The Adventuress: HFTS5 (4 page)

“Poor child,” whispered Mrs. Middleton.

“It goes to my heart to see her like that,” muttered Rainbird. “I shall give her a few moments to compose herself and then I shall go in there and apologise.”

Emily at last dried her eyes and was reaching for the bell-rope to summon Rainbird when the contrite butler appeared before her. He apologised for all the mishaps and for his own behaviour, and although he offered no explanation, Emily was relieved and at the same time touched.

As Rainbird apologised, Jenny and Joseph cleaned up the mess, Alice carried in bowls of flowers, bought earlier in case a new tenant should arrive after the rout of the Goodenoughs, Joseph made up the fire, and Angus himself appeared with tea and biscuits.

Emily rallied wonderfully under all this attentive kindness.

By the time Mrs. Middleton came in with the books, Emily found she was beginning to enjoy herself discussing household matters. She asked how much they all earned and exclaimed in surprise over the small amount. Rainbird, without much hope, for he still feared Miss Goodenough would prove tight-fisted, murmured that previous tenants had seen fit to augment their wages for the length of the Season, and to his surprise, Emily readily agreed to this.

The household budget she proposed was extremely generous.

Emily tried to maintain an aloof manner with these odd servants, frightened that they might become too familiar again should she be over-friendly, but soon found herself chatting easily with Mrs. Middleton and Rainbird about plans to send cards out for a rout so as to lay the ground for her forthcoming début.

Mr. Goodenough did not wake until dinner time, unaware of all the battles that had been fought and won while he slept. He was delighted to hear how friendly, helpful, and efficient the servants had proved to be and, mellowed by good food and excellent wine, began to look more confident than he had done since he had gained his inheritance. Emily somehow could not bring herself to tell him about the end to the Earl of Fleetwood’s disastrous visit. She knew he would be alarmed and frightened when he learned of her slip into common language. It was wonderful to see this, her patron, looking happy and at ease, for he was facing up to the rigours of a London Season solely for her sake.

Downstairs, the servants settled down late in the evening to their supper, just as relaxed and happy as Mr. Goodenough.

“A pleasant, quiet, genteel couple,” said Mrs. Middleton. “Oh, Mr. Rainbird, it appears as if we shall have our first
comfortable
Season.”

“Amen to that!” said Rainbird, raising his glass. “What a monstrous rat, Angus. How did you find it so quickly?”

“Got it frae the rat-catcher earlier,” said the cook. “I originally planned tae put it in Miss Goodenough’s bed. Well, it’s just as well I did not, for she has turned out to be a good lady. I hope that Lord Fleetwood never finds out it was me that startled his horses.”

It was to be Emily’s first night in London. She had never slept anywhere other than in the country before. Every time she was on the point of dropping off to sleep, the watchman would come along the street below, shouting it was a fine moonlit night and all was well. He came along with his weather bulletin every half hour. Added to that were the cries and rumbles of the night coaches going along Piccadilly at the end of Clarges Street. No sooner had their din ceased, than the clatter of the morning carts began. Then came the dustman with his bell, bellowing, “Dust
ho!”
at the top of his voice, then came the watchman again. He was succeeded by the porterhouse boy, jangling and clashing his tray of pewter pots. After him came the milkman and then more and more numerous cries, a deafening cacophony, but pierced always, every half-hour, by the irritating, penetrating drone of the watch.

Emily climbed down from her high bed and pulled a wrapper about her shoulders. She took a crown from her reticule and made her way downstairs. She would
pay
that watchman to go away. If he at least was silenced, then perhaps she could get some sleep.

The Earl of Fleetwood was walking back to Limmer’s Hotel from his club in St. James’s. He found himself in Clarges Street and wondered idly how the strange Miss Goodenough was faring with her even stranger servants.

And then he saw her.

