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‘I’m kind of doing a private reading. It’s OK. I’m being careful with it.’ I opened my bedside drawer, pulled on a pair of white gloves, and put on my owl-rimmed glasses.
Thomas groaned.
‘What?’
‘You look like a hot librarian.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘Whatever. Now listen, this is what’s happened to Mercy so far. It’s fascinating.’
I filled Thomas in on the backstory while he sat on the bed next to me with his legs crossed at the ankles, sipping tea.
‘So what’s this guy Jasper’s deal?’
‘I don’t know. But now he’s invited her to dinner, and she got all excited about it, but it’s a mean trick. He’s turned up with this awful woman, Arabella, instead ...’
Chapter 12
Upon leaving the dining room, I ran into two smartly dressed footmen in dark-blue velvet suits with gold buttons who had been busily transferring silver cloches to the kitchen table.
‘Supper for the lady and master,’ said one, bowing swiftly in my direction, and then they took their leave. I heard the faint crunching of carriage wheels on the gravel outside.
As soon as I entered the kitchen and saw all the gleaming silver cloches, my heart sank. My imagination hadn’t been too vivid after all. Jasper had outdone himself by enlisting the help of some upper-class cook. Unfortunately, it wasn’t with me in mind. Tentatively, I lifted the cloche of the nearest dish, which contained some kind of broth. It smelt rich and delicious. But my own appetite had disappeared entirely. I considered not going through with it, but I knew I had to; it was my duty as a maid.
From the dining room came gales of mirth from Arabella. Perhaps Jasper was telling her the amusing tale of my education or enlightening her about my humble background, where the likes of me weren’t able to escape the horrors of smallpox because we had no country house to hole up in. We just had to endure it and put up with people’s condemnation afterwards and then work as servants for the rest of our lives.
I looked at my face, which was reflected in one of the silver cloches. And then I looked again. A cruel trick of the light had blocked out the worst of the scars so the face looking back at me was smooth and unmarked. I appeared almost normal. This was how I was meant to look—not the scarred freak the pox had made me.
My confidence rose. Perhaps I could get through this if I kept that image of myself in my head. I grabbed the dish containing the soup and carried it into the dining room.
‘Ah, Mercy, finally!’ said Jasper, rising and taking the dish from me. ‘We thought you’d decided to eat the entrée yourself.’
Arabella snickered.
‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘I was organising things in the kitchen. Would you like some more wine?’
I grabbed the bottle and sloshed it into their glasses, managing to spill a few drops on Arabella’s smooth bouncing bosom.
‘Watch it, servant!’ she snarled and dabbed delicately at her cleavage. Jasper looked amused.
‘Now, now, darling, be nice,’ he soothed. ‘Let me feed you some soup. That should cheer you up.’
He scooped up a spoonful and fed it into Arabella’s waiting open mouth. I could hardly bear to watch as her tongue flicked out like a snake and licked the spoon clean.
Jasper’s chocolate-brown eyes found mine. ‘Still here? You really are a sucker for punishment,’ they seemed to say.
I left the room in a nauseous daze. In the kitchen, I held on to the counter for dear life. The sight of Jasper feeding Arabella had almost made me come undone. Misery welled in me, and I felt like bursting into tears.
Then I spied, tucked beneath one of the serving dishes, a letter sealed with red wax and my name on it. Gingerly, I broke the seal, and a few coins slid out. I gathered this was the payment for the ‘extra service’ Jasper had mentioned. I felt sick again and tossed the coins back on the table. I had obviously read the invitation wrong. Or I had read it correctly, and he’d decided to play a cruel trick, knowing how I felt about him—that I was the fool was in no doubt.
‘Jasper likes a joke except when it’s on him,’ Sebastian had said. Could I somehow turn this joke around so it was no longer on me? What ammunition did I possibly have? Then I remembered. Jasper’s letter—the one I’d found in his wardrobe and never opened out of some false sense of propriety, hoping for a chance to put it back undiscovered.
Well, the gloves were off now. If I had to go into that room one more time and witness him flirting with Arabella ... I shuddered. I calculated I had about ten minutes before they started clamouring for their first course. I ran up the kitchen stairs, along the hallway, and up into my room, looking around wildly. Where had I put it? The dresser. I pulled out all the drawers and flung my underthings into the air. It had to be here. Yes! In the bottom drawer.
I stood there holding the envelope for what seemed like an age. I had never knowingly opened another person’s private mail for the purpose of revenge. Yet for all its wrongness, it felt right in this case. Taking a deep breath, I opened the flaps and unfolded the sheet of paper. Thumbmarks were all over it, and the paper was old and very creased, as if it had been read a thousand times. I inferred from this that the letter was very important to Jasper. I eagerly scanned its contents, thanking the lord and Sebastian that I could read.
After I finished the letter, I stood there like a statue for some minutes, struggling to absorb it. I couldn’t quite believe the irony of life. Either that, or God had revealed himself to me in the lines of a quivering cursive script. I felt a glimmer of hope. If this were to be the longest night of my life, then by some quirk of fate, I had acquired the internal armour with which to bear the blows.
Throwing back my shoulders, I steeled myself and headed back down to the kitchen to serve the lovers their first course. Upon lifting several of the cloches, I discovered roast quail, which was rapidly losing heat. Still, the aroma emanating from the silver dish was so delicious my appetite returned, and it was all I could do to stop myself from ripping one of the tiny thighs to shreds with my teeth. My anger was reaching boiling point as I stormed through to the dining room.
