Chapter Twelve

CHAPTER TWELVE

Saturday, 11 October, 1862

When Mary discovered what the role of scullion in the Duc de Montalt’s London house entailed, she was not greatly impressed. Shocked would be a better description. To think Mam—as she’d called Catherine then—and Father Patrick had put her forward for such a lowly position. Nothing but grinding drudgery in the kitchens from first thing in the morning to gone midnight. It was the only vacancy, they’d said, but for all their poverty, she thought Mam had been preparing her for better work than this. She even slept in a box bed that folded out of a cupboard in the scullery corridor, for God’s sake. No privacy at all. Mam had responded by saying if she used her brain and worked hard, she could rise one day to become a cook or housekeeper. Mary noted she hadn’t said Lady’s Maid, as Catherine had been when her family fell on hard times. As though Mary wasn’t cut out for that exalted position. No doubt, the precious Ellen, safe and cosseted by Mam at