A Heart Revealed Read online

  “Who is that man with Jeffery?” Suzanne asked. “Do you know him?”

  “Of course not,” Amber snapped. “I know no one this far north. Why is Jeffery bringing him over?” She pulled at the lace edging of her cap as she watched the men getting closer. She looked to her bonnet lying beside her on the seat—she’d removed it while it was only her and Suzanne’s company she needed to accommodate. She quickly put on the bonnet, her fingers fumbling to tie the ribbon.

  “Act your part,” Suzanne said, drawing Amber’s eyes to her. The maid mimicked sitting straight, folding her hands in her lap, and lifting her chin. “You’re your own mistress, now. Act the part of a Lady and everyone will treat you as such.”

  Amber straightened as Suzanne had indicated, prepared to encounter this man, then snapped her gaze back to Suzanne. “Is he to address me directly, then? Should he not be speaking with you until I invite his attention?”

  It was Suzanne’s turn to look startled, but she nodded quickly and straightened her own posture moments before Jeffery knocked on the side of the carriage. Suzanne unlatched the door, which Jeffery then pulled wide. The man with him was older than Amber’s father and dressed in the simple attire of a workingman. He took off his hat to reveal thinning gray hair. He bowed, then looked up with a sincere smile that seemed incongruent with his country clothing and mottled teeth.

  He glanced at Amber but then turned his attention to Suzanne. “I am but right pleased to meetcha, Miss. My name be Paulie Dariloo. I take care of tha cottage where his lordship dun says you be staying this next while. Asked me to meet yer carriage in Topcliffe, he did, and I done been waitin’ jus ’alf an ’our’s all. Made right good time, yer driver did.”

  “Yes, he did,” Suzanne said nervously.

  Amber kept a polite smile on her face but found herself very much on edge. She was as unprepared to take charge of this situation as Suzanne was, but she was no longer a daughter or a debutante with someone speaking for her. She would have to take the position she had left to others all her life or she should have no order and respect here in the North.

  “You are too kind to have met us, Mr. Dariloo,” Suzanne said after an awkward delay, glancing at Amber who nodded to confirm that she should continue. Suzanne returned her attention to Mr. Dariloo. “You’re to give direction to the coachman in finding the cottage, I presume?”

  “I’m to lead you in, Miss,” he said, waving over his shoulder toward the road that ran in front of the inn. “These country roads can get a might bit ragged an’ the road to the cottage ain’t an easy one to navigate in the dark. Mr. Jeffery here”—he nodded toward the driver—“says you be wantin’ to get there tonight despite it being a late ’our that you’ll arrive. That set right with ya?”

  “My mistress would like to arrive at the cottage tonight, Mr. Dariloo.” Neither of the women had any desire to stay in another inn like the one from last night. Amber had barely slept at all for the strange sounds and odd smells of the place, and Suzanne had had to sleep on a straw pallet near the door.

  “And ya shall, ya shall,” he said, nodding. “The horses are ’bout changed an’ then we’ll make us a procession, if ya will, to the cottage.” He glanced at Amber, who glanced at Suzanne, who lifted her shoulders in confusion. She did not understand this situation any better than Amber did. Amber fumbled for what to do and then accepted that her time to be mistress had come.

  “You may address me directly, Mr. Dariloo.”

  His smile broadened, confirming that she’d read his unspoken request for her attention correctly. “Yer father’s man a’business found me just yesterday, he did,” Mr. Dariloo said. “To give me the ’structions. But my missus and I got the cottage set to rights fer ya in time. Everythin’s in place, it is.”

  “You’re very good, sir,” Amber said.

  His bushy eyebrows went up. “You don’t need to be calling me sir, Miss. I ain’t so fine as that, just a caretaker, that’s all I is. Glad to be of help to ya for your holiday.”

  Holiday? Is that how her father had explained it? Amber pulled at the strings on her bonnet. “Shall we go on, then?” she asked, nervous and wishing she could have the confident demeanor expected of her. Why should an underling such as Mr. Dariloo put her out of sorts?

