Chapter One (part 1)

Emilia Finch wasn't one to complain when things didn't go her way. If she was, considering she lived a life in service where her wishes mattered very little, she wouldn't have time for anything else.

She'd sometimes considered disappointment to be an old friend — the kind who, while an irritant, was familiar and could be depended upon to act as expected.

So when she let herself into her father's small set of rooms above the tavern in Pickering and saw the bins and boxes piled high, she ignored the stinging sensation behind her eyes and the hard, angry lump in her throat because of course... Of course he'd undone all her efforts. She'd spent her last free Saturday before she'd left for London clearing and cleaning to the point where a body could walk through the kitchen, at least, but of course he'd found a way to fill it again.

"Papa?" She placed her basket on top of one overflowing bin that looked like nothing more than old scraps of cloth.

"Aye, Em, is that you?"

"Who else could it be?" she muttered to herself. It wasn't as if he had other visitors. Besides her, only Old Thomas was likely to come to call and the two of them usually took their visit downstairs, sitting at the bar and drinking ale and exchanging stories about how much better things would be if the world would just be like it was in the good old days.

She was never certain what time they were talking about. She couldn't remember a yesterday that was any better, easier, or kinder to their sort than today. Though she supposed she did miss the days when her family had a small cottage outside the village with climbing ivy and a little garden. It was a step above this place with its sad little rooms — one cramped bedroom with a kitchen that could barely be called such a thing with its small sink that barely drained and no water pump. But she shouldn't complain.She didn't even live here.  Perhaps she'd become spoiled at Crewe House.

"Are ye feelin' better?" she called out.

"Aye, this dratted cold has left me at last."

It was one of many he'd had since the winter and she was starting to be concerned. But she supposed she shouldn't complain. She hadn't heard any coughing.

"I'm off to the well," she called out. "I've brought some lamb chops for dinner."

"Won't that be nice," she heard him call out beyond the clutter. "I suppose you're wonderin' about the cloth, but I'll tell ye all about it. It's a very big idea."

"Won't that be nice," she said, a bite in her voice as she took his pail from under the sink and took herself downstairs and out to the village square. She supposed she should be grateful he was feeling well enough to have another big idea. Still, she didn't want to know what it was. It would end up like all the others. He would throw himself into it, planning and plotting. He might even find a way to make it work. He might find some gullible sorts to help him, then he would leave all the work to them and sit back and wait for his life of leisure, which was precisely the problem...

"Lord knows I love your father," Margaret Finch had once said while stirring a pot of linens in lye and water. A lot of her musings started that way. "But I don't agree with him. He thinks I work too hard. Says I should hire some girls under me, pay them a pittance, and let them do all this."

Emilia, even at nine, had to agree that her mother worked too hard, but she didn't want a lot of stranger girls helping her mother when she could do it. "Why not just let me? I can do everythin' and you won't have to give me even a pittance." She didn't know what a pittance was at the time, though it sounded a bit like pence to her, so it must not be much.

Her mother had laughed. "You're a good girl and ye help me enough." She sighed. "No, it's just your father doesn't see things my way. I wouldn't feel right about it, taking payment for something I hadn't done. Work, when done well, can be very satisfying."

Emilia had wondered why her mother wasn't much more satisfied, considering she did the washing, mending, and pressing for half the village. She only seemed tired all the time and unhappy, from what Emilia could see, that was before her mother often caught her looking and pasted on a smile.

She did so then. "You run off and play. It's too nice a day to be stuck inside."

"I don't want to play. I want to help you."

Her mother's smile fell, then. "Play while ye can, Dearie. There'll be enough time for work later."

Her mother had been right about that. After she succumbed to consumption the following year, it wasn't long before Emilia was seeking out employment. The washing business had already been taken by another woman in the village and, though her father insisted she didn't need to work, that he had another big idea that was sure to sail them into a life of luxury, Emilia knew how his ideas turned out by then.

Her job at Hartley Hall, starting the age of twelve, was harder work than she'd ever imagined. As scullery maid, she was the first up in the morning and the last to bed. But it paid enough to keep that cottage roof over their head... for a time. Eventually, even her wages were sunk into his next big idea. It wasn't as if he was taking advantage of her. Her father was always very sincere about how, this time, it would work. But, without her mother, there was no one to talk sense into him except a daughter who, while old enough to work, was too young to be listened to. Nor could she find the courage to argue.

