In Victorian England slums, the oldest and quietest girl of four trying to keep a roof over her family's head accepts a job with an odd staff and mysterious employer. Until she finds out all the maids before her are dead and she must face a mystifyi...
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"I warned my friend he was being too obvious but that is Joseph, he could never hide his feelings."
"Since when?"
"Since we were children, he proposed to her too early she was sixteen and I warned him she would say no. My sister was born to please our parents and when our parents disagreed of the union I knew where it was headed still he asked her anyways."
"Yes that is very like him."
Of course Miss Lilly was the girl of his dreams, not only the first girl he fell in love but the one he was still in love with and no amount of denial could deny this truth. Though it was always a surprise to find the people we thought we knew as a part of our life already belonged to another life, to someone else in their past.
"How did you and Joseph become friends? He never told me anything on the subject though I have asked him about you many times." Henry asked while I saw how remarkable it was that I had met the girl who Mr. Howard did not think his son ought to be marrying and if he could go against her then no other lady stood any chance to get Mr. Howard's approval.
"We met in Bridgeston, I was out accompanied while delivering a letter to the post and he was on his own traveling to Stanley Hall, when the rain began to pour he helped us get away from it by offering his carriage."
This was the version I had been told to repeat because if anyone else heard the story of the circumstances which I had met Joseph in, suspicions would arise about my reputation for being alone with him.
"And that also sounds very much like my friend or should I say brother in law?" Mr. Henry smiled as we observed Joseph and Miss Lilly talking nonstop without detaching their eyes off one another.
Joseph and Lillian, that is how love looked, it saw in its lover's eyes nothing else but the holder of their hearts. In love you found both people in wholeness, ever present, with nothing left behind someplace else unlike when Joseph and I were together. Joseph's missing part had a name, a face, a joyful disposition named Lillian and he could only be whole with her and no one else.
A picnic luncheon was served during the hunt and before it finished I said under my breath, "we must talk once we are back at the house."
"Of course, see me at the library no one will bother us there," he arranged and I nodded then Lilly and her distant cousin who was from Ireland and Lilly's companion asked me to join them in a traditional Irish dance.
"Come ladies, my cousin Brielle will teach us how to dance!" Miss Lillian said excited to all the ladies who got up from where they sat on the blankets of the green grass west of Stanley Hall.
"Come dear, get up, we will dance," mama said for my sake and I followed them to where Henry was asking Brielle how to dance.
"Henry it is for the ladies now leave Brielle alone," Miss Lillian said.
