bottom, she felt the events of the night before subside into a haze of unreality.
She opened her door and saw the stairwell undramatic, plagued by nothing more than dust that she’d do well to sweep out. She descended into the bowels of the house to fetch coal and wood for the kitchen stove and start its fire, the ashes spavined and ready for shoveling. That done, she pumped water, brought in the milk cans, and commenced slicing bread and boiling millet.
Mr. and Mrs. Borden came down first for their breakfast, ringing the bell for her. She served them, and they spoke quietly of their day’s plans as she came in and out. When they finished, she cleared away the plates and bowls, their pattern a simple blue and white positioning of peacocks beneath a willow tree, all spreading their pride-filled spray. She used the brute of her hand to sweep away crumbs and set the table again.
The sisters arrived so promptly that she wondered if they had waited upstairs listening through the wall for the sounds of their elders resettling in their rooms or the front door closing behind them.
Miss Emma appeared in the doorway in a dress of blue lawn, a brooch at her neck, while Miss Lizzie came in behind in pink dimity with brown thorns, a glossy ornament pinned to her breast. Bridget stiffened at the sight of Miss Lizzie.
Her posture was firm and straight, yet her shoulders hunched a bit or perhaps her neck was short, providing her a distinctive profile, last seen as sable upon sable in the night stairway.
“Good morning,” said Miss Emma as she took her place at the table.
“Good morning, Maggie,” Miss Lizzie echoed carelessly, walking rapidly to her side of the table and sitting with no sense of polish. She bore a confidence that Bridget had never felt. The Borden girls basked in their father’s money even if they could not freely spend it. In their dowdy clothes, they appeared to still feel the height of their station, like princesses kept in hiding by cunning regents.
“Good morning,” replied Bridget.
“Millet,” Miss Lizzie pronounced, looking at her bowl with distaste. “This is what I feed my pigeons.”
“It’s all right now and then, Maggie, but we don’t prefer it,” said Miss Emma. She tempered the correction with a smile, but all Bridget heard was the dismissiveness of calling her another servant’s name.
“I’ll remember,” said Bridget. “Shall I take it away?”
“Not this time.”
“The doughnuts you made previously are in keeping with our hopes,” said Miss Lizzie. Her voice, low and flat-toned, had the hush of gentility that her graceless body lacked. She looked up, and their eyes caught. It was a fleeting moment, but Bridget thought she sensed the other woman’s triumph at not being questioned for her odd behavior the night before. She knew she’d been seen, but that Bridget was powerless to do anything about it.
As Bridget stepped back into the kitchen, Emma asked her sister, “Could you not sleep last night? I heard you pass through and stay away quite some time.”
Bridget waited on the other side of the doorway to hear the reply. “I sat downstairs and read,” lied Miss Lizzie calmly.
Bridget fumbled with the plates, nearly dropping them. She bent over, capturing them against her apron, gaining a smear of slimy millet for her trouble. And of course, the stain fell in the middle of the blank field of the apron, glaringly visible and embarrassing in its placement, as if she’d lost control of her natural functionings. She’d have to change into another, and God help her if that became tinged for there were only two.
So the miss could baldly lie; could she? Sitting and reading, was it, rather than hovering outside garrets in the dark?
She blotted the apron quickly. As soon as she’d got the coffee made, should Mr. Borden want another round, she’d go upstairs for the other apron. She went back into the dining room for the other plates.
“I wonder at you, Lizzie,” said her sister. “Why come all the way downstairs when you might simply read abed?”
“I was restless,” said Miss Lizzie. “And it was close.”
“The rooms do get stuffy upstairs,” Miss Emma agreed. “I wonder how it is in the attic.” The two Borden women looked at Bridget, but she was already on her way out, keeping her back turned to them to prevent their seeing the stain, so she threw Miss Emma a smile over her shoulder and continued on.
She quickly ground the coffee beans, rotating the wooden-balled handle while the aromatic beans gave way unto coarse grains. The smell filled the whole kitchen, and she opened the drawer at the bottom of the grinder to shake out the ground coffee into the pot, adding water and then putting it on the stove to boil.
She untied her apron and shrugged it off, going to the wash pail to work out the stain before it set. She used the flakes of detergent to make a weak lather to dab on the spot. She relaxed as she worked at it, for the day stretched ahead of her with not much to do in it.
She heard the rustle of skirts as someone came into the kitchen. Lifting her eyes, she saw Miss Lizzie there, waiting for her to acknowledge her.
“What sort of trouble did you invite last night?” asked Miss Lizzie.
Bridget made no answer, aware her jaw must be open. Her fingers tightened around the folds of the apron in her hands.
“Off with the Kelly girl, who is trouble no doubt,” she added, and Bridget suddenly understood she meant trouble out on the town, not trouble in the back stairway of the home.
“’Twas only a night of merriment, and no harm done,” said Bridget.
“Were there men in attendance?”
“Aye, but none I spoke with.”
“And alcohol?”
“Not so much.”
“I campaign for temperance,” said Miss Lizzie. “So many lives have been destroyed because of its ruinous nature. I do not approve of alcohol.”
“Nor do I, and there was hardly any there, just enough to moisten and soften the tongue.”
“Did you drink an alcoholic beverage there, Maggie?”
Bridget stiffened at the false name. “I had tea.”
“And the Kelly girl?”
“Tea as well, I suppose, if she had anything. I saw her take none.”
“Was there dancing?”
“Aye.”
“And the men had taken drink?”
“Not to the degree that you worry over, Miss Lizzie. The evening was a respectable one, and not the carousing I fear you envision.”
Bridget tried to keep an even tone, but she felt a bit of Mary Doolan’s ire. She could do as she wished on her nights out, so long as it cast no shadow on the Bordens’ propriety.
“Well, I don’t envy you dancing and sweating in such a hot milieu,” said Miss Lizzie. “I’ve never understood the
