Diamonds & Deceit (7 page)

“Thank you so much, Mrs. Grundy. We will be sure to let you know our decision as soon as we can.”

Georgiana closed the door of the housekeeper’s room after the latest applicant for Mrs. Cliffe’s position, and turned to Mrs. Cliffe, who sat at the desk with her notes before her.

“Oh, my goodness,” Georgiana said as soon as she was sure the woman was well out of hearing. “Did you smell her breath? Pure gin!”

“
Not
one we will be inviting for a second interview,” Mrs. Cliffe said with a sigh. She leaned forward and made a cross next to Mrs. Grundy’s name.

“I don’t know how the agency can think it right to send them.” Georgiana put her hands to her forehead, where a headache was beginning to pulse. She had never imagined that interviewing for a housekeeper could be so frustrating and exhausting. She looked around at the comfortable room, and heard the tick of the old clock pulsing like a heartbeat around it. It was impossible to imagine anyone but Mrs. Cliffe sitting here, ruling the household. What would Somerton do without her?

“There is a national servant crisis, I’m afraid, my lady,” Mrs. Cliffe said.

“So I hear. I suppose it must be attractive to live in town, but I can’t think a dirty, noisy factory a more pleasant place to work than Somerton.” She furrowed her brow. “I hope we make things pleasant for the people who work here, Mrs. Cliffe. I certainly try to.”

Mrs. Cliffe smiled at her, a warm, motherly smile that comforted Georgiana to the core.

“Everyone here feels lucky to work for the Averleys, my lady. You couldn’t ask for more generous employers.”

Georgiana smiled gratefully at her. It was nice to feel she was getting it right for once. It was so difficult with Papa and Ada away. Neither William nor Edith seemed to care about the estate, and she had found that if anything was to be done, she had to take charge.

“Thank you, Mrs. Cliffe,” she said. “I must go and tell Lady Edith that this one didn’t suit either. She won’t be happy, but what can one do?”

“Nothing indeed, my lady,” Mrs. Cliffe agreed. She followed her to the door, and held it open for her. “Somerton must have an excellent housekeeper, and I certainly will not leave until one is found.”

Georgiana stepped out of the door, but hesitated. She turned to Mrs. Cliffe, wanting to express something of her gratitude for the support she had received.

“It will be very hard to replace you,” she said. “In every way.”

Mrs. Cliffe smiled. “Have no fear. We will find someone capable.”

I do hope she is right, thought Georgiana as she hurried through the servants’ passage and up the stairs to the green baize door. Or we’d have to manage it all ourselves, and a pretty pickle we should make of it! She felt she was just beginning to realize exactly how much work went into running Somerton. It was quite frightening—and yet it was pleasant to take on such a challenge, to feel, well…
needed
. She had been ill for so long, it was a nice change to be able to look after others for once.

As she entered the hall she saw Cooper opening the door to her older stepbrother. “Sebastian,” she said in surprise. “I’m glad to see you, but I didn’t know you were coming.” She faltered, noticing that he looked tired and sad. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes…” He handed Cooper his hat and picked up the local newspaper, frowning at the headline before putting it down again and looking at her. “I’ve come directly from the gaol, that’s all.”

“Oh…” Guiltily Georgiana remembered what must have brought him to the area. “Poor Oliver. Did you see him? How is he?”

“As well as can be expected, I suppose.” Sebastian’s usually sparkling voice was flat. “If you’ll excuse me, I have some letters to write.”

“You’re staying then?”

“Afraid not. I must go straight back to London. My mother gets restless if I am not at her side for the season.”

“Of course.” Georgiana followed him with her gaze as he trudged up the stairs to his room. She was touched at the obvious pain he seemed to be in. She turned to Cooper. “Will you see that something hot to eat and drink is sent up to Mr. Templeton?” she asked. “He looks as if he would like it but won’t think to ask for it.”

“Of course, my lady.”

