“I’m Welsh, not French,” she said, with the impudent lift of her chin that he was already seeing as characteristic.
He moved his hand from her hair to the back of her neck, and looked into her eyes. She returned his gaze with bold confidence. But did her expression mean that she wanted him to go farther-or that she was ready to make a humiliating scene?
He heard heavy footsteps on the cellar stairs. Peel was back. Fitz stepped away from the maid.
She surprised Fitz by giggling. “You look so guilty!” she said. “Like a schoolboy.”
Peel appeared in the dim candlelight, proffering a silver tray on which there was an ivory-handled magnifying glass.
Fitz tried to breathe normally. He took the glass and returned to his examination of the wine bottles. He was careful not to meet Williams’s eye.
My God, he thought, what an extraordinary girl.
Ethel Williams felt full of energy. Nothing bothered her; she could handle every problem, cope with any setback. When she looked in a mirror she could see that her skin glowed and her eyes sparkled. After chapel on Sunday her father had commented on it, with his usual sarcastic humor. “You’re cheerful,” he had said. “Have you come into money?”
She found herself running, not walking, along the endless corridors of Ty Gwyn. Every day she filled more pages of her notebook with shopping lists, staff timetables, schedules for clearing tables and laying them again, and calculations: numbers of pillowcases, vases, napkins, candles, spoons…
This was her big chance. Despite her youth, she was acting housekeeper, at the time of a royal visit. Mrs. Jevons showed no sign of rising from her sickbed, so Ethel bore the full responsibility of preparing Ty Gwyn for the king and queen. She had always felt she could excel, if only she were given the chance; but in the rigid hierarchy of the servants’ hall there were few opportunities to show that you were better than the rest. Suddenly such an opening had appeared, and she was determined to use it. After this, perhaps the ailing Mrs. Jevons would be given a less demanding job, and Ethel would be made housekeeper, at double her present wages, with a bedroom to herself and her own sitting room in the servants’ quarters.
But she was not there yet. The earl was obviously happy with the job she was doing, and he had decided not to summon the housekeeper from London, which Ethel took as a great compliment; but, she thought apprehensively, there was yet time for that tiny slip, that fatal error, that would spoil everything: the dirty dinner plate, the overflowing sewer, the dead mouse in the bathtub. And then the earl would be angry.
On the morning of the Saturday when the king and queen were due to arrive, she visited every guest room, making sure the fires were lit and the pillows were plumped. Each room had at least one vase of flowers, brought that morning from the hothouse. There was Ty Gwyn-headed writing paper at every desk. Towels, soap, and water were provided for washing. The old earl had not liked modern plumbing, and Fitz had not yet got around to installing running water in all rooms. There were only three water closets, in a house with a hundred bedrooms, so most rooms also needed chamber pots. Potpourri was provided, made by Mrs. Jevons to her own recipe, to take away the smell.
The royal party was due at teatime. The earl would meet them at Aberowen railway station. There would undoubtedly be a crowd there, hoping for a glimpse of royalty, but at this point the king and queen would not meet the people. Fitz would bring them to the house in his Rolls-Royce, a large closed car. The king’s equerry, Sir Alan Tite, and the rest of the royal traveling staff would follow, with the luggage, in an assortment of horse-drawn vehicles. In front of Ty Gwyn a battalion from the Welsh Rifles was already assembling either side of the drive to provide a guard of honor.
The royal couple would show themselves to their subjects on Monday morning. They planned a progress around nearby villages in an open carriage, and a stop at Aberowen town hall to meet the mayor and councilors, before going to the railway station.
The other guests began to arrive at midday. Peel stood in the hall and assigned maids to guide them to their rooms and footmen to carry their bags. The first were Fitz’s uncle and aunt, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. The duke was a cousin of the king and had been invited to make the monarch feel more comfortable. The duchess was Fitz’s aunt, and like most of the family she was deeply interested in politics. At their London house she held a salon that was frequented by cabinet ministers.
The duchess informed Ethel that King George V was a bit obsessed with clocks and hated to see different clocks in the same house telling different times. Ethel cursed silently: Ty Gwyn had more than a hundred clocks. She borrowed Mrs. Jevons’s pocket watch and began to go around the house setting them all.
In the small dining room she came across the earl. He was standing at the window, looking distraught. Ethel studied him for a moment. He was the handsomest man she had ever seen. His pale face, lit by the soft winter sunlight, might have been carved in white marble. He had a square chin, high cheekbones, and a straight nose. His hair was dark but he had green eyes, an unusual combination. He had no beard or mustache or even side-whiskers. With a face like that, Ethel thought, why cover it with hair?
He caught her eye. “I’ve just been told that the king likes a bowl of oranges in his room!” he said. “There’s not a single orange in the damn house.”
Ethel frowned. None of the grocers in Aberowen would have oranges this early in the season-their customers could not afford such luxuries. The same would apply to every other town in the South Wales valleys. “If I might use the telephone, I could speak to one or two greengrocers in Cardiff,” she said. “They might have oranges at this time of year.”
“But how will we get them here?”
“I’ll ask the shop to put a basket on the train.” She looked at the clock she had been adjusting. “With luck the oranges will come at the same time as the king.”
“That’s it,” he said. “That’s what we’ll do.” He gave her a direct look. “You’re astonishing,” he said. “I’m not sure I’ve ever met a girl quite like you.”
She stared back at him. Several times in the last two weeks he had spoken like this, overly familiar and a bit intense, and it gave Ethel a strange feeling, a sort of uneasy exhilaration, as if something dangerously exciting were about to happen. It was like the moment in a fairy tale when the prince enters the enchanted castle.
The spell was broken by the sound of wheels on the drive outside, then a familiar voice. “Peel! How delightful to see you.”
Fitz looked out of the window. His expression was comical. “Oh, no,” he said. “My sister!”
“Welcome home, Lady Maud,” said Peel’s voice. “Though we were not expecting you.”
“The earl forgot to invite me, but I came anyway.”
Ethel smothered a smile. Fitz loved his feisty sister, but he found her difficult to deal with. Her political opinions were alarmingly liberal: she was a suffragette, a militant campaigner for votes for women. Ethel thought Maud was wonderful-just the kind of independent-minded woman she herself would have liked to be.
Fitz strode out of the room, and Ethel followed him into the hall, an imposing room decorated in the Gothic style beloved of Victorians such as Fitz’s father: dark paneling, heavily patterned wallpaper, and carved oak chairs like medieval thrones. Maud was coming through the door. “Fitz, darling, how are you?” she said.
Maud was tall like her brother, and they looked similar, but the sculpted features that made the earl seem like the statue of a god were not so flattering on a woman, and Maud was striking rather than pretty. Contrary to the popular image of feminists as frumpy, she was fashionably dressed, wearing a hobble skirt over button boots, a navy-blue coat with an oversize belt and deep cuffs, and a hat with a tall feather pinned to its front like a regimental flag.
She was accompanied by Aunt Herm. Lady Hermia was Fitz’s other aunt. Unlike her sister, who had married a rich duke, Herm had wedded a thriftless baron who died young and broke. Ten years ago, after Fitz and Maud’s parents had both died within a few months, Aunt Herm had moved in to mother the thirteen-year-old Maud. She continued to act as Maud’s somewhat ineffectual chaperone.
Fitz said to Maud: “What are you doing here?”
Aunt Herm murmured: “I told you he wouldn’t like it, dear.”
“I couldn’t be absent when the king came to stay,” Maud said. “It would have been disrespectful.”
