Chapter One
Part I
Lucy Primm stood trying not to fidget and moved her head a bit to the side in an effort to alleviate the high starched collar of her simple servant’s dress. She could hear Mr. Ellis coming down the line and cut her eyes at Missy, who stood just to her left and knew she was thinking the same thing: Would this head of staff be as bad as the last one?
They had hated Beatrice Steelman, whose laziness had made Hartford House something of a joke among those who appreciated any kind of historical accuracy. Some of the girls had even chanced wearing eye shadow or sneaking a smoke when the director had been in her office talking on the phone to whomever it was she talked to in the middle of the day. Word had come yesterday that she’d been let go and this new man, this Warren Ellis, would now be assuming her duties.
“Miss Primm, is it?” He was in front of her now and Lucy found herself looking at the front of an impeccably clean blue jacket. Her eyes traveled up and she felt herself gasp a bit. The face that looked at her was handsome, even underneath those horrible spectacles. When Missy had said the new head of staff was “some old guy,” she’d figured he’d be in his sixties. But this man was more around forty, just a few years older than she was.
“Yes,” Lucy said, curtsying and was unnerved to see him looking at her with irritation.
“I mean, yes sir,” she said. His face softened, but not for long. He took the quill he was holding and used the tip of it to lift the chain of her necklace up.
“Is this appropriate, Miss Primm?” he asked.
“Uh, no. No sir.”
Lucy grimaced a bit and tucked the necklace inside her collar. It wasn’t easy to do with the collar being so tight. Lucy had to tug and as she did she could feel his eyes on her and she blushed.
“There,” she said. “It’s all gone.”
“It’s not gone, Miss Primm,” he said, his voice cold. “It’s still there.”
“Well, I know. But you can’t see it.”
“That doesn’t matter.” He spoke to her like she was a child. “It wouldn’t have been an issue if you’d followed the rules. No…?”
She looked at him and then realized he wanted her to finish the sentence.
“Oh! No adornments.”
“Correct,” he said, continuing down the line. “No adornments – no jewelry, no makeup, no visible tattoos. Hartford House is a historical site on the National Historic Registry. People who come here want to feel transported to a different time period. We are expected to remain in character.”
He’d reached the end of the line now and was walking back up, his shoes making soft thudding sounds on the hardwood floors.
“I understand that my predecessor had allowed things to become…relaxed around here. I understand that returning to the rigorous standards the Board of Directors of Harford House may be an uncomfortable adjustment to those of you who have grown used to doing whatever you want…” He looked right at Lucy, as if wearing a necklace were some kind of mortal sin.
When he walked past, Lucy elbowed Missy and stifled a laugh. As she did, Warren Ellis stopped and looked right at her.
“Is something amusing, Miss Primm?”
Lucy forced her face to become as somber as she could make it. “No sir,” she said, but her voice was tight with laughter. The man was ridiculous.
“Hmmm. Well, you certainly seem amused, but perhaps you might take your job more seriously if you were aware of the new demerit system.”
“Demerit system?”
Someone else had asked the question, but Warren Ellis was looking at Lucy now as if they were the only two in the room, and when he gave his answer, it was directed at her.
“Why yes. Insubordination and improper attire are now among a list of infractions will earn employees a demerit. Three demerits and you lose your job.” He paused. “Miss Primm here has just earned her first.”
There was a collective gasp and Lucy looked side to side to see her co-workers looking in her direction with fear and pity. It was a tight economy, and Hartford House paid its staff well. With a young child to support, she was horribly in any position to become unemployed.
“Now do you understand the seriousness of the situation?” He was looking at her, and now it was his face that bore a slightly bemused expression as he took in her expression of shock.
“Yes sir,” she said and watched as he continued down the line, her head spinning from the first real dressing down she’d received since starting the job three years earlier.
Part II
“Jesus!” Lucy pulled the little white cap off her head and stomped down the steps, Missy at her heels. At the bottom she wheeled, almost running into her friend. “Can you believe that?”
“I heard he was kind of strict,” Missy began.
“What?” Lucy couldn’t hide her annoyance. “You didn’t tell me that. You just said he was old.”
