The Housekeepers(48)

Nobody had come knocking on their door again.

“Stand up straight, Sue,” she muttered now. The girl had her hands shoved in her apron pockets. She’d get a hump, slouching like that.

“Yes, Mrs. Bone,” Sue muttered back.

Mr. Shepherd said nothing during the briefing. He sat enthroned in his chair at the head of the kitchen table. The kitchen maids had no time to be briefed: they were running late, passing pans covertly down a line. William, the footman, read out everybody’s duties. He looked gray, as if he hadn’t slept.

Cook broke into Mrs. Bone’s thoughts, breath hot in her ear. “And where are those two?” she said.

“Eh?”

“Them Janes.”

Cook had been stewing on the Janes for days, the indignity of them, their very existence. She’d whipped herself into a frenzy about it. It was the peculiarity of them, she said—their odd looks, those daft expressions. The fact that they were allowed to share their own room. Cook didn’t like this one jot. Sisters could cause trouble if they weren’t separated, she said. “Who let them get away with that? Not Mr. Shepherd. I doubt he even knows about it. I should tell him.”

“Go on, then,” said Mrs. Bone, and flicked a bit of dry skin away under the table.

“I should ask him what he means by it. He ought to be ashamed of himself. And so should they! Not that they will be, for all the trouble they give me, staring at me all day, marching around like they’re the ladies and we’re the skivvies, as if I weren’t the single most necessary person in this household, specially—”

“Hush, Cook,” whispered Mrs. Bone.

“Who is talking?” said Mr. Shepherd. “There must be silence!”

I’ll silence you, thought Mrs. Bone. I’ll stick flaming pokers in your eyes.

Cook waved her hand, voice pious. “It’s them Janes, Mr. Shepherd. We was just saying they’re not here. They’re missing all the orders.”

Shepherd seemed annoyed. “But they must join us at once. Someone must fetch them.”

“I’ll go,” said Mrs. Bone, unpeeling herself from the wall. She knew exactly where the Janes were. They were sweeping the guest suites, which never had any guests, hauling the contents into packing crates. They’d suggested to Mr. Shepherd that it would be sensible to put things in safekeeping before the ball. Clever girls. Getting a nice head start on the job. Eminently sensible.

She caught William’s eye as she scuttled past. He didn’t just look gray—he looked as if he’d had the blood entirely drained out of him. He was more handsome when he was unhappy. It was almost interesting. She held his gaze for half a second and raised her eyes, just a fraction, to jolt him, to say, What’s got your goat?

He merely frowned, lost in thought.

A bell tinkled in the distance. All eyes went to the bell board, an intake of breath. They were picturing Madam, no doubt. Wispy, wreathed in black muslin, cooking up orders. Shepherd looked quite white in the face.

Lovely, thought Mrs. Bone. She wanted everyone nice and rattled.

She ignored her own nerves as they scampered all over her skin.

Sunday afternoon arrived. The Park Lane servants went off duty, meeting their sisters and cousins and gentlemen callers, and the women gathered to go over the plan together for the final time. They squeezed into a six-seater pleasure boat, two giant wheels crashing through the water, the Janes pumping hard on the pedals. Mrs. King sat in the front seat, studying the horizon. Alice had pulled her hat low over her eyes, and Hephzibah had brought a colossal parasol that threatened to decapitate someone.

It made Winnie feel unusually bad-tempered. Her fatigue and nervous energy were catching up with her. She’d been meeting foreign agents all morning on Mrs. Bone’s behalf, and her mind was spinning with Danckerts and Cuyps and Sèvres china and Joshua Reynolds. “I want the biggest sales lined up first,” Mrs. King had told her. “We can’t be managing fifty auctions. I need to know who’s going to put cash down quickly, first night we’re on the market.”

And so Winnie had sat in the parlor at Tilney Street, discussing prices, guarded by Mrs. Bone’s grim-faced cousins. She wore a veil during negotiations, and sat on one side of a screen painted with voluptuous nudes. She had to scramble, writing up all her notes, making sure she hadn’t made any errors. By the time they went out to the park to meet the others, she was feeling entirely flustered.

“Sleep,” she said now, clearing her throat for attention. “Sleep is the important thing. You’ll want to be razor-sharp tomorrow.” She leaned forward, prodded Hephzibah. “You especially.”

Hephzibah swung her parasol in Winnie’s direction. “I won’t sleep a wink,” she said. “It’s far too hot.” She pointed at Winnie. “You’re the one who needs her beauty sleep.”

I won’t rise to that, Winnie thought. “Remember, Hephzibah, you’ve got to roll in to the ball early, to keep an eye on the arrivals and get Miss de Vries moving.”

“Shall I be given supper?”

Winnie sighed. “If you make enough of a fuss, I suppose. Introduce her to Mrs. Bone’s men, make sure Miss de Vries thinks they’re Buckingham Palace policemen, and then get to work upstairs.”

Hephzibah frowned. “Can’t you make this thing go any faster, girls?”