The Crimson Gown

Chapter Thirteen

The bed linens were sodden and stained with something Lydia did not wish to take the pains to identify. She tore them from the bed, doing her best to bury the filth in the middle of the bundle where she would not have to touch it. The mattress itself bore a faint mark from where the unidentified fluid had soaked through, but a day or so of airing it out before an open window—no matter that the air coming in through the window would carry a few flakes of snow—and it would be deemed ready for another guest. At least, once a fresh set of sheets covered the discolouration.

Lydia wrapped up her bundle, adding it to the amount of linens taken from another empty room, and began the slow progress downstairs. The stairs were narrow, and a few of them tilted precariously to one side, a result of the building having settled into its foundations over the previous century of its existence.

She left the sheets in the laundry room, where several tubs of steaming water already held some of the morning's previous offerings. They would need to be scrubbed later, and boiled, and then soaked again. There were two other maids to help her with the work, and her hands had already begun to bleed again from the last three days of washing sheets in soap made with lye.

Three days, she realised, as she stood in the entrance to the kitchen and used her knuckle to knead a twitching muscle in her lower back. Three days since her father had let her out of her room, since Lord Cailvairt had left Mowbray Hall.

And yet it had not been until the previous night, while Lydia lay in her bed, the banked fire casting all manner of ghastly shapes and shadows about her room, that she came to a decision.

She would leave her father and The Lamb's Head Inn. There was nothing for her here. She refused to beg her father for anything, leastways any sort of forgiveness he purported to give. She had thought she would feel an unbearable amount of guilt should her father discover her affair with Lord Cailvairt, but instead she felt nothing but a fierce sort of anger at his treatment of her, that he considered himself in a position to pass judgement on her sins.

The duration of the night had been spent musing over and as quickly discarding various ideas for her escape. She had no money. Even the majority of her clothes were still at Mowbray Hall, her only gown now the one she had been wearing on her return home. If anyone had thought to return her bag, she had no doubt her father had either hidden it or simply discarded it. And she was an unmarried woman, of no consequence, and with no knowledge of the world beyond her immediate surroundings.

There were factories, she knew. Places where she hoped she could find some kind of work. Or perhaps if she could even find a position in a small household as a maid...

She thought of her request to Mrs. Latimer. Would it be worth the risk of returning there, if the housekeeper could provide her with a reference that would allow her to seek employment in another house?

For a moment, she thought of Lord Cailvairt and his departure from Mowbray Hall. No doubt he had left with the belief that she had gone away of her own free will, that she had no wish to see him or have anything to do with him again. There were ways to contact him, she was sure. If he still wanted her as much as he claimed, she doubted there would be little difficulty in tracing his whereabouts were she to go to Mrs. Latimer in search of ways to contact him. But she pushed those thoughts from her mind—tempting as they were—and instead continued to focus solely on escaping from the roof under which she currently resided.

Lydia returned to the kitchen, checked the rising mounds of dough for tomorrow's bread, and

settled her attention on a pile of potatoes that were to be peeled and chopped for a stew. She was nearly halfway through the task, her fingers slick with starch and the dirt from the peels, when her father stepped into the kitchen, the ends of his hair darkened with moisture from the snow that had begun to fall in greater earnest.