Lucy curtseyed again, without wobbling. "As you wish, miss. I'm very good at making tea. Mrs. White always said so. Said I was the best tea-maker in the whole school." She turned to go, stopped, turned back to us, curtseyed again, and only then did she make her way down the hallway to the stairs leading to the kitchen basement.
"Aren't you going to ask her about the Culvert maid?" Celia asked me as we entered the drawing room.
"Exactly what I was going to say," Jacob said, following me.
The room was cool so I stoked the smoldering fire with the irons.
"I'll do that," Jacob offered.
I shook my head. I didn't want to alert Celia to his presence-she already thought him ungentlemanly for his ghostly comings and goings-and I definitely didn't want Lucy to see floating fire irons when she entered with the tea.
"I think Lucy needs a few moments to get used to me before I press her about Maree," I said, poking the coals. "Oh and thank you, Sis, for mentioning the whole spirit medium thing to her. I'm sure she'll be inclined to stay much longer than the other maids now that she knows" "Sarcasm will make your face sag," she said.
"I'm simply saying I don't think it was a good idea." I returned the iron poker to the stand and sat beside her on the sofa.
"I disagree," Jacob said from his usual place by the mantelpiece.
"We had to try something," Celia said, taking up her embroidery.
I picked up the book I'd begun the day before and left on the round occasional table. "Why does 'something' always have to involve me being on the receiving end of odd or frightened looks?"
"It's better than being on the end of pitying ones."
I lowered my book to see her better. Was she referring to herself and her spinster state? But she kept embroidering as if she hadn't a care in the world and it had merely been an off-hand comment.
"Both are better than not being noticed at all," Jacob muttered.
My lips parted in a silent "Oh" and I closed my eyes so I didn't have to look at him. What a horrible, selfish fool I was. Jacob's lot was so much worse than anything Celia or I experienced. That would teach me to be so ungrateful.
"I'm sorry," I said. "You're right."
"Your book is upside down," he said.
I shut it and returned it to the table. He was smiling at me and there wasn't a hint of self-pity in his expression. It shouldn't have surprised me. Jacob didn't strike me as the sort to wallow in his disadvantages, even though being dead was a major one.