Mrs. Burke woke me early the next morning and nervously primped me. She tied a ribbon in my hair, then she decided it was ostentatious, and pulled it out again.
This first day, and none after, followed strictest etiquette, as if the Grimmonds cared enough about the rules of good society to prove they knew them, but not enough to actually abide by them day to day. Miss Goodwin and the children -- which included Temperance for a few months yet -- would breakfast in the nursery. Lady Oakhurst, as a married woman, would take a tray in her room. As a result, a footman showed me down to a morning room, and left me there, quite alone.
A sideboard of dark stained oak was piled high with platters of bread, sausages, cheeses, and small fishes, towers of peaches and little egg tarts, pots of butter and jam, and more of Oakhurst's pickled onions.
I filled a plate and sat, looking round me as I chewed. It was a simple room, bright and cheery. The walls were plaster; the draperies and the table cloth were starched white linen, plain save for an edging of airy cutwork. Simple as it was, I reckoned a lot of work went into keeping it all so starched and white.
The wall facing me was crowded with framed silhouettes, mostly children's. At least five of them were labelled Earnest. The other walls displayed pale watercolors, which varied in shape and size, but not in subject matter: they were all pastoral scenes of blue skies over rolling hills dotted with something or another -- crabbed oaks, orange flowers, grazing sheep...
Earnest joined me soon enough, pink-faced and damp about the temples, as if he'd washed just minutes ago. He was still buttoning his shirt cuffs, and I realized he probably really had washed just minutes ago.
"Good morning," he said cheerfully. "Did you sleep well? I hope you haven't been alone here too long. I'm afraid it's a bit lonely now, with Father gone and Constance married... In truth, I haven't bothered to come down in months." He cast a glance at my plate. "Didn't you care for the onions?"
"Oh." I had tried one the night before, and opted against sampling them again. "They're a bit strong..."
"Well, of course. You can't just skewer them with a fork and eat them whole" -- which is precisely what I'd done.
Earnest shook his head, laughing at me, then he spread one of the onions into a piece of bread. He mounded a generous helping of soft cheese on top and handed it to me. "You can put a fish on that if you like."
I bit into it without enthusiasm. The bread and the cheese rendered the onion edible, and that was all I could say for it.
Earnest shrugged, unconcerned. "Father never much liked them, either."
He loaded a plate with a few slices of bread, a whole sausage, two tarts, three or four little fishes, and more butter than I could believe, then he took a seat across from me.
I nodded toward the silhouettes. "This is quite a collection."
"Oh, Father did those. We're all up there. Aren't the resemblances fascinating? Here's Temperance and me..." He turned and indicated a half dozen profiles, each one larger, sharper, more adult than the last. Then he pointed out a few chubby-cheeked figures.
"These are the twins... Father made them last year. They look just like Constance did, don't you think? Temperance and I have sworn to each other we'll keep it up. It'd just be too sad if we didn't..."
Earnest blinked a few times, then he smiled blandly. "Say, the fish smell good..."
I ate a fish. My eyes drifted toward the landscapes.
"And who painted all the watercolors?"
"Father again," Earnest said. "There's one for each of us. Well, almost... The twins were a surprise, of course. That one's me..." He pointed to a hillside dotted with grazing sheep -- I felt a pang of worry about my flock, and I tried to forget it.
"Father busied himself painting while Mother was lying in," Earnest explained. "He liked painting... He always said he would hire a master and really study it some day."
He blinked again, and then he ate an entire slice of bread in three bites.
Lady Oakhurst breezed into the room before long. She greeted me warmly and somewhat theatrically, and then she unilaterally decided that what we all really needed this morning was a turn through the garden.
She said, "Earnest, when you've finished here, why don't you show Miss Shepley back to her room to fetch a hat?" -- and then she breezed out again.
Earnest watched her retreat, his lips pursed and his eyebrows raised.
"I think I'm supposed to beguile you with our riches now," he said, giving me a shrug and a wry smile.
"Is that what that was about..."
I finished an egg tart and laid my fork aside with a full-bellied sigh. Earnest crammed another slice of bread in his mouth, then he wiped his lips. A moment later, he was on his feet, offering me his arm.
He led me into a long hall of some kind -- it was too wide to be a hallway, really, but it was rather too long and narrow to be a proper room... It tickled at me as I looked round it, like the dressing room in my apartments.
The walls were covered with brocade in a golden yellow silk. Two gilt-framed mirrors, each big enough for a whole troop of the Lord Regent's army to use at once, hung on opposing walls, so that they reflected nothing so much as each other.
Under each mirror sat a pair of velvet settees. A little marble table was wedged between them, seemingly for no other reason than to hold a crystal vase overflowing with roses. The flowers were almost the exact same shade of buttery yellow as the velvet settees.
"My mother decorated this," Earnest said. "She's very proud of it."
"She has quite an eye..." I murmured. It was an impressive room, and I reckoned that was its sole purpose.
"She did the whole ground floor like this."
Earnest fell quiet a moment. I cast a glance up and down the room again, the implications of this statement seeping into me like flood waters.
When I turned my eyes back to Earnest, I found him watching me sidelong, mischief glinting in his green eyes.
"I say, would you like to see a secret?"
I raised an eyebrow, wary. "Is it the recipe for the pickled onions?"
"Oh, no, this is much better than that..."
