She said it to an empty room.
He was gone.
And Julia still felt like she was being watched.
Veronika was surprised to find Miss Julia’s bed made when she walked into her room.
She’d heard the American woman on the phone in the kitchen and she’d hurried to do the cleaning while Julia was otherwise engaged. She bustled around the room, intent to perform her duties to the exacting standards that Lady Monique Ashton expected them to be done.
Bathrooms cleaned thoroughly, daily. Used towels were taken away and washed, daily. Also, dusting and hoovering done, daily. Sheets were changed on Wednesdays and Fridays. Clothes were picked up off the floor and all of the outerwear was put in cleaned and pressed linen sacks and taken by Carter to the dry cleaners. Unmentionables carefully hand washed and air dried. Towels, sheets, serviettes, tablecloths were all washed, starched and ironed, by Veronika. The heavy cleaning was done on a strict rota that Mrs. Kilpatrick oversaw with a devotion akin to religion.
The American was like no one Veronika had yet met in England. She made her bed. She folded her towel and put it back on the rail. She spoke to Veronika in a normal voice and smiled at her, even when Veronika was just passing.
Veronika didn’t know what to make of her.
The Lady Tamsin had been quite like that but careful not to be overly familiar when Lady Ashton was around. Veronika had only seen Mister Gavin once, for the briefest of moments, and he’d been kissing Lady Tamsin at the time so Veronika had left them to it.
Veronika felt a great deal of guilt as she was the only one in the household who had gained from the lovely couple’s deaths. Mrs. Kilpatrick’s hours went from abnormally long to ungodly long. Veronika, who worked Wednesday through Sunday and had Monday and Tuesday off had gained a lot of extra hours and overtime pay the last five months. This had eased her burden tremendously.
She was able to move out of the cold and cramped old servants’ quarters and she got herself a small, shabbily furnished bedsit in the local town. She was also able to buy a beat-up old car. She put in a telephone (even though she had no one to call). She even bought plates, cutlery and pretty plastic glasses at the local Tesco that had bright circles printed on them.
Even with all the good luck Veronika had since meeting Lord Douglas Ashton that dark night nearly seven months ago, she still didn’t trust it.
Veronika was not a lucky girl, never had been.
And in that dark alley, so many months ago, she was certain her luck had run out. She was vulnerable, alone and the men who had been tracking her finally had made their move. They’d trapped her in that alley, beat her about the face until she tasted the blood in her mouth, and her belly until she found it hard to breathe, pushed her up against the wall and put the knife to her throat making such demands, such hideous demands. She knew she’d die, or go missing, perhaps sold into a life even worse than the lonely one she was living.
Then, out of nowhere, Lord Ashton appeared.
Veronika never knew what he was doing there but she prayed to God nearly every night a prayer of gratitude that he was.
There had been three large men but Lord Ashton dispatched them without breaking a sweat. When he turned his dark eyes to her she noticed he wasn’t even breathing heavily and his expression was not angry but strangely remote. The controlled and practised violence he showed when dealing with her attackers was almost more frightening then the knife pressed to her throat.
“Come with me, you’ll be safe,” he’d commanded, speaking fluent Russian.
She went, too afraid not to go at the same time knowing somewhere deep in her heart she was safe.
He took her to a hotel and signed her in, paying a week in advance.
She expected he would want something, something she’d never given anyone, and, although she was frightened, she knew she would have given it to him. He had saved her life for one thing and for another, he was very handsome, except for the scar on his mouth which made him look slightly menacing.
He was tall, lean and utterly perfect.
And he was her hero.
But instead, the moment he saw her safely into her room and handed her a wetted towel to wipe the blood from her mouth, he turned to go. She became so scared at the thought of being left alone, she blurted out her whole life story in quick, frightened sentences.
He listened, his impersonal expression never changing throughout her sad saga. When she was done, he nodded and left without a word. She thought that was it and she didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t stay and she was too frightened to leave.
In fifteen minutes, the phone rang in the room and an efficient woman was on the line, telling Veronika in somewhat broken Russian what would happen to her. In a week, she had a passport and a ticket to England.
That was it and here she was.
She’d started her job immediately in this big, frightening house with its many chimneys and gables, wrought-ironed scroll work, twisted, strange fancies shooting toward the sky, its curved turrets and graceful chapel.
Mrs. K was nice to her from the first but it still took Veronika months to trust her. Carter was gruff and quiet but she noticed he, and Mr. Kilpatrick when he was around, both looked after Veronika either under Mrs. K’s request or Lord Ashton’s edict. Even with their easy acceptance and their kind, efficient training of her in her new duties, she was still frightened. The men Lord Ashton had bested were not of the kind to lose gracefully.
She lived in fear that they would find her, one day.
In her new life, though, somehow, with all of this hanging over her head, the house scared her most of all. Especially at night, when she watched over the children and heard the noises, felt the draughts and saw the shadow of a man walking around outside.
No, the house didn’t scare her most of all. Losing her job did. She couldn’t go back to St. Petersburg.
And she feared losing her job every second of every day because Lady Ashton was not an easy mistress.
Everything had to be perfect, no feather left on the floor by the vacuum, no wet washcloth forgotten in the shower, no familiarity with family or guests. If it happened, the results were terrible. Veronika had felt Lady Ashton’s displeasure, the razor sharpness of her tongue and her angry eyes. There were rules and responsibilities that had to be seen to with the utmost care, Veronika had twice been careless, one more time and Veronika knew she would be gone.
“Oh! There you are,” Julia greeted her as if she was actually looking for her and wanted to speak to her. Veronika was finishing in her bathroom and watched as the American approached.
“Look at these… can you believe? I told Sam I needed a mobile phone and a computer, what… two hours ago? And look.”
Veronika shrank back as Miss Julia showed her a sheaf of papers, all of which had tiny writing and pictures of phones or computers on them.
“‘Pick one,’ Sam said, ‘and I’ll have it delivered to you this afternoon.’ This afternoon!” Miss Julia shook her head and Veronika watched the shining, fair hair move around the woman’s tired face. Unlike Lord Ashton and his mother, this one, Veronika could tell from her own awful experiences, was in mourning.
In Russia, when you lost a loved one, you wore black and you beat your chest and you cried and screamed and followed the coffins throwing yourself on the ground while you cursed God. Veronika knew this, she’d done it three times in her short life.
Not here, not in England.
Here, one day Lady Tamsin and Mister Gavin were alive, the next day, they were not and it was business as usual.
Veronika had walked in on Mrs. K snuffling into her handkerchief and Carter hadn’t spoken for a week, walking around tight-lipped and pale.