“Do you know how the case is progressing?” Georgiana asked. “It seems such a tragic thing. It must have been an accident, surely.”

Cooper inclined his head. “All of us liked Oliver, my lady. An excellent servant and a pleasant young man. None of us imagine him capable of murder. But whether the jury will see things our way…”

“Surely they must!” Georgiana exclaimed. “He’s so young, and he has an excellent character.”

“But there is the matter of the money he was owed. Some might see that as motive.”

“I suppose so.…” Georgiana sighed. “Well, I feel very sorry for him.”

“We all do, my lady.” Cooper coughed discreetly as Georgiana was about to move away. She turned back. “I wondered, my lady, whether the person had been found satisfactory.”

Georgiana realized he meant the gin-sodden Mrs. Grundy. “Oh, no. I’m afraid not, Cooper.”

“It is just that…” He lowered his voice. “Some of the staff have been expressing…doubts.”

“Doubts?” For a confused moment, Georgiana thought he meant religious doubts. “Surely the vicar—”

“About working under Mrs. Cliffe. Now that her history is so widely known, you see… They feel it lowers the reputation of the house, that she should continue here. I wondered if it might be possible to remove her to a different location, at least until His Lordship returns—”

“Cooper, that’s enough.” Georgiana felt her cheeks flush, both with anger on Mrs. Cliffe’s behalf and with embarrassment at conversing with a servant on such a subject. “I know you only mean to help, but we must give Mrs. Cliffe all our support at this time. I won’t hear a word against her.”

Cooper pressed his lips together, frowning. He merely bowed, however, and withdrew. Georgiana watched him walk away, offended dignity in every inch of his bearing. After the first impulse to defend Mrs. Cliffe had died away, she had to admit that he had a point. But the trouble, if there was any, had not entered into the upstairs world, and she had to trust Mrs. Cliffe to look after the downstairs one. It was unfair to meddle in her authority while she still held her position.

Annie groaned as she looked at the pile of mending that Lady Edith’s maid had put up for her. Sometimes she dreamed of it, napkin after napkin, sheet after sheet, shift after shift. It seemed deeply unfair that she should spend her life growing squint eyed and callous fingered and hunchbacked from hours of darning. While other people, just because of who they were born to, waltz at balls with royalty and suchlike.

“I should be enjoying my youth,” she sighed. Resentfully she picked up the pile of mending and lugged it to the kitchen.

“How that boy can get through so much linen is beyond me,” she complained to Martha, who was hosing down the sink, where she had been gutting a chicken. “He tears everything! There’s a devil in that Master Augustus, I’m sure.”

“Think yourself lucky,” Martha snapped back. “Some of us would give a lot to have a nice clean job like a housemaid’s.”

“Lucky!” Annie sniffed, picking up the first piece of mending, a napkin. She didn’t feel lucky. The white mountain of mending loomed at her. It meant hours of peering at tiny stitches, painstaking, fiddly work that pricked your fingers and left you with work-hardened hands. Not like Miss Sadie Billesley’s hands, she thought, and threw the napkin down again.

“Where are you off to?” Martha called after her as she got up and made to leave.

“Breath of fresh air, not that it’s any of your business.”

Annie went to the back door and breathed in the afternoon air. Why was life so unfair? Why did she never get a chance? She glanced over to the shining motorcar that stood in the middle of the stable yard, the doors open. Why was she never riding in a car like that, instead of standing watching them go past her?

A man came out of the servants’ entrance. He carried a trunk and called out behind him, “One more, James.”

Annie wondered who he was, then remembered. Mr. Templeton was clearly about to leave. This was his valet.

“Off to London?” James said as he came out with the other suitcase.

“Thanks. Yes, back to London.” The valet took it and put into the trunk of the car.

“Wish I was,” James said with a short laugh.

He headed back into the house. Annie stood where she was. A thought had struck her like a bolt of lightning: Wish I was.

