Back in Service by Rosanna Challis Page B

had a nice round bottom, and that he would love to see it laid bare before him. I told him that was rude talk, and he said he knew it was but could not help himself. He made me feel it was my fault, as if I somehow encouraged him.’
    ‘It is not your fault, Jane.’ She was angry now. ‘That man is a lecher and a rake. I had hoped after his accident he would be a reformed character, but it is obvious he is just the same as when I left.’
    ‘I do not know what to do, Miss Hetty. I am so frightened every time I go down to the stillroom. I am terrified he will suddenly appear.’
    ‘Do not worry, from now on I shall come with you,’ she promised. ‘Just come to me each time you need to go there and I will make sure you are not alone.’
    Relief and gratitude shone out of Jane’s jewel-bright eyes. ‘Oh thank you, miss!’
    ‘Whatever happens, you may confess it to me, and if I can do anything about it, I will. I am your friend now, Jane. I know what it is like to feel alone and persecuted, but now I have some clout here. Even though I am not mistress of the house, I am married to the heir, and that counts for something.’
    The conversation satisfactorily ended, Hetty decided to take a walk around the garden. She found Leo there talking to the head gardener, and he asked her to accompany him on a tour of the grounds. ‘Things are in a sorry state,’ he told her. ‘But two heads are better than one. Perhaps you can help me sort out the priorities.’
    Soon, however, she was obliged to face her nightmare memories again. There, looking somewhat more ramshackle than when she last set eyes upon it, was the infamous summerhouse, scene of Sir Victor’s obscene revels. ‘Oh Leo,’ she said faintly, ‘that terrible place! Let us not go near it, please.’
    ‘On the contrary.’ He grasped her hand and half dragged her towards it with determined strides. ‘It is time we faced our ghosts, Hetty. You and I have a perfect right to inspect the building, and inspect it we shall. Do not let the past haunt you, my dear.’
    She acquiesced for her husband’s sake, watching nervously as he unlocked the padlock with a key from the bunch hanging from his belt. The ancient door creaked menacingly as it swung open and the interior of the building was dark, but through a hole in the roof a faint shred of sky could be glimpsed that shed an eerie light on the messy floor.
    ‘Let us have some more light,’ Leo declared, and reaching up to the sconces on the wall soon had several of the thick candles lit. In the flickering illumination, Hetty could distinguish the accumulated rubbish – old birds’ nests, rats’ droppings, shredded upholstery and scraps of paper. There was a musty smell, too, that made her wrinkle her nose.
    ‘Well, things have come to a pretty pass here,’ he observed, walking over to the bookcase and unlocking it. ‘Hmm, the books seem in good condition still, as they have been kept under glass. Some of them are quite valuable, I believe. We may not approve of their contents, but that is no excuse for neglecting them. I think we should inspect them more closely to make sure the pages are not foxed or the covers damaged by damp or rot.’
    She followed him over to the bookcase, and in the candlelight refreshed her memory of some of the titles on display. There was Spare Not the Rod , a treatise on the rearing of importunate young women. She flipped through its pages and studied some of the drawings of girls in various stages of undress being disciplined by a variety of implements. Next to it on the shelf sat Barbaric Beatings , which was similarly illustrated, as was Sweet Agony , a novel by Father Ignorantine, which according to the foreword was about the salvation of fallen women through ‘penitential punishment’.
    Leo was walking around the room scribbling in his notebook. ‘I think we may turn this into a proper summerhouse,’ he remarked. ‘Somewhere pleasant for the ladies of the house to take their