  “Right ya are,” Mr. Dariloo said, backing away, his hat still in hand. “We be ready to go in five minute.”

  Jeffery shut the carriage door, and Amber leaned back against the cushion, her heart thumping. “How odd that I should be so anxious over an exchange of that sort,” she said out loud, then looked to Suzanne after pondering a few moments longer. “Neither of us are who we were in London, are we?”

  Suzanne’s smile was shaky too. “It does not seem so. You handled yourself very well, Miss. You didn’t appear nervous but for the pulling on your ribbon.” Amber was surprised at how grateful she was for the compliment. Suzanne continued, sounding calmer. “All that breeding will serve its purpose, I’ll wager. It’s not been lost just because you find yourself in Yorkshire.”

  Amber pondered that comment for the rest of their journey. As night fell, Mr. Dariloo hung a lantern from his saddle, giving the coach ample mark to follow. They still seemed well within the country when they turned from the relatively smooth ground to a more narrow and pitted road that wound through clusters of trees and fields.

  Eager to see the cottage, Amber and Suzanne were looking through the windows when Suzanne touched Amber’s arm. “I think that must be it,” she said.

  Amber could see the light from two windows set on a hillside a short distance in front of them. Mr. Dariloo turned onto a drive that took them off the road, and by the time the carriage came to a stop, Amber and Suzanne had their necks craned upward in an attempt to get a better view of the cottage. Amber hadn’t thought about why the place was called Step Cottage, but understood when she removed from the carriage and looked up an impossibly long series of wide stone steps—at least twenty—that led to an equally impossibly small gray house complete with a slate roof. If not for the white sections of stone that reflected the light of the half moon, it would have blended perfectly with the landscape around it.

  “Right pretty place, ain’t it?” Mr. Dariloo said as he joined them. He gazed up at the cottage as though it were a castle. “My missus has some mutton stew at the ready. We knew that you would be hungry.” He headed up the rough stone stairs. Amber lifted her skirts and followed, afraid to look anywhere but the next step as they were not equally spaced and Mr. Dariloo’s lantern did not give a great deal of light. She shivered in the night temperature and tried not to think of the haunted forests and forbidden woods of the fairy tales and fables her governess had read to her as a child. Her traveling boots looked impossibly dainty amid the rough surroundings and anxiety crept up her throat with every step.

  At the top, more stones were set together in a small terrace, and there were empty flowerpots near the small inset of the front door. Mr. Dariloo turned the knob, and Amber entered behind him. Once inside she came to a stop and then blinked desperately so her eyes would adjust to the dim interior, lit only by a few candles set into sconces on the wall.

  Surely the furniture and upholstery looked so dark and heavy because of the lighting. Certainly it was not a braided rug at her feet, or burlap hung as curtains over the windows in the room on her left meant to be a parlor; it was no bigger than a closet.

  In front of them was a narrow stairway heading to the second level, while to the right was a corridor that led straight back into what looked like a kitchen—there was no door to hide the functional part of the house from that of the common space. The area directly left of the front door was complete with a foot bench, umbrella stand, and shelves she imagined were meant for hats and things. There was one other doorway framed by heavy dark wood further down the hall past the parlor.

  “It is so small,” she said under her breath. It could hardly be called an estate, and she wondered for a brief moment if this were a joke. Perhap
s this was Mr. Dariloo’s cottage and the finer house was some ways off.

  “Is this Step Cottage?” she asked in a frightened voice. “It is not a cottage at all.”

  “Aye, ’tis a clever title to be callin’ it a cottage.” He laughed as though there were any humor in this situation. “But it’s a fine ’ouse and tight as a drum. Not many ’ouses have timber supports on the inside like this’un. You be findin’ the library an’ parlor ’ere on the first level an’ the kitchen to the back.”

  No dining room? Amber had never been to a house without a well-appointed dining room, let alone lived in such a place.

  Mr. Dariloo continued, “The sleepin’ rooms be upstairs. Jus’ the two though the one ain’t properly set up.”

  Two bedrooms!