Earnest gave me a terribly scampish grin, and then he grasped my hand. He led me on a twisting path through sitting rooms and servants' passages to a dining hall, oak-clad and cavernous. Great carved sideboards as tall as a man flanked a ludicrously massive table, which could easily seat thirty or forty. A fireplace big enough to roast half a steer filled the far wall.
"This is one of my most favorite things," Earnest told me, his voice almost a whisper. He led me to the fireplace and leaned against the paneling beside it. A loud click echoed through the empty room, and then the wall swung inward on some unseen axis.
I gasped.
"You have a secret passageway...? Ewert doesn't have a secret passageway!" This seemed grievously unfair.
Earnest waved me in. The door swiftly closed behind me, startling me. I had half-expected damp air and mold and crawling things, but the passageway was clean and almost cheerful. Sunlight streamed in through high windows, and a line of lamps would light the way after dark. It was not the sort of secret hole to hide outlaws and Wolves in, but merely a corridor for servants to get from one place to another quick and quietly.
"This leads to the kitchen, but we had best stay out of there today, or Cook will beat us with his biggest spoon."
Earnest turned toward a little doorway on the left. "This goes to the maids' sitting room, and from there, we can take the stair up."
"Wait a moment... Where are we?"
Earnest smirked at me. "Why, the secret passageway, of course."
We exited into a modest sitting room, as promised. Earnest led me through it quickly, and then he went up a stair, bounding up two or three steps at a time.
We landed in a long hallway with walls of striped silk and dark wainscoting. Doors stood on either side.
"We're on the west wall now, yes...?" I asked. But Earnest did not answer.
"These are my mother's rooms," he said, and I was not surprised -- I'd already guessed we were in the family quarters. "These were my father's rooms. And this was my father's study."
He led me round a corner and continued labelling doors as we passed them. "Here's the nursery. This board squeaks if you step on it... It took me years to figure out how to sneak round it. Here are Constance's old rooms... Mercy will take them when she's old enough."
We turned a corner again.
"These are Temperance's rooms... And here are my rooms... And this... is my library."
Earnest wheeled to the right and walked through an open doorway. He held his hands high and spun on his heel, grinning at me proudly.
"The library is in the family quarters...?"
I stepped in, frowning -- I couldn't help it. In truth, for a library, it was not so very large, nor so very impressive.
"No, no, you misunderstand... This is my library. My personal collection."
"Oh."
I looked round the room again. I quickly counted about twenty-five books per shelf, about eight shelves per bookcase, and seven bookcases in the room...
"Sun and Moon, Oakhurst..."
"Good, isn't it?" Earnest beamed at me. "But do you want to see the best part?"
He walked to the windows and pulled back heavy velvet drapes, revealing an orange cat sprawled out on a long window seat.
Earnest plopped down in the middle and patted the cushion beside him. I joined him at the window, but I did not sit -- I checked the sun. As it turned out, we were actually on the south wall.
Earnest rubbed the cat's belly. It chirped and rolled from side to side, blinking at him slowly. "The cats always sleep here," he said. "It's the warmest spot this side of the house. And it looks over the pond, so you don't even have to read, really, if you don't want to. I used to hide from my tutor for hours in here. Of course, the joke was on me, in the end... Turns out he knew I was here all along, and since I was reading, anyway, he just let me think I was getting away with shirking."
I laughed at that. And then I wondered what tricks Miss Goodwin had pulled on me...
"See that tree, there?" Earnest tapped at the glass. "A family of squirrels has taken up residence in it."
He pointed to a sprawling oak, old, and gnarled, and formidable. I could well believe several families of squirrels made their homes there.
"They're quite tame, actually. Would you believe I've got them eating out of my hand?"
"They don't make off with enough of your walnuts on their own...?"
"Oh, well, certainly... When the harvest is good... But what about the lean times, Miss Shepley?" He glanced up at me, grinning. "I won't abide sickly squirrels."
I shook my head at him, laughing even as I frowned.
The tour continued. Earnest led me up and down a few sets of stairs, showing me the window with the best view and a scandalous closet.
"Are you taking note of this?" he asked, casting a grin over his shoulder. "Shall we stop and consult the map?"
I followed him to the end of yet another long hallway, where he turned suddenly toward a door and announced, "And this... is your room, I believe."
I frowned up and down the hallway -- I'd had no idea we were even making our way to the third storey -- and then I frowned up at Earnest.
"I'll be needing that map you promised."
I fetched my hat -- or rather, Mrs. Burke painstakingly applied it to me -- and then Earnest led me back down through another series of secrets and shortcuts. We terribly frightened a house maid, and I'm ashamed to say we didn't even have the grace to not laugh about it.
We took a spiraling staircase down to a plain white corridor lined with identical plain white doors. The third door opened into a potting room or an orangerie of some sort. It was empty, but the floor was tile, sloped, with a drain in it, and one wall was nearly all windows. I could see all the other Grimmonds waiting on the terrace beyond, along with the nurse. Lady Oakhurst looked rather cross.
Earnest grasped my arm and leaned in close to me, making himself very small. He whispered, "I told you my mother was proud of the hall...? She is even more proud of the garden. Once we go out there, I won't have a chance to speak to you again for hours, and I must tell you-"
A rap at the window scared us both nearly out of our skins. Lady Oakhurst scowled in at us, calling, "Earnest! We are waiting."
Earnest sighed, his face twisting with remorse.
"Forgive me, Miss Shepley. We had all this time, and I wasted it."