The Adventuress: HFTS5 (2 page)

“Well, we don’t,” said Rainbird reasonably, “not as far as the aristocracy is concerned. We’ve been spoiled by some unusual tenants. Hey ho! Lackaday! Why don’t you send us down a tenant, O Lord!”

“That’s blasphemy,” said Mrs. Middleton.

“That’s a genuine prayer,” said the butler, a smile lighting up his clever comedian’s face. Angus MacGregor was peeling potatoes. Rainbird leaned over, extracted six, and proceeded to juggle them expertly. “Keeping my hand in,” he said. “I may go back to working the fairgrounds like I did as a boy.”

“Don’t even say such a thing,” said Mrs. Middleton. The “Mrs.” was a courtesy title, and the spinster harboured hopes of being able to marry the butler once they had their pub.

When Mrs. Middleton saw that pub in her mind’s eye, it was always summer, a sparkling English summer filled with the scent of roses and honeysuckle, and lazy with the drone of bees. It would be a fairly new building, not one of those dreadful Tudor places. The Tudors never could build anything right with their low beams that hit you on the head, and their nasty thatched roofs which harboured rats, and their non-existent drains, mused Mrs. Middleton, who was convinced the Tudors had built like that out of sheer wilful spite rather than ignorance. She would never wear black again, but ginghams and colored lawns and muslins. She would rarely wear an apron, so that the customers would know she was the lady of the house and that the landlord was her husband. Rainbird would change, become stately and distinguished, and cease to remember his juggling or his acrobatics or magic tricks. Perhaps if they were really successful, they could expand into a posting house, and have droves of servants to attend to all the lords and ladies who came to stay. In her imagination, Mrs. Middleton could see the portly bulk of the Prince of Wales descending from his carriage outside the posting house as she and Rainbird stood on the steps to greet him. And then just as she was curtsying to His Royal Highness, she was jerked back to the real world by the heavily accented Scotch voice of the cook.

“I wonder if I shouldnae jist plan on goin’ to Scotland,” said Angus MacGregor. “I don’t think I’m suited tae an English public house, and that’s a fact.”

“Oh, but you
are!”
cried Mrs. Middleton. Angus was a superb cook, and his cooking alone would draw the customers in droves.

“Aye, but it would take verra little to give me a wee bit o’ land in Scotland and a few cattle. I would be in ma ain country and no’ be at the beck and call o’ anybody, ever again.”

“Garn,” said Dave. “Wiff a name like MacGregor, they wouldn’t let you near a bit o’ land. Cattle thieves, that’s what the MacGregors are.”

Angus was too amazed to be insulted. “Where did ye learn that?” he exclaimed.

“Lizzie gave me a book all about it,” said Dave.

“Lot o’ lies,” muttered Angus, but he cast a sideways look at Lizzie, who was now as lost in dreams as the housekeeper had been. He had watched Lizzie change from a grubby illiterate waif to a well-read pretty young miss. But she was still a scullery maid, and surely she must begin to find her status in life increasingly degrading.

But Lizzie, too, was dreaming of the future. She would be married to Joseph, a Joseph who no longer postured and posed, but a manly Joseph, healthy and bronzed after a day’s work in the fields. For Lizzie saw the pub only as an extension of her servant labours. She feared she would be a part-owner of the establishment only in name, but would be expected to scrub and clean and wait table, and never experience the joys of social status or independence. If only Joseph would consider the life of a small farmer. All they needed was a little cottage and a little piece of land. Her dreams were very much like those of the cook, but where he saw towering mountains and glittering lochs and the shaggy moorlands of Scotland, Lizzie saw the rolling English countryside where the sun always shone and where the wheat was always ripe, where the roses hung heavy over the hedge, where the grass in the garden was trim and green, a garden where she could stand in the evenings and watch Joseph striding homewards down the road.

