The Shadow in the Glass by JJA Harwood (any book recommendations txt) 📕

over her skirts. Beyond the wall hansoms rattled past, fast and sharp. The houses around them were only just beginning to stir to life. Eleanor could hear doors opening, buckets clanking, the subtle sounds of chimney after chimney warming up along the street. Mayfair was still quiet, but she could already hear the racket when she turned her head towards Marylebone. Slow rumbling announced the arrival of the costermongers’ carts, already laden down. From far off came a cry of ‘Coffee! Hot coffee!’ – Speakers’ Corner, she guessed. The costermongers always got there early, selling pigs’ trotters to zealots so concerned with their souls that they forgot what they put in their bodies. But that was the best way to eat the costermongers’ wares. The fruit-seller at the corner of Wigmore Street had been boiling his oranges, and that wouldn’t be the worst of it.

She hauled the bucket back inside.

By the time she was done most of the maids were huddled around the kitchen table. Skinny, frizzy-haired Lizzie was yawning into her bowl of porridge. Leah was still absent. Aoife smiled at Eleanor, bleary-eyed. Daisy, their last remaining kitchen maid, was hunched over the stove, the muscles in her strong brown arms flexing as she stirred the heavy porridge pot. As Daisy ladled out another bowl, Aoife caught Daisy’s eye and blushed. Eleanor could’ve sworn she had seen Daisy wink.

‘Where’s Leah?’ Eleanor asked. ‘Is she still dressing?’

Aoife tore her eyes away from Daisy, blushing. ‘I’ve not seen her.’

Eleanor handed an empty bowl to Daisy. ‘Well, we ought to set something aside for her. She’ll need her strength.’

Lizzie, the head housemaid, rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, spare me your moralizing, Ella. It’s her own silly fault she’s eating for two.’

Eleanor whirled around, her temper flaring. ‘It is not her fault and you know it.’

Lizzie smirked. ‘There’s a lot of things I know, Miss Eleanor.’

Leah clattered into the kitchen and Lizzie fell silent. Leah hadn’t managed her stays properly; her dress bulged and sagged where they hadn’t quite fastened. It made her stomach seem larger than ever, and her eyes were very red. Still, she grabbed the porridge that Eleanor had set aside for her and wolfed it down.

‘You took your bloody time,’ Lizzie muttered, looking away.

Leah set aside her bowl and gave Lizzie a long, cool look. ‘You didn’t. There’s hardly any porridge left. Tell me, does food taste better when you take it from someone else?’

Lizzie flushed and slammed her spoon onto the table. ‘You watch how you speak to me!’

Mrs Fielding swept into the room before the argument could properly ignite, already immaculate despite the early hour. Her black dress had been brushed to a shine and her brown hair, greying slightly, was twisted into a savagely tight bun. Mrs Banbury, the cook, slouched in after her, short and stocky, her grey-streaked hair sagging down her neck. Both of them already looked hot and tired.

‘Still eating, girls?’ Mrs Fielding asked, rubbing an old scar on her neck. ‘Come along, we’ve lots to do.’

Lizzie simpered at Mrs Fielding. ‘We’ve just finished, Mrs F.’ She turned back to the table. ‘Ella, you can clear this lot away now.’

Mrs Fielding nodded. Looking over them all, her eyes landed on Leah, took in the bump, and they all saw the decision settle into place. Eleanor watched her jaw clench, the tip of the scar twitching, and knew that there was nothing she could do or say to make Mrs Fielding change her mind.

Tonight, Eleanor would go to the library again. She would read until her eyes ached. She would drown herself in words, sink into the vanilla-smell of the binding, replace her blood with ink. She’d feast on other worlds and make herself anew. A fresh, clean, charming thing with a story from every continent, safe in a world where good, kind girls would not be abandoned …

‘Get to work, girls,’ Mrs Fielding snapped, staring at Leah.

Eleanor had been told to wash the kitchen floor when Mrs Fielding led Leah out of the kitchen, past the abandoned laundry room and into the housekeeper’s private rooms. Eleanor clattered around the kitchen as she fetched her supplies. Three buckets: soapy water, clean water, and water and vinegar, and enough rags and sponges to make a patchwork quilt. She scrubbed each flagstone carefully, first with soap, then water, then the vinegar mixture, until her hands were red and stinging and a fine web of tiny cracks was bleeding across her knuckles. She wished that the sound of cloth on stone could drown out Leah’s pleading.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Eleanor knew she shouldn’t have expected any better. Eleanor’s mother had been Mrs Pembroke’s servant since they were both teenagers, and they had still confided in each other long after Eleanor’s mother left Mrs Pembroke’s employ. Eleanor had vague memories from when she was small of playing on the floor between the two women as they planned out her future. Mrs Pembroke had promised Eleanor a good character reference for her first job, and hoped that she’d care for Mrs Pembroke’s own daughter, in her own grand house, when the time came. But when she was eight, Eleanor’s mother fell ill, and all those plans had been eclipsed by a long year of nursing that Eleanor remembered only in snatches: sweeping the floor with a broom as big as she was, helping her mother sit up against the big iron bedframe, spooning broth into her mother’s mouth. When her mother died, followed by Eleanor’s father not long after, Mrs Pembroke had taken Eleanor in. Everyone expected her to train Eleanor up as a housemaid, give her a good reference and send her on her way.

Instead, she had treated Eleanor like a daughter.

When Eleanor woke up screaming in the night, it was Mrs Pembroke who came running through the bedroom door. Mrs Pembroke took Eleanor into the library every morning and had patiently taught her French, arithmetic and a little piano, without the help of a governess. Mrs