But the person in the door wasn’t her aunt, nor the supercilious Mary Anne; it was a young woman in a very much plainer version of Mary Anne’s uniform—the black skirt, but of plain wool, the black shirtwaist, unadorned—and a neat white apron, rather than the black silk that Mary Anne sported. A perfectly ordinary maid—with a round, pretty, farm girl’s face, and wary eyes.
“I come to see if you needed anything, miss,” the girl whispered, as if she was not quite sure of her welcome.
In a response that Marina could not have controlled if she’d tried, her stomach growled. Audibly.
And the little maidservant broke into an involuntary grin, which she quickly hid behind her hand.
“I suppose it wouldn’t do any good to ask for something to eat,” Marina said, wistfully assuming the negative. “I don’t want you to get in any trouble with the cook or the—the housekeeper? I guess there’s a housekeeper here, isn’t there?” She sighed. From what she’d heard from old Sarah, the housekeepers in great houses held the keys to the pantry and kept strict tally of every morsel that entered and left, and woe betide the staff if the accounting did not match.
The girl dropped her hand and winked. “Just you wait, miss,” she said warmly, and whisked out the door.
Marina finished shelving her books, hiding the ones she didn’t want anyone to find. By the time the maid returned, she was in a chair by the fireplace with a book in her hands, having mended the fire and built it up herself, warming her half-frozen feet. The girl seemed much nicer than Mary Anne, but there was no telling if she was just another spy for her aunt. Let her think that Marina had only been looking for something to read.
The girl had left the door open just about an inch, and on her return, pushed it open with her foot. She carried with her a laden tray, which she brought over to Marina and set down on the little table beside her. Marina stared at the contents with astonishment.
“Mister Reginald, he likes a bit to eat around midnight, so the pantry’s not locked up,” the girl said cheerfully. “My Peter, he told us downstairs about your luncheon. And supper. And Madam’s special cook—” she made a face. “Miss, we don’t think much of that special cook. Only person that likes his cooking is Madam; it isn’t even the kind of thing that Mister Reginald likes, so he’s always eating a midnight supper. So I thought, and Peter thought, you mightn’t like that cooking much either, even if you hadn’t got more than a few bites of it.”
“You were right,” Marina said with relief at the sight of a pot of hot chocolate, a plate of sliced ham and real, honest cheese—none of that sad, pale stuff that Arachne had served—a nice chunk of hearty cottage loaf—and a fine Cox’s Orange Pippin apple. “I feel like I haven’t eaten in two days!”
“Well, miss, I don’t much know about yesterday, but according to my Peter, you haven’t had more than a few mouthfuls today at luncheon and dinner, and no breakfast at all. Just you tuck into that! I’ll wait and take the plates away.” She winked conspiratorially. “We’ll let that housekeeper think that Mister Reginald’s eating a bit more than usual.”
Since Marina was already tucking in, wasting no time at all in filling her poor, empty stomach, the little maid beamed with pleasure. “If you really don’t mind waiting,” Marina said, taking just long enough from her food to gulp down a lovely cup of chocolate, “You ought to at least sit down.” She paused a moment, and added, “I’m sure I oughtn’t to invite you, according to Aunt Arachne.”
“Madam is very conscious of what is proper,” the maid said, her mouth going prim. But Marina noticed that she sat right down anyway. She considered Marina for a moment more, then asked, “Miss, how early are you like to be awake?”
Oh no—surely Madam wakes up before dawn, and I’m supposed to be, too, she thought, already falling into the habit of thinking of her aunt as “Madam”—”Oh—late, if I’m given the choice,” she admitted, shamefacedly. “No earlier than full sun, seven, even eight.”
“You think that late?” the maid stifled a giggle. “That Mary Anne, she won’t bestir herself before ten, earliest, and Madam keeps city hours herself. We—ell, miss, what do you say to a spot of conspiracy between us? Just us Devon folk—for we can’t be letting Mister Hugh—” and here she faltered, before catching herself, and continuing resolutely. “We can’t be letting Mister Hugh’s daughter fade away to naught. I’ll be bringing you a proper breakfast sevenish, and a bit of proper supper after that Mary Anne has took herself off of a night. So you won’t go hungry, even if that Mary Anne has got a bee in her bonnet that you ought to be scrawny.”
Marina was overwhelmed, and couldn’t help herself; this was the first open kindness she’d had since she’d been kidnapped—was it only yesterday? She began to cry.
“Oh miss—there now, miss—” The maid plied her with a napkin, then ran into the bedroom and fetched out handkerchiefs from somewhere, and dabbed at Marina’s cheeks with them. Very fine cambric they were too, her aunt certainly wasn’t stinting her in the matter of wardrobe. “Now miss, you mustn’t cry—Mister Hugh and Missus Alanna wouldn’t like that—”
For a moment, Marina was tempted to tell her the truth, all of it; but no, this girl would never understand. “I’m—alone—” she managed, as the maid soothed her, sitting beside her and patting her hand. That was true—true enough. Not the whole truth, but true enough.
She didn’t cry herself sick this time, and perhaps it was the best thing she could have done, though it was entirely involuntary, for by the time that she cried herself out, she knew that she had friends here, after all. She also knew, if not everything there was to know about the “downstairs” household, at least a very great deal. She knew that the maid was Sally, she was going to marry the footman Peter one day, that Arachne had dismissed the upper servants—the chief cook (replaced by her “chef”), the housekeeper and butler, her own personal maidservant, the valet.
Of course, the maidservant and the valet were still stranded in Italy, poor things. The other servants weren’t even sure they would be able to get home, for Arachne had left orders that Marina’s parents were to be buried in Italy where they had died.
“‘Where they so loved to live,’ that was what Madam Arachne said. And it isn’t my place to say,” Sally continued, in a doubtful whisper, “But it did seem to me that Mister Hugh and Missus Alanna loved it here. This is where the family was all buried, and I know Mister Hugh felt strong about his family.”
But Arachne couldn’t replace all the servants—trained city servants weren’t very willing to move to the country, not without a substantial rise in wages. So a substantial number of the lower servants were the same as had served Marina’s parents, and they remembered their kind master and mistress. Although they knew nothing about Hugh’s sister, except that she’d fallen out with her parents over her choice of husband, that counted more against her than her blood counted for her.
And although they were very circumspect with regard to Arachne and her son, they were all very sympathetic to Marina, especially after seeing the ordeals she was undergoing at the hands of Arachne and Mary Anne. She was Devon-bred as well as born, almost one of them, even if she did come from over near to the border with Cornwall. If they didn’t know why she’d been sent away, at least she hadn’t been sent far; she wasn’t a foreigner, and she didn’t have any airs.