The Adventuress: HFTS5 (14 page)

He was deliriously kissing her ears, her neck, her throat, and her lips again when a chill little voice of propriety told him the door was standing open and any gossiping servant who walked across the hall might have an interesting view.

He raised his head and gave her a little shake. “Wait until we are married, my sweet,” he said caressingly. “Then we will have all the time in the world for kisses.”

Emily blushed miserably. She knew she had behaved disgracefully. Was not this sort of behaviour just the way that wretched fictional maid, Emilia, had betrayed herself?

But when he bowed and walked to the door, stopped, turned back, and pulled her into his arms again and kissed her feverishly and passionately, Emily’s treacherous, wanton, common body betrayed her again, so that when he finally released her and took his leave, she had to stagger to a chair and sit down. It was some time before she could bring herself to summon Rainbird.

When the butler entered the room, Emily said curtly, “Sit down, Rainbird.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Rainbird sat primly on the edge of the chair opposite her.

“I am surprised you do not address me as Emily—now that you know we are of the same class,” said Emily.

Rainbird gave an infinitesimal shrug. “It is not my duty to question the machinations of my employers,” he said.

“You had a registration paper forged,” said Emily. “It was very wicked of you—very wicked of you, too, to read my papers. But I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You will not tell anyone?”

“No, Miss Emily.”

“Then I am to be the Countess of Fleetwood.”

“My felicitations. But, miss, have you not thought it might be wise to tell my lord the truth? He will find out sooner or later.”

“Why?” demanded Emily fiercely. “Do I not look like a lady?”

“You
are
a lady,” said Rainbird. “But my lord is very much in love with you, and men in love become jealous and suspicious and can
sense
secrets in a woman.”

“They say that love is blind,” said Emily lightly.

“Only for a little while,” said the butler earnestly. “I am sure if my lord knew the truth, he would still marry you.”

“He might forgive me for being of common stock,” said Emily. “But he would never forgive me for having been a servant. I was a servant in Sir Harry’s household. Fleetwood despises servants.”

“As to that, it is perhaps because there was a great deal of gossip about his late wife’s death.”

“Then he should blame his horrible sister for that scandal and not his servants. She called to tell me he had killed his wife!”

“But you did not believe her?”

“Not I. I believe in trusting people.”

“But Lord Fleetwood may come to believe
you
did not trust
him
enough. I will tell you why I examined your papers. I recognised Mr. Goodenough as being the former butler, Spinks. Although his face is greatly changed, someone else might recognise him … might recognise
you
, Miss Emily.”

“I was only in service a short time before Sir Harry’s death,” said Emily. “I was very young, only sixteen during the last year he was well enough to entertain guests. I have not seen anyone in London society who ever visited Sir Harry. And who ever notices a servant?”

“If you were as pretty then as you are now,” said Rain-bird cautiously, “some gentleman may well remember you.”

“There was one … No, I refuse to worry about it.” Excitement and elation flooded Emily again. “Only think! I am to be a countess.”

“Surely my lord means more to you than just a title?” said Rainbird.

“Oh. yes, of course. He is so very handsome—and I will be the envy of so many,” added Emily naively.

“Do you not think it wise to give matters a little longer, Miss Emily?”

“No,” said Emily. “Time may go against me. I mean to be a countess. Now I must go and tell Mr. Goodenough that, thanks to you, all is well.”

Rainbird felt a qualm of unease as he went down the stairs to the servants’ hall. He felt he had, perhaps, done Emily a disservice by supplying her with forged papers.

Lizzie tugged at his sleeve as he entered and whispered to him she had something to ask him. Joseph was glaring at her suspiciously, so Rainbird led her through to the kitchen, which was empty, for Angus was still in bed recovering from his fever.

“What is it, Lizzie?”

“It’s Luke,” said Lizzie. “He wants me to get an hour off this evening to go out walking with him.”

“It’s all right, Lizzie,” said Rainbird soothingly. “I’ll tell the young whipper-snapper to leave you alone.”

“Oh, no, Mr. Rainbird. I
want
to go out with him!”

“Lizzie, he is not a very pleasant individual.”

“I’m not going to
marry
him,” said Lizzie crossly. “Luke is a
first footman
. I shall be the envy of all the girls. He didn’t ask Alice or Jenny, he asked
me.”