A shaft of morning sunlight was striking the doorway of 67 Clarges Street. Between the two chained iron dogs that ornamented the front step stood Miss Emily Goodenough. She was saying something to the watchman and handing him a crown. The watch touched his hat and walked away.

Emily stood for a moment on the step, her face lifted up to the sunshine.

The sunlight lit up the gold threads in the masses of her hair, which tumbled down her back. In her white muslin wrapper and white nightgown she looked like some princess in a fairy-tale.

There was a purity about her, and a vulnerable innocence. She was as fresh as the morning.

Strangely touched, the earl stood watching her until she turned about and went back inside.

Emily was just sinking into a deep sleep when she remembered that rat. And then she remembered the drama caused by Lord Fleetwood’s startled horses. In the heat of the moment, she had been sure it was all the fault of the servants. But Rainbird had been so apologetic … and yet … and yet, he had not explained anything.

She tossed and turned, determined to put the matter out of her head, but now every creak and rustle sounded like the furtive movements of rats.

She rang the bell.

Alice answered it, looking her usual relaxed and beautiful self.

“I shall fetch your morning chocolate directly, miss,” said Alice, crossing the room to open the curtains.

“No,” said Emily. “I still want to sleep, but I am troubled about that rat. Is this house
full
of rats?”

Alice, like Rainbird, had no conscience about lying when she considered it necessary. “Oh, no,” she said in her slow, rich country voice. “Lord Charteris next door had the rat-catcher in and one of the rats got away. But we have no trouble on account of The Moocher, the kitchen cat. Fearsome hunter, he is.”

“But why were Lord Fleetwood’s horses frightened?”

“I don’t know, miss. Reckon there are many odd people about London. Mr. Rainbird said a horrible-looking man shouted at them and frightened them. Will there be anything else?”

“Yes. Rainbird apologised for his earlier insolence but did not explain
why
he had been insolent. Can you tell me?”

Alice looked at Emily with wide blue eyes while she tried to think of an excuse. Then it hit her that perhaps the truth was the best explanation.

“You see, miss,” said Alice, “we have mortal-poor wages, and we rely on a tenant to increase those wages. Seeing as how you was so nice over the matter of the rent, we reckoned as how you might be overnice in the matter of household expenses. And there was still time to find another tenant.”

“Do you mean,” said Emily wrathfully, “that you were trying to
drive
me away?”

“Sounds a bit harsh put like that,” said Alice, “but times is hard. We are all ever so sorry now.”

Emily tried to stay angry, but anger was quickly being replaced by relief. They had not thought her common or despised her for her low origins. They did not know! They had merely considered her to be stingy.

“Oh,” said Emily. “Well, behave yourselves in future. Perhaps I understand now why that normally deft and agile butler contrived to fall over the table. What
was
in those cakes?”

But Alice felt she had revealed enough. “Mr. MacGregor, the cook, is a genius,” said Alice. “Pity them cakes was spoiled.”

“It is a
pity
that Lord Fleetwood was given a disgust of this house,” said Emily, although she knew it was she herself who had disaffected him. “Is he a great personage?”

“Yes, miss. Mr. Rainbird do say as how Lord Fleetwood is a leader of society. This is his second Season in London since the death of his wife, although she died eight years ago.”

“And how did she die?” Emily felt she was being very vulgar gossiping with a servant, but her curiosity about the handsome earl was becoming stronger by the minute.

“She was beaten to death in a wood near his country home, miss.”

“Gracious! Who was responsible?”

“Nobody ever found out, miss,” said Alice, who, like Jenny, had no time for Luke’s gossip and did not believe a word of the next-door footman’s story of Lord Fleetwood’s having committed the murder himself.

Emily felt she should now dismiss Alice, but she had not conversed with any member of her own sex for such a long time. “You are very pretty, Alice,” said Emily. “Did that not cause you some trouble with the previous gentleman tenants of this house?” Emily suddenly remembered some of her own experiences as a chambermaid while Sir Harry Jackson had still been well enough to entertain.

