Her eyes flashed. ‘I am out of the schoolroom this age, sir!’
‘But your behaviour is not. Where is the excellent Miss Pym?’
‘I believe she is in the kitchen.’
‘And in need of help?’
‘So I believe. But I do not see why—’
‘Then shall we join her?’
Emily had been about to say she did not see why she, a lady, should be expected to work in an inn kitchen, but something told her that Lord Harley would despise her further for that remark. Never in her short life had anyone ever despised or disliked Emily. She had been cosseted and feted and petted from the day she was born.
‘I do not know where the kitchen is,’ she said.
‘But I do. Follow me.’
Emily reluctantly followed him through to the kitchen. Hannah was cutting slices of bacon, and Mrs Bisley was frying sausages. Mrs Bradley was out in the scullery, scrubbing the boiled clothes on a washboard.
‘More help here,’ said Lord Harley. ‘What would you like us to do?’
‘Lay the table,’ said Hannah promptly, ‘and then rouse the other guests. They cannot drift down to meals just when they feel like it.’
‘Where is a tray for the dishes?’ asked Emily, looking helplessly around.
‘We’ll all dine at the kitchen table,’ said Hannah.
All in that moment, Emily hated Hannah Pym. This woman was determined to humiliate her. Emily Freemantle being asked to dine in the kitchen!
‘Stop dreaming,’ ordered Lord Harley. ‘Help me with the plates.’
Hannah handed slices of bacon to Mrs Bisley to put in the pan and watched Lord Harley and Emily out of the corner of her inquisitive eyes. Emily was slamming plates down on the table in a sulky way and Lord Harley was paying no heed to her whatsoever.
Hannah swung open the heavy door of the oven in the wall beside the fire and brought out a tray of hot rolls. She said to Lord Harley, ‘If I could trouble you to rouse the other guests.’
Lord Harley grinned at her. ‘I’ll have trouble with Seaton. The commoner these fellows are, the more they expect to be waited on.’
Emily flushed with mortification, thinking the remark was directed at her.
The rest of the guests, the coachman and guard gradually came in one by one, all still in their undress and yawning and grumbling. The one exception was Mr Fletcher. He looked a new man, thought Hannah with satisfaction. The wig looked very fine and neat and the whiteness of his shirt and neckcloth was dazzling. His black coat and breeches looked refurbished because Lord Harley had ruthlessly brushed them after he had finished brushing his own clothes.
Hannah pushed Mrs Bisley into a seat and made sure Mr Fletcher was placed next to her. The captain, in a large night-gown with showy frills of cotton lace and a dirty dressing-gown and Kilmarnock nightcap, glowered at Mr Fletcher from the other end of the table. The landlord came in shivering with cold, and looked first amazed and then gratified when Hannah told him to take a seat and served him with breakfast and small beer.
Lord Harley watched Hannah with admiration as she served everyone in record time and then sat down herself, consumed a great quantity of bacon and eggs at amazing speed, and then started to load up a tray to take to Mrs Silvers’ bedchamber.
When breakfast was over, Hannah returned to say that as the circumstances were unusual, she would appreciate any help the gentlemen had to offer in clearing up. Emily was about to say that
The coachman, who divulged that his name was Old Tom, or, rather, that that was what everyone on the road called him, said cheerfully that if Hannah put some bits and pieces of food together, along with some ale, he would take it out to the post-boys. Assured by him that the post-boys were snug enough from the storm before the tack-room fire, Hannah set about preparing a tray for them. Ignored, the captain got sulkily to his feet. ‘Come along, Mrs Bisley,’ he growled. But to his mortification, Lizzie did not seem to hear him. She was tying one of the waiters’ aprons around Mr Fletcher’s waist, the little lawyer having said he would be glad to help with the dirty dishes. Mrs Bradley went off to get her basket of medicines to find something to ease Mrs Silvers’ cold.
Lord Harley rounded up the rest of the men and said to Hannah’s relief that a path to the outside privvy must be dug through the snow, ‘for no one surely expects these excellent ladies to empty chamber-pots, and if any of you have used that utensil during the night, then I suggest you carry it down and empty it yourself.’
Emily turned as red as fire. She had been about to nip up to the bedchamber to make use of the chamber-pot but now she could not, for that would mean carrying the nasty thing down in full view of everyone. No one cared about her predicament, she thought tearfully, quite forgetting that no one could possibly know.
The guard, who was called Jim Feathers, and the two outside passengers, Mr Burridge and Mr Hendry, followed Lord Harley outside to find shovels to start digging. Mr Fletcher and Lizzie Bisley were out in the scullery washing dishes.
‘Now dinner,’ said Hannah. ‘There is a pot of stock here, and soup would be a great thing to begin. Miss Freemantle, if you would be so good as to clean the vegetables.’
‘I don’t know how,’ said Emily.
‘For a start, here are carrots. You scrape them, so, and then cut them into slices, and when you have finished that, I shall give you the onions.’
Emily felt too intimidated to protest. Lord Harley’s remark about not wanting her hurt the more she thought about it. There was no Miss Cudlipp to whisper in her ear that he really did not mean it. And if he returned to the kitchen and found her rebelling, she knew his contempt for her would be awful. He could not really be aristocratic, thought Emily, ferociously chopping carrots. There must be common blood in the Harleys. Aristocrats did not dig snow to clear a path to the privvy. Gently born people hardly ever mentioned the place, and if they did, they referred to it as the ‘necessary house’.
But when Lord Harley came in, stamping snow from his boots, and said the path was clear, Emily slipped gratefully out of the kitchen and fought her way through the storm to the Jericho in the garden, suddenly grateful she had managed to avoid the humiliation of the chamber-pot. She came back to the kitchen brushing snow from her dress, her cheeks pink with the cold.
‘Onions, Miss Freemantle,’ said Hannah, putting the offensive, nasty things down on the table. Emily saw a flash of amusement light up Lord Harley’s eyes and bent to her work. But while she chopped onions, occasionally rubbing her streaming eyes with a handkerchief, she began to feel a glow of satisfaction. Yes, she had behaved badly by running away, but her doting parents would forgive all when they heard how she had been used. And what stories she would have to tell Miss Cudlipp! She could see Miss Cudlipp’s rather sheeplike face looking at her in amazed admiration. ‘Come along, Miss Freemantle,’ came the hated Miss Pym’s voice, ‘don’t take all day.’ Lord Harley grinned and left.
Mr Fletcher was polishing dishes in the scullery and admiring the tender white nape of Lizzie Bisley’s neck as she bent over the sink. She turned to hand him another dish and Mr Fletcher, with a little spurt of gladness, noticed the fine network of wrinkles at her eyes. He had thought her much younger than he.
‘I could not help but notice you are in mourning and you did say something about having been recently bereaved,’ said Mr Fletcher. ‘When did your husband … er … pass on?’
‘Eight months ago,’ said Lizzie. ‘I miss him sore.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He was a lawyer.’
‘Indeed!’ Mr Fletcher furrowed his brow. Bisley. Then his face cleared. ‘Not John Bisley of Bisley, Rochester & Bisley.’
‘The same,’ said Lizzie, turning her back on the sink and leaning against it.
‘He was a very successful lawyer,’ said Mr Fletcher wistfully. ‘I, too, am a lawyer, Mrs Bisley, but have not had any success at all. That is why I am going to Exeter, to try my luck there.’
