Character Showcase - McKenna

Amalie McKenna is an eager, hard-working young servant in the household of Lady Bramley. She has an ambition to become a lady's maid -- just like the woman who raised her -- and her mistress is very encouraging and supportive. When Amalie is sent by her ladyship to tend the new mistress of Slowly Rising, a manor house in the Shropshire countryside, she knows this is her big opportunity and she won't let anything spoil it. Not even the distractions caused by that irritating, nosy new valet.

Amalie, or "McKenna", as she must be called now that she's a lady's maid at last, is well aware of how important it is not to let oneself become distracted and she has no time for flirtations with cheeky-faced, impertinent rogues. She may look young and innocent, but she's not naïve and she doesn't intend to make a mess of this new life here in the country. Hoping to make her mother in heaven proud, she wants only to be the best lady's maid there ever was. It's everything she's ever worked for.

The other servants think she's haughty and prim, and too young to be a lady's maid. They tease and torment her, but the fact that they cannot get under her skin only annoys them all the more.

She has often felt like an outsider in any case, and her best friend is Arjun Das, the Indian valet of Lady Bramley's neighbor back in London. He is the only one who ever seems to see and understand her. The only one who listens and takes her seriously. Of course, she also has Coquin, the naughty spirit she keeps trapped in a silver chocolate pot that her mother once gave her, but that creature seldom listens to her either. Since they arrived at Slowly Rising, Coquin has been more restless and noisy than ever, begging her mistress to be let out of that pot and run free.

The last thing McKenna needs in her new post.

Before she lets Coquin out again, she'll need to learn as much as she can about the other spirits in the house. And she'll have to discover exactly what it is that brought the so-called valet, Gideon Jones, to Slowly Rising. Because she's quite sure that man is not what he pretends to be.

Nothing the lives within the walls of Slowly Rising is what it seems.

* * * *
(Excerpt below from Slowly Rising)

Not all spirits played well together. Sometimes they started fires or floods, or fierce mistrals that blew houses down. Sometimes they caused sudden quarrels between lovers, or lust between enemies. They made cows behave as if they were moonstruck, stopped hens from laying, and generally constructed chaos for their own amusement.

            And Amalie did not want anything bad to happen here to her kind new mistress. She had seen the scars on Mrs. Wilding's forearms when she dressed her in the morning, and so she knew that lady had already fallen foul of bad fortune— whether it be the fault of human hands or other beings. One day, when the time was right, she would ask her mistress about those poorly healed wounds, but Amalie recognized the scars left by flames when she saw them and that, for now, was all she need know.

            "They used to burn witches," said Coquin from her pot. "Well, they tried. They didn't know it made us stronger."

            Because when something burns it stays in the air to be dispersed with the smoke over far distances and in the tiniest of pieces. It becomes more powerful, indestructible, a part of the air itself and therefore a necessity of life. It is never lost. Never gone.

            "Did you know, sweet Amalie, that the word departed used to mean, split in two? Divided? It is not a word of which to be afraid, mon ami."

            What was the menace jabbering on about now? Lifting her head briefly from the pillow, Amalie urged again, "S'endormir!" Tired after a long day of work, she was in no mood tonight for Coquin's songs and stories. "To be sure, nobody else keeps such a noisy, chattering chocolate pot."

            That brought her silence, for a while at least. If one did not count the indignant huffs belched forth at intervals from the spout of that silver chocolate pot.

            Somewhere in the wall a woman laughed softly and water dripped.

            It must be raining again. Warm, summer rain.

            Amalie yawned into her pillow and let her limbs relax under the blanket. At least this house would never burn; it was too damp.

            Nobody could catch fire here.

* * * *

Want to read more? Get your copy of Slowly Rising here.
Happy Reading!

JF
 (Image: La Scapigliata by Leonardo Da Vinci c. 1508)