Love by the Morning Star (14 page)

“You fell asleep,” he pronounced grimly.

“Oh, yes. Another one of those proclivities we can't avoid. You see,” she said as if she were giving a quite reasonable explanation of her abominable behavior, “I was so very sleepy.”

A great deal of the improving literature Coombe received biweekly by post from the Untangled Ganglions correspondence course dealt with philosophy and logic. He puzzled through her statement.
Sleepiness
, he thought,
is a biologic fact
.
If I had told her to fetch something from a high shelf and she was too short to reach it, would I fire her for her lack of stature? Then is it fair to punish someone for a fault of nature? The human body, pushed to certain extremes, must sleep
.

But then he remembered the fundamental fact of life in service: servants aren't human.

Then too there was the circumstance of her discovery. If he, or Mrs. Wilcox, or the postman had discovered her asleep at the front door, it might all have been hushed up (after a fitting punishment, perhaps the loss of an afternoon off so she could catch up on her sleep instead of going to a village dance). But to have been found by
him!

“Hannah, do you have any idea who discovered you asleep like a puppy on the doorstep?” No,
puppy
had been an error—the comparison made her seem that much more endearing, made what must come next that much more difficult.

“I told you, I thought it was—”

“You were in error,” he said with the utmost butlerish severity. “Your rescuer, if I may so style him, was His Royal Highness Prince George Edward Alexander Edmund, Duke of Kent, Earl of St. Andrews and Baron Downpatrick, Royal Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Order of the Thistle, Order of the . . .”

Almost any other maid would have fainted or—for maids are notoriously archaic in their gesticulation—thrown her apron over her face. But Hannah did not seem at all impressed to have been scooped up by the third in line to the throne. “Then he really must be Noel's Georgie. Funny, I always imagined he was taller.”

Something clicked in Coombe's head, a half-remembered bit of gossip. “Noel . . . Coward?”

“Yes, he and my father hit it off right away, though I think he stole some of my father's best jokes for his next play. Still, no hard feelings.”

“You know Noel Coward?” he asked.

“Well, I don't know if he'd remember me—it was a while ago.”

“Who exactly are you? No, never mind. I'm afraid it won't do. Whoever you were, what you are now is a servant. I am in charge of the smooth running of this household, and I simply cannot permit such disruptions as you have caused. We were prepared to overlook last night's debacle as sheer ignorance, but to fall asleep, in public!”

“Hardly public,” she answered, rubbing the last bits of sleep out of her eyes. “A mile from the gate and five miles from a good road.”

“Insolence will avail you naught,” he said, so theatrically that a giggle burst from Hannah's lips.

She stifled it with her fingers, but her eyes danced. Really, these English were so wonderfully false, always acting every moment of their lives. Sally, who Hannah could plainly see so desperately wanted to be kind and maternal, but who forced herself into sharpness. The Liripips, who had acted their aristocratic parts so long, pretending to be some elevated form of life that transcended such mundane things as servants, that they never broke character. And Coombe, who so obviously wanted to gossip, who understood what it is to be tired, playing the perfect unemotional butler.

And then the humor of it all abruptly vanished.

“I'm afraid I must give you notice,” Coombe said.

“Of what?” she asked, tipping her head again in that most beguiling fashion.

“You will be paid for the remainder of the week, certainly, and provided transportation back to London.”

“No!” she cried. “You mustn't! You can't!” Since her arrival she'd thought again and again about leaving, to beg for help from the refugee agency, to peddle her voice at the lowest music halls until she could support herself. Her promise to her mother had held her at Starkers. But now she had something else: Teddy's friendship. More than friendship already, she was sure, and she wouldn't give that up. Not until he'd come home again, or at least until she'd gotten his first letter, so she could write back and explain everything.

“Technically, Cook or Mrs. Wilcox should be the one to fire you, but when I have explained the situation I'm sure they will defer to my judgment. No, don't cry. Oh, Lord!”

Hannah tumbled out of the chaise and now knelt melodramatically at his feet, her head bent.