Jenny, quick and dark, had fallen silent as well. She saw the pub only as a means to give her a background to marriage. In her dreams, she and Alice would be serving in the tap when two handsome dragoons walked in. They would be immediately smitten with both of them. Alice and she would have a double wedding. They would go to the Peninsular Wars with their husbands and be so very brave that the Prince of Wales would come to hear of it and would give them medals.

Unaware of her friend’s plans for her, beautiful blond Alice dreamt of children, lots and lots of children. She adored children, and when she tried to conjure up the face of the husband who was going to give them to her, she could never quite manage it. But this nameless and faceless man would ride up to the pub one day and would take her away to a country house with large airy rooms and a large nursery.

Like Lizzie, little Dave often saw the pub as just an extension of his duties in Clarges Street. They would need someone to clean the pots, and Dave was sure that someone would always be he. The ones he loathed were the saucepans after Angus had conjured up some of his French creations. The stuff left in the bottom seemed to be made of glue. But, now, if Mr. Rainbird were to take off and go back to his life at the fairs, then Dave would go with him. They would have an easy life on the road, sleeping out under the stars, and he, Dave, would take the hat round as the crowd gasped and applauded Mr. Rainbird’s clever tricks. The fairground was always brightly coloured and sunny and hot, and all the nights blazed with stars.

And then Joseph burst into the servants’ hall and all the dreams of summer and the golden future whirled about their heads and disappeared.

“It’s Palmer,” he gasped. “Arrived in a po’ chaise wiff a lady and gent. Come to see the house.”

He torn off his apron and struggled into his black velvet coat. His hair was only powdered in patches and so he dusted it liberally from the flour bin until flour covered his black velvet livery like dandruff.

“It may be them!” cried Rainbird. “Our new tenants!”

He threw off his green baize apron, seized his coat from a peg at the door, and darted for the stairs.

“This ’ere’s the butler,” said Palmer as Rainbird darted into the hall.

The agent was standing with his stocky gaitered legs wide apart and his fat hands clasped behind his back. Beside him stood a lady and gentleman. The gentleman was tall and thin with hair so fine and so beautifully white, it looked like a spun-glass wig. His face was very odd, the nose pointing a little to the right, and the thin mouth screwed round in the same direction. He looked as if his face were desperately trying to turn a corner while the eyes remained firm, looking straight ahead. His clothes were sober and old-fashioned but of the finest material. He had a slight stoop and an oddly deferential air. Rainbird judged him to be in his fifties.

Rainbird turned his clever bright eyes on the lady and then found he could not look away. Beauty is a powerful magnet. She had clear grey-blue eyes fringed with sooty lashes. Her skin was very white and translucent. Under her small fashionable bonnet, her curls were glossy and dark brown, highlighted with little threads of gold. Her mouth was pink and warm and generous. Her eyebrows were delicate and arched, like the brush strokes of a master. She had a straight nose, a graceful neck above a ruff of fine lace, and a figure to make a sensualist swoon. But the expression in her eyes was hard and haughty.

“Slop gawking, Rainbird,” snapped Palmer. “Show us around. No need to wait for that fussy Middleton female. If Mr. and Miss Goodenough like the place, then you can line up the servants.”

Rainbird led the way. In the front parlour, he darted about, seizing holland covers off the chairs, hoping to dispel that chill, unused atmosphere that had so repelled the Earl of Fleetwood. The fireplace was fine and Rainbird hoped they noticed it. It was marble-fronted and surmounted with a looking glass that was divided into three by gilt pillars which, in their turn, supported a gilt architrave. On either side of the fireplace were the new bell-ropes, made from coloured worsted during the winter months by Mrs. Middleton and finished by Angus, the cook, with knobs of polished spar.

The chairs and tables were of that fashionable wood, mahogany, brought from Honduras. There was a bookcase on top of a chest of drawers with glazed doors and curtains of green silk within, which could be drawn closed to shield the unintellectual eye from the dreadful sight of naked literature.

