Chapter 1
Coldwell Hall, Derbyshire
April 1911
It had been a cool spring and the blossom was late that year.
The Chinese vase Eliza carried up to the Kashmir Bedroom contained only a few stems of lilac, just beginning to turn brown and go past their best. As she set it on the washstand a scattering of tiny star-shaped flowers fell onto the marble.
‘Mr Gatley says he’s sorry but that’s all there is. Daffodils are over. Peonies aren’t out yet. There’s bluebells, but Susan said they’re bad luck in the house. If you bring bluebells in—’
Mrs Furniss cut her off with an edge of impatience. ‘Thank you, Eliza, the lilac will do very well.’
With the visitors about to arrive everyone was feeling the pressure, but in Eliza’s book that was no reason to be rude. She watched the housekeeper reach for the watch that hung from the ornate silver clasp at her waist, snapping it open and looking at it distractedly. ‘Is Davy Wells watching out for the carriages? He hasn’t forgotten?’
‘No, Mrs Furniss.’
Honestly, you’d think it was the king and queen they were expecting, not Mr Randolph and some middle-aged spinster he’d plucked off the shelf in desperation, and boring old Lord and Lady Etchingham. (No point in putting on any airs and graces for them; Lady Etchingham was Sir Henry’s daughter and had grown up here, so knew better than most what a mouldy old pile it was.) Mrs Furniss was usually all right, as housekeepers went, but she had a bee in her bonnet about this visit and was treating them like idiots. Which was fair enough in Davy Wells’s case, but hardly reasonable for the rest of them. ‘Joseph went up to the gatehouse to check. Mrs Wells said Davy’s had his eyes pinned to the road since Johnny Farrow left for the station. He’s ready to run down and ring the bell as soon as he sees them coming.’
Davy might not be the brightest spark, but he’d lived in the gate lodge at Coldwell for all of his twenty-odd years and knew every hill and hollow of the park, and the quickest shortcuts across it. There might be precious few visitors to Coldwell these days, but that didn’t stop Davy from watching out for them. It was his life’s purpose, probably because it was one of the few things he could do, being mute and simple. On the rare occasions a horse or a carriage turned between the gateposts, he ran ahead of it, cutting across to the estate’s little church to ring the bell and alert the servants. The carriage drive was almost a mile long and hilly; before the visitor had appeared within view Mr Goddard, the butler (who was as old as time and moved as slowly), could get his dusty old tailcoat on and make his way to the front door.
Mrs Furniss swept the fallen lilac stars into her hand. ‘Good,’ she said crisply. ‘Off you go, then, and get the tea trays ready.’
‘Yes, Mrs Furniss.’
Eliza was in no hurry to go back downstairs, where Mrs Gatley, the cook, was just as uptight as Mrs Furniss but a lot louder with it. Lingering in the stillness, Eliza caught sight of her reflection in the looking glass above the washstand. It was at least four times the size of the mean little mirror in the attic room she shared with Abigail, and the glass was clearer, so it didn’t look like she had the pox. She turned her head slightly, noticing that the spring sunshine gave her hair a buttery sheen (the sun hadn’t struggled up as far as the attic when she’d got dressed this morning) but also showed the spot she’d felt swelling on her chin. She touched it tentatively.
‘Eliza Simmons—tea trays, now!’
Eliza slouched to the door with a sigh.
She and Abigail were fond of moaning that nothing ever happened at Coldwell. Thudding down the back stairs (which smelled of cabbage and chamber pots), she wasn’t sure she didn’t prefer it that way.
* * *
When Eliza had gone, Kate Furniss looked around, repositioning the vase on the washstand, turning it so the two painted figures were at the front.
It wasn’t the smartest vase—a cheap English factory copy, not one of Coldwell’s genuine Eastern treasures—but she didn’t suppose Miss Addison would notice. A couple of branches of lilac hardly made a sophisticated floral display either, but they brightened the room and distracted attention from the flaking plaster cornice and threadbare carpet. (At least she hoped they did.)
The Kashmir Bedroom was the best Coldwell had to offer to guests. It might once have been a luxurious place to stay, but the pale blue painted walls had darkened over time to a dingy grey and the embroidered Indian silk bed hangings were faded and frayed, their exotic blooms unravelling. Like the rest of the house, their glory days were long past.
