Her Royal Spyness (14 page)

“He did foam at the mouth once,” Binky said hopefully.

“When he swallowed that piece of soap on a bet.”

Binky sighed.

He was normally such a cheery soul and I hated to see him like this, but I couldn’t think of anything I could do. It even crossed my mind that I might borrow a vampish dress from Belinda and try to seduce de Mauxville, thus obtaining the document from him in the heat of passion. But frankly I didn’t think I’d be very good at it.

Friday morning I set out for Eaton Place, my black servant’s uniform disguised under my cashmere coat, my cap tucked into my pocket to be put on at the last minute. I scurried down into the tradesmen’s entrance and put on my cap before I turned the key I had been given and let myself in.

I stood in a cavernous entry hall, decorated with the heads of hunted African beasts and the odd ceremonial spear. Once inside, my enthusiasm waned. The house was even bigger than our London place and it was full of objects brought back from generations of army postings around the world. I’m sure some of them were valuable and even attractive in their own way, but they were on every surface—curved daggers, ebony masks, statues, jade elephants, carved ivory goddesses—all highly breakable, by the look of them. There were walls full of paintings, mostly of great battles. There were regimental flags, glass-topped tables full of medals, and swords of all kinds of shapes hanging everywhere. The Featherstonehaughs had clearly been a military family of distinction for generations—which explained why Whiffy was in the Guards. There was enough to keep me dusting all day. I went from room to room, wondering if they needed all the large formal rooms on the ground floor opened up, or whether the pretty little drawing room on the first floor would do just as well for a short visit.

There was a vast fireplace at the far end of a ballroom-sized main reception room and I said a silent prayer of thanks that they hadn’t wanted that one laid. On every wall there were crossed swords, shields, even suits of armor. It seemed that the Featherstonehaughs had been killing people successfully for quite a few generations.

I went upstairs and was relieved to find the bedrooms were not equally full of artifacts, in fact were rather austere. I was about to start on the bedrooms when I heard a tap dripping in a bathroom. I looked inside and was not thrilled with what I saw. The bathtub had a disgusting black line around it. There were several towels dropped in a heap on the floor and the loo was also not the cleanest. That dripping tap in the basin had left a trail of lime. If this is how they leave their house, I thought, then they don’t deserve a good cleaning. Then it occurred to me that someone might actually have been living in the house, and that someone might be Whiffy. I crept from room to room until I was satisfied I was in the house alone.

Then my pride and conscience got the better of me. I didn’t want them to think I did shoddy work. I set to attacking that disgusting bathroom. I picked up the towels and disposed of them into a laundry hamper. I scrubbed at the basin; I even got down on my knees and attacked the ring around the bathtub. But as for sticking my hand down someone else’s lavatory . . . there were limits, after all. In the end I found a brush hanging up behind a door. I tied a cloth around this and, standing suitably far away and averting my eyes, I gave the toilet bowl a quick going-over. Afterward I hurriedly dropped the offending cloth into the nearest rubbish bin and hung up the bath brush as if nothing had happened. It was only as I replaced it on its hook that it occurred to me that it was probably hung there to scrub the hard-to-reach parts of someone’s back. Oh, dear. They need never know what it had been used for, I decided.

And of course I realized at that very moment that we upper classes are open to all kinds of fiendish tricks with which our servants can vent their anger and frustration. I’d heard once about a butler who peed into the soup. I wondered what the servants did at Castle Rannoch. The motto is obviously always to treat servants as one would wish to be treated. The golden rule does make a lot of sense.

Feeling more satisfied now, I started in the back bedrooms and removed the dust covers very carefully. I swept. I even went down to the coal cellar and I laid fires. That went smoothly enough, although I was out of breath after carrying a full coal scuttle upstairs several times. Then I came to the main bedroom, looking out onto Eaton Place.

This room was dominated by a giant four-poster bed, the sort that Queen Elizabeth had obviously slept in on her way north. It was a ghastly affair with faded velvet curtains. The rest of the room was no more conducive to a good night’s sleep. On one wall was a hideous mask with tusks, on another a print of a battle scene. As I went to shake out the satin quilt that covered the bed, I misjudged its weight. It flew up, knocking that mask off the wall. Almost as if in slow motion, I watched the mask fall and, in its turn, knock a small statue off the mantelpiece. I flung myself across the room to grab it, but I was too late. It hit the fender with a neat clunk and broke in half. I stared at it in horror.

“Stay calm,” I told myself. “It’s just one small statue in a house full of ornaments.”

I picked up the two pieces. It looked like some kind of Chinese goddess with several arms, one of which had now snapped off at the shoulder. Luckily it was a clean break. I stuffed both pieces into my apron pocket. I’d take it away, have it repaired, and then slip it back into the house later. Hopefully nobody would notice. I could bring up another, similar piece from downstairs to replace it until I could return it.

I had just heaved a sigh of relief when I froze. Was I now oversensitive, or had I heard footsteps down below? I stood, holding my breath, until I heard the unmistakable creak of a stair or floorboard. Someone was definitely in the house with me. Nothing to get alarmed about, I told myself. It was broad daylight in a fashionable London square. I’d only have to open the window and shout for help and any number of maids, chauffeurs, and delivery boys would hear me. Remembering how Mrs. Bantry-Bynge and her friend Boy had arrived earlier than originally planned, I presumed it was a member of the Featherstonehaughs’ entourage. I just prayed it wasn’t Whiffy.

There was a big wardrobe in the bedroom and I was tempted to hide. Then the voice of reason won out. Since servants were supposed to be not seen and not heard, I decided I shouldn’t announce my presence. A servant would just go on with her work, no matter what was happening around her in the household.

