TELL IT TO THE BEES

"Oh, nonsense. You have been given the night off just like everyone else. Surely no one expects you'll be spending the time hiding, unless you genuinely wish to do so." She had been in Rosie's position once, over twenty years ago now, and could empathise to a certain point. When you were expect to be neither seen nor heard, anything else seemed daunting. The servants had been a rare night of freedom to enjoy a fine party, but it was highly unlikely that meant no one would chastise them for stepping out of line. The fact that Rosie was hiding made perfect sense and Nora could not blame her for it.

She remained silent for a moment, carefully considering her next words. She wouldn't be caught dead openly badmouthing her employers, not yet at least, but that hardly meant she agreed with them or the seemingly ancient way their society functioned.

"No," Rosie replied uncertainly. "I mean, I dunno if I want to be alone. Maybe not. I don't think so." After a beat, she shuffled sideways on the stone bench to make room.

"I don't really know why I'm hiding," she continued, still twisting the hem of her dress in hands dry from years of soap flakes and hard graft. "It doesn't feel right, my being in there. If we were all down the pub, maybe... but in the Big House?" She grimaced. "I've dusted every room in that place a thousand times. Don't feel right, my being there."

Clearing his throat, he added a little more respectably, "By which I mean are you sure it wasn't letters from the, I don't know, tailor or bookseller or the nearest MP?" But he knew it wasn't. He could tell from the glint in Evans's eye and the telltale uptick of his heartbeat.

"Of course it were a man. I live with 'em, don't I? That were a man's hand, and Lady Prudence had replied to him. Many times. I don't know a thing more. You ask her. Sounds like a family matter to me."

And this time, because she couldn't help herself, she grinned.

"How am I supposed to know who you do or don't like?" Rosie retorted, uncrossing one arm so that she could twine some hair that straggled from her cap. "Besides, it's none of my business, isn't that what you said to me?" Without waiting for a reply, Rosie pursed her lips and momentarily enjoyed the feeling of power. It was nice to have the scales tip her way for once.

Still, the secret she had for Lord Balfour was anything but inhuman. If anything, it turned the frigid statue of Lady Pru into something with a livin', beatin' heart - a heart that was plump and juicy as a peach.

While she certainly wouldn't have minded being an important guest of honour, Nora was grateful she could slip away from the party-goers and enjoy a moment of quiet solitude. Well, that might have been the case if her planned hiding spot hadn't already been occupied by someone with similar intentions.

"Oh, I am sorry," she apologised immediately, taking a step back as if allowing the other just a little more space. "I hope I didn't interrupt anything. I simply needed to step away for a moment." Nora had spent her adult life in the service of fine houses and the wealthy families who owned them, but parties of such a calibre were still a rarity, especially ones where she was allowed to meander and loiter about. She wasn't overwhelmed per se, but the excitement of it all was starting to get to her.

Except for parties like this. Except for when it were so obvious that she were a hanger-on; a maid.

She'd strode out into the warm gloom on the pretense of enjoying the gardens. In truth, as soon as she was out of the puddle of chandelier light that flooded the lawn, Rosie broke into a run and had been perched on the edge of a stone fountain for what felt like forever. Until now, of course.

Rosie tightened her grip: she had been twisting the hem of her best dress with the force of a laundry maid. She peered up at - mercifully - someone she recognised, if only in passin'.

"Hello," Rosie muttered, tucking a long cord of hair behind one ear. She'd woven daisies along the crown but they were saggin' now. Looked stupid. Girlish.

"M'fine." Her tone curled with irritation and embarrassment. "M'hidin', aren't I? I don't exactly need company..." A peal of genteel laughter prompted them to look towards the house. The sight took Rosie's breath away.

Prudence was beginning to not mind Rosie. She always felt a kinship with her lady's maid. She had been around for as long as Prudence can remember, and she felt a bond that was not easy to hold with Prudence. But Rosie was easy enough to get along with, when she felt like it. Not that Prudence had any interest in offering her a new position.

Her eyebrows furrowed at Rosie's outburst and she whipped around. "--That's not--it's the one below--" and her voice was filled with stern panic. Humiliation fell over Pru at what Rosie could or could not have seen in the drawer. How stupid she was to trust her and let her stay in her room any longer than necessary.