  Mr. Dariloo rocked back on his heels and grinned widely. “An that smell you be savorin’ is Mrs. Dariloo’s mutton stew—good hearty tuck for ya at the end of yer journey. ’Ead on down to the kitchen, an’ I’ll see about ’aving yer trunks brought up before them grooms put up the horses in the stable. It’s a bit down the road—not so ’igh on the ’ill o’course.” He waved them toward the kitchen.

  Suzanne gave Amber a look that prompted Amber to follow her despite wanting to run back to the carriage and insist there was another destination in mind.

  When they entered the primitive kitchen, Amber felt her mouth fall open. A short, round woman stood over a cooking pot that swung out from the fireplace on a hook. She smiled at Amber and Suzanne, showing teeth the same shade of brown and gray as her husband’s. She began to jabber to Suzanne, but Amber was too overwhelmed to hear much of it and sat on one of the benches set at a small, rough-hewn table in the corner. The servants’ quarters of Hampton Grove were better turned out than this cottage, and Amber felt a fire in her stomach at the thought of living here.

  This is where my parents sent me?

  A bowl of stew was set before her, and she stared at the brown gravy mixed with chunks of meat and vegetables and thought of the four-course meals that had been standard at Hampton Grove and of the even finer meals the chef prepared for them at the London town house. Pheasant, creamed potatoes, asparagus with hollandaise sauce.

  She had never sat in the kitchen for a meal in her life, and she had never eaten such rustic food as mutton stew, which was decidedly peasants’ fare. She looked up from the bowl to see Mrs. Dariloo open a door off the kitchen that she showed to Suzanne. A single room for servant quarters? Where would the housekeeper stay? What about the chambermaid?

  Amber’s heart began to race as she realized how the life she’d known had slipped away during the miles they’d traveled. The plaster on the walls wasn’t smooth and colored, but a thick rough white, with bits of straw forever stuck within it. She closed her eyes. This could not be right. There must be a mistake. But when she opened her eyes again, she still saw the atrocious stew in a lopsided wooden bowl.

  “Yer mistress cun take off th’ bonnet,” Mrs. Dariloo said to Suzanne though she looked at Amber. She clasped her hands together below her ample bosom, which was covered in an apron no servant at Hampton Grove would see fit to wear for the stained dinginess of it. “No need t’ go oot tonight.”

  The horrid accent grated upon Amber’s sensibilities even further, and she came to her feet quick enough that the bench scraped against the floor. “Show me to my room,” she said, her voice quivering as she attempted to contain the level of emotion rising within her.

  “But, yer stew, Miss.”

  “Show me to my room!” she yelled, then clamped her mouth shut. Suzanne looked at her with a tight expression, and Amber narrowed her eyes defiantly. Suzanne was used to such poverty and could not possibly understand the feelings rushing through Amber’s head. She felt as though she had toppled from the top of a mountain peak and landed in a heap of broken bones. Perhaps that was exactly what had happened when she’d fallen down the stairs at Carlton House.

  Suzanne whispered something to Mrs. Dariloo, who nodded and led them out of the kitchen corridor and up the narrow stairs Amber had seen when she first entered the cottage. She removed a candle from one of the foyer sconces before heading up the stairway, moving far too slowly for Amber’s tastes and casting dark shadows on the narrow walls as they ascended. Amber dug her nails into the palm of her hand to keep from pushing the woman to move faster.

  At the top of the stairs, they entered a small alcove with a door straight back and two doors facing one another across the hallway. Mrs. Dariloo moved to the right-hand door, turned the knob, and pushed open the heavy door. Amber followed her inside and let her eyes scan the room. It was long and narrow and very close in style to the horrid room at the inn she had barely survived the night before.

  The ceiling pitched in line with the roof, leaving only space enough for a dresser, a bed, and a chair. There was a single window at the far end. A washbasin was set on the dresser, and Amber could see the edge of a chamber pot beneath the bed. The fireplace set against the interior wall was shared with the next room. A row of hooks on the wall served in place of a wardrobe.

