And one and all, these downstairs servants hated Mary Anne.
“Fancies herself a superior lady’s maid, she does,” Sally sniffed. “Too good to eat with us, has her meals with the butler and housekeeper, if you please. And it isn’t as if Madam Arachne doesn’t have her own maid, for she does, a French woman. Well, things have changed for us.” She sighed pensively. “But miss, we’ll take care of you, don’t you worry. If Madam Arachne wants you to be made a lady like her, we’ll help you out, till there isn’t nothing you don’t know. There’s Peter, he served with Lord Bridgeworth, and he knows all the right things—and it wasn’t as if Mister Hugh and Missus Alanna weren’t gentry. We’ll help you, for you’re ours, and we won’t ever forget that!”
Marina swallowed down another lump in her throat and a spate of hastily suppressed tears with her hot chocolate.
“Thank you,” she said, hoping she put the gratitude she felt into those simple words.
By the warm smile on Sally’s face, she did.
Morning brought Sally with a proper breakfast tray—the kind of hearty breakfast Marina was used to getting at home—from thick country bacon to hot, buttered toast. There was only one thing missing, oat porridge, which was just as well, since she would have felt homesick on seeing it, guilty if she hadn’t eaten it, and miserable if she did. Sally waited while she ate, and whisked the tray away, leaving her to go back to sleep again if she chose.
Which was a confirmation this was all being done in secret, abetted by a conspiracy among the lower servants, the ones who remembered her parents.
For some reason, they did not trust her aunt to treat her properly. Why? She couldn’t think of any reason why Arachne would mistreat her on purpose—she was clearly a very cold woman, but she seemed determined to do her duty to Marina. Even if her idea of her duty was not what Marina would have chosen for herself. She wasn’t stinting on wardrobe, that was sure. The clothing that she’d had made for Marina was of first quality and highest workmanship.
But servants saw and heard everything. Probably they were only worried that she was so unhappy and was being bullied. In any case, life was going to be much easier with the kind of help they had already offered, and she was not going to betray them by any carelessness on her part.
So she made sure that there was no sign that anyone had been in her rooms, and tucked herself back up in her bed, dozing until the odious Mary Anne appeared to wake her by pulling back the curtains and making a great clattering of noise with the breakfast-tray that she had brought.
It was breakfast for an invalid. A nauseated invalid. Or someone afraid of getting fat. Weak tea, and four pieces of cold toast.
With a silent prayer of thanks for Sally’s foresight, Marina drank a cup of the tea, but before she could eat more than a single piece of the toast, Mary Anne insistently dragged her out of bed and into her clothing. “Madam’s modiste is here, and miss must be measured again and select fabrics and patterns,” the maid ordered. “Madam is also selecting clothing, and miss must not monopolize the modiste’s time, nor keep her waiting.”
This was said as Mary Anne was lacing up her corset, and as Marina suddenly remembered a trick that one of the ponies used to employ, of blowing himself up so that his girth couldn’t be tightened. And it occurred to her at that moment that if she could just manage the same trick, herself—
So she secretly took in the deepest breath that she could, and instead of trying to draw herself up, hunched herself over, sticking her stomach out as far as she could manage and obstinately tensing the muscles of her midsection against the tightening of the corset-laces. Mary Anne tugged and pulled, but to no avail; when she gave up and tied the laces off, tying a modest bustle on the back of the corset and pulling the first of the three petticoats over Marina’s head, Marina was able to straighten up without feeling as if she was going to faint from lack of air. Her corsets were only a little tighter than she would have tied them herself. Not as comfortable as no corset at all but not a torture either.
There was nothing to show that Mary Anne had been doing any rummaging about among the books that Marina had put on the shelves last night, but that was not to say that she wouldn’t later. For now, the modiste was waiting in the sitting room, a patient little woman with sad eyes and gray hair, done up in a severe, but impeccably tailored, gray wool suit and matching hat, modestly ornamented with a ribbon cockade. She had swatches of fabric piled up beside her on one side of the couch, and pattern books on the other. Her eyes brightened at the sight of Marina; perhaps she had expected another martinet like Madam, or someone so countrified as to be impossible to outfit, with freckles, gap-teeth, and enormous feet that had never seen anything other than boots. In the midst of this florid room, the modiste looked like a little pile of ashes.
For that matter, I probably look like an unburned bit of coal.
“I will leave you with Miss Eldergast,” said Mary Anne loftily, and turned to the modiste. “Miss Eldergast, you have your instructions upon what is suitable for the young lady from Madam, so I will return for you in one hour.”
Both of them looked reflexively at the clock upon the mantelpiece, which was just showing half past ten. Then, as Mary Anne sailed out of the room with a self-important air, Marina smiled at the modiste.
“Why don’t you show me what is suitable for the young lady, Miss Eldergast,” Marina said, with some humor, “And we’ll pick something or other out.”
“Well, you’re in deep mourning, of course,” the dressmaker said hesitantly, “So these are the samples I brought—”
“Black, black, and black, of course.” Marina sighed, picked up the stack of swatches, and sat down next to Miss Eldergast, putting them in her lap. She added bitterly, “And it matters not at all that I never knew my parents; the sensibilities of society must not be outraged.”
Of course, I could be in mourning for the happy life I had in Killatree.
Miss Eldergast hesitated, somewhat taken aback. “Yes, yes, of course,” she said hastily, clearly trying and failing to find some polite response to Marina’s bald statement. “Now, if you could choose from among these for a riding habit and walking skirts—”
It didn’t take very long to make her selections; although the choice of fabric was wider and the number of patterns Miss Eldergast was able to execute much larger than the dressmaker in Holsworthy was able to offer, there were only a limited number of ways in which to dress in “black, black, and black.” What was suitable for the young lady, at least according to Madam Arachne, was the strictest possible interpretation of mourning, without even the touch of mauve, lavender or violet that as a young unmarried woman she should have been able to don without offending anyone.
I shall look like Queen Victoria before this is over. Or one of those melancholy women who are would-be Gothic poetesses.
Still, there was no doubt that Madam was equipping Marina generously, and in the height of fashion, the only exception being that everything suitable had high necks and high collars. Not that this would be too onerous in the winter, but when summer came, black and high collars were going to be difficult to bear.