Royal Blood (6 page)

“Oh, God. She’ll look like a bally great meringue in a wedding dress,” Belinda said. “Who is she marrying?”

“Prince Nicholas of Bulgaria, apparently.”

“Poor Prince Nicholas. I’d forgotten she was a princess, but then I suppose a lot of our classmates were some kind of royalty, weren’t they? I was one of the few commoners.”

“You’re an honorable. Hardly a commoner.”

“But not in your league, darling. I say, what a scream—a bridal attendant to Fatty Matty. Let’s hope the other attendants aren’t her size or you’ll be squished to death among them.”

“Belinda, you are awful.” I had to laugh. We broke off as tea was brought in. I watched Florrie serve it efficiently then depart.

“Your maid,” I said, “she doesn’t have a sister, does she?”

“Florrie? I’ve no idea, why?”

“Because I have been instructed by Her Majesty to take my maid with me to Romania. And since I don’t have a maid to take with me, I’m going to have to beg, borrow or steal one from someone else, or hire one from an agency. I don’t suppose you could do without Florrie for a week or so?”

“Absolutely not,” Belinda said. “I nearly starved to death during that fog. If I hadn’t been able to make a run on Harrods’ food hall for pâté and fruit, it would have been the end of me. Besides, if Florrie wouldn’t dare to cross London during a fog, I don’t think she’d have the spunk to make it across the Channel, let alone to Romania.”

“What about when you go abroad?”

“I leave her behind. I can’t really afford a second ticket. There are usually enough servants to take care of me at the sort of villas I like to visit.”

“Then do you have any suggestions as to where I might find a maid? Anybody you know who might be going on a cruise or to the south of France and leaving their maid behind?”

“People with money never leave their maids behind,” Belinda said. “They take them along. You could probably pick up the right sort of girl in Paris, if you go a few days ahead.”

“Belinda, I have no idea where one would find a maid in Paris. My mother took me there a couple of times when I was little and we went once with the school. Besides, I’d have to pay a French maid money that I don’t have.”

“That’s true,” Belinda agreed. “They are frightfully expensive. But worth it. If I wasn’t living this miserable existence, I’d have a French maid like a shot. My dear step-mother has one, but then Daddy gives her everything she wants.” She dropped a sugar cube into her teacup. “Speaking of mothers, why don’t you ask yours to cough up the money for a French maid?”

“I never know where to find my mother,” I said. “Besides, I don’t like asking her for things.” A thought crossed my mind. “We could try asking Florrie if she knows any girls who are looking for work and want a taste of adventure.”

“Anyone Florrie knows wouldn’t want a taste of adventure,” Belinda said. “She must be one of the most boring creatures on earth.” But she rang the bell.

Florrie came rushing back into the room. “Did I forget something on the tea tray, miss?” she asked, anxiously clutching at her apron.

“No, Florrie. Lady Georgiana has a request of you. Go ahead, Georgie.”

“Florrie,” I said, “I am looking for a maid. You don’t happen to know of any suitable girls who are out of work, do you?”

“I might, your ladyship.”

“And would be up for a little adventure, traveling abroad?”

“Abroad? What, like France, you mean? They say it’s terrible dangerous over there. Men pinch your bottom.” Florrie’s eyes opened wide.

“Farther away than France. And even more dangerous,” Belinda said. “All the way across Europe on a train.”

“Ooh, no, miss. I don’t know no girls who’d want to do that. Sorry, your ladyship.” She bobbed an awkward curtsy and fled.

“You needn’t have played up the danger,” I said. “We’ll only be on a train and in a royal castle.”

“You don’t want one who’s going to lose her nerve halfway across Europe and beg you in tears to be taken home,” Belinda said. “Besides, what if the train is attacked by brigands—or wolves?”

“Belinda!” I laughed nervously. “Things like that don’t happen anymore.”

“In the Balkans they do—all the time. And what about that train buried in an avalanche? They didn’t dig them out for days.” She looked at me, then burst out laughing. “Why the somber face? You’re going to have topping fun.”

“When I’m not suffocating in an avalanche or being attacked by brigands or wolves.”

“And Transylvania is part of Romania these days, isn’t it?” Belinda was warming to her subject. “You might meet a vampire.”