“You are a pretty little thing, Lizzie, but be careful! He may just be asking you out to spite Joseph.”

“I want to go,” said Lizzie stubbornly. “He is a first footman and Joseph is only a rented footman.”

“You and Miss Emily are much alike,” said Rainbird. “Two such pleasant women and both being tricked by vanity.”

“That’s not nice,” said Lizzie hotly. “I never have any fun. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to go out?”

“Very well, Lizzie. But only one hour. If you are not back, then we shall all go out looking for you.”

Rainbird returned to the servants’ hall.

“What was thet whispering all abaht?” asked Joseph languidly.

“Never mind,” said Rainbird. “Sometimes I could
shake
you, Joseph. If you were more of a man…. Take some more coal up to the parlour and stop lounging about. There’s work to be done.”

“So you are to be married,” said Fitz later that day. “And just like that! I feel you might have warned me your intentions were serious. I was on the point of trying for Miss Goodenough myself.”

“I thought you might have guessed when I went out of my way to arrange that rout and set you up as a princess.”

“But what of all those doubts of yours about her background?”

“I decided to trust her—but there was no need. Her papers prove her to be of gentle birth.”

“Then why all the secrecy about the marriage?”

“Because my beloved wishes it that way. And I do not want my sister’s Friday-face to spoil my wedding. Come, wish me well, Fitz. You will make an excellent bride-man.”

“I wish you all the best in the world with my better feelings. My nastier feelings, nonetheless, tell me that you deliberately tried to persuade me Miss Emily was common to put me out of the running.”

“My dear Fitz, you never even reached the startinggate until that dinner party of hers!”

“True,” said Fitz with a reluctant grin. “Ah, well, perhaps there will be another beauty to take my eye. I am feeling out of sorts. I have not yet grown into my new appearance and I confess I feel a dull dog in these sober clothes.”

“You can peacock as much as you like on my wedding-day.”

“So we shall be losing you,” said Fitz. “Where are you spending your honeymoon?”

“At Sixty-seven Clarges Street.”

“Bedad! Why?”

“My love is attached to her rented servants. That Mrs. Middleton is none other than the housekeeper.”

“I thought that
you
would not countenance an affection for mere servants.”

“If I can have my Emily, I can put up with anything. The house has proved lucky for me. Besides, I shall only have to endure the place for a few weeks.”

With her hair dressed up on top of her head, quite like a lady, and wearing a warm brown shawl over her green-and-white-striped gown, Lizzie stepped out proudly that evening on Luke’s arm.

She barely heard what he was saying, but he was bragging about himself, and Lizzie, who had become used to just such monologues from Joseph, felt free to bask in all the glory of walking along beside this splendid young man.

She saw Mary, the housemaid at Number 62, staring open-mouthed, and Lizzie felt her heart would burst with joy.

It was early evening and a green and violet sky stretched out over the tops of the jumbled chimneys of Buckingham House as they walked down through the Green Park. Trees with their new buds stood silhouetted in the twilight like black lace and blackbirds carolled their spring song out on the quiet, sleepy, smoky London air.

“Must be hard to be a scullery maid,” Lizzie realised Luke was saying. “You being eddicated and all.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” said Lizzie, who felt nothing could worry her on this lovely evening.

“Still, you’re a pretty little girl, and it must go hard not having a dowry.”

“Oh, I got a dowry,” said Lizzie. “Well, it’s my share of the pub.”

“Pub? What pub?”

Lizzie felt she should not tell Luke about their plans. But the desire to show off was stronger. She tossed her head.

“We’ve been saving up ever so hard. We got nigh on three hundred pounds among us.”

Luke whistled softly. “That’s enough to buy a pub already. Wot you all waiting for?”

“Mr. Rainbird says as how we must have more for the stocks, the glasses, the linen, and enough laid aside to keep us till we get a trade.”

Luke slid an arm about Lizzie’s slender waist. “That Rainbird’s a stupid fellow. He could make ten times as much by the end o’ next week if he used his brain-box.”

“Go on,” giggled Lizzie. She made to pull away, but then she saw one of the grooms from Lambeth Mews at the end of Clarges Street, who was cutting through the park staring at them, and stayed where she was.

