Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part Four
Felecia turned away from the only room she had ever known, the one, last and only place that she could ever call her own. She turned away and plodded down the stairs in her house shoes, her slip, and her pinafore dress toward the complete unknown.
Mother really was waiting in the foyer, waiting and looking around nervously. Nana was no doubt lingering somewhere nearby, making sure her will was carried out as always, especially now that she had grown too feeble to be a physical force to reckon with.
Careful to heed the maid’s advice, Felecia crept across the upstairs landing and over to the servant’s staircase, she took the steps slow and on the left side to keep them from squeaking too much. Elle would be in her kitchen like always, her daughter Rose and Josephine’s daughter Katerina would likely be there as well given the hour of the day. Rose and Kat were, the first, older than Felecia and, the second, much younger. Neither girl was close enough in age to ever be a playmate or able either to be friends due to their standing as servants in the house, but Rose was an occasional confidant. Someone in Felecia’s life that she felt warranted a notice of what was going on.
The kitchen seemed empty at first, Elle was nowhere to be seen and little Kat wasn’t at her usual pre-dinner position of carefully peeling potatoes or slowly and methodically chopping carrots. Rose was the only one in the kitchen, she stood in a cold corner, away from the stove and the sink. Felecia looked to the older girl, glad to see a familiar, if sullen, face before the older girl looked away and pointed at a small collection of jars and cheese cloth wrapped objects.
“Take those parcels and go, that was all Elle could manage before your grandmother came in and sent everyone away.”
Felecia lingered on a number of things to say to the slightly older girl. She lingered more than anything about how to explain what, if anything, Josephine and the other gossips upstairs had to say about Felecia’s mystery letters. The old hens were dense sure but it didn’t take a Victorian detective to suss out the archetype for most of Felecia’s lurid letters left upstairs in the bottom drawer of her chest. The rumors were already ripe, add this latest bit of gossip…and well? Wouldn’t it be better, and honest, to let Rose know the truth?
“I just want to apologize if you heard anything in regards to some letters I wrote to well, myself. It was an exercise, nothing more. Please forgive me for any license taken.”
Rose, the young woman left standing sullen in the far corner of the kitchen, didn’t seem at all the sort to pick up on subtlety, nor did she seem interested in waiting for intrigues. The young woman motioned at the carefully wrapped packages and parroted her previous statement. “Those are for you, take them and go. If your Nan sees me talking to you, I’ll be sacked. Please leave!”