Her hand closed on Rose’s letter in the pocket of her apron. She needn’t stay here, needn’t resign herself to a life of the same old drudgery and being passed over for better things. She had friends in high places. Why on earth shouldn’t she go to London and become Rose’s maid?

Her heart soared. She could see it now—the two of them riding off in motorcars to parties and dress fittings. Rose would make the best mistress, she was so kind and generous. It wouldn’t be like work at all. It would be like being a lady.

She turned round and whisked back inside. She had enough saved for the train ticket. All she needed to do was hand her notice in, and she’d be away.

Rose had expected to be in ecstasy at her first visit to the Royal Academy of Art’s Private View. It was one of the most exclusive events of the London season. An invitation to show at the Academy’s summer exhibition was jealously sought by every artist of note. But as she strolled with Sebastian through the halls of Burlington House, past dutiful landscapes and predictable portraits, she could not help but feel it all a little…dull.

“The Academy’s lost its fire,” Sebastian commented, as if he had read her thoughts. “I feel I’ve seen this all a thousand times over.”

“I’m glad you say that. I thought it was just my lack of taste,” Rose answered. She glanced around her. She had wondered if she would see Alexander Ross here. Or maybe she had hoped. Of course, there was no reason he would be visiting at the same time she was. There was no reason to suppose he would visit at all. Young men like him were generally more interested in hunting and punting than in art.

She had danced with him twice more since the state ball and spoken to him in company. Their paths had crossed in the foyer of the opera house and the drawing rooms of important hostesses. This was the season, after all, and it was a small world. The intimacy of their first dance had never been repeated. He danced with other women, talked to other women, laughed with other women. And yet she couldn’t help believing that the smile he kept for her was warmer, more genuine, than the ones he gave to other people. More than once she had caught him looking at her, and each time he had smiled as if the sight of her gave him pleasure. It was pleasant, she thought, to have a friendly face among all the unfriendly ones.

“Do look at those women,” Sebastian murmured with a gentle wave of his cane toward an elegant group gathered by the work of the latest society portraitist. “More interested in each other’s dresses than the pictures.” He sighed. “Somehow it all seems so disconnected from what’s happening outside the doors. To look at these pictures you’d think we were not living in an age of motorcars and trams and electric light.” He lowered his head as if a weight lay on his shoulders. “They don’t seem to see that everything has changed.”

Rose glanced at him in concern. She sensed he was not his usual self, and knowing where he had been, she could guess why.

“How is Oliver? Did you see him?” she asked. “What does the barrister think of his chances?”

“Not much.”

“I’m sorry.” She laid a gloved hand on his. “It was such a shock to all of us. Everyone will be sorry if Oliver—”

He interrupted her. “Please, don’t say it. The worst thing is, I’ve been called as a witness for the prosecution.”

“That is most distressing, but I suppose if you can help bring to light what actually happened—”

“I know what happened,” he snapped. Rose was startled by the passion in his voice. “I know Oliver isn’t capable of murder, and I won’t go to court to have lawyers try to make me say he is.”

Rose looked at his furrowed brow, the weariness etched in every line of his face.

“You are really touched by this, aren’t you?” she said softly.

Sebastian nodded.

“Is there anything I can do?”

He shook his head.

“At least—perhaps, yes,” he added a moment later. “So much about Oliver doesn’t make sense, Rose. There is more to his story than he’ll admit, and I think—I hope—there might be clues there that would help us save him.”

“He was certainly always very well-spoken for a servant,” said Rose, thinking back.

“There is so much about him that is more refined than one would expect. His accent, when he’s unguarded, is a long way above his class. And when I asked him about his family he became furious. He said he had none.”

“That’s dreadful,” Rose spoke from the heart, thinking of her own mother. There was not a night she did not go to bed thinking of her and wishing she were nearby.

“If only I could find out the truth about him, there might be something that would get him out of this jam.” Sebastian’s brows darkened again. “But Rose, if you could ask among the servants at Somerton, find out if anyone knows anything—what his place was before he came here. His references are fakes. I looked them up and challenged him, but he wouldn’t tell me a thing.”

