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Thus far, it had been a perfectly normal day. Busier than many, preparing for the arrival of the guests and the upheaval it always created downstairs, but Jane Wilson was used to that. She was prepared; her staff was prepared. There should be minimal incident.

Of course, it would have been nicer had it not been raining, but nothing could be done about that. They would have to let people track the dirt and mud in and clean up afterward, as best they could amongst their other duties.

Lady Trentham had a new maid again, green and scared, but that had been anticipated and planned for. Elsie would look after her, answer her questions, take her under her wing a bit. Elsie was a bit forward and in many ways no better than she should be, but she was also a decent sort who knew her job. She would be helpful to the new maid and steer her in the right direction.

It was a relief when the last car pulled up outside and the last pair of maid and valet came in. Lord Stockbridge had a new valet, it seemed. A young man, tall and good-looking. Too much so. Jane hoped he wouldn't be a problem. Something about him seemed vaguely familiar, but then all these young people looked like each other to her these days.

She pointed him in the right direction to put the guns away and was already thinking about something else when he gave her his name, his real name, not the one he would use down here. He said it casually. As though it meant nothing.

But 'Parks' meant something to her. And 'Robert Parks' meant something more. Elizabeth was passing as he said it, and both of them were caught by it, stopping in their tracks to watch his tall, broad-shouldered figure walk away. Not that Elizabeth said anything. She never said anything. But she had heard it, Jane could see she had.

Of all the people, in all the places, it couldn't be—but he was the right age, and he looked so … Jane hurried after him, forgetting her dignity, and her carefully planned schedule, in her need to know. "Mr. Parks?"

He was curious, this Robert Parks, looking into all the rooms as he passed them, so it was easy to catch up to him. He stopped when she called his name, looking down at her with polite interest.

"Mr. Parks, below stairs you'll be known as 'Mr. Stockbridge'. But … Parks, I knew a Mr. Parks who was in service in Norwich," she said, hastily making up the lie. "Is he any relation to you?"

"No, I'm from London. Born and bred."

London. London, where he would have been adopted into a good family. A good home. She wanted to ask him, but one didn't go around asking other people's servants about their family, and it wasn't possible anyway, and she had a thousand things to do.

"All right, Mr. Stockbridge, the gun room is just there."

He murmured a thank you and disappeared into the gun room, and Jane went off the other direction, forcing herself to put Robert Parks, both child and adult, from her mind in order to focus on her duties. Time enough to think later. Except—he really did look well, didn't he? So tall and handsome. A boy any mother might be proud of.


She ran into him again as he was coming out from putting the guns away. She couldn't keep away from him, too curious, wanting to watch his face and see if she recognized anything in it, a look, a trick of speech … anything.

Glimpsing Elsie coming down the stairs, Jane caught at the first excuse she could. "Elsie? Elsie, this is Lord Stockbridge's valet." Without thinking, she put her hand on his arm as she maneuvered him in Elsie's direction. Lady Trentham's mousy little maid was there, too, but Jane barely noticed her as she gave Elsie her instructions. "He's new to the house, so show him around, will you?" She turned to Robert Parks and could not stop herself from looking him up and down, unable to believe it was him and yet still unable to convince herself it wasn't. "You'll be sharing with Mr. Weissman's man," she told him, and moved off before she could make any more of a fool of herself. She wondered if Elsie had noticed that hand on his arm. Jane never touched the other servants—it was beneath her dignity. She had to keep her place.

"Has His Lordship's luggage gone up?" Elsie was asking as Jane went around the three of them.

"Supposedly," Robert answered her. "He's in the Tapestry Room, wherever that is."

As far from his wife as he could be put, Jane could have told him. But no doubt as Lord Stockbridge's valet, he knew all about that.

The irony of putting him into Elsie's hands, Elsie who was carrying on a barely discreet affair with the man Jane strongly suspected was Robert Parks' father, was not lost on her. Still, it meant Robert wouldn't be tempted into anything this weekend, as Elsie knew where her bread was buttered. And she was good at her job, not as crisp as Jane would have liked, but competent, so he would get things right. Jane was anxious that he should. A valet already at his age! Not that Lord Stockbridge was a particularly prestigious sort to work for, but a man could always move up in the world if he proved himself.


When she came into dinner, she was startled to see Robert Parks seated at her right. She shouldn't have been; it was his place in order of precedence. But she hadn't thought ahead for once, hadn't anticipated that.

You're slipping, Jane, she told herself sternly, even as she was greeting the assembled group of servants, all of whom were quietly standing behind their chairs waiting for her. You're better than this.

But she kept her head slightly turned from him, letting the neat curtain of her hair swing in front of her eye so she couldn't look up at him. Out of the corner of the other eye, she saw Elizabeth closing the door on her side of the hall, looking across at Jane for a moment before she turned away. Jane burned with that look. Was it her fault her boy was alive and suddenly here in these halls? Was it her fault that she had forced William to give Elizabeth her job back, all those years ago? Someday she would have to be forgiven for it all, she thought despairingly. She had never meant any harm.

Jane let none of that show on her face. Long years of training kept her thoughts hidden even as she murmured the words of the grace along with the other servants.

At last they could take their seats. The meal would be rushed so that they could all finish before they had to serve the more elaborate dinner upstairs. Jane always found it ironic that so much more work went into the upstairs meals, and they were appreciated so much less.

Mr. Jennings began filling plates, handing them around the table, and Jane tried to ignore the presence of Robert Parks at her elbow lest she begin asking him all the questions she wanted to ask. Where did you grow up? Who were your parents? Were they good to you? Did your mother sing to you, rock you to sleep …

No. That was all quite inappropriate. And she was only guessing, anyway, she reminded herself. Parks was not an uncommon name. Neither was Robert.

