Nothing But Time (6 page)

“But you’ll come back, yes?”

Kate drew in a breath and exhaled slowly. 
While she didn’t want to lie, Kate wasn’t completely a cold-hearted bitch.  There was no reason to break his
heart
. 
“Eventually, sure
and I’ll come visit on my days off.
”

“Will you?”

“Of course,”
Kate said to reassure him.  “
And just think, y
ou’ll have all the time and space you need to work on getting us home and I’ll have something to keep me busy so that I don’t think so hard about how much I miss my mom and dad.”

The emotion welling up in her didn’t need to be faked and Kate could see
David
giving in under her honest admission. 
“I just need something
to do
, anything to occupy my mind and time,
David
.  Of course, I’ll visit when I can. 
You are my only friend here, you know.  The only one I can really talk to.”

That seemed to make
David
feel better and Kate breathed a sigh of relief.  As long as
David
didn’t know that her main concern
– ranked only slightly above ridding herself of mind-numbing boredom – w
as putting some space between them, she’d be fine.  She couldn’t afford
to alienate him in case he did
manag
e
to solve the cabling
issue and was able to deliver them safely back to the
twenty-first
century.  “Here’s the address in case anything comes up.”  Kate slid a copy of the address along the table
. 
David
picked
it
up and studied
it
.

He let out a low whistle.  “
Belgrave
Square
, huh?  Swanky.  What did you say you’ll be doing there?”

Taking a deep breath, Kate squared her shoulders before admitting.  “I’m going to be a maid…for now.”

David
nearly choked on his pork.  “A maid?  You?  You’ll never survive it!”

“Yes, a maid!”  Kate pushed back from the table to go and pack her bags.  “Really,
David
, how hard can it be?”

Ramble House

Henley-on-
Thames
, England

The next afternoon

God, it was hard!
Kate
thought to herself as she lugged yet another
full bucket of
water from the kitchens of
her employer’s
massive house to the drawing room where she was scrubbing the soot from around the edges of the fireplace
.  She
dared not falter or weaken to the task because somewhere in the
mansion
was a hawk-eyed old bat who apparently had nothing
better
to do but micro-manage her platoon of
housemaids
while they scrubbed and polished every inch of the place.

She’d been on her hands and knees practically from the moment of her arrival and there seemed to be no end in sight.
  Kate couldn’t help wondering if she wouldn’t be better off drifting aimlessly around
David
’s house for the next few years rather th
an toiling slavishly away.  N
o, she had to do this!  She needed to make her own way no matter what century she was in and she knew it.  If this was how it would be done, then so be it!

But, ugh!  T
he place was huge!

David
had
taken the time to drive her into town the previous afternoon and drop her off
at
the address Mr. Lowry had given her in London’s
Belgrave
Square
.
  She had thought it an act of kindness until they had rolled up in front of the proper
t
y and she had seen the look on his face.  He had wanted to see her shock when she saw the ‘house’ – as she put it – where she
thought she
would be working.  How he must have laughed over her reaction.

When she had gotten out of the carriage and looked up
and up
,
Kate
felt her jaw nearly hit the cobbles at her feet.  It was practically a
white stone
palace with its n
eoclassical design
and six stories
, a series of four pillars holding up the front portico with its frieze of war-like cavalrymen and horses rearing with swords drawn.  

That
was the first moment that
Kate
had truly taken to
put aside
the ruminations of her mind and actually look around her. 

This was London in 1876.  The
suburb
s and business districts she left behind
in
David
’s neighborhood
had barely
changed
when compared
with
those same areas in her time
at first
glance
. 
Nothing in St. John’s Wood stood out as significantl
y different from her time.  There
were quiet, traditional neighborhoods full of charming storefronts and established pubs.  She’d seen few people when out on her occasional walks,
seen few things other than infrequent
horses or carriages to really drive home how different this time was. 

But this! 
Kate
circled about taking in the wealth of the
vicinity
with its spectacular mansions, fancily dressed pedestrians and ornate carriage
s
that filled the streets.
Gone was London’s modern skyline, the towerin
g
fifty
-story
Canary Wharf (as everyone referred to One Canada Square)
,
Heron Tower
and new Shard
.  In fact, the coal-smoke haze that hovered overhead couldn’t hide the fact that
practically every building
was
shorter than in her time and
the London Eye was nowhere in s
ight.

I
t was like being droppe
d onto the set of a period film, a
n Academy Award winner
for set design
.  It all reeked of old-fashioned wealth and culture. 

Standing there on the cobbled walk
in Belgrave Square
was
the first moment
Kate
genuinely felt out of time.  Out of her element.  Probably the first moment she felt real fear.  She could get lost in this place, swallowed up by it and no one would notice or care.
  She
was
nothing.

Kate
swallowed deeply
trying to calm her trembling heart
,
force
d
a cheerful
goodbye to
David
and climbed the s
teep
steps to the door
,
making her first mistake by going to the front rather than to the rear door.