Rose hesitated. It was not exactly insulting—but it made her color faintly to think that she was still considered a go-between to the downstairs world. It was not exactly tactful to remind her of her origins, and Sebastian seemed to realize that, because he turned on her a look of such pleading desperation that her hurt feelings melted away at once.

“Please, Rose, I don’t mean to insult you. If only you knew the state I’m in.” He spoke quietly, but she could see from the way he clenched his cane, his knuckles white, that he was not calm.

Rose moved toward him, lowering her voice as she feigned interest in the nearest painting. “Of course I will help. I know Oliver means a great deal to you. It is good of you to look out for him so well.”

Sebastian glanced at her, then replied even more quietly. “It is not ‘good of me.’ I have no choice.” His voice was tortured. “Please, may I tell you something? I don’t know—that is, it may be foolish of me—I don’t want you to despise me.”

“What do you mean?” Rose asked, startled. Sebastian’s manner was so strange that she almost wondered if she should call for the attendant, if he were perhaps mad, or even dangerous.

“I can’t keep silent. If I don’t tell someone, it will kill me.”

“Sebastian, what have you done?” Rose was frightened now.

“Nothing that a million haven’t done before me. Oliver and I—we—” He paused, struggling for words. “Have you ever met someone and felt at once that you understood each other perfectly? That you had such a deep connection it felt as if you were one soul in two bodies?” There were tears glittering in his eyes now. “I love him, Rose. And I can’t let him hang for a crime he didn’t commit.”

Rose stared at Sebastian. What did he mean? Were he and Oliver related somehow? What—and then she understood. She blushed and could not meet his eyes.

“I—I had no idea.” And yet it all made sense now.

“The truth is this. I was…entangled with Simon Croker. He was blackmailing me. Of course you know I would do anything to conceal it. Simon attacked me, and Oliver defended me. The fall was an awful accident. But Oliver wanted to protect me, and he confessed before I could stop him.” He spoke as if he felt the pain of it even now. “I hope you understand. I’m not a monster.”

“Of course you’re not. I’ll try to understand.” Rose hardly knew how to speak to him. She was shocked by the story, moved by Oliver’s bravery…and yet she felt she ought to be persuading him to abandon his unnatural tendencies. But he was
Sebastian
. He was kind, and good, and he had done nothing that was wrong—except that it was all wrong, of course it was. Every Sunday school lesson, every sermon, everything she had ever heard in whispers and giggles and shocked looks in the servants’ passages, told her so. But Somerton seemed so far away and simple and innocent now. He was Sebastian—kind, good, gentle. How could he do wrong just by loving someone?

“I’ve thought and thought about what to do. I’ve gone as far as going to the police station, but I never quite have the courage to tell them the truth. My mother…there are times when I hate her, but she loves me and I cannot bring that shame down on her head. She has done so much to try and keep my…nature a secret.”

“She knows, then?” Rose exclaimed.

“She guessed what kind of man I was, perhaps before I did,” he said bitterly. “And then there is Charlotte. It is her last season, perhaps. I can’t ruin her chances of marriage. And Michael’s career would be harmed. He doesn’t deserve that. Do you understand? Tell me I’m a cad if you want to. You’re probably right.”

“No, no, I…” Rose shook her head. “It is a terrible situation.”

“I won’t rest until I can get Oliver free, somehow. I won’t let him be sentenced. I’ll confess if it comes to that.” He looked at her intently. “I need hardly tell you what it would do to me, to your family, if the truth about me came out.”

“No, no,” Rose exclaimed, feeling almost physical pain. “Of course I will tell no one.”

“Thank you.” He glanced back at the door just as Rose’s stepmother, Ada, and Charlotte entered. The countess raised her hand and gestured imperiously to Sebastian.