"Of course, milady," Rosie replied, unable to be entirely obsequious yet making a show of stepping back with her hands raised. She fought against her grin and managed to twist it into a kind of cringing, apologetic smile.

"I'll leave you, milady." Rosie picked up the dress and Old Lady Pru's shoes and stockings. Draping them over her arm, she hurried to the door and made sure to give a short bob before she retreated fully.

But when she turned to slip through the door, she saw when her lady's face fell: the precise moment that those arctic manners dropped and she was struck with terror. No ordinary letters would elicit such a thing. Old Lady Pru was hiding something, something juicy.

“I suppose I should just go to bed now, I’m quite exhausted. But then I’ll never hear the end of it from them.” Not that inconveniently dipping out of social situations she did not wish to attend was anything new.

“Thank you, Rosie,” she replied, an almost pained expression on her face as she stepped into something warmer and dryer.

Rosie straightened and put the dress over one arm. She stood like a lemon for a moment, peering around for an airer of some description, and settled for gingerly laying it out on an armchair, as if it were the impression of a ghost.

"Yes, m'lady." Rosie unclasped the necklace, her fingers brushing the back of Lady Prudence's nape, before she turned away quickly.

"This dressin' lark isn't so bad," Rosie remarked, if only to fill the silence. She investigated the variety of wooden boxes on the vanity before putting the necklace into a random one (eh, Miss Trousers-and-Golf would figure it out later). She retrieved the dress and tugged open a drawer. "S'just common sense, isn't it? Does it get weird, havin' someone dress you every day? How'd you get anythin' done?"

The drawer was full of flimsy articles. Rosie contemplated stuffing the dress into it, but opted at the last moment to make a production of neatly halving it, shaking it out, folding it into quarters. The pearls clattered and caught the light.

"If I were you, milady," Rosie continued, "I'd lounge in a robe all day so that I weren't interrupted by someone unfastenin' my sh-o-o-o-es-"

There, stashed at the bottom of the drawer: a bundle of letters. Foreign postmark. Rosie's heart leaped.

Rosamund, was she? Rose?

He let her continue to accost the bottle without protest, a frown settling on his features as he considered her as seriously as she wanted to be taken. “My uncles,” he said at last. “They’ll tell me only so much about the estates, it’s my cousin, the heir, they’re interested in raising, so I need to know what they’re keeping back.” A far cry from a harmless but amusing riffle through Prudence’s chest of drawers. “I understand, of course, that it’s not so easy for you, especially with your new role. If there’s anything you need of me, you tell me rightaway.”

This were bad news. Somehow, she knew. But the prospect of bein' a proper ladies maid shone like all the temptations in heaven. She would have new clothes, dresses and shoes, and would be keepin' company with better sort than those downstairs. She'd be rubbin' elbows with the most beautiful women, listenin' to their secrets, swearin' her loyalty. If Lord Balfour needed an eye or two for that to happen... so bloody well be it.

Rosie thrust out a hand and they shook.

Or maybe it was him he didn’t like being made fun of.

He rested the gin bottle against his knee, unable to make himself take another drink. There was a party he eventually had to rejoin and they would notice if he came in sopping drunk. Propriety, after all.

"Only..." She hesitated. "Well, you could help me. What is it that you want me to tell you? There are about fifty people in this 'ousehold, and near on all of 'em have somethin' to hide. D'you want to know anythin' about anyone special? And don't say owt," Rosie added sharply. "You don't strike me, milord, as the sort of man who doesn't 'ave a plan."

Edwin gladly accepted the bottle, taking a measured sip to smooth his nerves. It was practically medicinal. This was an exercise in therapeutic… bloody rot, it was him sitting next to hot steam pipes, drinking with the help. The help who was getting a leg up in the system in exchange for absolutely no useful information at all.

"Milord!" she objected in delight, referring to his use of the word 'shit'. Oh, she'd 'eard them all say worse, but it felt good to remind him that he were (apparently) the social better. Them lot always had an attack of conscience and went over all eager to remedy their mistake. Rosie could do with a remedy that ended her in the job of a ladies' maid, that were for sure.

"Oi! I've only started today, haven't I? Give a woman some grace. That's what you Catholics do, in'it? Or is it all guilt and rosary." She drawled the last word with every ounce of Northern rough she could muster. Grinning cheekily, she swigged again and handed him the bottle.