“It’s the truth. Lord Hampshire’s got a filly running at Ascot at ten to one, and I ’appen to know the other ’orses, horses, has been nobbled. Now, say you took that money and gave it to me to put on, you’d be able to give ’em three thousand pounds. Think o’ the looks on their faces! Three fousand—thousand! Why, none of you’d need to work in a pub. You could invest that on Change and live on the proceeds.”

“I’d never do that,” said Lizzie, pulling away this time. “ ’Member when Joseph took the money and put it all on a horse and lost it all?”

“Joseph. That milksop!”

“Thought he was a friend of yours. Anyway, he’s a friend of mine, and I don’t like you calling him names!”

“He’s a friend o’ mine, too, Lizzie, but come now, you must confess he ain’t got much brain. This filly’s going to win ’cos I got it from Hampshire’s valet.”

“How much you putting on?”

“Five shillings. Don’t laugh. It’s all I got.”

“They’d never let me have the money,” said Lizzie. “They’d laugh at me.”

“Well, don’t tell them! Think o’ their faces when you comes in and throws the money on the table.”

It was a lovely dream, but Lizzie shook her head.

“You see, Lizzie,” said Luke earnestly, “the reason I’m asking is this. I’ve taken a fancy to you, so help me, I have. Your share o’ the winnings would give you enough for us to be married and set up a business on our own. I know, we’d buy a little cottage in the country, a little bit of land, and you’d keep house and I’d work the land.”

He slid a coaxing arm about her waist. Lizzie closed her eyes and leaned against him. It was so like that dream she had had of herself and Joseph. But Luke was not Joseph. He was tall and strong and extremely masculine. She saw a pretty little cottage, a garden full of flowers, and now it was Luke who marched towards her down the country road, and not Joseph.

“I couldn’t do it,” she whispered. “It would be stealing.”

Luke turned her face up to his and kissed her gently on the mouth. A passionate kiss would have frightened Lizzie, but Luke’s soft kiss was warm and reassuring. “I am being proposed to by a
first footman,”
thought Lizzie dizzily.

Then she remembered the days when Luke had been courting Alice, and how Luke had once twisted her arm so hard he had bruised it.

“You was after Alice once,” said Lizzie, drawing away.

“Alice ain’t the kind you
marry
,” said Luke with a scornful laugh. “Listen, let me tell you about that cottage where we’ll live….”

He began to talk long and earnestly, interrupting his speech from time to time to kiss Lizzie and to stroke her hair. Dazed, flattered, happy, elated, and made thoroughly vain for the first time in her life, Lizzie listened to him, and the more he talked and the more he kissed and caressed, the more Lizzie hardened her heart against her “family”— the other servants. They had let her sleep on a damp pallet on the scullery floor, and her situation had only improved after she had fallen ill and one of the tenants had insisted she have a proper bed to sleep in. When they had nearly all been arrested for stealing one of the King’s deer and she had saved them by slashing her own wrist so that the blood on the area steps was believed to have been hers and not that of the stolen deer, they had not done one thing to make her lot in life any better. Yes, they had been kind when she was recovering, but after that, they had piled the menial jobs on her much as they had done before.

The sky was growing dark. By the time Rainbird’s voice could be heard, shouting, “Lizzie! Lizzie!” she and Luke had become conspirators.

Mr. Percival Pardon was back in London after a long absence. He was low on funds and could not entertain as lavishly as he would have liked, but he had invited his old friends, Mrs. Plumtree and Mrs. Giles-Denton and their daughters, Bessie and Harriet, to tea. He drank in all the gossip like a thirsty man who had been deprived of water for a long time.

“And so,” said Mrs. Giles-Denton after a long bout of highly satisfactory scandal, “we have had quite a busy time. I forgot to tell you, we were persuaded to let the dear girls go to that wretched house in Clarges Street.”

“Oh yes?” said Mr. Pardon, that wretched house holding bad memories for him, for his efforts to ruin one of the previous tenants had brought him nothing but disgrace.

“Yes, and I wish I had gone with them. For the tenant is a most odd female no one has ever heard of—a Miss Emily Goodenough.”

“And is she pretty?”

“Nothing out of the common way,” said Bessie. “Fleetwood was monstrous taken with the creature. But I think she is vulgar. Didn’t you think she was
vulgaire
, Harriet?”