“No, miss. Mr. Rainbird would never allow such a thing. One gentleman,” said Alice, remembering the arrival of last year’s handsome tenant, “got a bit frisky at first, but after Mr. Rainbird spoke to him I didn’t have no trouble.”

“Thank you, Alice,” said Emily, who felt she had been indulging in gossip for long enough. “You may go.”

Alice went out quietly and closed the door.

Emily snuggled down under the blankets. So the servants had not seen under her mask after all! No one would, she reassured herself fiercely. Sir Harry’s estates had been in Cumberland, in the far north of England. Such guests as he had entertained had usually come from the local county, and only one or two travellers had stopped over on their road to London.

A shadow fell across Emily’s face. It was one of those travellers who had tried to force his attentions on her, a horrible man—Mr. Percival Pardon. Her screams had brought Mr. Goodenough, then the butler, Spinks, running to her aid. The row that had ensued had caused the poor butler to have an apoplexy from which he had recovered but which had left his face peculiarly twisted up. Shortly after that unfortunate visit, Sir Harry had fallen ill and entertained no more.

Surely no one in. London would recognise the chambermaid Emily Jenkins in the now rich and fashionable Emily Goodenough, or the butler Spinks in the changed face of the now Benjamin Goodenough, Esquire.

They had laid their plans well. They had not dashed off to London, but had gone about things slowly and carefully. The house and estates had been sold, and then they had travelled south to Bath, so that Emily might study the manners of the ladies, and have a fashionable wardrobe made. They had spent a whole year in Bath becoming accustomed to their new identities, although they took no part in the society of the spa.

Somewhere in London, thought Emily, as her eyes began to close, must be a gentleman of manners and title who would want her for a wife. Lord Fleetwood would not do at all, even if it turned out she had not given him a dislike of her, thought Emily, banishing the earl’s handsome face from her mind. Any man who despised servants as much as he must be cold and unfeeling.

“Why do you persist in staying in this disgusting hotel?” demanded the Earl of Fleetwood’s sister, Mrs. Mary Otterley. “You have a perfectly good town house in Grosvenor Square.”

“Which you are living in at the moment,” pointed out the earl. “I did not expect you to take it for this Season as well.”

“I do not see what the trouble is,” said Mrs. Otterley crossly. “You were quite content to stay with us last year.”

“If I may remind you of last year,” said the earl gently, “I came to the Season to find myself a wife. No sooner had I found a likely candidate than you saw fit to call on the girl and her parents, and after that I found I was not welcome.”

“Nothing to do with me,” said Mrs. Otterley. She was a fat, square, pugnacious, red-faced woman, some ten years older than the earl.

“And yet, I was under the impression, Mary, that it was you who reminded my lady-love of the peculiar nature of my late wife’s death.”

“Stuff! Would I do such a thing?”

“Your son, Clarence, stands to inherit my title and estates if I do not wed and have children of my own. I am warning you, Mary, do not interfere again.”

Mrs. Otterley buried her dry eyes in a handkerchief and gave a very stage-like sob. “That my own brother should accuse me of such a thing! Poor Clarissa. How can you forget her so soon?”

“Easily,” said the earl brutally. “Clarissa, my lovely wife, has been dead these past eight years.”

“I cannot understand what went wrong with that marriage,” said his sister, giving up pretending to cry. “Clarissa was so beautiful, so dainty, so much a lady …”

“And childless,” said the earl, “so naturally you approved of her. I did not talk to you about my marriage at the time, Mary, and I have no intention of talking about it now. I had enough of a cross to bear with those Sussex servants at Whitecross Hall. They tattled and gossiped so much, it was a wonder I was not hanged outside Newgate. I detest malicious gossips, and my detestation of all servants makes me reluctant to set about finding a place in London. The servants I have now in Sussex are hand-picked and as close-mouthed as clams. They are all good country people, unlike the last lot, who were mostly imports from London.”