Rainbird's Revenge (15 page)

Now what, wondered the duke, had he said to make Fergus's face light up, not knowing that Fergus had immediately planned to ask Alice to go out with him the following evening.

‘Very good, your grace,' said Fergus.

‘And see if you can find out if anything is troubling them belowstairs, other than a lack of sleep.'

Fergus bowed and went out.

But Fergus's almost constant presence in the servants' hall was why the others could not talk openly. Mrs Middleton and Angus had planned to announce their engagement as soon as they had gained their freedom. To announce it beforehand would mean Fergus might tell the duke, and as the duke knew that servants were not allowed to marry, he might demand the reason for the odd engagement. Lizzie was nervous and strung up. Mr Gendreau had given her to the end of the Season to tell the others about her engagement. He had said if she had any free time, then she was to send a note to Manchester Square arranging to meet him. Lizzie was now wondering how she could send that note and was debating whether to take little Dave into her confidence.

She feared Joseph might have sensed something, he was so rude and surly. But Joseph had told Blenkinsop he would take the post as first footman, and, lacking the courage to tell Rainbird, he was unconsciously behaving as badly as possible so as to provoke a quarrel and in the heat of the row bring the whole thing out into the open.

The duke had not told Fergus he was to attend the theatre, and so Rainbird, unaware that his master was to be in the audience, told the others he planned to take Dave out for a walk when the duke was absent. Dave's eyes glowed with excitement, for he guessed Rainbird meant to go to the theatre. Fergus shyly asked Alice to go out walking with him, and promptly went deaf and blind to everything else when she accepted.

Chambermaid Jenny heard Mrs Middleton saying she and Angus would take a stroll the following evening and offered to go with them. Mrs Middleton concealed her disappointment very well.

Rainbird went upstairs to stand on the front steps and wonder whether he was being a fool to take such an enormous risk as to face a London audience. He saw Miss Sutherland arriving home and waving goodbye to two friends. Jenny turned to enter the house, but as she did so she looked along the street and saw Rainbird and hurried towards him.

‘You should not be seen talking to servants in the street,' said Rainbird severely.

‘I suppose not,' said Jenny, looking not in the slightest concerned. ‘I heard something the other day about the Duke of Pelham's agent . . . what is his name?'

‘Palmer. Jonas Palmer.'

‘Ah, yes. And he has his offices in the Tottenham Court Road, does he not?'

‘No, miss. He's at Twenty-five Holborn.'

‘How very odd. My friend seems to have heard things all wrong. Thank you, Rainbird.'

‘What did you hear about Mr Palmer?'

‘You are quite right to reprimand me,' said Jenny primly. ‘I should not be standing here talking to you.'

She hurried off and left Rainbird staring after her.

The duke tossed and turned that night, thinking always of Lady Bellisle's rejection of his suit. Was he as romantic as Lord Paul believed? Certainly, his desire to leave his rich and comfortable existence and fight for his country might be construed as romantic. But marriage should be a civilized arrangement, not a turbulent and messy courting full of sighs and sobs such as a person like Miss Jenny Sutherland would surely expect.

And yet she would probably never receive such a blow to her
amour propre
as he had endured. She would finally settle for a suitable gentleman, bear him children, and become placid and fat. He tried to conjure up a picture of a fat Miss Sutherland, but all he could remember was how enchantingly she had danced in the servants' hall and how her curls had tickled his nose.

Two houses away, the object of his thoughts was awake as well. Jenny was turning over in her mind ways to break into Jonas Palmer's office.
If only I had a man to help me
, she thought.

What a parcel of fools and dastards have I nourished in my house, that not one of them will avenge me of this one upstart clerk!

KING HENRY II OF ENGLAND

Various friends of the duke called next day and the staff were kept busy. Rainbird had learned that the duke was to go to the theatre and suffered a momentary stab of fear, but when he asked Fergus whether the duke might by any chance be going to the Spa Theatre in Islington, Fergus had looked surprised and said he was sure his master would not attend such an undistinguished place.

Lizzie, too afraid to take Dave into her confidence in case the pot boy considered it his duty to tell his beloved Rainbird that she was writing notes to a Frenchman, had managed to slip across the street and pay a page who worked in one of the houses opposite to go with her letter to Manchester Square.

At one moment, the front parlour seemed to be full of gentlemen who appeared to have settled in for the whole day, but the next they were gone, and the duke was hurrying into his evening clothes.

The day had been very hot, not bright and brisk and breezy as it had during the previous days, but still and sultry.

The kitchen and servants' hall were like an oven. To add to the misery, the fire in the kitchen had been kept burning all day as Angus had been baking biscuits and cakes for the visitors, and it was now stoked up again to supply cans of water for the duke's bath.

Rainbird said he was leaving. Joseph let out a squawk and pointed out he would need help to empty the duke's bath and carry it downstairs again, but Rainbird did not seem to hear him.

‘Are you performing at a children's party, Mr Rainbird?' asked Lizzie, as she saw Dave slinging the butler's box of tricks, a relic of the days when he used to perform at fairs, up on his shoulder.

‘No . . . yes,' said Rainbird, and dived up the stairs with Dave at his heels.