She supposed, in that, she had changed. Whether it was age or the relative position of respect she enjoyed at Crewe House, she found herself arguing with Prudence Crewe every day. Yet she still couldn't manage it with her father. Not only because he was, after all, her father, but because he could talk circles around even Miss Prudence, she'd wager.

She stopped on the way to the well to let Miss Hartley pass, ducking her head and hoping the girl didn't notice her. Luckily for Emilia, Mary Hartley was much too busy berating her maid for dropping a parcel. It was no wonder, since the poor thing was laden with so many.

Emilia felt rather guilty, standing back and hiding as the girl struggled to pick up the package she'd dropped without toppling the others. Emilia would like to help, but she couldn't risk Miss Mary seeing her. It would actually be worse for the maid, since Mary would then force her to stand there with her load while Emilia endured her barbed comments about both herself and Miss Prudence.

Prudence had spent a good many years as Mary Hartley's "friend" as they were of an age, and there weren't many other young girls equal to her station in the area. The relationship between the Hartley and Crewe families was one Emilia always found strange. Lady Crewe and Mrs. Hartley didn't seem to like each other at all, but put on as if they were dear old friends and insisted on throwing their daughters together.

Emilia dreaded the times she was forced to attend Miss Prudence to tea at Hartley Hall, she suspected, even more than Prudence did. Mary Hartley might limit her barbs when it came to Prudence, but she had no such restraint when it came to Emilia. Perhaps it was the fact that Emilia had the gall to leave her house for Crewe House, perhaps it was the fact that Emilia had become a lady's maid when the Hartleys spent five years keeping her in the scullery where Mary felt she belonged.

Either way, Mary often spent an entire tea comparing her hair and gowns to Prudence's and finding the latter wanting, and while Emilia knew this was all aimed at Miss Prudence, that girl didn't care about such things. But Emilia felt the words keenly as Mary often suggested it was down to hiring someone "better suited to scrubbing chamberpots" with a pointed smirk in Emilia's direction.

Prudence would often laugh such things off easily, proclaim that she had a lady's maid that was far better than she deserved, with a wink at Emilia, as if they were having a little laugh together. But Emilia didn't find it very funny. Prudence could be dressed and coiffed ten times better than Mary Hartley if only Prudence would allow her to...

Emilia pushed the familiar gripe away as it felt ridiculous to complain about not having enough to do after years of working in a position where she had too much. Besides all that, Mary Hartley had safely passed the well by now.

As she filled her bucket, she saw Agnes and Jeremy across the square. The boy was staring at the kitchen maid with adoring eyes as he took her parcels from the butcher and placed them in the cart. As Agnes was a full four years older, she doubted he would succeed there, but he was welcome to dream. After Charity and Ian, Emilia supposed there was no such thing as an impossible match.

She gave them both a wave when they spied her lugging her pail back to the tavern.

"Is your father better?" Agnes called out.

"That depends on how ye mean it," Emilia slowed as she passed them, "but aye. He's got over his cold. Lady Dartmore came for tea while you were away."

Agnes' eyes widened. "Oh, Lord. I suppose Cook is awfully cross with me, but there was such a queue at the butcher's and I couldn't..."

"Don't worry. I was still there to bring it and no one minded in the least." Cook had muttered about it, since Sally, their housemaid, was away with the birth of yet another grandchild, and was she expected to not only make the tea, but deliver it and make supper? Emilia was half-wondering if she'd rather have done so, if only so she could find more reasons to grouse.

"Thank God for you," Agnes sighed. "She'd have tore a strip off me for sure."

"Oh, nonsense," Emilia said with a laugh. "Cook's bark is always worse than her bite, as they say."

"Aye, but I still live in fear of it," Agnes said with a shudder.

Emilia only laughed again and went back to the tavern.

Crewe House, despite all the complaints she definitely did not have, was a fair place to work. The pay, when she started, was lower than what she had at Hartley Hall, but the more pleasant atmosphere more than made up for it. Though she was only a kitchen maid to start, she'd found, despite Cook's rough manner, she was much kinder than the French chef the Hartleys hired, who didn't think a girl capable of even cutting onions. More than that, her gruff exterior hid a certain softness.

In her first month, not wanting to rock the boat she was working in, Emilia hid an infected burn on her wrist. After Cook discovered it, she feared she'd be tossed out for being careless enough to have been injured in the first place. That was the way of things at Hartley Hall.

