“Let’s talk about this in the morning,” he suggested. “Get some rest first. It has been an incredibly tiring day for everybody. Hopefully, in the morning, the majority of the staff who are ill today will feel better and will be able to resume their duties. Take time to speak with him then. If you do so tonight, when your emotions are running so high, you are apt to say something you could regret.”
She nodded. She knew he was right. There was nothing wrong in taking a little time to think carefully about her actions. There was certainly no going back if she left and realised it was the wrong decision. However, there could be no other outcome, she knew it. She must return to her father’s farm where she belonged. After Aidan’s snub, she doubted there was any benefit in talking to him. He had made his regrets clear. There was no reason for her to stay.
Rollo nodded toward the stairs. “You go off to bed now. I will close up here.”
Minutes later, Petal let herself quietly into the room she shared with Aggy. Her friend was curled up on her side facing the wall, leaving Petal to change in private. The focus of her attention was firmly on the man who lay one floor down in the room she had spent last night in.
Thankfully, Aggy had been too ill to notice Petal hadn’t been in bed at all last night. When she had asked why Petal hadn’t been there when she woke up, Petal had lied. She had claimed she had slept in an empty room to give her friend the bed to herself. It felt terrible to have to lie to her, but couldn’t tell her the truth. Nobody apart from Rollo, and most probably Mrs Kempton now, need ever know the truth.
Once in bed, although she needed the peace, sleep was a long time coming. Her body ached, both inside and out, leaving her restless and on edge, and she had a helpless sense of regret she knew she could do nothing about.
She felt exactly the same in the morning when she woke up to the sound of five chimes from the clock in the hallway. Heaving her tired body out of bed, she quietly dressed and left the room. The last thing she wanted was to go about her chores, but if she lay in bed she would end up thinking about matters best left closed.
At the door to the upper landing she paused. She should go downstairs and light the kitchen fires first, if Rollo hadn’t already, but then she would only have to come back up again to light the fire in Aidan’s room.
Besides, you really want to see him again, a small voice whispered.
She didn’t, but neither could she deny herself, and so she crept quietly toward his room. Once there, she slowly and carefully nudged the door open and tiptoed inside. Sunlight was only just starting to creep over the horizon, and bathed the room in various shades of grey, but it was enough to allow her to see.
Her cry of dismay was smothered by her hand when her eyes landed on a scene she knew would remain with her for the rest of her life. At first, she couldn’t quite believe what was before her.
Outright denial was her first instinct. That couldn’t possibly be Aidan lying on his side in the bed, one long arm tucked around Edwards, could it? But she knew that it could be – and indeed was. The room swam alarmingly at the sight of the woman’s bared shoulders poking out from beneath the covers.
Petal felt sick at the horrifying realisation that she had been taken for a gullible fool began to sink in. There was no explanation for what she saw other than he had not been as decent, or as honest, as he had led her, and practically everyone else in the house, to believe.
The longer she stood there, the more something within her died. Hope, maybe? Whatever it was fuelled a survival instinct she hadn’t realised she possessed. It certainly gave her the strength to get out of the room and close the door behind her just as quietly as she had opened it.
Rather than make her way downstairs to start her chores, she returned to her room and woodenly began to pack her b
elongings into the small bag she had brought with her.
With no way to pen a note to her friend, she gathered her shawl around her stiff shoulders and left the room. She would leave a note for Rollo and ask him to tell Aggy that she would see her in the village on her next day off. She could explain everything then. Aggy need never know what had truly transpired to make her leave the position she had always dreamed of. However, Petal suspected that the gossip about her departure would be spread. She quickly blanked out what that gossip would be about; she rather suspected with Edwards in the house there would be no question that her reputation would be beyond repair.
Once in the kitchen, Rollo eyed the bag she carried and sighed deeply.
“Have you spoken to him?”
Petal sucked in a deep breath and shook her head. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him. The words hovered in the darker recesses of her mind, and she refused to even contemplate the image that now lingered there.
“He is a little busy right now,” she replied woodenly.
Rollo frowned. “At five o’clock in the morning?”
“Edwards is there.” She walked out of the house without saying anything else, leaving Rollo staring at her in shock.
As she walked through the gardens at the back of the house, she saw nothing of the neatly tended lawns and boxed hedges, or the folly nestled beneath the dangling branches of an enormous willow tree. She was blessedly numb. The steady patter of rainfall that soaked her skin and chilled her flesh didn’t even register on her senses. She felt little of the goose bumps on her arms, and merely clenched her fingers tighter against the early morning breeze that nipped at her fingers.
Nothing mattered to her now except for reaching the sanctuary of home. Her real home; the farm she shared with her father. The refuge she knew awaited her would always be with her father. She knew, deep inside, that as long as she could get there then everything would be alright with the world.
It was in the back of her mind that she hadn’t told Rollo where to send her wages, nor had she bothered to ask if she would even get any. She had effectively walked out of the job without serving any notice. That didn’t matter right now. Living through the hurt that threatened to swallow her whole was essential.
At any other time, the sight of the vast, rolling moorland stretching out before her would have made her sigh in delight, and relish the length of the walk that lay before her. Today, she ignored the sharp bite of the winds against her cheeks that tugged at her clothes and stole her breath. As she trod the familiar path, it felt as though a lifetime had passed since she had quite innocently hurried in the opposite direction, eager to start her new future. Full of excited anticipation, and armed with a brilliant imagination, she had envisaged bountiful teas in luxurious drawing rooms, the finest cotton and silks, and magical balls full of resplendent lords and ladies.
The cruel reality was that life in a big house for a servant was nothing like that. It involved endless hours of toil consisting of fetching and carrying heavy burdens up and down ridiculously steep flights of stairs, working for people like the contemptuous dowager, and scoundrels like Aidan, and generally being non-existent as a person.
“Forget about him,” she muttered aloud. “Forget about all of it.”
While a part of her knew it was best to, there was something that still warned her there must be an explanation; that it all had to be some sort of terrible misunderstanding.