“My dear, ahem, this is most . . .”

“Please do not make me leave.”

“Take your hands off my—Oh, my!” She had reached up blindly to clasp him in supplication, and the view that Anna got when she swept into the room was blackmail material if she had ever seen it.

Coombe saw her and stepped back sharply. Hannah, still clutching his midsection, fell forward.

“Miss Morgan, this is not what it appears to be,” Coombe sputtered. “Forgive this unfortunate spectacle . . .”

“Of the Unfortunate Fruit,” Hannah said, scrambling to her feet. “I quite agree with your disapproving look,” she added, regarding the newcomer. It was the stunning blond woman who had taken her place in the car. When Teddy had smiled at her the night before with his world-embracing cheerfulness and goodwill, Hannah had been jealous. But it was not this large gold and cream woman he'd talked with for hours, not her gloved fingers he had held. It was not her thumb he had kissed, or she who would get the first dance at the Servants' Ball. She smiled at Anna now; she had nothing to fear.

“I do not make a habit of clutching at men or kissing their feet,” Hannah went on. “Begging and abasement are terrible, don't you agree? Yet there are times when they are necessary. I was being cast out, you see, so that is one of the times when one might sink to one's knees—I did it elegantly, don't you think, like a dying swan?—and plead with all one's heart. Do you know, I think Coombe believed I was going to attempt something scandalous, another and much more drastic way of begging, but I am not such a fool as that. To begin with, the parlor is not the proper venue, and then—”

“You will not fire her, Coombe,” Anna said, mustering every ounce of pretend authority she had taught herself over the years.

“But, miss, she has absolutely no experience—we were misled. And then she is incorrigible in her behavior: speaking out of turn, sleeping on the job. I'm very much afraid she won't do.”

Anna looked at the dark little maid. “You speak German?”

“Yes, of course. I
am
German.”

Anna stared evenly at Coombe, until that dignified butler felt like a dickey bird under a cobra's baleful, hypnotic gaze. “I have need of her,” Anna said.

Coombe knew the tone. It was the reason he had never married.

He stiffened and made a little bow, then removed himself.

“Freshen yourself up and then come to my room,” Anna said, and swirled out in a cloud of rose scent.

“I
AM WITHOUT A LADY'S MAID
at the moment,” Anna said breezily when Hannah entered her room. Anna was sitting at a florid rococo vanity, idly dusting her nose with powder and blotting it off again to achieve the exactly right artificial naturalness. “Do you have any experience?”

Hannah gave a deep, regretful sigh. “I sometimes feel that I have wasted so many opportunities for experience in my life. There are times when people—young men mostly, but older ones too, and sometimes those who one would think are quite
too
old—make propositions and you say no, because of course you do not care to, and then you think,
Ought I to have?
Because if you are at a nice restaurant and you are served a very small octopus, you eat it, do you not, even if the idea of eating such a perfect little animal who is looking at you and seems to be still alive makes your stomach flutter, because you might not ever have another chance, and then afterward, for all your life, you could say you had—do you see? An experience. Do you think people should sometimes do things they don't think they want to, just for the experience?”

Anna gave her that disjointed look with which so many people regarded Hannah, as if they had fallen too many words behind to ever catch up.

“I would not say such a thing to a man because it would give him ammunition against future women, but to you I can say it. I can tell by the look of you that you must receive many offers of experience, probably more than I, because you really are quite spectacular, almost as frighteningly pretty as Traudl, but then you are an English lady and I think men might not make as many offers to ladies as they do to cabaret singers.”

Anna froze mid-powder. An electric sensation coursed through her, sudden and shocking, accompanied, as a real charge might be, by paralysis and a strange overpowering buzzing in her ears. German. Jewish. The stage. A kitchen maid.

