Chapter
Seven

The first footman, Jonathan Butler, and Daniel Murray, the second, were enjoying a late-night game of cards in the servants’ hall when Mr. Wright entered.

“I’m afraid that the duke will need one of you to act as his valet for the remainder of the weekend,” Mr. Wright announced. “It would appear that his own valet has gone missing.”

“Who can blame him?” Daniel said, not bothering to look up from his hand.

“I’ll go,” Jonathan said, throwing down his cards and starting to rise. He’d been losing anyway.

“Thank you, Jonathan,” Mr. Wright said, “but I think Daniel would be better suited to this particular job.”

Isn’t that just like old Wright? Daniel thought, tossing his own cards down. Someone else volunteers, so of course Wright would pick him instead.

“All right, Mr. Wright,” Daniel said, knowing the butler hated it when he put it like that, slowly rising, slowly moving across the room.

“And don’t dawdle!” Mr. Wright called after him. “The duke is waiting!”

Daniel just kept walking at his own pace, up the servants’ stairs and through the green baize door at the top of it, moving through the house that he knew better than the home he’d grown up in. Now seventeen, he’d arrived at Porthampton Abbey when he was just twelve. He’d always been tall for his age, and so he’d lied about it, claiming he was sixteen in order to get the job of hall boy. His early duties were mostly scut work, all the odd jobs no one else wanted and Fanny was too small to do, and delivering Mr. Wright’s breakfast. But he’d watched and learned, with an eye toward becoming a footman whenever a job opened up.

A few years after he started, it was easy enough to lie again about his age, for an entirely different reason, an entirely different sort of job.

For the past two years, Daniel had been second footman, and that suited him just fine.

His duties included greeting guests with the family, answering the front door, delivering messages to the village, serving in the dining room, and keeping the fires lit in whatever rooms the family were currently using. He also cleaned, ironed, laid out and packed clothes, did some mending, and removed change from pockets so Lord Clarke’s clothes would hang better.

He liked that last duty.

What he didn’t like so much was being assigned now to be the duke’s stand-in valet.

Daniel considered his job, as a whole, to be not dissimilar to that of a great actor. A footman needed to act a certain way at all times whenever on duty and could relax, and even then just a bit, only when he was backstage with the other servants.

Oh well.

Daniel could act with the best of them.

He’d been doing it long enough.

Daniel knew that some of the other servants were always dreaming of life outside the big house; Fanny in particular. Daniel had once shared those dreams, but he’d seen enough of the world now, and he didn’t anymore. If he could remain at Porthampton Abbey for the rest of his life, perhaps finding love and marriage with one of the female staff, that would suit him just fine. Maybe they could even live in one of the small cottages that peppered the farther reaches of the estate, those cottages reserved for tenant farmers and married staff.

Daniel liked the idea of marriage in general and liked the idea of females in particular; at least females didn’t start wars and go around killing one another, which seemed a huge feature to recommend them. In addition to the female staff he knew from Downstairs, there were also the three daughters of the house, whom he glimpsed from time to time while carrying out his duties. But from what he’d glimpsed? Lady Kate was horrible and Lady Elizabeth was silly. Lady Grace appeared to be the best of the lot in that, if she was neither here nor there in the way her sisters were decidedly here and there, there seemed to be something downright decent about her. Some might find “decent” to be an equivalent to “boring,” but Daniel had seen a lot that wasn’t decent in the world, and for him it was anything but. Daniel would give a lot, he’d give everything he had, for a world populated with more decent people like Lady Grace. Still, when a person grew up with everything provided for her—money, a grand house, safety, love—it wasn’t so much a wonder that Lady Grace was decent but that the rest of them weren’t. Shouldn’t they have been? Shouldn’t they have been more grateful?

But now it was time for Daniel to leave off daydreams of a future and stray thoughts about the ladies of the house and get back on stage as he raised his fist to knock on the duke’s door.

He needn’t have knocked quite as sharply as he did, but Daniel liked to take his pleasures wherever he could find them.

“Enter!” a voice called.

Daniel did so, only to be greeted by the duke’s surprised face.

“But you’re so young!” the duke said. “I was hoping for someone more senior.”

Immediately, Daniel bristled inside. No one else ever told him he looked young. As far as the rest of the household was concerned, he was something like twenty-one now. Besides, the duke didn’t look much older than he was supposed to be himself.

“I’m old enough to have fought in the war,” Daniel said, still bristling. “Were you there, sir? I feel like I may have seen you. Perhaps we shared a trench one time? It’s always so difficult to remember who was with one and who was not, while one was being shelled. Don’t you find that to be true?”

Daniel knew it was a low blow, just as he was sure he knew the answer, but he hadn’t been able to stop the words from coming out of his mouth.

“No, I was not,” the duke said. “I needed to stay at home to mind the family affairs.”

“Of course, sir,” Daniel said, just shy of snidely, but then he felt a touch of guilt upon seeing the blush of embarrassment color the duke’s cheeks.

Of course the duke hadn’t served in the war. A soft man like him would have died there. And a soft man like him would have been wise to not go.

Daniel hadn’t been wise.

Three years ago, just fourteen years old, he’d gone, just in time for what would be the final year of the war. You had to be eighteen to sign up, nineteen to fight overseas. But if you didn’t have a birth certificate, as many poor people didn’t, a large sixteen-year-old could fake it. Or a large fourteen-year-old. The minimum height requirement was five foot three—Daniel cleared that easily, by ten inches. The minimum chest measurement was thirty-four inches—Daniel cleared that easily, too. Like the two hundred and fifty thousand other underage soldiers, Daniel had figured that he’d get some fresh air and good food and a bit of adventure.

He got more than he bargained for.

What had been embarked upon with great enthusiasm and dreams of glory had ended when he’d been forced to face grim reality.

He learned how to build trenches and use sandbags and toss a grenade, and he became all too familiar with the sight of death.

If he never saw another trench in his life, that would be fine with Daniel.

And if he wanted to make sure that never happened, that he never lost his cushy job at Porthampton Abbey, perhaps he’d better stop being so rude to this duke.

“What would you like for me to do first, sir?” Daniel offered solicitously. “Lay out your night clothes? Run you a nice warm bath? Perhaps I could help you with those cuff links?”