The warm late-August air embraced her. She paused to tip her face to the sunshine, the warmth on her skin as sweet as the pudding had been. The wolfhound, Jester, appeared and trotted beside her, tail wagging.
Her half boots crunched over the pebbled drive as she walked between the kitchen garden and one of the flower gardens, surrounding her with the fragrances of comfrey, lavender, and intermingled floral scents. She followed the hedgerow to the front boundary of the estate. Jester shadowed her as far as the road, but there she told him to stay. She was surprised when the dog obeyed, though he watched her depart with mournful eyes.
She would walk into Weavering Street, she decided. Whether or not she would have the courage to enter the Fox and Goose remained to be seen.
The tiny hamlet of Weavering Street was a collection of cottages and shops that had sprouted up during the building of Fairbourne Hall and continued to succor the spouses of several estate workers. Mrs. Budgeon, Margaret had heard, did the majority of the marketing in large and prosperous Maidstone beyond.
Margaret strolled up the walkway fronting the businesses—a combination butcher shop and bakery as well as a chandler’s shop which sold a bit of everything, displaying its wares in a many-paned bow window. As she passed, she breathed in the delicious aromas of pies and cakes, pungent cheeses, and savory sausages.
She stopped short at the sight of Joan standing beside a gig, its horse tethered near the chandler’s. A jumble of emotions crowded her throat. Nostalgia at seeing a familiar face. Shame at the weakness she had displayed in her former maid’s presence. Gratitude. And fear of rejection.
“Hello, Joan,” she said tentatively.
Joan looked over and also seemed to hesitate. “Well, well. Never thought I’d see you again.” She stepped up to the walkway. “What are you doing here?”
“I have a post nearby.”
“You? What as?”
“Housemaid.”
Joan shook her head in disbelief, then glanced toward the shop door. “Someone came along and hired you after I left?”
Margaret nodded. “Eventually.” Joan didn’t appear interested in long explanations, so instead Margaret asked, “So . . . are you out enjoying a half day as well?”
“Half day? Hardly.” Joan snorted, again glancing toward the shop. “The Hayfields have been in mourning for nearly a year and are broke in the bargain. So no time off, no servants’ ball, no gifts at Christmas, nothing. Several left for better places because of it, which is why I was hired.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.” Guilt slithered through Margaret. “How is it working there otherwise?”
Joan shrugged. “I’ve had worse. The housekeeper’s a terror, never satisfied. But I’ve got a roof over my head. The food is decent and the others aren’t a bad lot.”
It wasn’t very convincing. “At least you’re not a maid-of-all-work,” Margaret suggested weakly.
“Yes, I avoided that fate, at least.” Joan smirked. “I suppose your place is a bed of roses?”
“Not bad, though one of the other housemaids barely tolerates me.” Margaret almost added, “She reminds me of you,” but thought the better of it.
At that moment, the stern Hayfield housekeeper stepped out of the chandler’s.
“Let’s go, Hurdle. Stop dawdling.”
Joan looked once more at Margaret. “Well, good-bye again.”
“Good-bye, Joan,” Margaret whispered over an unexpected lump in her throat.
She stood there, watching until the two women climbed in and the gig moved on. Then Margaret turned to the chandler’s window, idly wondering what the old biddy had found to buy there.
She casually surveyed the hodgepodge of wares—from cheap candlesticks to cookware to bottles of the latest patent medicines for those who did not wish to venture to a Maidstone apothecary. She regarded the collection with some amusement and, if she were honest, condescension. Clearly, the shop did not have the most elite of clientele. She was about to continue on, when something behind the glass reflected a ray of sunlight, shining, winking at her. She frowned and bent nearer, as much as her stays would allow, to view the object more closely.
Her breath caught. There beside a paltry collection of slightly dented pots and kettles lay a gilt chatelaine in a velvet box. It could not be . . . Chatelaines were not uncommon, she told herself—in fact they had become quite ubiquitous. Even fine ladies wore them, inlaid with mother of pearl and even jewels. This one bore no jewels but a distinct engraving of a stag’s head on the body of the brooch. Empty key chains and three tiny gilt boxes lay in a tangle beneath. Oh no . . .
