The Forgotten Room(80)

With Mona’s help, Olive bore the dress toward the mirror. “Don’t let it touch the floor!” snapped Prunella, and Olive whispered to Mona to bring over the stool. She climbed atop and settled the satin folds carefully over Miss Prunella’s elegant little head, fitting each delicate sleeve over an uplifted ivory arm, while Mona guided the delivery down below. Miss Prunella’s corset had already been squeezed into an impossible circumference. Olive found the buttonhook amid the jumble of ribbons and jewelry on the bureau and fastened each satin-covered button, until the dress lay snug against Miss Prunella’s artfully manufactured figure.

She climbed down from the stool and stepped back. “There we are.”

“Now the shoes.”

Olive followed Miss Prunella’s pointing finger and discovered a pair of miniature slippers, lying on the rug near the hissing fireplace. The satin was warm, whether by design or accident, and Olive carried them over to the young lady’s waiting feet.

As she knelt and lifted the hem of the dress, she felt Miss Prunella’s eyes upon the top of her head, the white cap that had come loose as she and Harry had tangled greedily on the stairs, trying to reach the attic door and not succeeding. Succumbing where they stood, because it had been hours, hours since breakfast, when they had come together last in their nest in the studio (Olive was supposed to be hanging garlands from the railing in the stairway), and hours then since the night before.

(Oh, the night before!)

“Mona,” said Miss Prunella, “you may leave.”

Olive looked up into a pair of blazing blue eyes, which were fixed on the space between her throat and her collarbone.

“Yes, Miss Prunella,” gasped Mona, and an instant later the door clicked shut.

Olive started to rise.

“Where did you get that?” said Miss Prunella.

Olive’s hand went to the gold filigree chain at her neck. “Get what?”

“You know what I mean. That necklace.”

“I—I don’t—”

“Oh, yes, you do. I know that necklace. There’s a ruby pendant on it, isn’t there? That was my necklace.”

“Your necklace?” Olive stepped back.

“I recognize the chain. My mother gave it to me to wear on New Year’s Eve last year, for my debut, and the next morning it was gone from my dressing table.”

“I don’t know anything about that. This is my necklace.”

“Let me see it.”

“I— No.” Olive straightened and allowed both hands to fall to her sides. “I won’t. The necklace belongs to me. It was given to me a week ago.”

“How dare you! Show me that necklace.”

“With all possible respect, Miss Prunella, you have no right. The necklace belongs to me.”

“No right? No right?” Prunella stamped her foot. She was shorter than Olive by several inches, and yet somehow, for an instant, she seemed to stand taller. No sign now of the dutiful daughter, the quiet and obedient flower of the house. What had Harry said? She’s seen me looking at you. The ruby burned against Olive’s skin.

“I am entitled, I believe, to a certain degree of privacy, even if I am a mere household employee.”

The field of scintillating fury began to dissolve from around Miss Prunella’s small body, replaced by something colder and far more dangerous. Olive took another step backward, unable to help herself.

“Ah, yes,” Prunella said, far too softly. “The maid who speaks like a lady. Do you think I don’t know who you are?”

Olive stared in horror at those chilly blue eyes, the exact same shade as Harry’s, except that on Prunella they reminded her of little chips of arctic ice. And her voice, frostbitten, hanging in the air. I know who you are.

“I don’t know what you mean. I’m Olive Jones, the housemaid.”

Miss Prunella leaned forward. “Jones, indeed. You’re the architect’s daughter, aren’t you? I recognize you, even if the others don’t. I used to watch him while he was at work. My goodness, he was handsome. You have that same peak in your hair, in the middle of your forehead, and your eyes are exactly alike.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I knew something was wrong about you, right from the beginning. The way you looked at us. And I turned it over and over in my head until I realized, watching you, that night at dinner, when my brother was so obviously in love with you . . .”

“That’s—that’s—”

“And your name. I remembered he had a daughter named Olive. He used to speak of you.”

Olive’s mouth opened without speech.

“Oh, I’ve kept it to myself, of course. Never fear. I’ve been waiting to see what you mean to do. And I suppose this is it, isn’t it? Seducing my brother, as if that would ruin us.” She laughed, a bitter sound. “As if disgraced housemaids aren’t already a regular occurrence around here.”

“That’s not true.”

Prunella didn’t reply, except with her eyes, which narrowed in frosty contemplation. She looked so unnervingly perfect, so incongruously innocent with her round face ending in a pointed chin, with her silky curls clustered girlishly around that alabaster forehead and those dainty spiraling ears. Her lips formed a sweet pink pout. Only her eyes were hard, calculating the sums that lay on the other side of Olive’s hot face, inside the nooks of her soul.