"Fetch the Tea, You Are Not a Guest," Her Stepmother Smiled - The Duke Rose and Carried the Tray

Hester Aldis has kept her father's house at Layham, in Suffolk, since the February she turned 15, and nobody ever sat down and gave the duty to her. The linen wanted counting on the Monday, and she counted it. 14 years later she still keeps the household books at the parlour table on one candle, the brewing, the poultry money, the servants' orders and the sick of the village, in a house her father's will left to his widow for life. Her stepmother, Lavinia Aldis, made one arrangement when she came to Layham, and never once said it out loud. She let Hester go on doing the work. It held for 12 years, and it suited everybody. On the 6th of November, Lavinia gave a ball to launch her own daughter. Hester wrote all 72 cards in the small upright hand she keeps for anything a stranger will read, hired the plate and the glass from Hadleigh, beat the musicians down from 4 guineas to 3 and a half, and came down in her mother's grey silk, turned and made over in three evenings after everybody else had gone up to bed. At 9 o'clock, with 40 people in the drawing room and the fiddles tuning through the wall, her stepmother looked up from the tea table, smiled, and said it in a voice pitched to reach the window. Fetch the tea, Hester. You are not a guest. Hester set the cup on its saucer without a sound, said, "Yes, ma'am," and went out by the servants' door, and down 13 steps to a kitchen where every pair of hands was spoken for. Nobody in that room spoke for about four seconds. Then a man at the far end of it set down the cup he had just been handed. The Duke of Ashcombe had been in the room 11 minutes. Don't forget to subscribe so you won't miss new stories, and ring the bell so you know when the next one arrives. Tell us in the comments what you made of Hester Aldis and the Duke of Ashcombe, and where you are watching from and what time you saw this video. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events are imaginary, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental. This video was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence, including narration and painted imagery. Chapters: 0:00 Introduction - Eleven Cups in the Dark 5:42 Lot Ninety One 9:30 The Key on the Blue Ribbon 12:43 A Man at Hadleigh 18:10 Seventy Two Cards 21:16 The Second Pot 26:40 What Was Said at Hadleigh 37:11 The Twelfth Cup #RegencyRomance #HistoricalRomance #RegencyStories #AudioStory