A Rip Through Time(12)

Do his lips twitch? It must be a flicker of the gas lighting. “I believe I’ll need more than that.”

Please don’t ask me to dress you. Please, please.

When I hesitate, he taps his cheek, rough with stubble. Then he motions to the washstand. A straight razor sits beside it.

I babble excuses. I’m not even sure what they are—I just babble.

His eyes chill. “I believe you were the one who convinced my sister that we no longer needed the barber’s visit. You are paid extra for this, and if you are using your mental impediment to shirk a duty—”

“I said I wasn’t, sir,” I say, and I sound like myself, Detective Mallory Atkinson, telling her sergeant that he is mistaken. As Gray’s eyes narrow, I reverse course. “It’s my hands. They’re unsteady after the accident, so unless you’d like your throat slit…”

That is not reversing course.

He only looks at me, though. Looks very closely, as sweat beads at my hairline.

“Might that additional pay be deducted from my wages, sir?” I say. “If you insist, I’ll attempt the shave, but I really am concerned I might hurt you—”

He pulls back, already turning to his work. “Go. Take the tray. I’ll manage it myself.”

He mutters under his breath. I take the breakfast tray and eye the straight razor. I’m going to need to figure that one out. How hard can it be? Worst I can do is leave him lying in a pool of his own blood, and after a day or two, that might not seem like such a bad idea.

I think I stifle my snorted laugh, but Gray turns, that narrow-eyed look as sharp as the razor.

I murmur something vaguely apologetic, curtsy, and back out of the room.



* * *



Apparently, it’s Sunday. I’d known that from Gray, but what I’d overlooked was the significance of it in nineteenth-century Scotland. Sunday means church. While that would give me time away from my chores, I can’t risk attending a Victorian church service. I’m guaranteed to do something wrong. When I beg off with my “sore head,” Mrs. Wallace’s grumbles suggest Catriona isn’t exactly a regular churchgoer. Skipping out would mean a couple of hours alone in the house, and I can’t begrudge her that short break.

Except she wouldn’t be alone. Gray doesn’t attend either. In his case, I get the feeling that’s normal—no one seems to expect him to do otherwise. Either way, it’s not as if I could have taken advantage of the time off. I need every minute that day just to finish my chores.

As a teenager, I spent a summer cleaning houses, when my inexperience meant it was that or telemarketing. As I’d scrub a stranger’s toilet, I’d reassure myself that someday I’d hire people to do this for me. By my late twenties, I could afford a weekly cleaner—the benefit of a decent job and no dependents. Yet when I slapped on a pair of rubber gloves and picked up a scrub brush, I fell back into a world where I could shut off my brain and rely on pure muscle and muscle memory.

I find comfort in cleaning. I start a task, and as long as I keep at it, I see the results. Organized shelves. Sparkling floors. Glistening walls.

That’s how I start my day of cleaning. Oh, it’s tougher than at home, where I can hit the button on my robotic vacuum cleaner. Harder even than when I was a kid and homeowners would hide away their “good” vacuum and give me the crappy old one. No vacuums here. No spray-bottled cleaners. Not even rubber gloves. I’m on my hands and knees with a scrub brush and water filled with some cleaner that I’m ninety percent sure will later be proven to cause cancer.

I also spend far too much time reaching for my phone to start a podcast, resume an audiobook, even listen to music. That’s what I do when I’m cleaning, same as when I’m working out or driving or any time my hands are busy but my brain is not. Here, there’s nothing to do except keep uselessly checking my nonexistent watch for the time, which passes with excruciating slowness.

Still, hard work never killed anyone, right?

By midday, I decide that whoever coined that phrase never toiled as a nineteenth-century housemaid. I don’t mind the cleaning. Don’t mind the hard work. But it never ends. Scrub this. Polish that. Haul hot water. Empty dirty water. Make the beds. Sweep. Dust. Clean. Oh, and don’t even get me started on the chamber pots.

I suppose I should be thankful that I’ve at least managed to jump into a time period with actual bathrooms. I have not, however, jumped into the era of flush toilets. What looks like a toilet has a basin under it, and Alice and I alternate the duty of emptying that basin and then scrubbing it. We’re allowed to use the facilities ourselves, as I discover when Mrs. Wallace reminds Catriona what a privilege it is for staff to be permitted to use the family “water closet.” I don’t even want to know what the alternative would be.

When I do complain—a bit—about the water hauling, I get a lecture on how lucky I am to be in a house that has the luxury of both hot and cold running water. At least I don’t need to heat the water on a fire and haul it the way Mrs. Wallace did back in her day, which was, I’m guessing from her age, only about five years ago. Yep, gas lighting, running water, it’s all fairly new, but when it comes to science the Grays have the best. Mrs. Wallace proudly tells me they’ve even been pricing out the possibility of central heating, coal-fired of course.