Langdown Manor by Sue Reid

know.’ I was silent. I didn’t agree. They weren’t even trying to understand me.
    â€˜How was your ride?’ she asked me. ‘You were looking forward to it, weren’t you?’ I winced and turned my face away. She’d unwittingly touched a sore place. I was wishing that I hadn’t lost my temper. I’d found a refuge in the stables and I’d spoilt it.
    â€˜I’ll never ride here again,’ I said at last.
    She looked perplexed.
    â€˜Fred won’t want to take me out,’ I said. ‘I … I…’
    How could I tell her what an idiot I’d been? I flushed.
    â€˜Oh miss, don’t you worry about him. You can ride whenever you want. One of the other lads will take you out.’
    It was true. I could ride whenever I wanted. But I didn’t want anyone else to take me out. I’d felt comfortable with Fred. But I could never tell Baxter that. What would she think – her ladyship’s niece more at home with a stable lad than her cousins. But it was true. I’d felt more at ease with Fred than with anyone else at Langdown, except Clemmie, and Clemmie was a child. We shared something special – Fred and me – a love of horses. Now that refuge had been roughly torn away – and by my own two stupid hands. ‘I can’t trust you,’ he’d said. I sighed and got up and let Baxter help me dress, then she fetched a comb to tease the tangles from my hair. Now I had to face the family. What would Aunt say when she learned how I’d behaved today? My legs felt like jelly as I walked downstairs.

D OWNSTAIRS

    â€˜Who do you think you are?’ Ivy stood at the end of the table, staring down her nose at us. ‘The front door for the h’gentry h’only. H’servants round the back. How many times do I have to tell you?’ I was laughing so hard I was crying. It was Barrett to a tee. The way he held his head, the barely concealed contempt for us lower servants in his eyes. How did she do it? Even Sarah smiled, though I noticed how her eyes kept sliding to the door. She’d left her seat by my side and now was sitting facing me – all the better to see who was coming in and out.
    I shifted my attention back to Ivy. I didn’t want to miss a single minute of her performance. I couldn’t believe the change in her. You’d never have known it was the same little shrimp who’d sat huddled at the table, scooping up her broth as if she was starving. She was small still, but when she performed for us she seemed to grow taller. Some words I’d heard somewhere once popped into my mind. All the world’s a stage . I wasn’t sure what it meant, but all the world was Ivy’s stage. I hoped I’d never fall out with her. I could imagine how she might mimic me.
    I heard a chair scrape as someone sat down and looked round to see that Maddie had shifted up next to me. ‘Isn’t she a card,’ I said.
    â€˜Should be on the stage,’ Maisie on my other side said. Maddie merely grunted, drumming her fingers on the table. She wasn’t smiling. I felt sure I knew why. When the upper servants had departed to eat their sweet in Mrs Smithson’s parlour, it had left a spare seat next to her, but Robert hadn’t taken it. There were plenty of spare seats at the table now. The upper servants always left, halfway through the meal, to eat their sweet and gossip in Mrs Smithson’s sitting room. If I was a proper lady’s maid, that’s where I’d be now, too. But I was glad I was still able to sit with my friends. The other lot didn’t have half as much fun as we did.
    Across from me Sarah was pretending to eat, pushing her pudding round her plate. Fred hadn’t come by for dinner. He often didn’t but today I wished he had. I’d thought I’d reassured Sarah but it hadn’t lasted. I’d never seen her so jumpy. I scooped up the last of the rice