Lily by Patricia Gaffney Read Free Book Online

me,” she said impulsively—and suddenly remembering she was supposed to be Irish.
    “ ’Ave ee got un, an?”
    “Aye, we’re betrothed.”
    Lowdy’s big, chip-toothed smile lit up her face. “Well, now,” she said, guiding Lily out of the room with a soft hand. “Well, now, edn that grand?”
    Dinner was another dour, silent meal, and afterward Lily wasn’t sure she had the strength to get up. It had become impossible to think of what was happening to her even remotely as an adventure. She was plagued and haunted by the idea of lying down somewhere, anywhere, and closing her eyes just for a few minutes. Every muscle pleaded for a rest; the skin on her palms was raw, her fingernails blackened and torn. Food no longer had the power to restore her, so profound was her fatigue. But there were still steps to be whitened, and after that birds to be plucked, peas to be shelled, pots to be scrubbed, and a hundred miscellaneous chores to be done for any servant who was superior to her—which was all of them. The single bright moment in the awful, exhausting day came when it was finally over and she was allowed to have a bath, in the last big tub of hot wash water in the laundry house. She made the most of it, washing her hair and taking as long as she possibly could, knowing it would be her only all-over wash for the week.
    When supper finally came—a bowl of watery soup and a pilchard on a chunk of bread—she’d lost her appetite and had to force the salty fish down. Even then, bedtime had to wait. The servants gathered in the hall for an hour every evening, to talk and do mending or other personal tasks. Lowdy told her in a whisper that she couldn’t go up yet even if all her chores were done, for Mrs. Howe had to lead them first in evening prayers, and those didn’t begin until nine o’clock. Lily fell asleep waiting, slumped in a hard chair at the table, her chin on her chest.
    “Rose is sick,” Mrs. Belt said one morning a week later, pointing at two covered trays on the kitchen table. “Take these up to the master an’ the young master, then come right back an’ help me with this sourbread.”
    “You mean—to their rooms?”
    “No, to your room. Then call ’em an’ make ’em come up there an’ eat it.”
    She flushed. The cook was famous for her sarcasm, and Lily was frequently the butt of it. She picked up the trays and hurried out.
    As she climbed the two flights of stairs to the second floor— gentry stairs; she’d never been allowed on them before—she felt a flutter of trepidation, and scolded herself for it. She had not seen the master since the night of her arrival. But he would not be drunk and raving at half past eight in the morning—so how foolish, how absurd, how silly of her to be nervous. That was what she told herself all the way down the hall to the door of the room she’d been told belonged to the younger Mr. Darkwell. Putting one tray down on a table beside the door, she rapped out a timid knock.
    “Yes!”
    “Breakfast, sir.” Sar, I should have said, she worried as she straightened her cap.
    “Yes, bring it!”
    Was she just supposed to walk in, then? He’d sounded impatient. She opened the door and went in.
    And stopped dead. Mouth open, eyes wide. Shocked, but unable to look away from the riveting sight of the young master’s bare backside. He glanced at her reflection in the wardrobe mirror, in front of which he was standing and shaving his chin. “On the bed is fine,” he tossed over his naked shoulder.
    It took half a minute for the words to penetrate. They did so at the same moment he turned completely around to face her, perplexed by her hesitation. Some sound escaped her involuntarily. Certainly not a scream, and not really a squeal either, she would later assure herself repeatedly, merely a—sound. Then she did the only thing she could think of, which was to set the tray down on the nearest flat surface—the bed, fortunately—pivoted in the opposite