Dragonfly Maid

and I thought I might invigorate before heading to the Queen’s room.”
The House Steward scrutinized me, then scowled again. “Have you been out here long?”
“I just got here, sir.”
“Are you sure?”
I nodded.
He glanced around as though he suspected I might not be alone, but when he was satisfied that I was, he seemed to relax. “Well, don’t dally. The Queen appreciates a certain energy in her staff, but she won’t abide tardiness. I suggest you get on with your task.”
“Yes, sir.” I held back. Was that my dragonfly buzzing in the distance?
Mr. MacDougall held the door. “Now, Jane.”
The buzzing, if it was buzzing, faded into the morning breeze.
“Of course,” I muttered and hurried inside. Any answers my friend might have were going to have to wait.

CHAPTER TWELVE
I didn’t want to go upstairs.
If my assignment had changed to parlor maid or chamber maid, at least I could hold my head high and expect a few shillings added to my wages.
But delivering firewood? I could already hear the whispers behind my back. What could I have done to deserve such a demotion, they’d wonder, and why hadn’t I simply been shown the door? Why did I have a job at all when so many others far more deserving had lost theirs?
The speculation wouldn’t be kind. It never was to girls like me.
And yet, I was in no position to decline.
So here I stood, at the bottom of a servants’ staircase to the Long Gallery, dressed in a frilly apron but feeling worse than ever.
Just be done with it.
All I wanted was to get back to my familiar corner of the kitchen alongside Mrs. Crossey. Where I didn’t have to wear a fussy apron, or pull my shoulders back, or avert my eyes from my betters.
I had no patience for any of it.
Just get it over with.
Somehow, I forced one foot in front of the other and ascended the staircase. At the door, I tightened my grip on my basket and turned the knob to peer down the wide corridor that led to the Queen’s sitting room.
At least I appeared to be alone. No pages, no other maids, no wandering courtiers.
Still, I remained in the shadows to catch my breath and calm my nerves.
It was only my second time upstairs. My first was a chaperoned visit that took place on the day of my arrival, when I was still reeling from my abrupt departure from Chadwick Hollow. I wasn’t as observant as I should have been. The only thing I remembered keenly was the jarring opulence. The scarlet carpet, the silks and gilt, the crystal and wood polished to a mirror-like gloss.
It had been an unsettling introduction to a world so different from the one belowstairs and the one I had known at Chadwick Hollow.
But now, just as then, I forced myself onward, cringing beneath the stares of long-dead royals and nobles peering down from the walls as I made my way toward Victoria Tower.
Do what you’re told.
Those were the words I had told myself on that first day at the castle, when all the new rules and duties and chaos threatened to paralyze me.
Somehow I had gotten through that day, and somehow I would get through this.
By sheer force of will, I reached the door to the sitting room. On that first visit, it had been occupied, and I hadn’t been allowed in. So this was entirely new territory. Carefully, I eased the door open.
I don’t know what I expected to find inside, but it wasn’t three ladies already in their day dresses—dark and modest as Her Majesty preferred—standing in a huddle at a window overlooking the castle’s Quadrangle, teacups and saucers in hand.
One, taller and more serious than the others, smoothed a hand over her sleek black chignon and frowned at me. “Do say you’re here with the firewood. It’s colder than the winter Alps in here.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I muttered, feeling my cheeks burn but not daring to breathe another word. Speak when spoken to was the servants’ rule, though I would prefer not to speak at all. I stared at the carpets beneath my feet and hurried to the room’s fireplace. Across from it, a round table was set for four, and I could see the slender silhouette of a parlor maid arranging biscuits and toast points on a polished silver tray.
When the ladies returned to their conversation, I went to work unloading the wood from my basket, placing it in a copper receptacle beside the hearth. In furtive glances, I took stock of the room. Smaller than the formal drawing rooms by half and filled with cozy cushioned chairs. In fact, the whole room was cozier than anything I’d seen in the castle so far.
Dozens of framed photographs and painted portraits occupied the side tables and the bookshelves. Images of the royal children. The Queen and her Prince. Aunts and uncles and cousins.
One on the mantel stood larger than the rest. A silver frame containing the likeness of the Queen’s mother, the Duchess of Kent and Strathearn, and not as the porcelain-skinned beauty of her painted portraits, but as a stout and stoic matron of mature years. Standing beside her in the photograph was the Queen, still fresh faced and young. Perhaps not yet crowned.
And this frame didn’t gleam as the others did. Its polish was worn in places and spoke of recent handling, perhaps frequent handling, by ungloved hands. A daughter’s hands, if I were to guess.
But then, I didn’t have to guess, did I? If I could hold that frame in my bare hands, what secrets would it unlock?
Instantly I pushed away the thought. I shouldn’t covet royal memories.
But hadn’t Mrs. Crossey said she wanted me to learn what I could? Anything to protect the Queen?
Peering into Her Majesty’s past might yield helpful information.
At least that’s what I told myself.
Beneath my gloves, my fingers twitched as I squatted beside the hearth, arranging logs on the iron grate and considering how best to