Before she consciously chose to do so, Margaret stepped inside the shop, only distantly hearing the jingle of the bell announcing her arrival. A diminutive man with thin hair and the bushiest side whiskers she had ever seen stepped forward to greet her, hands clasped before his narrow, vested chest.
“Good afternoon. How may I help you?”
“The chatelaine in the window . . .” She was tempted to ask whose it had been to verify her suspicions. But Betty’s brother lived in the hamlet. She did not want to embarrass Betty before her family, or for word to reach Betty that Nora had been snooping into her affairs. “Who . . . that is, I don’t recall seeing it there before.”
The man shook his head, a sparkle in his eye belying the regretful expression. “No, miss. Just come in today, it did. And a fine piece it is. How lovely it would look pinned to your frock just there.”
She did not like the man eyeing her waist. She frowned. Betty would never forgive her if she heard some Fairbourne housemaid was thinking of buying her cherished chatelaine for herself.
“I wasn’t thinking of it for myself.”
“Oh.” Disappointment etched his features, but then his brows rose. “A gift, perhaps? And a fine gift it would be, indeed.”
Margaret licked her lips. “I don’t know. I . . . How much are you asking?”
“For a fine piece like that? Dear it is, but worth every farthing to the lucky lady who wears it.”
A farthing she could manage, but from the gleam in his eye she guessed he was asking far more. “How much?”
“Oh . . .” He screwed up his face, lips protruding, as he took in her reticule, her leather gloves, her bonnet . . .
She knew she would not like his answer.
He named a figure. An astounding figure.
“But . . . it isn’t real gold, you know. It’s only brass.”
“Pinchbeck, actually.”
“Which still isn’t gold,” she insisted.
“I could let it go for a bit less, for a fine young lady like yourself.”
She huffed. “I am not a fine lady, sir. I am a housemaid.”
“You don’t say? Where are you placed? Fairbourne Hall?”
Margaret turned to leave before she said something she regretted. She reached for the door latch.
“Don’t be hasty, miss,” he called to her. “A pound, two and six. And that’s as low as I can go.”
“Did you give her a pound, two and six?”
His brows furrowed. “Who?”
“The woman who brought it in.” She swallowed and added, “Whoever she was.”
“Well, a man has to make a profit, hasn’t he?”
“From other people’s misfortunes?”
There, she had said too much. She turned and left the shop without another word, ignoring his plaintive calls to reconsider.
She stalked back down the road, back toward Fairbourne Hall. She could not face Betty. Not now. She did not have that much money. Nowhere near it. All she had was the cameo necklace her father had given her. It was likely worth quite a bit more than the chatelaine, but she could never part with it. Not the last gift her dear papa had given her. Perhaps when all this was over and she had her inheritance, she would send Betty a new chatelaine. Or even drive back down in a private carriage and buy back Betty’s chatelaine from the greedy little man, as much as it would gall her to do so.
In the back of her mind, a voice asked, “Will it still be there months from now?” But she resolutely ignored it.
The housemaid’s folding back her
window-shutters at eight o’clock the next day
was the sound which first roused Catherine.
—Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
Chapter 12
Margaret arose feeling refreshed the next morning. She had gone to bed early the night before, and though she tossed and turned for a time, she had gotten more sleep than usual. Betty had forgotten to come to her room to unlace her stays, so again Margaret had slept in them. Constricting as they were, keeping them on did make dressing in the morning so much the quicker—and possible solo. She hoped Betty had not similarly forgotten to attend to Miss Upchurch. The upper housemaid had been doing what she could to dress her mistress and arrange her hair since the lady’s maid retired, but based on Helen Upchurch’s appearance at morning prayers, Betty’s skills in that department were rudimentary at best.
Margaret thought again of what she had heard about Helen Upchurch’s great disappointment in love, and the rare sympathy in the gossips’ tone as they speculated about her long absence from society. Something about her father refusing his consent to the match and then the man’s untimely death soon after. Poor Helen. She recalled the good-looking man in the miniature portrait on Helen’s dressing table. No wonder she was disappointed.