Justine Elyot Read Online Free PDF Page A

basement. Too many stairs in this place, that’s the problem. Don’t worry. I was the same when I started here.’
    ‘How long have you been here?’ she asked, following him along yards and yards of crimson carpet patterned with gold fleurs-de-lys.
    ‘Couple of years,’ he said vaguely. ‘Straight after I demobbed.’
    ‘Gosh, were you in the trenches?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘It’s a bit different to that here.’
    He turned around and gave her a very odd smile.
    ‘Yes. In some ways,’ he said.
    No more was spoken until they reached the kitchen.
    But now Edie was in best black-and-whites, listening to Mrs Munn’s pep talk on how to behave when serving dinner guests.
    She felt like breaking in and telling the woman that she’d been to enough dinners to know what was done and not done, but she had to endure the sermon without interruption.
    In the background, Ted was eating a chicken leg and grinning at her.
    It was too bad of him – Edie was flustered enough already and when he winked at her she had to look away and block him from her mind.
    She was already a little feverish at the prospect of being in the same room as Sir Charles again. What was this peculiar fascination he held for her? She had never been drawn to such characters before. The thought that Jenny might be accurate in her surmise that he would notice her and try to seduce her made her feel alternately hot and cold all over.
    By the time Mrs Munn’s talk was through, Edie felt an uncomfortable band of sweat beneath the elastic of her cap. All she could think of was the way he had looked up at her from the forecourt below, a blend of curiosity and something else, something she had never thought much about because it frightened her.
    The trap. The thing that caught so many good women and took them out of the world, where they could have forged a path of their own.
    She thought about this all the time she helped to lay the table, placing forks within forks and spoons below spoons. Jenny showed her how to fold the napkins ‘the Deverell way’ but she was clumsy and could not manage to pleat them properly, so she was sent to set out the glasses instead.
    Cars had been pulling up outside the house all evening. Ted Kempe had made several journeys to and from the station as well.
    She could hear the muffled voices from the reception room beyond and she tried to make out what people might be saying, but it was too hard. Now and again she heard the fruity, theatrical tones of Lady Deverell, followed always by laughter. This made her knees weaken. Sir Charles’s voice was distinctive too, but he didn’t seem to amuse quite as much.
    Stanhope, the butler, sailed into the room just as the last piece of crystal was set in place.
    ‘Take your positions,’ he muttered.
    Like frilled centurions, Edie and Jenny stood guard by the table, with four other servants, while Stanhope threw wide the large double doors on the far side of the room to announce dinner.
    There were twenty-four at table and Edie found a vicarious interest in looking at the gowns and jewels as they shimmered past, adorning pale aristocratic flesh.
    She did not know the woman on Sir Charles Deverell’s arm, but she saw him cast the quickest little dart of a glance in Edie’s direction before pulling out his companion’s chair.
    Lady Mary was gorgeous in royal-blue satin overlaid with net, beaded and jewelled at the neckline and on the sleeves. She was transparently a female version of her brother, his dark looks softened and made sleek on her smaller canvas.
    The man who limped in behind her must be the other brother, Sir Thomas. He had a thin moustache that did not look as if it had much more growth in it and his eyes were tired and hooded.
    And then – yes, it could only be Lady Deverell, in sweeping floor-length emerald silk that swished about her and was overlaid with a cloud of black tulle. The emeralds at her throat and in her tiara set off the deep red of her hair, while swirls of black