Free A Sense of Entitlement by Anna Loan-Wilsey Page B

it further Mrs. Mayhew, clenching down on her bottom lip, left Davies and headed straight for me. Her expression told me I had done something wrong, but as I glanced at the place markers I was satisfied that she wouldn’t find fault with my effort. Mrs. Mayhew stopped short of me and went to the center table, right in front of the stage, and ripped one of the place markers in half. I glanced at the name on the seating chart I held and read Gideon Mayhew .
    “Davish! Davies!” Mrs. Mayhew yelled. The butler and I rushed to her side, exchanging glances. “Mr. Mayhew will not be attending this afternoon’s recital.” I had wondered when she would make the news public. Suddenly the woman turned to me. “Davish, what am I to do?”
    “I believe Mr. James Gordon Bennett has arrived from New York,” I said, as if I’d done this my whole life. Part of my new tasks was to scan the “Cottage Arrivals for the Week” column listed daily in the Mercury newspaper.
    “Really? Wonderful, Davish! Do invite him in Gideon’s stead. I knew I could rely on you.”
    “Thank you, ma’am.”
    “By the way, what was in that envelope you delivered to Mr. Mayhew the other day, Davish?”
    “I have no idea, ma’am,” I said, trying to keep my indignity out of my voice. The suggestion that I would ever open anything I was not instructed to was an affront I had difficulty ignoring, even from Mrs. Charlotte Mayhew.
    “Of course you don’t,” Mrs. Mayhew said, sighing. “Well, whatever it was prompted my husband to go back to New York early. And now he’s planning to stay there!”
    Why would she think the letter had anything to do with it? The letter appeared to me to have been addressed in a man’s hand, not a woman’s. Maybe she was simply using it as an excuse.
    “He’s known about this for weeks and he promised that he would attend. I even invited Maestro Jacobi because he favors him. Is it too much to ask?” Davies and I remained silent, both knowing a rhetorical question when we heard one. Without another word, she walked away.
    “She’s quite disappointed,” I said as Mr. Davies straightened some nearby silverware.
    “Yes, she does seem rather”—the butler hesitated, obviously searching for the most appropriate word—“put out.”
    “Mr. Mayhew’s snub of his wife’s party definitely qualifies as a reason to feel put out,” I said.
    “I’m sure the master had his reasons,” Davies said, defending his employer while shaking his head.
    “She’s put out by more than her husband snubbing the party, if you ask me,” the footman James said as he walked past carrying a tray of crystal goblets. “Where’s Mrs. Astor? We’re still not good enough for that great lady?”
    “James!” Mr. Davies scolded. “Yours is not the place to comment. Now put the goblets over there.”
     
    “Isn’t the music delightful?” Britta said, standing next to me. With our duties temporarily at a lull, several of the maids and I crowded at the end of the third-floor hallway. With the window cracked open, we listened to the music and peered down at the party scene below. The musicians had begun only a few minutes ago. Earlier, people had mingled on the lawn, sipping champagne and eating the picnic fare: salmon croquettes, lobster mayonnaise sandwiches cut into leaf shapes, minced ham roll sandwiches in purple silk ribbons, a variety of custards, cakes, fruits, ices, and cheese. Lady Phillippa was there, as were the two girls I’d met in the hall yesterday, Cora Mayhew and her friend Eugenie Whitwell. I had spied Miss Lizzie and Miss Lucy almost immediately. Except for the fact that Miss Lucy was thinner and Miss Lizzie was more plump, the two elderly sisters looked exactly the same as I remembered them.
    Now that everyone was seated I could get a good look at the woman named Mrs. Grice seated with them. Dressed in an expensive but simple gray and white lawn dress and wide-brimmed straw hat with white egret feathers, she sat