“Try the cakes. The cook is really very good at them.”
They would have choked her, she thought. “No thanks. So you got everything.”
“Everything. House, estate, paintings, horses, even the sheets on the beds and the flowers wilting in the vases. I won his past from him and your future from you. That’s why I want to help you now.”
She took a swallow of the hot tea. It made her feel better. “How?”
He lifted a small iced cake daintily with silver tongs.
“You’ve lost your situation.”
“Because I was stupid.”
“Is that why?”
“She wanted me to beat Emmeline,” Sarah said coldly, “and I wouldn’t. The poor little wretch has enough troubles. I felt sorry for her.”
He was silent a moment, patting his knee till the cat jumped up. When he spoke again his voice was almost sly. “It didn’t seem like that to me.”
She stared.
“No, to me it seemed you were quite ready to cane the child. You didn’t care for it, but you would have done it. No, the reason you rebelled was that the woman Hubbard called you a menial, in front of me, and told you to repeat it. That stuck in your throat.” He smiled. “Just like a Trevelyan.”
Sarah put the cup down, so hard that it clinked in the saucer and toppled over. “Why have you brought me here? Just to make fun of me?”
“Indeed no. To offer you a new situation.”
She stood, furious. “As some scullery maid.”
Azrael’s eyes widened. He swung his legs off the footstool and swiveled around, concerned. “Of course not! Was that what you thought?”
“I don’t know what to think!”
“Please, sit down.”
But she didn’t move, so he took a breath and said, “I’m a reclusive man, Sarah. Something of a scholar; my field is alchemy and all the strange old sciences of the Middle Ages. Old-fashioned now, of course, with our gas lamps and steam engines. But important to me. The Great Work, the old sages called it.” He leaned forward, his face keen and lit with enthusiasm. “The eternal, unending search for the most precious element in the universe. For pure gold, Sarah! For shining goodness!”
As if he’d said too much, he stopped, and laughed. “I have a laboratory and an immense library, thousands of volumes, all untidy and muddled, that desperately need to be put in order and catalogued. I also need help with my experiments. I would like to pay you to do it. Twelve shillings a week. Rooms for yourself and your father, here in the Hall. He will be well looked after.”
She stared down at him, utterly astonished.
He smiled, picked the cat up again, and smudged crumbs off the cake. The cat’s pink tongue licked them from his finger. “Do please accept. I have no desire for fussy secretaries or prying university men. I want someone who loves learning. And don’t just think I’ve invented this for your sake. Believe me, I really need the assistance. You’ve seen Scrab.”
She sank back into the chair, legs suddenly weak. “How do you know I like learning?”
His glance was bright and amused. “Why else would you stay at that bearpit of a school? No, you’d be perfect, Sarah. We could work well together on my Great Work, to make gold, the most precious of things. Do say yes. But take time to think, if you want.”
The fire crackled. Around her the portraits of cruel Trevelyans stared down at her scornfully. She knew she was betraying them by taking a job in their house. In her house. But back at the cottage her father would be coughing.
“I accept,” she said.
six
Martha picked up the pile of shining coins and clicked them through her fingers. Then she dropped them back on the scrubbed boards of the table. “It’s a lot extra,” she said.
“Mmm.” Sarah blew on the spoonful of potato soup and swallowed it even though it burned her tongue. She wondered how to explain.
In the weak rushlight the page next to her chipped plate was shadowy. It was a battered dictionary, one of her father’s few possessions. She tore a chunk off the loaf, reading.
ALCHEMY: The medieval science of the Philosopher’s Stone, the search to transmute metals into gold.
Instantly, like a blow out of nowhere, the memory of her strange dream came back. She stopped eating, spoon paused in midair. The library. It was coming true. She was so amazed she almost didn’t notice Martha had sat down opposite. Martha never sat down in the mornings. There was too much to do.
The stout woman pushed back her graying hair. Then she said, “Or did his lordship give you the money?”
Alarmed, Sarah stared. “What?”
Martha sighed. “Lord, Sarah, don’t play Miss Innocent. I know Mrs. Hubbard turned you away. I heard about it at the market yesterday.”
Sarah dropped the spoon into the dish. “She didn’t turn me away. I left.”
“It’s all the same in the end.”
The baby gurgled in his crib; she gave him an anxious glance. “You’ve got your rent,” Sarah said hotly.
“Yes, but I’m worried about you. Lord Azrael . . .”
“What on earth makes you think I got it from him?”
“This.” Quickly, as if she didn’t like to touch it, Martha took a small white card from her pinafore and laid it on the table.
Sarah stared at it with cold fear. She had burned this. She’d watched it turn black and crinkle and fall into ash.
She reached out and turned it over; it felt smooth and cool. The familiar words slid over its surface. I FEEL I OWE YOUR FAMILY SOME RECOMPENSE.
For a second there was something darkly mocking in the sloping script.
“It was in the ashes when I cleaned the grate.” Martha leaned forward and caught hold of Sarah’s wrist. “What does it mean? Why does he want to make all right, after years and years?”
“It’s nothing. He’s given me a situation. In his library.”
“His library?” Martha looked puzzled. “With books? But why you? There’s learned folk would suit him better . . .”
Annoyed, Sarah pulled away. She took the soup dish to the scullery and scrubbed it fiercely in the cold greasy water. “Well, he’s asked me. He’s paying twelve shillings all found.”
“You’re to live in!”
Exasperated, Sarah turned. “All servants live in, Martha, and that’s all I’ll be. There’s a room for Papa too. It’ll be better for him than here. More like he’s used to.”
Even as she said it she saw Martha’s shock.
“But who’ll take care of him, the master? I always have! He knows me.”
“There’ll be servants.”
“Yes, and how they’ll despise him!”
“I thought you’d be pleased,” Sarah snapped. “Or is it the rent you’ll really be missing?”
In the silence she knew it had been a spiteful thing to say. Martha turned and bent over the cradle; after a second Sarah crossed to the back door and opened it, feeling the wet breeze on her face, the wild cries of gulls over the plowed fields on Marazy Head. Out at sea a faint drizzle obscured the fishing fleet.
After a long breath she said, “Sorry.”
Martha had the baby out and was rocking him. Her face was flushed. “There’s talk about this Azrael,” she said obstinately. “That he spends nights in sorcery and speaking with demons. No one respectable goes near the Hall after dark. They say he’s found a way down to the caverns, and sometimes at night you can hear a roar like great engines churning underground. Ernie Marsden that lives out on the cliff says on full moon last week he looked out and saw the carriage there, and his lordship walking, at dead of night, looking over the sea. He’s a strange man, that’s for sure.”
Sarah shrugged. “Gossip. He’s a scholar. And a gentleman.”
“Indeed? They say the devil is a gentleman.”