“What’s the fee?” she’d asked Mrs. King.
Mrs. King told her, and Alice felt her chest expand in disbelief. That was all she needed—it was unimaginably more than she needed. As sewing maid, all she needed to do was keep her hands clean and her mending box tidy and watch Miss de Vries. She was even given a room of her own, a tiny box in the breathless heights of the house. That first night, she went down on her knees and recited her catechism three times under her breath. She felt like a thief claiming sanctuary in a church. Ironic, really.
It wasn’t hard to avoid her sister in public. There was one vast table running down the middle of the servants’ hall, and Alice was always seated at the bottom end, above the lamp-and-errand boy and the scullery maids and the endless parade of kitchen maids. The air smelled permanently of boiled meat and stewing fruit, and the pipes clattered without ceasing. Above Alice sat all the housemaids, and then all the house-parlormaids, and then the men: under-footmen, footmen, Mr. Doggett, the chauffeur, and Mr. de Vries’s valet. That wasn’t even counting the electricians, and the gardeners, the family physician, a nurse, three carpenters, half a dozen groomsmen to muck out Mr. de Vries’s stable of horses, the mechanics, or the French chef who came downstairs twice weekly and fought unceasingly with Cook. It was an army big enough to run a country house, let alone an address on Park Lane. The butler, Mr. Shepherd, sat at the head of the table, lord of all, with Mrs. King on his right hand.
They reconvened in secret, in snatched moments. Brisk conversation, no time for affection. It made Alice feel rather lonely.
“Here,” Mrs. King said, tipping out the contents of a box. “Labels.”
Alice picked them up, doubtful. Microscopic letters had been printed all over them. “Labels for what?”
“Instructions. I want them ironed into these skirts.” She dumped a dozen crisp, machine-made petticoats on the bench. “We’ll have new girls coming soon. And I won’t be drilling them myself. They’ll need the plan printed out.”
Alice stared at her in wonder. “And where will you be?”
Mrs. King was aloof. “Never mind about that. Get ironing.”
She didn’t say goodbye. She didn’t even give a warning that she was going. The news broke that morning as the maids were trickling down the back stairs. Mrs. King had been spotted in the gentlemen’s quarters. Mr. Shepherd was having it out with her in the servants’ hall. William, the head footman, was being detained in Mr. Shepherd’s office for questioning.
William? thought Alice. She supposed Dinah might have held a candle for him. He was handsome, certainly—he had glorious golden eyes. He could keep up a decent conversation. She’d told him about the street on which she’d grown up, the hateful behavior of the neighbors, and he’d listened very hard while she was talking, as if what she was saying was peculiarly interesting.
Cook feasted on the scandal. “Fornicators!” she said. “That’s what they were!”
Alice spotted William sitting in Mr. Shepherd’s armchair, the under-footmen guarding the door, face flushed, eyes defiant. He looked puzzled, wrong-footed entirely. It’s beginning, Alice thought, skin tingling. The petticoats were stashed in her wardrobe, the labels ironed beautifully into the hems.
Things in the household began to fall apart the moment Mrs. King left. The breakfast service ran late, the fresh flowers were abandoned in the front hall, one of the still-room shelves collapsed, the electrolier in the front hall started spitting and blinking, and someone saw a pair of rats entering the cellar. One of the house-parlormaids ran downstairs, out of breath, red in the face. “Didn’t you hear the bell? Madam’s asking for the sewing maid. At once.”
Alice glanced up.
“Me?” she said.
Alice took the electric lift. It was in an iron cage, and the other servants always struggled to close the gate, but she never did. Some people just couldn’t work their way around machines. Alice punched a glass button and the cage jerked violently. She felt its teeth clenching, locking, and then it rose slowly through the house. It hummed as it went, an uneasy sound. The hall expanded and then disappeared beneath her. The air changed, grew sweeter, and Alice glided upward to a different realm altogether, one blanketed in a cream-and-gold hush.
The bedroom floor.
Alice had never felt carpets like this before entering Park Lane. They were so rich, so new. They seemed to suck at her feet. The doors were mirrored and looked as if they’d been glazed with syrup. She adored the bedroom floor. It made her teeth tingle, as if her mouth were filled with sugar. It was heavenly, the home of angels.
She waited at the end of the passage, smoothing her apron, listening to the clocks. Straightened her cap. The household machinery tensed, every clock hand poised, straining, ready.
“Wait for Madam in the passage,” the house-parlormaid had warned her. “Don’t go and knock. She hates that.”
Until now, Miss de Vries had been an entirely remote figure. Nearby, certainly: really only a few feet away if Madam was in the bedroom and Alice was in the dressing room. But she was attended by other servants. Alice observed her, studied her daily movements. She didn’t talk to her at all. The Bond Street seamstresses managed all the fittings for Madam’s ball dress. Alice despised it.
It was black, per instruction, suitable for mourning. But the sleeves were fussy, heavy, and the lace looked almost antique in its design. The seamstresses worked section by section, sending parts up to Park Lane for Alice to finish. Hackwork, really, the kind of thing she could do with her eyes closed. Yet she found herself unpicking their stitches, remaking the lines, softening the gown’s edges. Trying to make it elegant. Sometimes, when she was hanging about for the latest delivery, Alice would make sketches of the gown that she’d design for Madam. Something with a little pep to it, something with a little go. Something to make people stare.
Thunk.
The clocks marked the hour, and soft chimes issued through the house.
At the end of the passage there was a fan window, admitting a bright shaft of sunshine. And in it, threaded into the haze itself, she spied a figure on the approach.
A wisp of a person, a moth-wing flutter of black lace, fair hair. But there was a force around her, pressure in the air.
“Madam,” called Alice, raising her hand.
The figure paused. The light shifted, dissolved, and Miss de Vries turned and looked her way.
The first time Alice saw Madam, she’d been startled. She hadn’t expected Miss de Vries to be so tiny. To be such a small, delicate person. She was—what? Two years older than herself, at most? Twenty-three, and only just that.
Just a girl, really.
Miss de Vries was wearing mourning, black-dyed and ruffled lawn, and the lace came all the way up to her chin. Her flaxen hair was teased and curled so that just one lock fell on her forehead. She had curious features. A thin nose, and slightly protuberant eyes. Like a fairy, or a goblin. She waited for Alice to approach.
And it was the way she waited—patiently, perfectly, preternaturally still—that gave Alice pause. As she stepped closer, Alice felt it. Electricity crackling around those delicate hands, wrists. Miss de Vries’s bones seemed miniature, like a bird’s, but there was something dense, ferocious, about the way she was constructed.