“Sorr-ee,” said Missy defensively. “I didn’t think I had to spell it out for you. Robert from the blacksmith shop told me Mr. Ellis used to work at Hargrove Plantation and that everyone was afraid of him. I was going to tell you but there wasn’t time.”
Lucy couldn’t fault her for that. She’d barely gotten to work in time for the morning line-up and was in such a rush to change that she’d forgotten to take her necklace off. If she had just known…
“I don’t think it’s fair that he gave you a demerit right off the bat,” Missy said. The two had dropped to their knees in the herb garden to dead head some of the plants, occasionally casting glances back to the house.
“No shit,” Lucy said quietly. A couple of other staffers were walking by and she didn’t want to be overheard. It was common knowledge that profanity was forbidden in the house or on the grounds, but that rule was largely ignored. Now, with one demerit to her credit, Lucy became fearful of being overheard.
“You could talk to him,” Missy offered.
“I don’t want to talk to him,” Lucy said angrily, taking her agitation off on an innocent bee balm plant she was decapitating.
“Don’t be stubborn,” Missy said. “If you explain your situation and promise to be more careful I’m sure he’ll take the demerit back.”
‘Your situation,’ Missy had said, and Lucy had to agree that it was different than that of the retirement age women, college interns or recent history majors who worked at Hartford House not because they had to, but because they wanted to. At thirty-two, Lucy was struggling to raise her four-year-old son Kegan, the product of a stupid one-night stand. Lucy had never notified the handsome man who had seduced her after a party, and knew little about him except that he was a writer for some magazine in New York. He’s come across as vain and self-centered, and Lucy knew if she’d been sober she would have never fallen for his lines.
She remembered little about the encounter, except for snatches of their conversation in which he revealed that he hated kids and was trying to get his pilot’s license. What started as a chivalrous offer to walk her home ended at a local hotel. Lucy thought she’d seen him put on a condom. Now she knew he had not.
The pregnancy had been a surprise for someone who thought she couldn’t conceive. Lucy had been married at age twenty-two to a man who desperately wanted children. But try as they might she could not conceive. When she suggested they adopt, her then-husband had objected and began researching IVF’s, embryo transplants and surrogates. Lucy realized that she didn’t want to go through a bunch of painful tests to bring another child into the world when there were so many that needed homes. So she left and her ex went on to remarry. To this day he remained childless.
As Lucy sat on the toilet staring at the plus sign on the pregnancy test she had two thoughts. The first was “It was his problem, not mine.” The second was “What am I going to do?”
She knew she would keep it, even if it was for selfish reasons. Both her parents were dead and the child would be the only family she had. A child would ease her lonely existence; before getting pregnant she’d often thought that once she was financially stable she would do what her ex had refused to do – adopt.
But Lucy knew she would have to get a better job. At the time she was working as a research assistant for a textbook company. It was enjoyable work, but her hours had been cut and there were talks of layoffs. The position held until Kegan was born, and two months later she happened to find the ad for work at Hartford House and was surprised to find that the pay and benefits were good.
The work was much different than what she was used to. No longer did she spend her days tucked away in a small office with a coffee cup at her elbow as she dug through stacks of papers or scanned archives for information.
Her job as a researcher had given Lucy enough knowledge to help her become a convincing re-enactor. But the work was physically demanding and the long, high-necked dresses she was required to wear did not make things easier. But she did her job well and without complaint and during her time working at the historic site Lucy had outlasted three directors, watched several of her co-workers retire and watched half a dozen interns come and go.
Ironically, she was now one of the site’s senior employees, and as she thought about what a good employee she’d been, she grew angrier and angrier.
“You’re right,” she said, standing to brush the dirt off her apron. “I will go talk to him. That Warren Ellis may have been able to play Lord of the Manor everywhere else, but he’s not going to get away with it here. Demerits. That’s just ridiculous.”
Lucy snatched the basket of seed heads off the ground and stalked off. Missy stood and followed, wondering if she’d done the right thing by egging on her friend. If Warren Ellis was as stern as everyone said, Lucy was going to have her work cut out for her.
Part III
Warren Ellis looked inside the spittoon outside the restored smokehouse and scowled. Cigarette butts. What on earth had Beatrice Steelman been thinking to allow staff to sneak cigarettes onto a historic site that didn’t even allow visitors to smoke?
