I ran from table to table, refilling teapots, serving food and beverages, clearing and resetting tables, and bouncing in and out of the kitchen at an exhausting pace. Numerous times I spilled tea into the saucer as I poured, but I found it almost impossible to avoid it. My face flamed relentlessly, but after a couple of hours, I was too tired to care anymore about shaming myself. Miss Hardcastle checked in on me regularly, but all she did was frown severely, then leave me to muddle through on my own.
When the lunch crowd drifted away, I wearily settled at a table and helped myself to a generous portion of cucumber sandwiches. I had just taken a bite when Miss Hardcastle accosted me. “The tea crowd will be here shortly, and you’ve not cleared and reset all the tables.”
I wolfed down the rest of my sandwich, and, dragging myself to my feet, I began restoring the dining room to its former order. By four o’clock, another onslaught of women filled the room. The end of the day could not arrive soon enough. I was dog-tired, and all I wanted to do was head back to my little cot and rest until dinner. Near the end of the tea hour, two women walked in and sat at the reserved table by the window. Mrs. Douglas, I deduced. And a friend.
I pasted a fresh smile on my face and approached the table.
“Mrs. Douglas?” I asked.
She nodded. She was a small, plump woman with determined dark eyes and a practised smile. At my greeting, her guest, a tall woman wearing a large white hat with a veil, turned her face to me.
“Miss Harding? Is that you?” The woman removed her veil.
“Lady Persephone!” I wanted to sink into the floor.
“I never expected to find you here,” she said. “At least not as part of the staff.”
“I have little choice…” I glanced at Mrs. Douglas.
“We had looked forward to hosting you at the residence,” she said. “But I’m sure you’ll do very well here.” There was something in her eyes. I sensed that she understood what I was going through, how hard it was to fit into a strict society, trying to hold on and not let go.
“You and your sister. What a pair you turned out to be,” Lady Persephone scoffed. “To think I once thought you the perfect bride for dear George Chalmers—that I was set on promoting the marriage.”
“Perhaps George is the one you have misjudged,” I said lightly.
“I hardly think so. He is Pam’s handpicked successor.”
I felt a burn in the back of my throat. I’d put up with so much, taking everything with a smile and a brave face. Something in me snapped.
“George is a man with no moral compass,” I said in a low, hard voice. “He is lascivious and cunning, certainly not fit to hold high office. Nothing could have induced me to marry him, no matter what you said or did.”
A sliver of recognition passed over Lady Persephone’s face. She’d heard this kind of talk about George before.
“How dare you slander him in this way. You’re not fit to scrape the mud off his boots, let alone marry him.” She turned to Mrs. Douglas, who was looking with distaste at her guest, and then resettled her features into her usual porcelain mask. “I believe I’ve lost my appetite. Do you mind if we have tea another day?”
Mrs. Douglas cast a glance at me, then turned back to Lady Persephone. “Certainly,” she said. As she gathered up her things, part of me thought she seemed relieved to have a reason to cut short the outing, and I wondered what she thought of Lady Persephone or even me.
After the two women left, the anger in me evaporated and my exhaustion returned in full force. I slumped down into Mrs. Douglas’s vacated chair. What had I just done? Would I never be rid of my past? The few remaining ladies in the tea shop gave me curious looks and talked behind their hands. Hari would have known how to handle that, I thought. And then I was flooded with the reminder that she was gone, that I was on my own, and that maybe I had just made a huge misstep.
Chapter Thirty-four
I had expected an early winter with snow and ice in the northern colony, but the seasons here were not as harsh as I predicted. Autumn deepened, the air cooled, and the leaves changed colour and began to drop. A dusting of frost made them crunch under my feet when I went to work each morning, but I was warm enough in my wool cape. Once inside, I didn’t have much time to think of the weather, and as the branches of the evergreens hung low with dew, as if wrapping their arms around themselves for comfort, each day became a mindless routine of waking, working, and sleeping, with a few snatched moments of enjoyment with Sarah and Jacob each night.
After Miss Hardcastle was satisfied that I was getting by, I made some small adjustments to ease my work. I set fewer dishes for each place—less to clear and clean—and one night, I took a pair of shears and decommissioned the handheld bells the patrons used to summon me. Fortunately for me, Miss Hardcastle’s role as director meant she rarely ventured into the tearoom. Mrs. Douglas came in a few times, nodding pleasantly to me, and I kept an eye out for Lady Persephone, but so far she hadn’t returned, and I was relieved.
The barracks were cold with nothing other than a potbellied stove at one end for heat. As women went to live with their employers or got married, our group dwindled, and by mid-October there were only twenty of us left. Alice’s wedding had been