All the way over to Islington, Rainbird found himself hoping that the resident harlequin would throw a scene and refuse to stand down, that the rest of the cast would refuse to accept him.

But when he arrived at the Spa Theatre, it was to find that the harlequin was in a drunken stupor and could not have performed anyway, and that the rest of the actors had been warned of his forthcoming performance. He went into a huddle with his fellow actors; Columbine, played by a muscular young man called Jeremy Trip, and Pantaloon, Billy Bright, an old actor with a Falstaffian build. They were to go through the usual pattern of the harlequinade, with which Rainbird, as were most of the British population, was well acquainted. But there were still the long gaps to be filled in by the harlequin with patter and tricks. He asked Mr Frank if he could have some of the other actors for the opening scene, and Mr Frank smiled and told him that as long as he did not expect them to learn any lines, he could have as many as he liked.

The evening was so uncomfortably hot that Rainbird kept hoping very few would attend. Surely it would be better to be out in the fresh air on such an evening than sweltering inside this theatre. Rainbird did not know that playbills advertising ‘The Best Harlequin Since Grimaldi' with the ink still wet on them were being circulated through the streets. Mr Frank was a gambler and had put a lot of money into getting the playbills out at the last minute. He had even hired two strong men to guard the stage door in case the wrathful Duke of Pelham should try to get to his servant.

As the Duke of Pelham climbed into his carriage, he saw his friend, Lord Paul, emerging from Number 71 with Lady Letitia and Jenny Sutherland. Miss Sutherland stood for a moment on the steps, the folds of her flimsy white gown hanging motionless on her body in the suffocating air. She looked very beautiful and very sad. Lady Letitia and Lord Paul smiled and waved. The duke smiled and waved back. Miss Sutherland gave him a chilly nod, a little dip of the head.

Well, she had no doubt learned of his savaging of her character. He could not expect her to behave otherwise. But her sad face upset him. Had she looked angry and haughty, it would not have bothered him in the slightest. He drove off, trying to put her out of his mind, but he could not help contrasting her present sadness with the happy enjoyment of the girl who had danced in his servants' hall.

Jenny was being taken to yet another Season's engagement, a turtle dinner. She was glad Mrs Freemantle was going to play cards somewhere else, for Jenny wilted before that robust lady's disapproval. Mrs Freemantle had not yet forgiven Jenny for having caused her aunt so much unnecessary distress.

As they drove off, Jenny saw the chambermaid Jenny at Number 67, standing at the top of the area steps, and as she looked down from the carriage, prepared to smile, the chambermaid gave her an angry, glowering look before turning around and going downstairs again.

Nobody likes me
, thought Jenny Sutherland wretchedly.
Oh, I must see if I can do something for those servants at Sixty-seven. How can I get to Holborn in the dead of night? Even if I wear very plain clothes and try to look like a servant, I shall be in danger of being attacked.

After turning the problem over in her mind, she said to Lord Paul, ‘We are fortunate to belong to a class who can afford servants to escort us everywhere. Say some poor girl had to make her way through the streets of London in dead of night, surely she would be in great peril.'

‘It depends whereabouts in London,' said Lord Paul.

‘Holborn, say.'

‘Yes, very dangerous. I would suggest this poor girl of yours save up her pennies for a hack.'

Of course, thought Jenny, a hackney carriage was just the thing. She had plenty of pin money left. She would tell the driver to wait for her. Now, all she had to do was hope this tiresome dinner would not last too long.

In Holborn, Jonas Palmer worked over his books. Finally, he threw down his quill pen with a sigh. There was no way he could excuse the bad state of the tenants' cottages on the duke's estates. To put everything in order, even supposing he had the time, would mean paying out of his own pocket. For Palmer had come to consider all the money he had stolen from the duke's estates as his own. He went to a corner of his office and lifted up a loose floorboard and took out the bags of gold he had hidden there and looked at them.

He could buy himself a passage to America and start a new life there. He had enjoyed the power he had had over the duke's dependents more than he had enjoyed getting the money, but he now knew he would be extremely foolish to stay in the country for much longer. He had enjoyed keeping the two sets of books, the real ones showing how he had cleverly managed to feather his own nest. Now, he would have to get rid of them.

He took out one small bag of gold and slid it into his pocket. He would go home and get a good night's sleep. He would book himself a place on the stage-coach to Bristol in the morning and then return, take the gold, and destroy the books.

Joseph minced through the London streets, looking for a breath of cool air. The sun was going down, but the air was still hot and breathless. There was an odd feeling of anticipation in the air, as if the whole large city were holding its breath.

He decided to go to The Running Footman before the heat took any more of the starch out of his cravat. The pub would be hot, but not very much hotter than the scorching streets. He could even feel the heat of the pavements burning through the thin soles of his flat-heeled black pumps.

And then, all at once, he saw Lizzie. She was walking along on the other side of Oxford Street on the arm of a gentleman. She was wearing her best green gown. She was looking up into the man's face with a silly, doting look – or rather, that was how Joseph described it to himself.

The footman was very angry indeed. Here he had been miserable with guilt at the thought of taking that job with Lord Charteris, and all because he thought Lizzie would be heartbroken. And here she was, obviously the mistress of some foreign-looking gentleman.