As he revealed all these wonders, Rainbird puzzled over his own odd feeling of familiarity, of recognition. He was sure he had seen this Mr. Goodenough before. That strange sideways face of his should be hard to forget. The couple said nothing as they were led from room to room, and Rainbird’s heart began to sink. If only Palmer could have warned him, then he would have suggested delaying the visit to the afternoon so that the rooms might be heated and decorated with flowers.

He kept glancing at their faces, hoping to catch some hint of either approval or disapproval. But Mr. Goodenough’s eyes were blank and his thin mouth was screwed up sideways in a perpetual smile. In any case, the young lady with him—his daughter? had an air of frozen hauteur that gave nothing away.

At last the tour was over and they stood in the hall, Palmer, the lady and gentleman, and Rainbird.

“We shall take it,” said the young lady. Her voice was clear and accentless and very cold. “You, I know, are Rainbird, the butler. I am Miss Goodenough, and this is my uncle, Mr. Benjamin Goodenough. We shall reside here until the end of the Season on June fourth. Now, we should like to inspect the rest of the staff.”

Rainbird opened the backstairs door to call the rest, but they were already crowded, waiting, on the other side of the door. He ushered them in.

Mr. Goodenough had wandered back into the front parlour and was staring vacantly out into the street. The staff shuffled into line in front of Miss Goodenough.

Her hard eye travelled down the line as Rainbird made the introductions. It came to rest on Joseph. “Brush your livery properly before you appear in front of me again,” said Miss Goodenough. The footman blushed and twisted his head round, noticing the flour on his coat for the first time. Then Miss Goodenough turned her attention to Mrs. Middleton. “I shall see you this afternoon at three o’clock, Mrs. Middleton,” she said. “Bring the housekeeping books with you and we shall go over them together. Thank you. That will be all.”

“When,” said Palmer, “will you be moving in?”

“Today,” said Miss Goodenough. “Come, Uncle Benjamin,” she called.

Palmer was obviously in the throes of some inner conflict. He did not want to scare them away by demanding the rent. But, on the other hand, they had arrived out of the blue, and in a rented chaise, not a private carriage.

“There is the matter of the rent,” said Palmer as the Goodenoughs were making for the door. Palmer glared fiercely at Rainbird as he said this, as if in the hope the butler might get the blame if the Goodenoughs considered his demand impertinent.

“Ah, yes,” said Miss Goodenough. She opened a capacious reticule and drew out a thick wad of notes, which she riffled through. Rainbird thought there must have been at least five hundred pounds in that wad. She extracted eighty pounds in five-pound and two-pound notes.

Palmer’s eyes bulged in his head. “There is a little mistake, miss,” he said with an ingratiating leer. “Eighty
guineas
is the sum.”

“Such a pity,” said Miss Goodenough. “I never deal in guineas. Nasty, heavy things. I much prefer paper money.” She put the money back in her reticule. Her cool gaze rested for what seemed ages on Palmer’s beefy face.

Then she said quietly, “You advertised this house at eighty pounds in
The Morning Post
. I believe you are greedily trying to chisel more money out of me. You are not getting a half farthing more. Furthermore, I have a good mind to take you to court.”

“Oh, deary me!” cried Palmer, desperately feigning surprise. “My wits must be wandering. Eighty pounds it is.”

“Seventy-six now,” said Miss Goodenough sweetly. “You tried to make a profit of four pounds. So you can take a loss of four pounds or I shall write to the Duke of Pelham and inform him of your chicanery.”

“You cannot do this!” said Palmer.

“I can and will,” said Miss Goodenough.

Palmer shuffled his feet. The advertisement had now been in the newspaper for three months. The only person other than Miss Goodenough who had shown any interest was the Earl of Fleetwood, and he had decided against renting the place. Palmer looked at Miss Goodenough’s set face and was sure she
would
take him to court or write to the duke—nasty, overbearing, managing female that she was.