graciously did not mention it now.
