Alone With You

Chapter 1: Rumors

     Every day spent at Ravenwood House consisted of the same exhausting, monotonous routine for Maeve Walsh: wake at six in the morning, deliver tea and toast to the housekeeper, dress the Duke's youngest sister in her morning attire, and then off to clean and scrub until it was time for Kathryn to change again. At some point, Maeve would be allowed to eat and sleep, but those times only served as momentary pauses, and before she knew it, she was back to work again. The only changes to the routine came when the family, particularly the Duke of Carlyle's widowed mother, the Dowager Duchess, would decide to host visitors or the occasional ball, which was much less exciting than one would think. 

     Maeve hated visitors and she despised balls. Visitors and balls meant more people, and more people meant more work and more opportunities for someone with money and a higher station to use you however they deemed fit. It was bad enough that the staff were subjected to the careless remarks tossed at them by the Dowager Duchess, as well as the near daily fits that Lady Regina, the Duke's middle sibling, would throw over matters both trivial and out of their control. But to be subjected to that and much worse by the visitors that came through the grand estate during the London Season was almost more than she could bear. 

     However, despite the chores and the dismissive attitudes of the family who, unlike most of aristocratic England, dwelled at their London home on Park Lane year round, life at Ravenwood House wasn't all bad. It was steady work with some pay, and it provided Maeve with something that she hadn't had since she had left Ireland as a child: a home. Her mother and father were dead-- casualties of the Great Famine that swept through her homeland in 1845. Maeve was six years old when she had been sent to the workhouse, and that's where she would remain until her tenth birthday brought Mrs. Morrison, the Ravenwood's housekeeper, into her life.

     Charlotte Morrison had been at Ravenwood House since she had entered service as a scullery maid at the tender age of eleven. Like Maeve, Charlotte had no parents and no one to care for her. She had been near death when the butler had found her salvaging scraps out of a bucket beside the servants entrance one cold and rainy autumn afternoon. Mrs. Morrison had been in the employ of the Ravenwood family ever since. 

     Like many housekeepers, Mrs. Morrison had become fiercely loyal to the family who employed her, so much so that she was able to turn the other way when pretty, young housemaids would turn up with child and then vanish into the night like ghosts. Or, when the hall boy would show up late to breakfast with a bruised neck and scratches down his arms that he couldn't explain.

     Over the years, Mrs. Morrison had simply learned to find another young girl to take the place of the missing or to give the wounded a day off from chores, all with the hopes that the gentleman's cravings had been satiated for the time being. Not that she could have done anything to protect them-- no one at Ravenwood, save the Duke himself, could do that. All Mrs. Morrison could do was pity them and replace them. After all, there was work to be done.

     Life at Ravenwood House had calmed slightly after the death of the late Duke of Carlyle in the winter of 1841. Only a few short years after the crowning of Queen Victoria came the passage of the Dukedom to the late Duke's only son, Alexander. Alexander was only eight years old when he was christened the new Duke of Carlyle, and with it was granted all of the privileges and responsibilities that came with the title. However, because the young Duke was still a child, the estate was managed by his uncle, Lord Henry Ravenwood, until the Duke became of age.
Lord Henry managed the estate well; however, like his brother before him, he could be a tyrant, and he had little to no respect for those who were beneath him in station. 

     By the time that Maeve had arrived at Ravenwood House in the summer of 1849, Lord Henry had been in charge of the Ravenwood family and all of the responsibilities and luxuries that came with them for almost a decade. And, despite the fact that Alexander was almost seventeen, Lord Henry still maintained control of the Ravenwood fortune, seeing as the Duke himself spent little time at home, let alone bothered to try and pry control away from his uncle.