"I won't comment, milord. It'd be rude of me, wouldn't it? Above m'station. You lot have the monopoly on propriety, or did you forget?"

Rosie picked up a strand of hair and investigated it, curling the dark around her fingers like a snake.

The lesson had stuck with only one.

Or not at all with Evans, considering the ease with which she collapsed onto what looked like laundry. Edwin, still holding onto the basket (more laundry), set it down quickly. They were, he realised, in continued possession of the gin.

"Are you jokin'?" She snatched the bottle and uncorked it with a wrench, only stopping herself from usin' her teeth at the last moment. The first taste was acrid, and she mimed vomiting before taking another long slug. When she handed it back to Lord Balfour, the warmth was returnin' to her limbs.

"I wouldn't lie about somethin' like that," Rosie remarked staunchly. She crossed her hands on her stomach and stretched out, sinking back against the pile of old sheets. "Surely you've 'eard the ghost, milord? It only causes a proper racket. At least, it does upstairs, where we all sleep." A snide comment: the servants slept at the top of the house but below the attics. It were the coldest and hottest part of the house, dependin' on the season.

The night simply couldn’t be over fast enough.

Prudence rose slowly, not used to someone not showing her patience. She almost pretended to faint for dramatics, but instead steadied herself with her cane and rose, her back toward Rosie.

“I would surely hope not,” Prudence said, a puzzling assumption to her voice. “It was quite expensive.” In truth, she had no idea the cost of the dress, only that the gin and rain it was currently soaked in surely had to bring down its value.

Then Old Lady Pru looked over her shoulder, and Rosie's breathing went funny.

She weren't a beautiful woman, but there was somethin' about 'er. Soft blonde hair, tucked into a bob; her clear eyes. Her skin were pale and smooth, and Rosie was certain that the down on the private places of her would be like feathers. She felt the heat rise in her face and forced herself into action. Rosie began unfastening the cloth buttons that ran along the back of milady's dress. Each one she unhooked revealed another sliver of a creamy slip that hung from birdlike shoulders so delicate that Rosie was moved to...

"Your hair, milady," Rosie whispered. "If I may...?" She untucked a loose curl from the strap of the dress and eased it over and down.

When the dress was unfastened, Rosie swallowed and willed her eyes to unfocus to preserve her lady's modesty.

In the face of so much squeamishness, Caro naturally took the opposite view. She viewed the inner workings of her home with fascination. She patronized the smoke, grease, and steam behind the green baize door as if it was all her own personal museum, to be peered at at will, stopping for questions whenever one entered her head. Any gnashed teeth or clenched jaws on the part of the staff were entirely beneath her notice.

Now, in a house she couldn't lay claim to, these whims weren't something she indulged as frequently. Still, with every Fortescue, Ryland, and Balfour seeming particularly intent on mindblowing idiocy this weekend, she had been desperate for any change in environment, however small.

"Oh!" She shrunk back instinctively, her back curving to hit the next nearest step, when she became aware of Rosie's presence.

She bounced to her feet, dropping the cigarette and grinding it hard into the stairs.

"To tell you the truth," She dropped into a conspiratorial tone. "I always think these weekends will be thrilling, and then –" A shrug. "God forbid what kinds of horrors you might find up there. His Grace, or the Dowager, or someone, went a bit wild with the champagne on offer this year." There's no actual apology for anyone's behaviour in what she says, exactly. It's Rosie's job to scrape vomit and who knows what else from baseboards, isn't it?

"The only upside is that misbehaviour leads to a hell of a lot of secrets. Millions in blackmail, if you knew what you were doing." She was only half joking.

She weren't stupid. She could read between the lines. What was surprising was that Lord Balfour had already told his wife about, well, the arrangement; and to that she had to assume he'd told Lady Balfour that Rosie were to be her new ladies maid.

Excitement thrummed, and she straightened her posture.

"Of course, milady," Rosie replied, slathering it on as one might a pat of butter on hot toast. "Not at all, milady, I understand." Not really... when had she last been invited to a party that wasn't hosted by her employers? Or a party at all, now that she thought about it...

Excitement gave way abruptly to panic, and Rosie's face flushed.

"I didn't have much, milady, I swear it!" she blurted. "Only, Lord Balfour said I were allowed a glass on account of Old Lady Pru- I mean Lady Prudence." Mortified, Rosie snapped her trap shut and stared at Lady Balfour in horror.