Sommersgate House (Ghosts and Reincarnation #2)(3)
Ruby was standing next to Julia looking up at her with sparkling blue eyes and Mrs. K took that opportunity to study the child.
Ruby had taken the last five months surprisingly well, but then, at four years old, how much could she understand about the horrible events that rainy night? It was William, and especially Elizabeth, who had suffered the most.
Julia seemed to realise where she was and what she was saying. She bent low and kissed the top of Ruby’s curls before her eyes returned to the housekeeper.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. K, I’m exhausted. The trip, selling my house, car… the last week has been day after day of going away parties, meals out with friends, finding a place for every last hair pin. It’s been insane.”
Mrs. K understood; the last few months had to be upheaval for Julia. She’d had to give up everything.
She gave Julia a reassuring smile. “I’ve got the kettle on. Let me get you a cuppa. A warm drink always helps. Coffee?”
Julia nodded gratefully and Mrs. K shuffled her into what she knew was Julia’s favourite place at Sommersgate, a smallish room off the grand stairwell that had a tile and flagstone floor and butter-coloured, stone walls. It had wide entryways to both the stairwell and the drawing room and grand, double French windows that lead to the front gardens.
This space was once the entry to the house in the days when horses clattered to the front. Motor cars, and an ancestral baroness who detested them and refused to see them out her front door, had changed the traffic of Sommersgate. She modified the drive to complete at the studded doors at the side, added the fountain and laid the old front drive to gardens. She then altered the huge space within the house to what was now one of the warmest places you could find, literally and figuratively. It held comfortable, button-backed leather couches, chairs and ottomans surrounding another ornate, grand fireplace with sturdy but fine tables here and there on which to lay drinks, trays, books or puzzles, as the case may be.
Of course, no one used the space much, the lord of the manor and his lady mother weren’t the kind who casually wiled away time with games and puzzles.
Mrs. K’s mind moved from the space, back to Julia.
“You wait here. I’ll be back in a snap,” Mrs. K assured her.
She bustled away, hearing Julia’s chic pumps hit the floor one-by-one as she took them off and, in a teasing voice, she addressed Ruby. Listening to Julia, Mrs. K. nearly ran into Veronika who was hiding in the shadows by the dining room
“She arrive safe?” Veronika asked in broken English.
The Russian girl had been at Sommersgate for six months, the longest Mrs. Kirkpatrick had been able to keep a daily for several years, and, for that alone, she cherished the girl. It took an extraordinary amount of time hiring staff, training them in the very specific tasks they had to perform, then losing them and having to hire more.
Veronika not only stayed, but she did a job at which many people would turn up their noses and she did it with pride and unending amounts of energy. Especially these last months when so much more was required of them with the arrival of the children.
“She’s safe, you’ll need to unpack her cases,” Mrs. K informed the girl. “But first, I want you to meet her.” Her orders were voiced kindly but Veronika shrunk into herself and Mrs. K’s heart went out to the girl.
Veronika had not shared much but Mrs. K knew something was not right. She was timid and scared of her own shadow. Monique Ashton unnerved her and Sommersgate House petrified her, both of which weren’t unusual and often why the other girls never stayed very long. But Veronika needed the job, or she would likely be shipped back to wherever she came from, something, Mrs. K thought, terrified her most of all.
Where Douglas Ashton had found the petite, young, pretty, dark-haired girl was something that Mrs. Kilpatrick did not want to know. He’d simply told Mrs. K one day that a girl was coming to fill the daily job that had gone vacant for several weeks.
“If she’s suitable, keep her. She’ll have no references but that’s not your concern, just put her to work,” he’d said.
The comings and goings of Douglas Ashton, titled Baron Blackbourne and sixth master of Sommersgate House, were none of Margaret Kilpatrick’s business and, even if she could know, Mrs. Kilpatrick didn’t want to know. Further, she’d never question Lord Ashton, not in a million years. She’d be sacked, without references, even if she had been in his life since he could remember. He’d do it, she had no doubt, and he’d not entertain another thought in his handsome head about it.
Mrs. Kilpatrick had come to Sommersgate when Douglas Ashton was an infant. Even knowing him since he was a wee lad, as a man, she admired him greatly, she feared him and she worried about him, in that order.
Given his privileged birth, he could have chosen an entirely different path. However Douglas Ashton was driven to something else and this drive, to attain whatever it was he desired, was what Mrs. K admired. Although a cold man, Mrs. Kilpatrick felt (with some pride, even though it had naught to do with her) that Douglas Ashton was not a bad man (not like his father). One couldn’t say exactly that he was a good man but he certainly wasn’t cruel and, considering his upbringing, to avoid that end was a feat in itself.
His determination was what she feared, along with his rumoured ruthless tactics. No man should work that hard, that long, sacrificing whatever morals and ethics (and, if gossip could be believed, were all of them) to get what he wanted. Lord Ashton was not a man to be denied, if he wanted something, it was his. If he wanted Mrs. K to employ a pretty, young Russian girl with no references, no experience and nothing but a passport, then he’d have it. And he did. And Mrs. K was just one in a small army of people who did his bidding, or faced the consequences.