“Oh, come on, Belinda. There are no vampires.”

“Think how intriguing that would be. I understand it is utter ecstasy to be bitten on the neck. Even more of a rush than sex. Of course, I believe one then becomes one of the undead, but it would be worth it just for the experience.”

“I have no wish to become undead, thank you,” I said, laughing uneasily.

“Come to think of it, I’m sure Matty told us that their ancestral home was actually in the mountains of Transylvania, so there you are. Vampires everywhere. How I envy you the experience. I do wish I were coming with you.” Suddenly she sat up straight, nearly knocking over the little tea table. “I have a brilliant idea. Why don’t I come along as your maid?”

I stared at her and started to laugh. “Belinda. Don’t be absurd,” I said. “Why on earth would you want to be my maid?”

“Because you’re invited to a royal wedding in Transylvania and I’m not and I’m bored and it sounds as if it could be loads of laughs and I’m dying to meet a vampire.”

“Some maid you’d be.” I was still grinning. “You don’t even know how to make tea.”

“Ah, but I know how to press things, thanks to my clothes design business. That’s the important part, isn’t it? I could press and dress you. And in case you have forgotten, I played the part of your maid once before and I did it jolly well,” she said. “So why not? I’m itching for an adventure and you’re providing one. You wouldn’t even have to pay me.”

I have to admit I was sorely tempted. It would be fun to be in a strange country with Belinda beside me.

“In other circumstances I’d take you up on your offer like a shot,” I said, “and it would be a lot of fun, but you’ve overlooked one small detail—Matty would recognize you instantly.”

“Nonsense,” Belinda said. “Nobody looks twice at servants. I’d be in your room or in the servants’ quarters. Her Highness and I would never have to meet. Come on. Do be a sport and say yes.”

“I know you too well,” I said. “You’d soon tire of being left out of the fun and festivities, wouldn’t you? You’d only be there ten minutes and you’d find some good-looking foreign prince, reveal your true identity and leave me in the lurch.”

“I am cut to the quick,” she said. “Here am I, making you a generous and unselfish offer, and you keep finding reasons to turn me down. Wouldn’t it be a lark to be there together?”

“A fabulous lark,” I agreed, “and if I were going as an ordinary person, I’d take you along in an instant. But since I’m representing the royal family and my country, I have to observe protocol in every aspect. Surely you can see that?”

“You are becoming as stuffy as your brother,” she said.

“Speaking of my brother, you’ll never guess in a million years. Fig is in the family way again.”

Belinda grinned. “I suppose in their case it’s he who has to close his eyes and think of England when he does it. So you’ll be bumped back to thirty-fifth in line to the throne. It doesn’t look as if you’ll ever make it to queen.”

“You are silly.” I laughed. “It will be good for Podge to have a brother or sister. I remember how lonely it was to be a child living at Castle Rannoch.” I put down my teacup and got up. “Anyway, I must go on my quest for a maid. I’ve no idea where I’m going to find one.”

“I’ve offered my services and been rejected,” she said. “But the offer still stands if you can’t come up with anyone better by the end of the week.”

Chapter 7

A semidetached in Essex with gnomes in the garden
Still Thursday, November 10

This was turning into a tricky problem. There was nobody else in London I knew well enough to ask to borrow their personal maid. I realized when I reconsidered that it would be the most frightful cheek to turn up on somebody’s doorstep and ask to borrow a maid, even if I did know them well. I wondered if I might get by with traveling alone and telling the dreaded chaperon that my maid had come down with mumps at the last moment. Surely they’d have enough servants at a royal castle to spare me an extra one. And I had become quite good at dressing myself. But probably not dressing myself in the sort of gown to be worn at weddings, with a thousand hooks or so down the back. There was nothing for it. I’d have to find an agency and hire a suitable girl, hoping that I could find some way to pay her at the end of the trip.

I was still dressed in my visiting-the-palace clothes so I set off again, scouring Mayfair for the right sort of domestic agency. I didn’t dare return to the one that had supplied me with Mildred once before. The proprietress was so impossibly regal that she made the queen look positively middle class. I wandered along Piccadilly and up to Berkeley Square. Luckily the rain had slowed to a misty drizzle. I finally found what looked like a suitable agency on Bond Street. The woman behind the desk was another dragon—perhaps it was a requirement of the profession.