As everyone was beginning to eat, the American's valet had a question. Something wrong with him, Jane thought. Not Scottish, to be sure. The accent was too thick. Ridiculous. And not familiar with the workings of a great house. Lady Trentham's maid wasn't, either, but you could see that she was new and overwhelmed. Mr. Weissman's man seemed too confident, cocky, almost, despite his lack of knowledge. And the question—he asked how many at the table had parents in service, and if that had affected their choice to go into service themselves. An odd question … and decidedly not usual practice belowstairs, where that type of curiosity was reserved only for those you had come to know quite well.

Mr. Jennings had everyone whose parents were in service raise their hands. Parks kept his down. He seemed to be elsewhere, his thoughts far away, uninterested in what was happening at the table. Only when Mr. Weissman's valet asked him directly did he turn his head toward the rest of the table.

"What about you, Mr. Stockbridge? What's the matter, don't you know?"

There was a pause, one that said plainly how disinterested Parks was in the conversation. "Yeah, I know what they did. But it didn't have any effect on me, on my choice of work."

Before she could stop herself, Jane asked, "And why is that?"

"Because I grew up in an orphanage," he told her. He wasn't ashamed of it, that was evident, but he would have preferred not to talk of it. She was almost sorry she had asked. No, she was sorry she had asked. She would have liked to have gone on not knowing. She was frozen, the spoon still in her hand, the bowl of salad hovering above her plate, in the silence that followed his admission.

Then she put it away, in the box where she kept things that she could only think about when she was entirely alone. But even as she prosaically spooned salad greens onto her plate, she was certain of it, every heartbeat crying out that this was her boy, her son.

It was sweet beyond words to turn and hand the bowl to him, dinner with her boy, and agony at the same time, because it might have been, if she had made different choices.

"Thank you, Mr. Weissman. You've given us all something to think about it," Mr. Jennings said with finality, closing the subject. There was little time to talk at dinner, too much yet to be done for the night.

Her ladyship appeared halfway through the meal to discuss the unusual diet of the American, who didn't eat meat. By rights, she should have gone to the other side of the hallway and spoken to Elizabeth, but she was too frightened to do so. It always amused Jane that Lady Sylvia was too intimidated by the women who ran her house to give orders. Everything was done as she required … but very little was done as she wanted. It was Mrs. Croft and Mrs. Wilson's house, and she merely lived in it.

Yes, very amusing, Jane thought, making it clear to her ladyship that she was behind the times and everything had already been managed. She felt better after that, more sure of herself and who she was and the choices she had made.

Her ladyship asked which of the new servants was Mr. Weissman's valet, and it didn't escape Jane's notice that her eyes lingered on Robert Parks, clearly hoping it was him. But Mr. Weissman's man wasn't bad to look at—although not as handsome as Robert, Jane thought with a whole new type of pride she had never felt before—and there was a relief in knowing that whatever trouble might be in store for Robert Parks, a dalliance with her ladyship wasn't going to be part of it. That would be far too sadly ironic.


Later, Jane sat in her own room trying to make sense of it all in her head. She was used to having control over her emotions, not caring particularly about anything that might happen in a day's work, but today … Of all the people to come into her tidy, well-ordered little kingdom, it should be her son.

Her son.

She repeated the words to herself in wonder, watching herself say them in the mirror to know that they were true. And what a fine-looking man he was, so tall and sure of himself. Arrogant, really, and something about that disquieted Jane. He was too confident for a servant, too controlled and self-contained. She should know—she had the same qualities, and she was a servant only because she chose to be. For reasons of her own.

Now, what reasons would Robert Parks have to become a servant? It was a decent life, to be sure, good wages if you could be taken on by a man such as Lord Stockbridge, and you were well taken care of. But Robert Parks didn't strike Jane as someone who wanted to be taken care of. No, something was off there, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it.

People were moving about outside her door, up and down the stairs above her head. Always a bit of an upheaval during a house party, but this was more than usual.

Lady Trentham's little maid, too frightened and out of her element to say 'boo', was just going up the stairs. They spoke for a moment about the marmalade for the morning, but Jane already knew the answer; she had merely needed to hear herself say it out loud.

Then he came along. Sir William. Robert's father. It was hard for Jane to remember what she had ever seen in him, fat and crude and unpleasant as he was—and devastating to think that it was because of this man that she had lost her son ... and her sister, for all that she lived across the hall.

Still, it amused her that Sir William, crude and low-born as he was, felt so much more comfortable with servants, giving orders, than Lady Sylvia, to the manor born though she was.

Sir William went off, and Jane closed her door. She forced herself to think on her usual lines, going over the schedule for tomorrow and what needed to be done, considering the events of the day and noting anything that needed to be remembered and looked into. There was a knife missing, it seemed. Hard to imagine where it might have gone.

But amongst all those tidy, familiar thoughts the face of her son kept intruding. Her boy, here in front of her. Used to keeping tight control over her emotions, Jane could hardly keep her happiness from bubbling up. Only the knowledge that he must never know, that no one must ever see her pride in him, kept her quiet and calm.

She went to bed, and fell asleep with only a bit more difficulty than usual.

In the middle of the night she sat bolt upright in the bed. She knew, knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, where the knife had gone, and why. How she knew she couldn't have said, except that Robert Parks was her son and what she was certain he was contemplating had run through her own thoughts many and many a time in the past thirty or so years. Now, how to make sure he couldn't throw his life away in haste and foolishness.

Wide awake, Jane lay in bed and turned plans over in her mind until dawn.