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

Eleanor did not care. They were going back to Granborough House for the first time in a week, and if she didn’t have the window open she was going to be sick. How much damage could Mr Pembroke do in seven days?

The hansom rolled to a halt outside the front door, the steps gleaming white in the rain. Eleanor scrambled out of the carriage at once and had already started for the tradesmen’s entrance before she remembered Felicity. Face burning, she unrolled the steps, put up an umbrella and helped Felicity to the door. Felicity gripped Eleanor’s smarting arm, digging in her fingernails.

Aoife opened the door for them. Her face broke into an enormous smile when she saw Eleanor. ‘You’re back!’

‘Quite the welcome, I’m sure,’ Felicity sneered, striding into the hall and leaving Eleanor to wrestle with the umbrella. ‘Run along, girl, and tell my fiancé I’ve arrived.’

Aoife scurried away, blushing. Felicity stared around the hall with an appraising eye, taking in the marble floors, the sweeping staircase, the mahogany banisters. ‘Make a note, Hartley,’ she said, staring at the wallpaper, ‘I want something a little less dated in here. Scheele’s green would do very – Charles!’

Charles was coming down the staircase, beaming. ‘Felicity! How are you finding the Langham?’

‘Oh, charming, although I miss you terribly, of course. You must have me over for dinner or I shall waste away.’

‘Well, I hope tea will suffice until Thursday, at least. And you, Eleanor? I hope you’ve been enjoying your stay.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ she said.

‘There’s no need for you to call me sir, Eleanor.’

Felicity raised an eyebrow. ‘I did not realize you ran such an informal household, Charles.’

He blushed. ‘Well, ordinarily I should never dream of it. But Eleanor and I grew up together. I could never ask Eleanor to call me “sir” after I’d spent so many years pulling her pigtails. It’d be unnatural, coming from her.’

There was a glint in Felicity’s eyes like the shine on a blade. ‘Is that so?’

Panic began to flutter in Eleanor’s chest. Barely ten minutes inside Granborough House and she was already in trouble again.

‘Goodness, yes,’ said Charles. ‘I’m afraid I was a perfect beast towards her. She used to ask me for help with her French and I taught her the most awful phrases.’

Eleanor started. ‘You did? Which ones?’

Charles went scarlet. ‘I thought you knew! You were always smiling when you said them back to me – you joined in when I laughed! You must’ve known, surely!’

‘What did you teach me to say?’ Eleanor asked, unable to hold back her smile.

‘I can’t tell you now! You’re …’

‘Run along, Hartley,’ said Felicity, taking Charles’s arm. ‘I shan’t need you.’

Eleanor scurried to the servants’ stairs as Charles and Felicity climbed the grand staircase to the drawing room. The moment she came through the kitchen door, Aoife threw her arms around her.

‘Look at you! Give us a twirl, Ella. I’ve another letter from home, will you read it to me?’

Eleanor smiled, forgetting some of her fear. ‘Of course, but are you all right? You haven’t been …’

They both glanced at Mrs Fielding.

‘I’m well,’ Aoife said, although Eleanor noticed the shadows around her eyes and the way she fiddled with the cuffs of her dress. ‘Will you read my letter, please?’

Eleanor spent half an hour in the kitchen, reading Aoife’s letter aloud and writing a reply for her, all while being pelted with questions about Felicity and the Langham. All too soon, the drawing-room bell rang and all Eleanor’s panic came flooding back.

‘You remember what I said?’ she asked Aoife, squeezing her hand.

Aoife nodded. Eleanor went upstairs, hailed a cab and escorted Felicity back to the Langham in a silence that made her stomach curdle.

Eleanor knew what was going to happen now.

Felicity crushed her skirts in her fingers as she climbed the stairs to her hotel room. Her arms were like bowstrings, waiting to be drawn back. When Felicity waited for Eleanor to unlock the door to her room, she stood like a hangman waiting at the gallows: silent, still, and with her face empty.

Eleanor shut the door behind her, heart beating fast.

All Felicity’s packages were stacked neatly by the foot of the bed. The pillows had been plumped, the sheets had been changed. The tablecloth was clean, there was no dust along the windowsill and every surface had been buffed to a shine.

No one was coming.

‘Lock the door,’ Felicity said.

Eleanor locked it. She tried to reassure herself. Felicity couldn’t do much damage. She was a good sight taller than Eleanor but she was still a lady. Ladies’ arms were slim, their hands soft; they were meant for playing the piano and smoothing out their skirts. Eleanor had spent the past three years avoiding Lizzie, who’d lugged iron buckets full of coal up and down the stairs all day. It wouldn’t hurt as much as—

Felicity slapped her.

Eleanor staggered back, her cheek throbbing. Felicity took a deep, steadying breath.

‘Proverbs,’ she said. ‘Twenty-three fourteen.’

‘I … what?’

Felicity slapped her again. Eleanor turned her head with the blow. It took the bite out of the slap, but it still stung.

‘Proverbs, twenty-three fourteen,’ Felicity snapped, ‘recite it.’

All Eleanor could think of was ‘deliver us from evil’, and that would get her another slap. Then she remembered, and dread swelled up inside her.

‘“Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and deliver his soul from—”’

Felicity hit her again. Her eyes were shining.

‘I do this for your own good,’ Felicity hissed, ‘as fathers do for their children. Adultery is a sin, Hartley. Fornication is a sin. You’ve sinned far too much already.’

‘Miss, I swear, I haven’t—’

‘I don’t want to hear your excuses! You are my maid. You’ve no business with my fiancé! I’ll have no more of this. No more, do you hear me?’

Smog seeped under the shuttered windows of the hansom. Felicity insisted they be closed; ladies were not gawped at. More likely than not, she didn’t want the dye on her dress to run; today’s confection was in magenta and mauve and would turn