“Let me get this straight, my lady. You wish to employ a lady’s maid to accompany you to Romania?”

“That’s right.”

“And when would this be?”

“Next week.”

“Next week?” Her eyebrows shot upward. “I think it would be highly unlikely that I could find you the right sort of young woman to fill this position within one week. I can think of one or two who might be persuaded, but you’d have to pay her a premium.”

“What sort of premium?”

Then she named an amount that I should have thought sufficient to run Castle Rannoch for a year. She must have seen me swallow hard, because she added, “We only handle the highest caliber of young women, you know.”

I left in deep despondency. My brother could never find that sort of money, even if Fig would ever let him hand it over to me. It would have to be Belinda or nobody. As I walked through the growing twilight I pictured Belinda and all the sort of things that could go wrong with that arrangement. I was doomed whatever I did. Then I heard a newsboy calling out the headlines of the day in broad Cockney. That immediately made me think of the one person I had not yet turned to. My grandfather always had an answer for even the toughest problems. And even if he couldn’t conjure a maid out of thin air, it was like a tonic just to see him. I almost ran to the Bond Street tube station and was soon speeding across London into darkest Essex.

I suppose I should explain that whereas my father was Queen Victoria’s grandson, my mother had started life as the daughter of a Cockney policeman. She had become a famous actress and left her past behind when she married my father—only to bolt from him again when I was two.

The tube train was packed by the time it left central London and I emerged rather the worse for wear. It was raining hard again as I left the train. I was always glad to see my grandfather’s little house, with its neat, pocket handkerchief- sized lawn and its cheerful garden gnomes, but never more so than that evening. A light shone out of the frosted glass panes on the front door as I trudged up the path. I knocked and waited. Eventually the door opened a crack, and a pair of bright boot-button eyes regarded me.

“Whatcher want?” a gravelly voice demanded.

“Granddad, it’s me, Georgie.”

The door was flung open wide and there was my grandfather’s cheerful Cockney face beaming at me. “Well, I’m blowed. Talk about a sight for sore eyes. Come on in, ducks. Come in.”

I stepped into his narrow front hall and he hugged me in spite of my wet overcoat.

“Blimey, you look like a drowned rat,” he said, holding me at arm’s length and grinning at me, his head to one side like a cheerful sparrow. “What on earth are you doing here, out on such a miserable night? ’Ere. You’re not in some kind of trouble again, are you?”

“Not really in trouble,” I said, “but I do need your help.”

“Let me take your coat, love. Come into the kitchen and take a load off your plates of meat.”

“My what?”

“Yer feet, love. Ain’t I taught you no Cockney rhyming slang yet?”

He hung up my coat then ushered me down the hall to his tiny square of kitchen, which was already occupied by one person. “Look what the cat brought in, ’ettie,” he said. It was his next-door neighbor, Mrs. Hettie Huggins, who had been setting her cap at him for ages and finally seemed to have succeeded.

“Pleased to see you again, yer ladyship,” Mrs. Huggins said, dropping me a curtsy, although there wasn’t really room for her ample hips to bend. “I’ve been taking care of your granddad, since he had a nasty bout of bronchitis.”

“Oh, no. Are you all right now?” I turned to look at him.

“Me? Yeah. I’m right as rain, ducks. Couldn’t be better, thanks to ’ettie ’ere. She fed me up like I was a prize chicken. In fact, we were just going to have some of her stew, weren’t we, Hettie? Want to join us?”

“Her ladyship won’t want stew, Albert. It ain’t what posh people are used to.”

“I’d love some, please,” I said. Then added, “Just a little,” in case they didn’t have much. But Mrs. Huggins ladled out a big bowl with barley and beans and lamb shank and they nodded with satisfaction as I wolfed it down.

“Anyone would think you hadn’t seen a decent meal in a month of Sundays,” Granddad said. “You’re not still growing, are you?”

“I hope not. I’m taller than some of my dancing partners,” I said. “But I do love a good stew.”

They exchanged a look of satisfaction.

“So what are things like up in the Smoke?” Granddad asked.

“Smoky. We’ve had horrible fogs. I’ve hardly been out.”

