Secret Letters by Leah Scheier Page B

sleeves and begged me to stay with her a while and help her set the silver. I looked appropriately shocked at her suggestion, for dirty scullery maids were not permitted near clean linen.
    She glanced about her and whispered hoarsely, “They can’t know that I was ill again. I’ll be let off for sure. It’s the fourth time in two weeks. I can’t lose my place yet, not ’til I’m sure of the other.”
    I shook my head. “Have you seen a doctor?”
    She looked embarrassed. “There’s nothing they can do for me. They’d only—”
    We were interrupted by a tall footman bearing a steaming food tray to the dining hall. As he passed us, Agatha and I scurried backward into the shadow behind the plant. A pungent aroma of boiled kidneys lingered behind him and caused my miserable companion to hold one hand to her mouth and grab helplessly at mine with the clammy fingers of the other. She doubled over the hibiscus tree, and as I wondered if she would anoint its leaves once more, the cause for her anxiety became suddenly clear to me. By the time she had regained her composure, I had understood what her condition was and was sorry for her. She would lose her place immediately when it became known, that much was certain—and, if she had no family to help her, would end up in the workhouse, or worse.
    She gave me a wan, guilty smile and allowed me to lead her into the dining hall.
    “Does the—father know?” I inquired hesitantly as we set the side table.
    “I can’t speak to him,” she murmured sadly. “Not after he was so angry with me.”
    “Why was he angry with you?”
    “Well, he’d been so quiet, not like himself at all, and I got worried, you see. I thought perhaps there was someone else, and that was why he was avoiding me. So a few days ago I went into his room when he wasn’t there, to look around a bit. And he caught me. Ah, he acted something awful, like I had committed murder. Me, the woman he promised to marry, and soon to bear his…”
    She glanced down at her waist and blushed.
    “Did you find anything in his room?”
    She shook her head and groaned. “I know I oughtn’t to have done it, I shoulda trusted him. He’s different from the rest of them, mind you. He thinks greater thoughts than all of us put together, and he’s read more than the master himself, I daresay. It’s what I noticed about him from the first. Every time I entered the study, there would my James be, with a different book in his hands, leafing through it like his soul depended on it.”
    “James, the valet?”
    She blushed again and frowned, realizing that she had given away his name without intending to. I imagine she would have come to it eventually, but girls like to reveal such things on their own terms, after a little breathless expectation from their audience.
    “Yes, who else would I risk my good name for? I fell in love with him the moment I saw him, same as all the other girls did. He’s been here but a few months, and I don’t think there is a single maid below the age of fifty that wouldn’t give her eyes just to be noticed by him. That’s why they speak so meanly of me, you understand.”
    “Is he so very handsome, then?”
    “It’s more than that, you’ll see. But they’ll all be here in just a moment, and then afterward you can tell me what you think of him.”
    I realized that in normal circumstances Agatha would never have addressed me as a friend; my status as a scullery maid put me below her notice, just as she was below the master’s. But I shared her secret now, and in her eyes, her shame made us equal.
    I put my hand about her waist and smoothed her damp hair from her forehead. “I won’t tell anyone,” I promised. “And I’ll help you any way I can.”
    There was a sound now from the hallway, and Agatha shrank back against the wall. “Stand there behind that post,” she instructed me, “and if anyone notices you, just slip out through the door. You look clean enough, and I’ll just