“My mother calls.” Sebastian made a face and walked toward them. Rose watched him join them as the countess pointed to some small bronzes with her parasol. Rose turned away, noticing a shabby-looking man loitering by the entrance to the next room for the first time. Rose wondered how he had got in, but simply stepped around him and slipped through the door. She was not really unchaperoned, she thought. Her family were nearby. She just needed a few moments to calm herself after Sebastian’s news.

She had thought she was no longer in the mood for looking at art, but she saw at once that the paintings in this room were entirely in keeping with the shock of Sebastian’s secret. She stepped back to look up at the four vast canvases that filled the walls of the small gallery. Not only did they dwarf in scale everything she had seen so far. They were almost abstract—not quite, that would have been trying the patience of the Academy too far—and the artist’s method so bold she could almost feel the force with which the paint had been flung against the canvas. One could not call it anything as conventional as painting, she thought. It was movement, as powerful as the leaps of Nijinsky.

And yet, she thought, as she continued to gaze at them, they were somehow…empty. They were storms of passion with no center, no purpose, no object. She frowned, puzzled and disappointed, as she looked from one canvas to the next.

She lowered her gaze and found herself looking into the eyes of the Duke of Huntleigh. For a second she was too startled to speak. He was lounging against the door frame, watching her without smiling. Rose felt her heart flutter under his intense gaze. “Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning.” He straightened up and came into the room.

Rose tried to meet his gaze, but it was impossible to do so without blushing. “I was just admiring the paintings,” she said.

“Do you like them?” He did not sound enthusiastic.

“Don’t you?”

“They’re all right. A little tame.”

“Tame?” she exclaimed. “They’re the wildest things in the exhibition.”

“That isn’t saying much.”

She had to laugh. “No, I suppose it isn’t. But the vigor, the confidence, the passion…”

He raised an eyebrow.

“And yet they’re rather sad and empty, don’t you think?”

He didn’t immediately answer. Rose turned back to the paintings. Perhaps she had been wrong. But everything she saw there confirmed her feeling.

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “Yet even for all their power and passion, I feel the artist hasn’t found his subject yet. He doesn’t know what he wants to paint
about
.”

The duke was still silent. Rose wondered if she had said too much. After all, she was hardly an expert on art.

“They are the best things here, though,” she said. “They make me feel as if I could write music again.”

“You write music?” he asked quickly.

She sighed. “I used to. But there is no silence in this city, especially during the season, and I need silence to hear my music.”

He made an impatient movement. “You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to.”

“But I do. I cannot let my father down, not after all he has done for me. And he wants me to take my place in society.”

“Oh, families. How I wish they had never been invented.” He added, “Stravinsky’s
Rite of Spring
is being performed here in London soon. You should go, if you are interested in music.”

“I wish I could, but I am sure the countess will never be persuaded to go to a performance that has been so controversial. She does only what society does, and as a result, so must we. Sometimes I feel that society is the only living thing in London, and we are just its fodder.” She stopped, surprised by how far she had gone. She met his eyes.

“You have a strange knack of encouraging me to say things I didn’t know I felt until I have said them,” she said with a small laugh.

He gave a slight bow. “You’re wrong,” he said. Rose raised an eyebrow. “Society is just a machine, like a locomotive that needs feeding. You’re alive. You’re truly alive because you are a creator.”

Rose’s breath felt thin and quick, as if she were standing on top of a mountain. This was a very different conversation from any she had had with Huntleigh before—indeed, a very different conversation than any she had ever had with
anyone
before. It was so strange, she thought, that the person to whom she felt closest, the one who seemed to understand perfectly how she felt at every moment, was the one most removed from her in birth and breeding. She couldn’t help but think of what Sebastian had just described to her—an understanding between two people deeper than anything that could be put into words. She managed to reply. “So only those who have the leisure to create are alive? I can’t think that’s fair.”

“I don’t mean just symphonies or landscapes. Anyone who works creatively.” He moved closer, his moss-green eyes taking her in. “There’s a dignity in every kind of labor—except service. No servant could ever be creative. When one is not free, one cannot create.”