Chapter 8,
“Room 301”
Summer led Lily around, giving her a quick rundown of the hotel and its operations.
“Your job is to collect the laundry from guest rooms and return it to its place. Easy enough, right?”
Lily diligently took notes in her notebook.
“Most late-night requests get refused. We need our sleep, too. Oh, and no jewelry is allowed.”
Summer pointed at the locket around Lily’s neck.
On the walls of the underground corridor were bells marked with room numbers, with strings running somewhere out of sight.
“Pull the string in the room, and the bell rings. You just follow this corridor to the hotel.”
The hotel looked different from the outside than it did from inside.
It wasn’t just the grand chandeliers, the murals of ancient Roman gardens, or the beautiful carpets. A humble, close-knit community of staff existed within the hotel, far removed from the aristocratic elegance outside.
“I’ll show you your room too. You’ll take the bed Bennett used,” Summer added.
The room had no proper furniture at all. Lily sat on the small bed stuffed with chicken feathers. Like other maids, she would surely be exhausted by her workload, but for now, she was happy to have a place to rest.
To Sister Volina,
I haven’t written in a while because I’ve been busy. I got a job at the Belmore Hotel (please make the sign of the cross when you read this sentence).
I’m spending a week full of nerves. It’s frustrating, but the hotel staff actually like Belmore, even though they’ve never met him. He pays well, too.
Lily paused for a moment after writing this line before picking up her pen again.
Everyone else graduated from maid school, but I’m from a convent. Still, I work hard to keep up. I haven’t made any big mistakes yet.
I’ll come back to the convent after receiving my first paycheck.
And the murals are safe. I still often visit Sister Brigida’s grave…
“Elizabeth, are you writing a love letter? If not, turn the lights off immediately.”
Summer muttered, annoyed. Lily slipped the letter between books and turned off the light.
Ding Dong
By the time a month had passed, Summer called Lily before starting work.
“Elizabeth, from today, you’ll work alone.”
“Alone? What if I make a mistake?”
Summer barely glanced at her in the mirror and answered casually.
“Better to make mistakes while on probation. You’ll handle the laundry on the third floor starting today.”
Hearing “third floor,” Lily immediately thought of the man in Room 301. Memories of that day, which she had tried to forget, rushed back. She hadn’t seen him since fleeing his bed. Summer misinterpreted her silence.
“The third floor has smaller rooms, so there are more rooms to manage, but that’s not a bad thing.”
Lily nodded. She couldn’t bring herself to mention the man from Highbrom.
“Let’s go.”
Looking at herself in the mirror in her black maid uniform and white apron, she adjusted her bonnet. The girl in the navy checkered outfit was gone—she now looked like an experienced maid. She quietly prayed that her work would be as seamless as her appearance suggested.
Christopher liked his private time at the end of the day. He sank into a plush sofa, whiskey in hand, reflecting on the day.
“They searched Highbrom, but no one saw a woman like that,” he thought.
It was enough that she hadn’t appeared. The nun leaving for East Longfellow had left an enigmatic message:
“Things will flow as God wills, so don’t be too arrogant.”
At least for Belmore, that wasn’t true. The convent had been relocated according to his plan, not God’s.
He only needed to find the woman and send her far away.
Christopher rang the bell to summon a maid. He needed clothes for his appointment with Cecil tomorrow.
Moments later, someone knocked politely and entered.
Normally he would have ignored them, but the figure turning their back felt strangely familiar.
“Shall I take all the clothes here?”
Hearing the maid speaking while organizing the luggage with her back turned, he set his glass down with a sharp clack.
Startled, the maid turned around. Seeing her face, he finally spoke.
“So this is where you’ve been hiding.”
The lighthouse doesn’t illuminate beneath itself—they had failed to find her at Highbrom for a reason.
Christopher spoke first. Lily, who had been looking down, lifted her head.
“Care to explain why you’re working here?”
Lily’s shoulders trembled under his cold gaze. He radiated displeasure from head to toe.
“I didn’t know you were still staying here.”
“That’s not the answer I want,” he said.
“I’m not that kind of… woman you think I am. That day…”
Before she could finish, he cut her off.