But Cook had berated her for hiding such a thing and ordered her to rest and Mrs. Douglass had been similarly upset at her for working in such a state and told Lady Crewe who, in a state of high alarm, called for the doctor. Despite the berating from all, she'd felt, for the first time in years, strangely cared for. She had vague memories, during her fever, of Cook bathing her forehead with a cool cloth and singing softly — something the woman had denied since, but Emilia knew better.

On meeting the Crewe sisters, she'd been afraid they'd be as beastly as Mary Hartley. That girl had gone through so many lady's maids, after all, that Emilia wondered if this latest would last the month. As a scullery maid, on the occasion Emilia was sent to Miss Mary's room to light the fires or empty the chamberpots, not only did she witness Mary berating whatever poor lady's maid had been stuck with her, but she had to endure the girl yelling at her — on how long she was taking, on how dirty her hands or her apron were, on how she should do this when Miss Mary was not in the room despite the fact that the wretched girl had called her to do so at the moment.

But the Crewe siblings, even upon being introduced to her as their new kitchen maid, had been much kinder than she'd expected from the folks of supposed quality. Prudence, a girl her own age, had wished her luck dealing with her younger brother stealing all the biscuits, Ernest had denied that he ever did such a thing (an obvious fib) and blamed his youngest sister, Charity. Dearest Charity —who was only fourteen at the time and just into proper gowns of her own -- had stared at Emilia's hair in abject fascination and asked her how she made it so pretty!

At the time, Emilia had blushed and said it was nothing much, only some braids, pinned in a little pattern. She had done much better on her mother's hair.

Despite not having anywhere to go, Margaret Finch had always taken pride in her hair, washing it at least every Saturday night for church on Sunday and brushing it until it shone. And Emilia had loved nothing better than playing with the shining locks at night, as they huddled close to the hearth and her father told his stories, plaiting it with flowers or ribbons, pinning it in intricate twists and turns. Her mother often declared it too fine for her, that she would surely not sleep for fear of spoiling it.

It had seemed a silly thing to waste effort on back then, but she supposed that silly thing had led to her current position. It had started with being called upon to dress hair before the odd party — first for the Crewe sisters and then, eventually, their mother. When they learned she could mend very well, it had ended with her current position, which included better wages, trips to London or wherever the Crewe sisters traveled, and cast-off gowns she could remake for herself.

Her current gown was light green muslin which, when she turned it over and made it anew, was much too fine for lugging pails of water, but someone had to do it.

"Em, are ye back?" her father called out.

"No, it's Prinny come to call," she was tempted to say. "Aye, it's me," she said instead. "Just about to start dinner... if I can find the stove."

Her father finally made an appearance among the clutter. "It's a right mess, isn't it?"

She was glad he was acknowledging it.

"But it's only for now. You see, I have a plan..."

Yes, he always had a plan.

Emilia listened to her father's latest scheme as she moved the bins and boxes of scrap out of her way and cooked dinner. Apparently, taking these scraps of fabric and making them into quilts or pillows was the key to a life of luxury.

"This is where you come in, my girl..."

"Papa" she protested, tired already, "I have my own work. I don't have time to sew countless—"

"Nay, nay. You won't have to lift a thimble. I will hire some village seamstresses. Ye've got important work of yer own. I know that."

She wondered if he did. Her position at Crewe House was secure, but not enough for her to ask favors... which he seemed to want her to do.

"Lady Dartmore has her mills and warehouses. Surely they have many scraps of nice, colored cloth, even with fine patterns and whatnot, just sitting in bins. You could ask about—"

"I'm sorry, Papa, I cannot ask her." Not only had she always drawn a line not to involve him with her life at Crewe House — she would not recommend him for work he might do very well for a day or so before he found something he liked better — but Lady Dartmore had surely gone after tea. She and Lady Crewe could never abide each other for long. "She has left by now. She was only visitin' to deliver Miss Prudence home."

"Ah, it's just as well," her father said. "I suppose I've enough of Mrs. Phillips' scraps to start with."

Emilia glanced with annoyance at the bins as she laid out supper, sure he had more than enough until he let this latest idea go by, but she didn't say a word. She wasn't one to complain.

TBC

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I'll be back Wednesday. Hope you enjoyed this little intro to Emilia. So far, I love her and want the best for her and only hope she learns to want better for herself. More to come...