  It was unlike anything Amber had ever seen before, and she closed her eyes as though she could forget the image of it entirely. “Leave me,” she said curtly.

  “Miss, doncha want—”

  “Leave me!” Amber shouted at the top of her lungs. Her hands were balled into fists at her side. “This is my room and my house, and when I ask you to leave, you will do as I say!”

  “Miss.”

  This time it was Suzanne’s voice, and Amber opened her eyes to glare at the servant who would abandon her in a few days’ time.

  “If the servant’s quarters are in line with what I have found here, you have reason to be as outraged as I. Leave me.”

  Mrs. Dariloo scurried through the doorway after lighting the candle in the lamp on the dresser.

  Suzanne’s expression was chastising, but Amber did not care.

  “I shall help you undress,” Suzanne said.

  “There is nothing for you to attend to,” Amber said. She pointed to the door. “Leave me alone.”

  Suzanne’s expression did not soften, but she nodded once, then bobbed a curtsy and backed out of the door, pulling it closed behind her.

  Amber stood in the middle of the unpolished wooden floor and looked around at the disgraceful furnishings of the horrible room. My parents sent me to this place, she said to herself again. She had already acknowledged their lack of compassion toward her but had not imagined that their disregard could extend to this. Her father had said she would be comfortable here. Did he feel that losing her hair equated to losing all respectability?

  She ripped off her bonnet and cap, throwing them against the pitched wall and then ran a hand over her gruesome head, not needing to see it to know how disgusting it was. She grasped two of the remaining tufts of hair and pulled at them, not expecting them to come away from her head so easily. She began to cry and grabbed another portion and pulled . . . and pulled . . . and pulled some more, her body racked with sobs as she threw the last of her hair onto the floor around her. She sank to her knees on the braided rug, covered her face with her hands and cried as she had never cried in her life.

  It was clear to her now that she had not been sent simply to Yorkshire; she’d been cast into hell. Was she truly so terrible to deserve such punishment?

  Chapter 17

  Amber had been lying in bed and staring at the single window of her new bedchamber—though she found the term overstated—for well over an hour the next morning when there was a tapping at the door. She didn’t respond and instead pulled the quilt higher to her chin, knowing Suzanne would come in without an invitation.

  Suzanne let herself into the room, and Amber turned to face the wall. The bed was large enough to be comfortable, but the pitched roof above her felt confining, especially when compared against the four-poster bed in the London house and the equally grand bed at Hampton Grove; her room there was the size of the entire upper floor of St
ep Cottage.

  Amber listened as Suzanne picked up the discarded clothing from the floor, shaking out each piece. Amber refused to watch Suzanne’s movements as she went about the room, folding clothing and pulling out drawers in order to put everything away. The last thing Suzanne did was fetch the chamber pot from beneath Amber’s bed, then she left the room as silently as she’d entered, pulling the door closed behind her.

  Imagining Suzanne taking the chamber pot to the privy—wherever that might be—reminded Amber of the discussion they’d had before departing for London regarding Suzanne performing tasks meant for housemaids. And she would be leaving.

  The thought of Suzanne’s departure terrified Amber. Not only would she be responsible for herself, she would be alone in this house—this prison. Though she’d told both Suzanne and Lady Marchent that she could be without a personal maid, now that she had a fuller grasp of the situation and realized there were no other servants here, it was impossible. Perhaps she could find a new maid, but how? She had never hired anyone. How would a new maid react to her situation? Her father had said he was sending correspondence to people in town—who? Would he outfit the house with servants? Even if he did, where would they stay? With only one room for a servant, the cottage could not accommodate the attendants Amber needed. Her father had to know that.

  The questions finally drove her out of bed. She picked up the dressing gown from the chair where Suzanne had left it, adjusted the cap on her head without surveying the damage she’d done last night, and tied the gown about her waist. She exited her room and took a fresh look at the house in the daylight.

  The plaster looked no better in the day than it had the night before; the swirls of the trowel used to shape it were reflected in the texture, and the dark wooden beams that ran through the ceiling and walls were rustic and stark.