Take A Picture (It'll Last Longer)

As much as I always hate to admit that Ben is right, Eadendowns Manor is spooky at night. The suites of armor don’t really move but they look like they do. I don’t really know what possessed me to just get up and walk around this place at night. I couldn’t sleep and after struggling to get out of Ben’s tight grip, I decided I would go downstairs and raid the fridge. Or whatever the equivalent of a fridge is here in a Tudor Era manor house. No one else seemed to be up. The lovely Brigit and her mother had gone home while Ben’s mother had gone to sleep in her room and his father had retired to his. I found it a little amusing that Ben’s parents didn’t just sleep in different rooms but that their rooms were on opposite ends of the house. Ben told me it was because his parents probably hadn’t actually slept with each other in close to fifteen years. The only person I worried about running into me aimlessly roaming the halls was Amy, but when I noticed that her room was wide open and all the lights were off, I suspected she’d headed to the nearby town to pick up some guy at a bar.

I somehow managed to wander into the kitchen, which was twice the size of my apartment back in Chicago. I found Earp standing there with an elderly man and a buff, muscle-toned looking woman, a man with a moustache in a chef’s uniform. All three of them were standing around a television set with three dashing young gentlemen dressed up like footmen and two girls around my age wearing maids outfits. The television was tuned to boxing and everyone in the room was screaming their heads off. One of the boxers fell to the ground and every either yelled in jubilant celebration or agonized defeat. Suddenly, the elderly man in the suite turned around and smiled at me.

“Ah, you must be the Lady Catherine Earp has told us so much about.”

“Catt, please,” I said, blushing bright red.

“Well, then Lady Catt,” the elderly man smiled, “I suppose we should make our introductions. I am Mr. Pemberton the Dawes’ butler.

“And I’m Mrs. Midgley, the housekeeper,” the burly woman said. “If Lord Benjamin gives you any trouble, I’ll thwack him, my dear.”

“You already know me,” Earp smiled.

“And I am Monsieur Jean-Pierre du Severin,” the man with the moustache and the chef’s uniform bowed. “I have been the chef for the Dawes’ for twenty-three years. And not once have they ever complimented by award winning soufflé!”

“Probably because not once have you made said soufflé without spitting in Lady Dawes’ bowl,” Earp snorted.

“The two maids there are Annabelle and Therese,” Mrs. Midgley said, glaring at Earp and du Severin.”

“And those three runts,” Pemberton said pointing to the footmen, “are Sowards, Speight, and Hawkins.” They weren’t paying the least bit of attention to any of us since they were too busy clinking their beers together.

“Stay away from them,” Earp advised.

“What brings you to the kitchens so late at night?” du Severin asked me, his accent making it a little hard to determine what he was saying.

“I just couldn’t sleep,” I shrugged. “So I decided I would walk around and this was the only room where the lights were still on… I’m rambling. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, my lady,” Mrs. Midgley said. I looked around the room for a moment, trying to figure out who she was talking to before I realized it was me.

“Oh,” I blushed. “I’m still not used to that yet.”

“Lady is a title it is very easy to get used to,” Mrs. Midgley laughed.

“Yes. Lady Amelia is quite used to it,” Therese snorted, not aware that I was in the room. “She’s quite conceited about everything. D’you know she purposely leaves her clothes on the floor so we can pick them…. Oh…. My lady I’m sorry I didn’t see you there…”

“It’s okay,” I smiled, “I’ve picked up Amy’s laundry before too.”

“When?” Annabelle asked me curiously.

“When she came to stay with us in Chicago,” I replied. “Actually, I just picked up the clothes. I made Ben do the laundry. It’s his sister, after all.”

“Lord Benjamin doing the laundry?” Mrs. Midgley asked in wide-eyed surprise. “Do you have photographs?”

“I think I took some,” I laughed.

“Did Lord Benjamin ever learn how to drive a car?” du Severin asked me curiously.

“Not within the speed limits, but yes,” I said, wondering why they were all so curious about Ben now.

“I knew he would learn to drive,” Earp laughed. “It was quite comical to teach him. Always stopping and starting and afraid he was going to blow the entire thing up. You know, he couldn’t remember which was the accelerator and which was the break for the first three weeks I was teaching him.”

“That sounds like Ben,” I nodded.

“Oh! And remember that time he tried to make us all Christmas cookies?” Mrs. Midgley laughed.

“He is never allowed to use my kitchen again,” du Severin snorted.

“There was batter everywhere,” Pemberton informed me. “And he watched the oven for three hours because the cookies wouldn’t bake. He thought the oven was broken. In the end, he had just forgotten to turn the oven on in the first place.”

“Who we talking about?” slurred the footman I vaguely remembered to be Seight.

“Lord Benjamin,” Earp sighed, exasperated.

“Never heard of him,” sloshed the footman called Soward.

“I remember him,” Hawkins said, not nearly as drunk as the other two. “I had only been on the job three days before he left though. When I was sent out to clean up a mess in the hall, I found him beating up one of the other footmen who worked here before me. I think his name was Mot-something –or-other. Apparently, Lord Benjamin caught the fellow with Lady Brigit. Not a very nice girl. She’s either insulting you or trying to sleep with you.”

“As you can imagine,” Pemberton informed me, “none of us are quite fond of either Lady Andrews.”

“Didn’t Lady Brigit wind up in the Daily Mirror a few months back for being skirtless on Prince Harry’s lap?” Annabelle asked.

“That was Lady Amelia, actually,” Mrs. Midgley said in a disapproving tone. I wrapped my bedrobe tighter around me because a draft was coming through the kitchen. Mrs. Midgley turned to me in a motherly tone. “Getting cold, dearie?”

“A little,” I admitted. “This big old houses… I’ve never really been in one before. At least not one this old.”

“What is it you do, exactly?” Therese asked me curiously.

“I write for a magazine in Chicago. Mostly small stuff, but I like it,” I replied.

“Is it true Lord Benjamin is a photographer?” Annabelle asked.

“One of the best,” I nodded.

“What about your parents?” Therese asked.

“Girls, don’t be rude,” Mrs. Midgley said.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” I said. “My mother is a yoga instructor and my father owns a business that restores antique cars.”

“Wow,” Annabelle said. “My dad works in a factory and my mum sells collectibles over the Internet. Not even good ones. Cheap ones. Like from Fergie’s wedding to Prince Andrew.”

“Hold on. that ‘My Humps’ girl married Prince Andrew?” Soward slushed.

“No you dumbass,” Speight said. “The one who does those Weight Watchers commercials.”

“Let’s try to avoid drunkenly confusing the Fergies at this point,” Pemberton offered.

“How’d you meet Lord Benjamin?” Therese asked.

“In college,” I replied. “We were in a few of the same classes and just got to know each other.”

“How romantic,” Annabelle swooned.

“Not really,” I frowned. “He used to stick his fingers in my pizza so I wouldn’t eat them and he could have them himself.”

“That sounds more like the Lord Benjamin we all know and love,” du Severin snorted.