The
indignant
butler
sent her around to the service entrance and there she had met Mrs.
Andrews
.  That
plump
, motherly
woman
had welcomed her warmly but
wasted no time informing Kate that
‘the master’
had announced that he
was retiring to the country for the remainder of the Season.  Kate
was to b
e sent off to
Buckinghamshire
straight away with a handful of the newer staff to prepare for his arrival there. 

With barely a moment to digest the news much less let
David
know of the change
, Kate
and three other new employees, two young men and a cheerful woman in her early t
wenties
, were rounded up and driven to a train station in Chelsea where the quartet boarded a westbound locomotive
to Henley-on-Thames
.  Back in the rocking conveyance, Kate swallowed back her nausea with questions chasing each other through her mind, wondering where they were off to.

Another carriage picked them up and brought them to a place the driver called Ramble House.
The moment the old house ca
me into view, Kate had fallen in love.  All her worries
about where she was going and how she was to let
David
know where she was
disappeared as she took in the
beauty of the
ivy-
covered
brick
building with its bank of windows looking out over the long narrow reflecting pool that stretched out before it.  It must have been hundreds of years old and it was simply breathtaking.

N
ot so literally breathtaking
though
as the hard poke she’d received from Ramble House’s housekeeper, Mrs. Hendricks, when
Kate’s
attention had wandered
from the housekeeper’s
lecture
to
ogle
and awe over
the
view
through a small window in the housekeeper’s office
.

The housekeeper at Ramble House
was the complete opposite of the maternal Mrs. Andrews. 
Mrs. Hendricks
was
a frail looking old woman, scrawny and skeletal in her black gown with her grey hair scraped into a tight bun at her nap
e
.  H
er icy blue eyes were shrewd.
Any
charitable
urge
Kate
might have
felt to help the old woman t
o a chair and offer her tea
withered and died when Hendricks leveled that
frigid
glare upon her
and jabbed her in the
ribs
.

Kate
felt as if the woman could see right through her as she studied both herself and the letter of introduction Lowry had given her.
  The housekeeper
questioned her at length regarding her skills, lack thereof and missing references.

Hendricks finally nodded.  “Ye’ll do for now,
but I’ll be watchi
ng ye. 
All of ye.
”
S
he waved a finger at the four newcomers.  “
Master’s coming at the
end
of the week
and everything will be spit spot before he gets ‘ere.  Marta will show ye
girls
to
yer quarters
and
issue
ye a uniform
then I want ye back down ‘ere ready to work.  T
en
minutes!”
  The housekeeper passed off the two new male workers to another man standing nearby with similar instructions.
  It surprised Kate that there would be work to do since it was nearly five o’clock already.

However she was too t
horoughly cowed
(
perhaps
for the f
irst time since orientation
day
at
graduate school)
to argue.  Meekly,
Kate
followed along behind Marta
and the other new maid, who had introduced herself on the train as Nan,
through a series of passageways and stairs that were
solely
for the servants
’
use to keep them
, Kate supposed, from being seen
in the main part of the mansion. 

 
Marta
was what Kate always pictured
as ‘the girl next door’.  She was a pretty blond
e
maybe a couple years younge
r than
she was
.  Short, a wee bi
t plump and completely wholesome looking despite the drab gray dress and white apron she wore.
  With her rosy cheeks and winking
dimples, Marta also had a look about her that told Kate she smiled often. 
The maid
had been
working for the house for four years.  She was a fount of knowledge giving
Kate
and Nan
a quick rundown of the place, who was who and what
they were
expected to do.  The
‘quarters’
they
w
ere
shown to was a dormitory on the top floor
shared by
all the lower level maids of the house.  There were about twenty beds there leaving
Kate
to wonder what they could all do to stay busy every day.

It had onl
y taken her the remainder of that first
afternoon
to find out.  The
ir duties were to
dust
, swe
ep, mop and polish
every surface of the
house
that awed Kate in its sheer magnificence. 
The
palatial
mansion – though not so large looking from the front – extended far back. 
There were e
ighteen bedrooms, twelve reception rooms, three dining rooms, a billiard room, a study.  The list went on and on.  There was even a room
solely
dedicated to the washing of the estate
’
s hounds. 

Each room was more opulent than the last.  Finely detailed woodwork, velvet and silk curtains and upholstery and more gold leaf and crystal than any home should have.  Her
first sight of the foyer with its marble floors, Corinthian pillars and huge portraits in gilded frames was enough to set Kate back on her heels
. 
There was visually abundant wealth in every room she worked in. 
It was overwhelming, even
more so
when Kate considered that she was one of the many responsible for keeping it all clean. 

They
were to
m
ak
e beds, change
linens, beat rugs and drapes
, dust,
scrub,
polish and shine
.  Upstairs and down.  All five stories
of the mansion’s residential rooms
.  And when they made it all the way through, Marta said, they would start all over again.  Along with the cleaning maids was a
n army of kitchen
staff
along with
footmen
and
downstairs maids who fetched and carried for others.  Outside were the gardeners and stable staff. 
In total
,
over
seventy people
were employed
in this house.