How could I have been so stupid?
Anna asked herself.
It was there, all of it, right before me
. But there had been so many German and Austrian and Czech girls trickling in over the last year, taking jobs in service, making her father complain bitterly about unemployed English girls being deprived of honest work. There was another one in Starkers—she'd heard her muttering in her foreign lingo as she fluffed the pillows. It was too remarkably obvious: Could she have somehow simply switched places with the girl who was the real step-cousin-in-law? There was not some missing girl waiting to unmask her. The girl was here, in Starkers. But why had she said nothing? Why would a girl who was supposed to be welcomed into the family accept a place as kitchen maid?

With a chill of uncertain dread giving her goose bumps, Anna asked, “What is your name?” Silently, she pleaded,
Let me be wrong
.

“Hannah Morgenstern, and you are? But no, I am not to ask.” She gave Anna a sweet smile, without malice. “You see, I hadn't intended to be a maid. I forget sometimes—no, all the time—how I am supposed to behave. I am to be invisible to the family.”

For all her small stature, she was perhaps the most visible person Anna had ever seen.

Hannah
, she thought.
The name Lady Liripip called me when we first met. Hannah to Anna, not much of a change. Just the thing an integrating foreigner might do. Just as a foreigner might change her name from Morgenstern to Morgan
.

“What had you intended to be?” Anna asked carefully.

“An opera singer, eventually, though truthfully I have nothing against low singing. Comic singing, I should say, or sentimental. I can't get beyond mezzo soprano, so everything I sing is low. Operetta is splendid too, but no one takes you very seriously when you sing Gilbert and Sullivan. And I could only do the harridan parts. Ruth and Buttercup are never kept by marquises, are they?”

“Do you want to be kept by a marquis?”

“Heavens, no. I want to fall in love with one very nice man whom I will be with all my life, just like my mother did. He can make me expensive presents and buy me pretty little bijou villas if he likes, but it won't be necessary. Love will be enough.”

“Love is never even close to enough,” Anna said passionately. “Without money, love is like a disease. A slum disease. You must avoid it at all costs, and get rid of it ruthlessly if you catch it.”

“You sound as if you know what you're talking about,” Hannah said softly. “I'm very sorry.”

Anna gulped. “I—” She stopped herself. She could not tell Hannah—she could never tell anyone. Her scheme of personal improvement had not been without a price. One hardship was that there was no one to share her struggle with. And another . . .

There had been boys before, nice boys, who had smiled at her or sent her flowers or affectionate letters. Their fathers had been drapers or clerks, and they themselves had been clever, ambitious, hard-working lads who might have given her a good life, if she'd let them try.

There had been one in particular: He had just inherited his father's flower shop, and he had courted her with all his might. But Anna had never given him a chance. She'd dreamed about him, but she wouldn't encourage him. In her mind she'd built their house together, a snuggery filled with the end-of-day's half-wilted blooms, the rose and jasmine scents deepening as the flowers died. She had decorated that dream house with a grandfather clock that ticked away each happy moment of their long life together. And there had been dream children, too, chubby babies rolling in petals, gleefully tearing flowers apart with their clumsy, imperious hands.

But he had not been good enough for her, and he had married someone else.

Anna had always felt an instinctive attraction to men who worked with flowers. That fellow she'd seen from her window, and later in the garden, for instance. What deity had so little insight into the creation of man that he made gardeners poor and rich men indifferent to flowers? Even now, that glimpse of the fetching laborer with his dirty hands and an armful of blossoms made her breath catch, her heart race, far more than the thought of Teddy. Yet rich, titled—and admittedly just as handsome—Teddy had to be her goal. Why did it ache, that traitorous heart of hers?

“It is hard,” Anna said, wondering why she was confessing to this servant. No, she wasn't a servant, she was practically an aristocrat, a relative of the Liripips.
What are our relative positions?
Anna wondered.
Am I higher or lower than she?
It was always the vital question for Anna: Who was superior, and how could she position herself so that she would be perceived as superior?

She went on: “It is hard to be born in one place and then move to another. The old place drags at you. My mother told me stories about Jenny Greenteeth, a fairy who pulls children down into ponds and eats them. People who haven't been in the pond are never afraid. It is those who have felt her claws on their ankles, and then escaped, who know fear.”