“I saw you at Highbrom. Don’t think I don’t know what kind of place that is.”
He interrogated her.
“Please, just pretend you don’t know, even once.”
“Who gave you the right? Who hired you?”
Lily bowed her head and pleaded silently. If not for this man, that day would have been a foolish incident she could have kept to herself.
“All the maids working here were hired by Sir Belmore.”
The most authoritative name Lily could think of—but it held no weight with him.
“Belmore hired you? What could he have seen?”
Noticing the mockery in his lips, Lily fell silent.
“You’re an orphan. You’ve had no proper education, no real work experience.”
He deliberately exposed her as insignificant.
“And if you’ve ever hurt the hotel’s reputation, even briefly, you wouldn’t have been hired.”
“That… only matters if the guest keeps quiet.”
“Tell me why I should keep quiet.”
Lily clenched her fists.
“I’ll quit as soon as I’ve earned enough. Just until then…”
“You trust people too easily.”
She added that she was pleading, but he didn’t answer. The silence felt humiliating. Lily suspected he was enjoying the situation.
“I’m not trusting you, but a gentleman doesn’t tattle.”
Her words hit him like a bomb.
He stepped closer. Lily stumbled back, eventually trapped between him and the wall.
“Do you really not know who I am? Or are you pretending not to?”
Lily stared, rolling her eyes, uncertain how to answer a man asking her identity.
“I know.”
“You say you know me, and yet you claim Belmore hired you?”
“Why? You’re just a guest, aren’t you?”
Christopher sighed. She hadn’t cowered as expected; instead, she held her ground, unexpectedly confident.
A laundry maid, undisciplined, wearing jewelry at will.
He gripped the necklace around her neck. She was pulled closer until they nearly touched.
“Better to leave Londinium. It’s safer where no one knows what kind of woman you are.”
His warm breath brushed against her, but Lily didn’t yield. She wasn’t ‘that kind of woman,’ and if she’d been ready to give up, she would have left for East Longfellow.
“I’m not leaving. You’re the one who goes to Highbrom to buy women, so that’s why you see me that way, isn’t it?”
She gripped the taut necklace.
“Threaten all you want. I won’t take your money.”
“You won’t take it?”
He released the pendant without hesitation. It fell against her chest, the cold metal brushing her collarbone, making her shiver.
“You have nothing more to ask or demand, right? I mean the laundry, not misinterpreted things,” she said, pulling a shirt from the laundry basket.
“I’m telling you this for your own good. It’s not too late,” he said.
From the very first day working alone, she had bad luck. He looked genuinely pitying, like a man seeing a stray dog. Cheap sympathy was worse than insult.
“If Sir Belmore believed you, I’d be fired. But me listening to you and leaving on my own? Never. Ever!”
Lily shouted the last line, then bolted from the room.
After that, she was bedridden for two days, unable to work.
Summer, placing a cold towel on Lily’s head, finally asked,
“Lily, is something wrong?”
Seeing her expression, Summer pressed for an answer, but Lily stayed silent.
If she spoke, she would have to mention Highbrom. Even one day of the orphan’s story wasn’t something she could be sure anyone would believe.
Seeing Lily stay quiet, Summer sighed.
“Whatever it is, don’t tell anyone about the guest. That’s why Bennett got fired.”
Summer whispered as if the walls had ears.
“The guest will leave someday. Talking about it only hurts our reputation.”
“What did Bennett say?” Lily asked anxiously.
“Someone bragged about bringing a woman from Highbrom to the hotel. Told Bennett to change her clothes! He must’ve been frustrated serving such a woman.”
Summer rambled on about Bennett, but Lily’s attention had long since drifted.
So the man really did nothing?
Her mind swirled with confusion.
Who exactly is that man?
Ordinary people would have paid for such services, yet he offered money and ordered her to leave.
Lily got up, brushed her hair, and stared at her pale, hollow-eyed reflection. She changed from pajamas into her hotel uniform.
“Why are you up? Take another day off.”
Summer tried to stop her.
“I’m fine. I have no vacation, but lying down like this feels unfair to everyone.”
Working diligently and quietly at the hotel—this was how Lily would prove her innocence.
