Free Manor of Secrets by Katherine Longshore Page B

world abovestairs the day she sneaked Charlotte back to her room.
    She wanted to see it again.
    Stepping through the door was like entering another country. The carpet beneath her feet was like walking on the thickest of newly mown grass. The electric lights cast glaring halos across the ceiling. The paintings were like great windows to the sky. Or the past. She breathed in the scents of furniture polish and perfume. The odors of affluence.
    And silence was the sound of it. No clanging pots or loud voices. No ringing bells. Her feet made no noise as she crept past the first door on the left.
    She glanced back once to the servants’ stairs. The door had fit back into the wall, the wainscoting and dado rail blending almost seamlessly. Barely visible. As if the downstairs didn’t exist.
    Or existed only to serve when needed.
    Janie stopped outside the second door.
    Opposite Charlotte’s door was a large painting of a man and a woman. The woman had a band of curls over her forehead and looked straight out of the portrait into the hall. As if she could see Janie’s every move. The man had a long facewith a pointed beard and a sensuous mouth, his long, dark, curly hair spilling over his shoulders. He looked at the woman as if she were his very life.
    Janie turned to Charlotte’s door and lifted her hand. Her fingers were red and raw — the skin cracked from scrubbing the copper pots in the scullery because Mollie couldn’t get them to Mrs. Seward’s standards. So obvious against the clean white elegance of the door.
    Janie strengthened her resolve and knocked. The swift motion broke the silence like a thunderclap and pushed the door half-open. Janie caught a glimpse of Charlotte hunched over her desk, scrambling up a sheaf of papers.
    Charlotte looked over and Janie dropped her gaze and turned away. She shouldn’t be peeking into people’s rooms. Like she was really spying.
    “Janie!” Even Charlotte was whispering. Janie heard the door open all the way, and Charlotte joined her in the corridor. “You came!”
    Janie nodded, her eyes on the painting across the hall.
    “Is that … ?” Janie asked, gesturing to the canvas.
    “A Van Dyck,” Charlotte said.
    “Charles the First?” Janie said at the same time, and blushed. “I’m afraid I don’t know paintings. But I read a bookonce. About him.” She wished she were back in the kitchen. Soufflés and aspics she understood. Kings and Van Dycks made her feet itch.
    Charlotte fidgeted for a moment. She felt it, too, Janie could tell. But then she stepped forward and looped her arm through Janie’s in a proprietary manner.
    “Come in and see my room.” Her tone was soothing. Like something one would use on a shifty horse.
    The window of Charlotte’s room looked out over the patio and the formal garden. And beyond — to the hills and the river. The sun was just beginning to dip toward the west, turning the lake into a dark and mysterious hollow between the hills. It was the same view Janie saw from the kitchen gate every morning. But different. Framed, like a painting.
    Sunlight flooded the room. The walls were a lemony yellow, the wainscot a leafy green. Drapes of the same green hung from the giant four-poster bed, the thick velvety counterpane turned down from the white linen of the pillow. The pot of ink on the desk stood open, the top page of the hastily gathered papers covered in curling cursive.
    “What do you think?” Charlotte asked. She sounded shy. Nervous.
    “It’s lovely.” Janie’s gaze moved involuntarily again to the window. What she wouldn’t do to have that view. Her own window opened too high to see out of, just under the rafters, and facing the drive.
    “I was just …” Charlotte angled her body between Janie and the window. No, not the window. The desk. She kept stealing uneasy glances at the pages lying there.
    “Writing?” Janie finished for her.
    “It’s silly.” Charlotte picked at the lace cuff of her peach-colored tea gown.