“You thought to go to London and become a secretary, I take it?” Mrs. Symonds asked.
“Yes.”
“And one day you want to travel.”
Stella looked miserably at the pile of unburned papers on the table. “I thought if I worked hard enough, I might be able to save. It was a silly idea.”
“You’ve done that three times now,” said Mrs. Symonds sharply.
“What?”
“Used the word ‘silly.’ ”
Stella’s back straightened.
“How did you find the time for both?” Mrs. Symonds asked.
“After I finished in the kitchen every night, I would go to my room and study. Sometimes, I would wake up early in the mornings as well.”
“Can you not continue to do that?” Mrs. Symonds asked.
She shook her head. “With Bobby, it’s too difficult. Besides, there’s no point now.”
“No point?”
“I used most of the money I’d saved on him,” she said.
Mrs. Symonds looked shocked. “Your sister didn’t provide for him?”
“Joan could forget about money like that,” she snapped, “when it suited her.”
“You could have asked if Robin had any clothes he’d grown out of. He was a little taller than Bobby, but with a little hemming they would have worked,” said Mrs. Symonds.
This time Stella kept her proud mouth shut.
“No, I see. That wouldn’t do,” said Mrs. Symonds.
“It isn’t just the money. What am I supposed to do with him? If I move to London, I’ll have to find some place to stay that allows children. I’ll have to find a job with an employer who doesn’t mind that I have a child, even if he isn’t my own son. It doesn’t matter that my story about Joan dying is the truth. I know what it sounds like. And what happens when he is ill and needs to be nursed?”
“You and Bobby will always have a home here,” said Mrs. Symonds.
No. Stella felt the word in every bit of her body. What Mrs. Symonds was offering was a kindness few domestics could hope for, but it felt wrong. She couldn’t stay here.
Still, she wasn’t thinking only for herself and it was time to accept that.
“Thank you,” she said, shoulders drooping under the heavy weight of her future.
Mrs. Symonds toyed with the cover of one of Stella’s exercise books. “If you still do wish to move to London, there might be a way.”
“How?”
“Let Bobby stay here.”
“What?”
“He is already settled at Highbury. He can move back into the nursery, and I can recall Nanny or hire on someone else. I can care for him, and you could go to London.”
“I have no money,” Stella said.
Mrs. Symonds arched a brow. “I could arrange that, too.”
“It wouldn’t be too painful for you after Robin?” Stella asked.
Mrs. Symonds set the book down and folded her hands on top of each other before looking up, her eyes solemn but determined. “It would give me a great deal of pleasure.”
There it was, her plan held out on a silver platter to her, funded by this woman she’d worked for, for so long. She could go to London. She could work her way into a job that, one day, might let her see those places she’d planned to go for so long. But it would mean turning her back on the one responsibility she should hold most dear.
“I don’t know if I can do that,” Stella said.
“I am going to London at the end of the week. You may think about it until I return,” Mrs. Symonds said. “Now, I think I’ll have that warm milk I came down for.”
Stella stood automatically. “It’ll just be a moment.”
“No, Miss Adderton, you take your things and go back to bed.”
When she shot Mrs. Symonds an uncertain look, the mistress of Highbury laughed. “I can warm a pan of powdered milk. I’m not completely helpless.”
Stella had never seen the great lady do anything of the sort, but who was she to argue with the mistress of the house? Instead, she picked up her things and began the long climb upstairs knowing she wouldn’t sleep a wink.
• VENETIA •
SATURDAY, 26 OCTOBER 1907
Highbury House
Cold with the first frosts already threatening
My conversation with Mr. Hillock brought me back to life. I stood, brushed off my skirts, and returned to the desk I’d neglected since my miscarriage. Opening my sketchbook, I began to work out a plan for the winter garden.
For four days, I hardly left my desk, falling asleep over my pencil. But every morning I woke up, peeled the paper from my face, bathed, and then went back to work.
Twice in four days, Mr. Hillock came to the house bearing bread or cakes from his wife’s kitchen. I ate like a starving woman while he looked at my drawings, asking questions and familiarizing himself with the design he would have to execute.
I have not yet told Adam what happened at Highbury House. If he thinks anything of the lapse in my correspondence, he hasn’t mentioned it in the letters that are delivered with my breakfast tray. I will tell him in my own time what had happened. Or I won’t. It is no one’s business but my own.
And Matthew’s.
Matthew, who has yet to reappear. I cannot deny that I had hoped he would, if only to share a little bit of the burden of grief. If I let myself think back to that horrible evening when everything went wrong, I can see the expression of rage and desperation and grief stretched across his face. But then every doubt I ever had of his feelings—about the proposal, the baby, everything—creeps back in.
Back to my garden.
• STELLA •
Thwack! The cleaver went straight through bone and hit the wood butcher’s block, solid and satisfying. Beth, who was sitting well out of the range of chicken’s blood, watched Stella, wide-eyed.
“How you don’t chop your own hand off I’ll never know,” said Beth. Behind her, Mrs. George and her minions banged pots and pans.
“More years of practice than I’d like,” said Stella, setting the neatly severed thigh to the side of her board. Her cuts had to be precise because every bit of this chicken would be used. She would pound the breasts thin, coat them with margarine and herbs, roll them in the last brown bread crumbs from the morning’s loaf, and then fry them for something approximating chicken Kiev for Mrs. Symonds’s dinner tonight. She would roast the thighs separately, pulling the meat from the bone to use in a pie. And the carcass would go into a pot for stock, Stella retrieving any remaining meat to shred for a soup with the vegetables Beth had just delivered.
“I suppose I’ll have to learn how to cook properly at some point,” said Beth.
Stella looked up. “You can’t cook?”
Beth shrugged. “Basic things, but I haven’t had much practice with it. My aunt never let me in the kitchen with her. She said I was a distraction. You can teach me if I’m still in Highbury.”
If I’m still at Highbury, Stella thought.
“Have you heard from your Graeme?” she asked.
“I get a letter most days,” said Beth.
“And have you talked any more about where you’ll live?” she asked.