With the building always bustling with relatives and lodgers and those who stopped in for a pint or meal after a day’s toil, one had no privacy save the thoughts one kept inside one’s head. Perhaps because of this, she was entrusted with many secrets by others who couldn’t help but let the words out. Peg the kitchen maid disliked Polly, who worked in the scullery, supposedly because Polly was lazy but in truth because Peg’s man had flirted with her. Carys and Elder were battling over some Spanish trinket from Aunt Annie—given to their oldest brother, Bert, but left behind when he married. And so on, daily. You’ve got the sort of face people want to talk to, Nathaniel had once told her. The world tipped its troubles into her ear until she was full of them and could not let them out. Why could not all life be changing bedding in guest rooms or currying a horse in need of soothing? Straightforward work, honest work. To fit within a web of people made Rosalind feel tugged about.