“Same down here. That’s what done in Albert’s chest,” Mrs. Huggins said.

“So what can we do for you, love?” Granddad asked, looking at me fondly.

I took a deep breath. “I’m looking for a maid, in rather a hurry, I’m afraid.”

Granddad burst out laughing. “I didn’t mind pretending to be yer butler, love, but I ain’t wearing a cap and apron and being a maid for you.”

I laughed. “I wasn’t expecting you to. I was wondering if you knew anyone who had experience in service and who was out of work.”

“I reckon we can come up with half a dozen girls who’d jump at the job, don’t you, ’ettie?” Granddad turned to her and she nodded.

“A maid for you, yer ladyship? Your own personal maid, like?”

“Precisely.”

“I shouldn’t think the position would be hard to fill. You’d have girls lining up to work for a toff like you. Why don’t you just put an advertisement in the newspapers?”

“There are some complications,” I said, realizing as he said it that an advertisement might be a jolly good idea. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? “Firstly, it’s only a temporary position. I want a girl to accompany me to a royal wedding in Europe.”

“In Europe?”

“Romania, to be exact.”

“Blimey” was all Granddad could find to say to that.

“And I can’t pay her much. I’m hoping I’ll be able to pay her something when I return.”

Granddad shook his head, making tut-tutting sounds. “You are in a bit of a pickle, aren’t you? What about your brother and his snooty wife, can’t they spare you a servant?”

“Nobody at Castle Rannoch wants to travel to London, let alone abroad. I’m looking for an adventurous girl, but I can’t afford to pay her much.”

“Seems to me,” Granddad said slowly, “that a girl might want to take up this position so that she could use you as a reference. Former maid to royalty. That might be worth a darned sight more than money.”

“You know, you’re right, Granddad. You’re brilliant.”

He beamed.

“My niece Doreen’s girl is looking for work, as it happens,” Mrs. Huggins said quickly. It was clear that her brain had been ticking as he made that suggestion. “Nice quiet little thing. Not the brightest, but it might help her land a good position if she had a reference from a toff like you. Why don’t I speak to her about it and send her up to you if she’s willing to give it a try.”

“Brilliant,” I said. “I knew I was doing the right thing coming to you two. You always have an answer for me.”

“So you’re going to a royal wedding, are you, your ladyship?” Mrs. Huggins asked.

“Yes. I’m going to be in the bridal party, but I have to leave next week, so that doesn’t give me much time to hire a maid to travel with me. This girl you mentioned—she has had some domestic service training, has she?”

“Oh, yes. She’s had several jobs. Not anything like as grand as your house, of course. This will be a step up in the world for her. But like I said, she’s a quiet, willing little thing. And you wouldn’t have to worry about her having an eye for the boys. She don’t have an ounce of what they refer to these days as sex appeal. Face like the back end of a bus, poor little thing. But you’d find her keen enough to learn.”

My grandfather chuckled. “If she was in the theater, I wouldn’t hire you as her manager, ’ettie.”

“Well, I have to tell it straight for her ladyship, don’t I?”

“I won’t be judging her on her looks, and at the moment I feel it really is a case of beggars not being choosers.”

“So I’ll tell her she can call on you at yer house, shall I?”

“By all means. I look forward to meeting her.” I finished my stew and started to stand up. “I really should be getting back to London, although I can’t say I’m looking forward to it. I have my brother and sister-in-law at the house.”

“You’re welcome to the spare bedroom,” Granddad said. “It’s a nasty night out there.”

I was tempted. The safety and security of Granddad’s little house versus the doubly frigid atmosphere of Rannoch House occupied by Fig. But I had a wedding to plan for, and I didn’t want Fig suspecting that I’d spent the night with Darcy.

“No, I really should get back, I’m afraid,” I said. “It was so good to see you.”

“We’ll want to hear all about it when you come back from wherever it was,” Granddad said. “You take care of yourself, traveling in foreign parts.”

“I wish I were a man, then I could take you as my valet,” I said wistfully, thinking how much nicer it would be traveling across a continent with him at my side.

“You wouldn’t catch me going to heathen parts like that,” Granddad said. “I’ve been to Scotland now, and that was quite foreign enough to last my lifetime, thank you kindly.”

I laughed as I walked up the front path.