She must have been spending a lot of time in her office to miss the sight of staffers smoking, but he wondered how she could have walked the grounds without detecting the smell of nicotine hanging in the air. Warren wrinkled his nose; even with no one smoking the air still reeked of the stale odor.
He jotted down evidence of this latest infraction on a list that was growing in speed only second to the pace of his irritation.
Hartford House standards had fallen abysmally. After only a short time on the job, Ellis had witnessed staffers, who were required to remain in character at all times, chatting casually in the halls about things like iPods and television shows. He’s caught the smell of perfume on more than two of the women. Several of the men looked as though they’d not laundered their shirts. In the spinning house he’d even found a skein of synthetic yarn in one of the baskets.
Warren was a stickler for detail; that was what made him good at his job. As a historian, he’d written numerous books on colonial life before being asked by the Willouburg Historical Society to consult them on some of accuracy of some of their sites.
At Hargrove Plantation he found so many inaccuracies that they booted the director and hired him. The improvements were written up in several tourism magazines, and buoyed by the success, directors made plans to move Warren to the even more mismanaged Hartford House.
With its accompanying farm complete with barn, stables and blacksmith forge, Hartford House was a big draw for school groups and tourists and its annual Hartford House Harvest Festival was becoming increasingly popular. The historical society members wanted Warren in place in time for the event, and let him know they counted on him to do at Hartford what he’d done at Hargrove.
Had any of them really known Warren Ellis, then they would have realized there was no need to urge him thusly.
Warren was a history scholar for a reason – he loved and longed for the past. Sometimes, when he was surveying the scene of a historical site like Hargrove, while he was watching women and men in period dress milling around he wished it were real. He hated modern times, hated what “progress” had done to society. Traditions, manners and morals had done nothing but decline with each passing generation, and each new year brought a feeling that he was more disconnected from the past he longed for.
Warren knew his feelings were unusual, and while he got along well with most people, his unorthodox mindset had been a major roadblock in his quest to find a wife, which – besides the past – was the only thing he really longed for. Modern women were a frustrating enigma. Why were they, he wondered, so eager to forsake the roots of femininity, to turn their back on chivalry and the sound guidance that traditional male leadership offered. Back in the day, a woman trusted her husband or other male family members to decide what was best for her, to protect her. She even willingly submitted to physical chastisement, knowing that her husband, brother or father only had her best interest at heart.
For several years he thought he answer might be to seek out his female counterpart – a historian who was willing to live the values that modern society had rejected. But Warren quickly learned that the academic females who caught his eye considered history exactly that – history – and had no desire to return to a lifestyle where they depended on a man.
Frustrated, Warren spent several years playing the rake and bedded any number of beautiful coeds and even a couple of grad students when he served as visiting professor at a university in London. But the role was not who he was, and he was plagued with guilt for acting beneath what he knew was his character. Two years ago, he returned to courting but after a year had even abandoned that when he realized he’d exhausted his pool of suitable prospects.
It helped to throw himself into work. If he couldn’t create the kind of life he wanted to see in this current time, he would have to settle for making sure his little slices of history were served up with a side of accuracy. And what he was seeing at Hartford House did not square with what he wanted.
Warren Ellis stalked back inside and walked into the office, groaning as he did so. In his mind, the only acceptable piece of technology besides the telephone was the computer. But the other things Beatrice Steelman had added to the office would have to go – a television sat on a corner table and a coffee pot on the shelf under that. On the wall was a plaque featuring an old-fashioned car under which was written the words, “I may be slow, but I’m getting there.”
“Slow indeed,” he growled and snatched the picture off the wall as he reached for the wastebasket. Tossing the plaque inside he walked around, purging the office of any other sign of his former director’s historically heretical style.
The pail as nearly full when he heard a tap at the door. Warren looked at the clock. It was almost one, too early for the meeting he had scheduled with Hartford’s livestock manager, whom he’d summoned for having a flock of historically inaccurate sheep that didn’t even exist in Colonial times.
Sighing, he put the pail aside and walked to the door. When he opened it, he frowned to see the upstart little maid who’d dared to make light of his assessment earlier that morning.