The footsteps came closer. It was hard to keep making that bed without turning around. In the end I just had to peek.

I jumped a mile as Darcy O’Mara stepped in through the bedroom door. “Holy mother of God, what an impressive bed,” he said. “This certainly rivals the Princess and the Pea, doesn’t it?”

“Darcy, what are you doing here?” I demanded. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

“I thought I saw you crossing Belgrave Square earlier, looking rather furtive, so I decided to follow you. I watched you go in the tradesmen’s entrance of the Featherstonehaughs’ house when I knew they were still in the country. And I was intrigued. Being of a curious nature I wanted to know what the hell you were doing in someone else’s empty house. I waited. You didn’t reemerge, so I came to take a look for myself. You didn’t lock the door after you, naughty girl.”

“All right,” I said. “You’ve discovered my guilty secret.”

“Your secret pleasure is to go around making other people’s beds? Sigmund Freud would find that interesting.”

“No, silly. I’ve started a new career. I’m running a domestic service to get people’s houses ready for them when they want to come to London and save them the expense of sending staff in advance.”

“Brilliant notion,” he said. “Where is the rest of your team?”

“It’s just me so far,” I said.

He burst out laughing. “You’re doing the housecleaning yourself?”

“I don’t see what’s so funny about that.”

“And when have you ever cleaned a house? I bet you’ve been polishing the floors with the stuff they use to clean the silver.”

“I didn’t say I was doing the spring cleaning,” I retorted. “My service offers to air out and dust off a few rooms. Make ready the house, that’s all. I can run the carpet sweeper, put clean sheets on the beds, and do a good dust.”

“I’m impressed—but I bet your family wouldn’t be.”

“We’ll just make sure they don’t know. If I start doing well enough, I can hire a staff to do the actual work.”

“Very enterprising of you. I wish you luck.” His gaze strayed back to the bed, now in half-made disarray. “My, but that is a fine-looking bed,” he said. He gave the mattress an experimental push to test the springiness. “Who knows what notable historical characters might have had a romp on this bed? Henry the Eighth, do you think? Nell Gywnne and King Charlie?” Then he looked up at me.

He was standing very close, so close that I found it unnerving, especially given the subject matter of the conversation and the way he was looking at me.

I moved away. “I don’t think the Featherstonehaughs would approve if they arrived early and found a strange man in their house, bothering the servants.”

He smiled, his eyes flashing a challenge. “Oh, so you’re getting bothered by me, are you?”

“Not at all,” I said haughtily. “I am being paid to do some work and you are keeping me from carrying out my duties, that’s all.”

He was still smiling. “I see,” he said. “Very well, I’ll go. I can tell when my presence is not wanted. Although I can name a long list of girls who would have found the chance to be alone in such surroundings with an attractive man like myself too good to turn down.”

I realized with a pang of regret that I may have given the impression that I wasn’t at all interested, which wasn’t exactly true.

“You said something about taking me to a party this week?” I said as he turned away. “At the Café de Paris? With Americans?”

“It turned out not to be suitable for you after all.” He was looking away from me, and it came to me that he had taken someone else in my place.

“What were they, drug fiends?”

“Journalists. And you can bet they’d just love a scoop on a real royal personage gate-crashing their party.”

“Oh, I see.” Now I didn’t know whether he was genuinely concerned for my welfare or had just decided that I was too straightlaced and boring to be bothering with anymore. He must have noticed my face fall.

“Don’t worry about it. The world is full of parties. You haven’t seen the last of me, I promise you that,” he said. He put a finger under my chin, drew me toward him, and brushed my lips with the lightest of kisses. Then he was gone.

And I stood there, watching the dust motes dance in the morning sunlight, half wishing for what might have been.

I had finished the bedrooms and finally plucked up courage to attack that drawing room. There was no way I was going to take out those Persian rugs and beat them, the way any good servant would have done. I ran a sweeper over them and then started to sweep the dust off that vast parquet floor. I was down on my hands and knees, sweeping the area around the drawing room fireplace, when I heard men’s voices. Before I could do anything sensible such as hide behind the nearest suit of armor, the voices came closer. I kept my head down and brushed away furiously, praying that they wouldn’t come in here, or at least not pay any attention to me.

“So your parents are arriving today?” One of the voices floated toward me, echoing from all that marble in the foyer, even though he was speaking softly.

“Today or tomorrow. Not sure. Better stay away, just in case, or I’ll have the mater going on at me again. You know what she’s like.”

“So when will I see you?”

The voices had reached the open doorway on the far side of the living room. Out of the corner of my eye I recognized the stiff, upright bearing of the son of the house, the Hon. Roderick (Whiffy) Featherstonehaugh, and behind him, in shadow, another tall and lanky young man. I turned my back to them and kept sweeping, hoping to build up a cloud of dust around me. The sounds of my brush hitting against the brass fender must have startled them.

There was a pause and then Whiffy said,
“Pas devant la bonne.”

This was the standard phrase for times when something was about to be discussed not suitable for servants’ ears. It means, “Not in front of the maid,” for those of you who are not conversant with French.

“What?” The other man asked, then obviously spotted me. “Oh
oui
, I see.
Je vois
.” Then he continued in atrocious French.
“Alors. Lundi soir, comme d’habitude?”
(Meaning, “Monday night as usual?”)

“Bien sûr, mon vieux. Mais croyez vous que vous pouvez vous absenter?”
(“But do you think you’ll be able to get away?”) Whiffy’s French was marginally better, but still with a ghastly English accent. Really, what do they teach these boys at Eton?

“J’espère que oui.”
(“I hope so.”) Then the speaker reverted to English as they headed out of the room again. “I’ll let you know how it goes. I think you may be wunning a fwightful wisk.”