The air was thick with the scent of spices and steam. All the servants were crowded around the long pine table sampling the almond drops and the Naples biscuits. Mrs. Bow, the cook, had been completely won over by Margery’s sponge roll, declaring it the best she had ever tasted. The hall boy had taken a parcel of cakes out to the stables for the grooms and the coachman to try, and even Barnard the butler had biscuit crumbs trailing a guilty path down his livery. After the initial half hour he had cracked open the second-best bottle of sherry, supposedly for cooking purposes only, but it was not long before one of the footmen had surreptitiously passed the bottle around. From the sherry they had somehow progressed to port and from there to champagne and so the confidences had started to flow along with the wine. Daisy, the second housemaid, had told Margery all about her younger sister who did not want to go into service but wanted instead to be an actress, and how their mother thought that was more likely to be the start of a career as a lightskirt than anything else.