“Miss Primm, if I recall correctly?”
“Um. Yes.” Lucy dropped to a short curtsy, hating herself as she did. But she was convinced to get the demerit removed from her record.
“Do you need something?” Warren didn’t even try to hide his impatience.
“Yes,” she replied. “A word?”
Warren generally dismissed staffers who came by without an appointment, and later he could not really pinpoint exactly why he bade entrance to the diminutive brunette. Perhaps it was the curtsy, or the way she’d said, “A word?” in that halting, respectful tone. But a second later he was stepping back from the door and ushering her in, even if it was with a continued air of agitation.
“Very well,” he said. “Come in then. But whatever you need, please be brief Miss Primm. I’ve got a busy day.”
Lucy looked down at the wastebasket stuffed with the former director’s things, her eyes conveying that she didn’t see the urgency in cleaning an office. But she didn’t yet know Warren’s quirks and just as quickly dropped her eyes to the tips of shoes that peeked from underneath her skirts.
“I just wanted to talk to you,” she said. “About this morning.”
“What about it?”
“The demerit you gave me, Mr. Ellis. I think it was most unfair.”
“Do you?” He asked the question dismissively, to send the message that he really didn’t care what she thought.
Lucy frowned. She got the message loud and clear and after less than two minutes in Warren Ellis’ office, silently pronounced him a Complete Ass. But still, she knew she had to try harder.
“I do,” she said. “I have no problem with rules, Mr. Ellis, and from what I understand there will be many more soon. But I do believe you should let us know what those rules are before you punish us for violating them.”
Warren, who had picked up a TV Guide off the desk and was looking at it like it was a filthy porn magazine now stopped to regard his visitor.
“Are you telling me, Miss Primm, that you were unaware of the prohibition on adornment, makeup and visible tattoos before you showed up for work this morning?” He tossed the TV Guide into the trash.
“No, no sir.” she admitted, angry at herself now for misstating the question. “I mean, yes, I was aware that we’re not allowed to wear jewelry. But this morning my son was being contrary when I was trying to get him on the Pre-K bus and….”
“What happens outside of Hartford House isn’t my concern,” he said abruptly. He turned to her. “Miss Primm, I want to be very clear about something. I do not strive for excellence, I demand it. And I will brook no disobedience from those under my charge. And that means you. Now, you may have found amusement in my disdain for your breaking of the rules this morning, but I assure you I found nothing honorable about such a dismissive reaction. Even without being told, you should already know that laughing in the face of authority is wrong. Or did your parents never teach you that?”
“My parents died when I was a baby,” Lucy replied.
Warren stopped mid-diatribe. “Well,” he said. “I’m quite sorry to hear that.”
Warren sighed and put the trash can down on the floor. “Perhaps you are right, Lucy. Prior management here was permissive, too permissive. You and the others here will find in me a stern head of operations who expects excellence and authenticity in everything. The demerit system is a good tool and I probably should have let you all know what the new penalties would be for breaking the rules.”
“So you’ll remove the demerit?” she asked hopefully. “Because, Mr. Ellis, I can’t afford to lose my job…”
He paused, considering. “I will if you acknowledge that you erred doubly by mocking me.”
Lucy did not feel that she had mocked him, but had to admit to herself that she had screwed up by laughing.
“Yes sir,” she said.
“Very well.” He stood and walked to the door, opening it. “The demerit is removed. And you are free to finish out your day.”
Lucy curtsied, breathing a sigh of relief as she did so. “Thank you, sir,” she said and moved to the door. But as she was exiting, he stopped her.
“Miss Primm.”
She turned back. “Sir?”
“You should know there is a price for my generosity. I see in you a streak of wilfullness that bothers me. Please be advised that I will keep my eye on you, and do whatever it takes to quell that streak should you reveal it again. Do you understand?”
Lucy felt a chill go through her – chill mixed with kind of tingly, fluttering buzz that felt strangely like a perverted excitement. Her cheeks colored up at the sensation and she used her final curtsy to turn away so her blush would go undetected.
“I do, sir,” she replied and, hearing the click of his office door shutting, scurried off on shaky legs to find Missy.
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