Free The Last Camellia: A Novel by Sarah Jio Page A

and a prominent Adam’s apple appeared in the doorway of the servants’ hall. He was so tall, he had to stoop below the doorway as he passed through. I watched as he stopped at a basin by the window to wash his hands before joining us at the table. He looked up as he reached for the soap, and our eyes met, but he turned away without smiling. Dirt-tinged water streamed from his hands.
    “Miss Lewis, this is Mr. Humphrey, Lord Livingston’s chauffeur,” Mrs. Dilloway said as the man sat down, helping himself to a slice of bread. “Mr. Humphrey, Miss Lewis is the new nanny.”
    He nodded. “What do you think of them?”
    “I’m sorry?” I asked.
    “The children,” he said, spreading butter on the thick slice of bread with a firm hand. Dirt remained under his nails from the apparently unsuccessful scrubbing.
    “Oh, yes,” I said. “I hope they’ll warm to me, after all they’ve been through.”
    He grunted something between bites, before taking a drink of tea. “Watch out for the eldest one,” he said. “That boy carries a pitchfork, I tell you.”
    “I don’t know if I’d go as far as to say that,” I said.
    “Well,” he harrumphed. “Say what you want, but that child is the devil incarnate.”
    “Miss Lewis,” Mrs. Dilloway interjected, “Mr. Humphrey’s just smarting because he thinks Abbott gave the car a flat tire last week.”
    “What makes you think he did that?”
    Mr. Humphrey leaned back in his chair. “I know a guilty face when I see one,” he said. “Besides, you should have seen his smirk when I had to patch the tire.”
    “Maybe he’s just misunderstood,” I said. “Maybe his brother and sisters are too. After all, they only recently lost their mother.”
    A silence fell over the room, and I felt my cheeks growing pink.
    “Miss Lewis,” Mrs. Dilloway began, “if you don’t have an appetite, why don’t I show you the house?”
    I nodded. “That would be lovely, thank you.”
    We walked up the stairs, through the doorway that led to the foyer. Mrs. Dilloway walked straight to a gold sconce on the far wall and polished it with her sleeve. “That Sadie,” she huffed. “She always neglects these fixtures.” She took a step back to examine the sconce, then frowned. “Lord Livingston doesn’t like to see fingerprints.”
    I glanced around the foyer, open to three stories. The walls were dressed in elaborate wood panels and decorated with paintings of people engaged in foxhunting and horse-riding and other scenes of life in the English countryside of centuries past. I thought of Desmond suddenly, wondering if he came from a home like this.
    “It’s quite something, isn’t it?” Mrs. Dilloway said proudly.
    “Oh, yes,” I replied.
    “I remember my first day here. I’d never seen anything more beautiful in all my life.”
    “I can see why,” I said, marveling at the space. “It’s so different from where I come from.”
    “You will come to love it as I have,” Mrs. Dilloway said confidently.
    I gazed up at a painting of a stiff-looking man with a dog seated at his feet. I thought of Papa with his easy smile and rosy cheeks. “What’s Mr. Livingston, I mean, er, Lord Livingston like?”
    Mrs. Dilloway eyed the painting affectionately. “He’s a complicated man,” she said. “He—” The front door flung open and a large yellow Labrador retriever barreled in. His light fur was all but covered in a thick layer of mud. He wagged his tail, and dropped a rubber ball at my feet. A moment later, Abbott and Nicholas appeared sheepishly, their pants mud-stained.
    “Mr. Abbott! Mr. Nicholas!” Mrs. Dilloway scolded. “Where have you been?”
    “We only took Ferris on a walk to the rose garden, ma’am,” the elder boy said.
    “Boys, your father forbade you,” she continued. “Why must you disobey him?”
    “It was Ferris’s fault,” Nicholas said. “He ran away. We had to go after him.”
    Mrs. Dilloway plucked a pink petal that had affixed itself to the