I metthat ladythree times the following week. The first meeting took place at the butcher’s shop. I stood waiting for my turn when the door came open, and Lady Pembridge, dressed head to foot in black, strode in. She came directly to me.
“Miss Bennet,” she said dipping her head.
“Lady Pembridge,” I replied with a full curtsey.
This acknowledgement was sufficient to raise my currency with the butcher. I learned from the man that the squire’s wife had the richest poultry yard in all Derbyshire, that she successfully raised all manner of birds, and that he was sometimes lucky to receive excesses from that estate for a fair price. This fortuitous meeting subsequently raised my standing with Mrs. Smith, for I was the beneficiary of one of her birds.
“I have brought a fat capon today, Mrs. Smith,” I announced proudly as I came into the kitchen with my basket. “And look, a decent rind of pork for bacon.” This triumph had bolstered me to a stupid degree, and I spoke more personably than normal. “Would you believe it?”
“Lawks!” she cried, also taken off her guard by my success. “I ha’ not seen a capon in a while. I will roast him up fit to feed a prince.”
I clapped my hands and said, “Perhaps you can put the potatoes underneath so they can roast in the drippings. Well, that is how we did it at home anyway, and I once got an offer of marriage from a man who thought I had made those potatoes.”
“The weddin’ potatoes, is it?” She laughed.
We both looked at one another in surprise before she settled back into suspicious dislike, and I retreated to my frosty manners.
I had thought the incident at the butcher shop had been purely coincidental, but when Lady Pembridge again noticed me at the baker’s, I suspected she had chosen me for her project. That day, I returned home with my usual allotment of two loaves of bread and a dozen buns, but the latter were still warm from the ovens and slightly larger than I had been used to. When I arrived in the kitchen, I tore open a fresh roll, spread it with butter, and handed it to Penny. I then did the same for myself, Doreen, Smith, and even Mrs. Smith. We stood in the kitchen in silence as we indulged, each of us in a kind of floury heaven. The cook passed out cups of milk as we ate, and when I had licked the tips of my fingers clean of butter, Penny helped me make a tray with the same homely delight for Mrs. Jennings.
“Only half a dozen rolls left, miss,” Penny said with a sigh.
“True, but we must treat ourselves once in a while.”
I then offered an olive branch to the cook, adding in a voice loud enough to be overheard, “And if Mrs. Smith wants more buns later in the week, I shall fetch them for her.”
Chapter Thirteen
January slowly turned into February. The weather was nearly as wet with fewer days of rain but more days of snow. I had settled in, and the hours I spent keeping house for Mrs. Jennings plodded along—in mimicry of Doreen—as an unvarying parade of things to do.
Much as I did not wish to agree with him, Mr. Darcy had been right. Winter was hard to endure. Perhaps, like nature herself, we were all running out of whatever enthusiasm and vigor we had stored up during the previous spring, much as our larder was running out of fresh and interesting fare. Mrs. Smith was a mundane cook, well suited to preparing the uninteresting dishes of winter, which meant we ate our fair share of salted fish, meat pies, and stews. I began to wish for something to eat that was not brown, imagining too often the greens of asparagus and new peas in May, the red strawberries in June, and the golden melons that ripened in July.
Not only did I yearn for fresh food, I also wished for air—for the warm breezes of late summer or even the brisk wind of autumn. Lambton sat under a pall of smoke, our chimneys sending ash-tinted plumes upward in columnar fashion, only to merge into a single leaden cloud over our heads. In Mrs. Jennings’s house, we burned coal in braziers in our rooms and wood in the hearths. The constant tramping into the house with wood and coal and out of the house with buckets of ash, meant even more sweeping and dusting.
The yard was at times a sea of mud, and our woolen dresses were darker than the muslins of summer, adding to my impression that the world had turned a drab color—neither brown nor gray.
In the village, there was some talk of a mine closure north of Lambton. At Stevenson’s, I heard that winter was a harsh time to close down, and when I went to the apothecary for a little oil of peppermint to soothe Mrs. Jennings’s light cough, I heard we could expect desperate stragglers on the road, coming south in search of work. Doreen and Penny seemed on edge, and as the days passed, I began to be slightly uneasy about Penny sleeping alone in the kitchen. After a conference with Doreen, we shifted things around in the attic, and I put the two girls together.
I thought of asking Smith to stay at night. It seemed prudent to do so, and I would have if he had not been racked with a cough. But after several days, talk about the vagrants died down, and my worries subsided.
Thus, after making sure Auntie was fully asleep, when I went down to the kitchen to assure myself the fire was well banked, I was entertaining other worries. Principally, I wondered what my life back home would be like when I returned. I could not quite envision myself comfortable doing nothing at all, so accustomed had I become to work. Perhaps I would be happy being Charlotte Collins’s drudge after all—a silly idea that made me smile as I absently opened the back door in response to a low thud. Had Mrs. Edmonton’s man returned the barrow he had taken earlier in the day?
“Give us a bite now, missy, will ya?” growled a man who stood in the dark by the pump.
“What? No! Go away,” I said, moving to close the door.
Too late I discovered another man in the shadow behind the door. He pushed past me, and in a flash, four men swarmed into the warmth and sanctity of Mrs. Jennings’s house. I stood in speechless amazement, too shocked yet to feel fear.
“What are you doing?” I suddenly demanded, finding the outrage to stand my ground.
“Enjoyin’ yer hospitality. Wat’s fer supper, eh? Give us a plate, then.”
There was no time to think. I began to operate strictly on impulse, on intuition, and with a strong sense that I had better not antagonize my visitors.
“I will do no such thing,” I replied saucily.
“Eh?” asked one of them. So far, he had done most of the talking, so to him I continued to speak.
“If you wish to eat in this kitchen, you will at least scrape the mud off your boots and wash your hands,” I turned toward the stove to build up the fire. “There is soap on that dish there, and use that apron to dry.”