Kate had checked the room already, making sure that the bed was made up to her satisfaction, that there was soap and fresh towels on the washstand and a pot in the bedside cupboard, but she went over it all one more time. It wasn’t the servants’ place to get involved in Sir Henry Hyde’s personal business, but you’d have to be deaf or stupid not to realise that an awful lot rested on the next few days; specifically, the marriage hopes of Sir Henry’s son Randolph (whose bachelor status had seemed fixed) and, by extension, the future of Coldwell Hall and all who worked there.
She went to the window, removing the handkerchief from her sleeve to rub at a smear on the pane, and stood for a moment, watching the shadows of clouds slide over the hills. Her gaze moved uneasily to the crest of the drive where the carriage would first appear.
They were unused to guests at Coldwell, and she felt overwhelmed by the task that lay ahead. Four staying guests to look after, and their servants to accommodate below stairs; five more guests for dinner tomorrow night. Three days of marshalling her small troop of girls, ensuring that there was enough hot water; that trays were prepared properly, beds aired and turned down, fires lit and kept burning, the correct linen and china taken from the store cupboards and replaced again, and that everything went according to her meticulous plan.
Kate sank down onto the window seat and rested her head against the cool glass. Everything was under control, she knew that; control was what she did best. She was too vigilant to make mistakes, too careful to leave anything to chance; but still, it felt like her head was full of jangling bells, summoning her to the hundred small tasks that needed her attention.
With only elderly Sir Henry inhabiting Coldwell’s endless upstairs rooms, the staff below had dwindled to a skeleton of what it had once been—enough to look after the needs of one reclusive baronet but woefully insufficient to maintain a fifty-room mansion, never mind provide for a house party. Mr Goddard had finally accepted that they needed to replace the footman who had left last Christmas, but he had placed the advertisement in the Sheffield Morning Post too late to engage someone for this visit. Kate had written to Mrs Bryant, housekeeper of Sir Henry’s London house in Portman Square (where Randolph Hyde had taken up residence since his return from India) to ask that a footman be sent, to ease the pressure on poor Thomas, though the London footmen tended to be overconfident and troublesome. She would have to make sure that the extra pair of hands didn’t stray where they shouldn’t.
She let out a breath, misting the glass by her cheek. Through its haze she caught a movement in the park beyond.
A figure was standing on the top of the hill in front of the house. A man; tall and well built. Youthful. He was wearing a pale shirt, the sleeves rolled back, a jacket and a knapsack slung over his shoulder. Without thinking, her eyes firmly on him, she stood up. The breeze lifted his hair and made his shirt billow back and flatten against his chest. She was too far away to see his face properly, but she knew she hadn’t seen it before.
A stranger, then.
For a second, it seemed he looked straight at her; and in spite of the distance between them there was something dark in his stare, something searching. Instantly, she darted out of view and pressed herself against the wall panelling, the instinct to hide still overwhelming after all these years. Her heart rattled against her ribs and her palms were clammy as she waited, before edging back the stiff curtain and peering out.
He was gone.
Emerging cautiously, she looked out, and saw that he had put his jacket on and was walking towards the house with a loose-limbed, easy stride. His footsteps left a silvery trail in the damp grass.
She watched until he disappeared from view beneath the window. Taking a steadying breath, she gathered herself, brushing away the shadow of suspicion, the whisper of what if…? She collected her pile of clean towels and went to check that all was as it should be in the remaining guest rooms.
* * *
It wasn’t much of a place.
Oh, it had been once, there was no doubt about that. The house itself was a palace: a great big stone monument to wealth and power, with rows of windows stretching on forever and a huge triangular portico on the front supported by four mighty pillars. It had obviously been built to impress, and the fact that it was so hidden away just made its extravagance more arrogant. Its magnificence was not meant to be shared, its luxury intended only for a select few.
But it seemed that the plan had gone awry, and somewhere along the line seclusion had become isolation, sliding towards abandonment. Time and the elements had blackened the buff stone, and the windows were grimy, many of them shuttered. Paint flaked from frames and weeds sprouted from guttering.
Copyright © 2024 by Iona Grey