By The Sea, Book One: Tess Read Free

the damask
tablecloth and twenty-four serviettes, which she set to soaking in
a copper tub filled with soda solution. The stain was gone, but not
so her suspicion that Peter Boot was right: she had done it on
purpose.

Chapter 2
     
    I hate being in service. That was her
thought as she lay quietly in her attic room at dawn, careful not
to wake her sleeping sister. The muslin curtains of the tiny
dormered window hung slack; there was no breeze to fan them. The
air was thick, hot, old, a mixture of August oppression and stale,
used up vapors from the floors below. Tess thought with longing of
the guest bedrooms, with their lofty ceilings and enormous French
doors open to the cool ocean.
    She had been one of the first of the staff
to arrive from New York, shortly after the Morans entered the
employ of the Winwards, to open up Beau Rêve for the season. With
an upper housemaid, Tess had gone from room to room, awestruck,
stripping away the huge muslin sheets from the lavish, priceless
furnishings. Her imagination had recoiled from the gilded opulence
of Mrs. Winward's bedroom, but she had found herself enchanted by
the east-facing bedrooms of the Winward daughters, Isabel and
Cornelia, who with their brother would someday inherit not only all
of Beau Rêve but its domestic staff of nineteen as well.
    To inherit. Tess turned the idea over in her
mind, tormented by its possibilities. To inherit meant that you
need never worry, really, about the future. It meant that you could
send someone you loved who was ill to take the cure at Hastings, or
on the south coast of France. It meant that fathers and brothers
did not have to live separated from daughters and sisters. Perhaps
it was true that the meek would inherit the earth. But the rich
would inherit most everything else: good health, happiness, lovely
manners.
    It was a long night for Tess, filled with
forebodings. That's from Mother, Tess thought wearily. Mother, who never saw the rainbow, but only the rain.
    Ironically, Maggie had got her best night's
sleep in a long time. For once she awoke without an unhealthy red
flush in her cheeks, which made Tess immeasurably happy. Tess's
feelings toward her older sister had always been oddly maternal;
since their mother's death, more than ever.
    Maggie came and sat on the side of Tess's
bed, very much as she used to when the two were little girls in
Cork. "I feel so much better today, Tessie. This afternoon when
we've done with our work, let's go off for a walk along the beach.
We'll have tea."
    "So you plan to go leaping down the lane
like a deer, miss, and all because you've had one good night's
sleep?" Tess threw her blanket off and strode to the corner
washstand. "Whatever next? You'll be off to join the equestriennes
in the circus, I suppose," she teased. "My own thought on the
matter is that it's early days to be thinking of hauling yourself
cross-country," she said firmly. And then, in perfect imitation of
the cultured tones of the mistress of Beau Rêve, Tess, a born
mimic, added, "However, I daresay a stroll along Bellevue Avenue
would suit you perfectly, darling. I shall arrange your hair, and
you shall have my silk parasol."
    "Oh, never the silk one!" Maggie
cried, delighted.
    "Indeed, you shall have it."
    But first the laundry. At most of the great
Newport houses, Monday was set aside as laundry day. Articles were
sorted and inventoried in the washing book, after which they were
set to soaking in soda or lime solutions until Tuesday morning,
when the fires would be lit for heating the huge copper tubs; and
soon after, washing would begin. But at Beau Rêve, entertainment
proceeded at a breakneck pace. Caroline Winward accepted
invitations only from half a dozen among her exclusive circle of
friends; mostly, she entertained. For practical purposes, there was
little to distinguish a dinner party at Beau Rêve from a state
dinner at the White House: Ambassadors and senators, English earls
and European counts were summoned with