The Wicked Godmother: A Novel of Regency England - Being the Third Volume of A House for the Season

by M. C. Beaton

  They stood in the hall, removing their cloaks and listening to the hum of conversation coming from the small saloon on the ground floor. Sir Benjamin’s sister-in-law, Miss Giles, had taken up residence after the funeral and showed no signs of leaving. Neither did his brother, Mr. Peter Hayner, nor his brother’s wife, Mrs. Amy Hayner.

  “I cannot bear any of them at this moment,” said Sarah. “Let us go to the upstairs drawing room, Annabelle. We must hold a council of war.” She turned to the butler. “Biggins, don’t you dare tell any of them we have returned.”She put her arm around her sister’s waist and together they mounted the broad oaken staircase.

  “Now, what on earth are we to do about that tiresome Harriet creature?” said Sarah, pushing open the door of the drawing room. “Throw another log on the fire, Annabelle, and don’t always be ringing the bell for the servants to do everything or we shall never have a chance of a private discussion.”

  “The servants are paid to do things,” grumbled Annabelle, but she was too lazy ever to argue much with her stronger-willed sister.

  The Hayner twins might have been exactly alike had not their somewhat different characters moulded their appearances. Sarah was thin and energetic and Annabelle plump and languid. Sarah was always very intense about everything, while Annabelle faced most of life’s vicissitudes with only an occasional grumble. She had become used to allowing Sarah to deal with all problems. In the presence of company, their likeness to each other was more marked, as both affected the same social manner—a sort of decorous femininity that involved many suppressed giggles, fan flutterings, rolling eyes, and conversations confined to the most trivial topics. In fact, they went on very much as debutantes of good breeding were expected to do. Had they been of a lesser caste, then they would not have been considered very pretty, but a great deal of money added a lustre to their appearance in the eye of any beholder less cynical than, say, Miss Josephine Spencer.

  Both had thick brown hair, fashionably dressed; both had straight little noses and tiny, pouting, rosebud mouths. But both were inclined to be sallow. They wore pastel colours that did not flatter them, and the high-waisted modes hung loosely on Sarah’s thin figure and showed Annabelle’s plump figure to disadvantage, in the latter case mainly because she wore her gown cut too narrow and too tight.

  They had just learned—again—from the lawyer, Mr. Gladstone, that the terms of the will were all too clear. They were to be brought out in London by Miss Harriet Metcalf, and there was nothing to be done about it. In vain had Sarah raged that Harriet was a schemer who had bewitched their father and that she would use up their fortune and leave them naught. Mr. Gladstone had said firmly that Sir Benjamin’s opinion was that Miss Metcalf was the only honest woman left in Britain—an opinion, said Mr. Gladstone, that he himself shared. The handling and running of the estates would be carried on as it had been in Sir Benjamin’s lifetime by his agent, Robert Wyckoff. Mr. Wyckoff would, of course, consult Miss Metcalf on all matters. Sarah then said that Miss Metcalf had no connections and was a country bumpkin and was not a fitting person to chaperone them at the London Season. Mr. Gladstone replied unsympathetically that he was sure Miss Metcalf would do her best, and if the Misses Hayner thought they could do better, they had only to wait until they were twenty-one.

  “Do you think, as we cannot legally do anything at all about Harriet,” ventured Annabelle, “that it might not be wiser just to let her take us to London?”

  “And watch her fleece us?” demanded Sarah.

  “I do not like her either, Sis,” said Annabelle. “But, do you know, I doubt if the silly little widgeon will take a penny more than is due to her. After all, she is not the sweet innocent she tries to make everyone believe she is. She did take Papa’s affection away from us. You know she did.”

  “And she shall be made to suffer for it,” said Sarah, spreading her thin hands out over the blaze. “You do sometimes have good ideas, Annabelle. Let us go to London. We are both pretty enough to rival the Gunter sisters. We shall both probably be engaged by the end of the Season.”

  “Do not compare us to the Gunter sisters,” giggled Annabelle. The Gunter sisters had been famous in the last century for their dazzling marriages. “Do you know what one of them is supposed to have said to George II? The old king was complaining he did not like public displays, and one of the Misses Gunter said blithely, ‘Neither do I, Your Majesty. The only public display I wish to see is the next coronation!’ “

  Sarah collapsed in helpless giggles. Finally, she dried her streaming eyes and said, “We must make sure that Harriet does not lure the gentlemen’s eyes away from us with her sneaky ways. Look how she made Papa love her as a daughter, and that is what I cannot forgive. Had she flirted with him and made him look upon her as a possible mistress, that I could have borne. But to sit there with her empty blue eyes, pretending to be Saint Thingummy was sickening to watch.”

  “And Papa would not hear one word against her.”

  “But just wait until we get you to London, Miss Harriet Metcalf, and there you will see that your innocent, countrified ways are considered a bore.” She pretended to raise a quizzing glass to her eye and stared haughtily at Annabelle. “Pon rep,” said Sarah in a deep voice, “who is that preposterous milkmaid of a gal with the beautiful Hayner twins?”

  “It’s really all too deliciously funny,” said Annabelle, beginning to giggle again. Sarah aimed a playful punch at her, and then both sisters rolled about the sofa, helpless with laughter at the thought of the comeuppance of Miss Metcalf.

  Harriet and Miss Spencer were leaving Harriet’s cottage on the following day to pay a visit to the lawyer, Mr. Gladstone, when that gentleman surprised them by appearing at the garden gate. Glad to be saved a journey to Barminster, the ladies ushered him into the cottage parlour, where Harriet poured out her troubles. Mr. Gladstone was all that was reassuring. The estates’ business matters would be handled as they had always been handled; money matters would be taken care of by himself. Harriet should be paid an allowance until such time as the twins came of age. As to finding a house for the Season? Mr. Gladstone smiled triumphantly and produced a crumpled copy of the Morning Post out of one capacious pocket.

  “I have taken the liberty of answering an advertisement in this newspaper,” he said. “The house advertised is a good address, and the price is very reasonable.”

  He pointed to an advertisement on the front of the newspaper.

  Harriet and Miss Spencer leaned forward. They read,

  A HOUSE FOR THE SEASON

  Gentleman’s residence, 67

  Clarges Street, Mayfair.

  Furnished town house. Trained

  servants, Rent: £80 sterling.

  Apply, Mr. Palmer, 25 Holborn.

  “Wonderful!” said Harriet.

  “Too cheap for such a tonnish address,” said Miss Spencer with a worried frown. “I wonder if there is anything wrong with it.”

  Chapter

  Two

  The rain it raineth on the just

  And also on the unjust fella;

  But chiefly on the just, because

  The unjust steals the just’s umbrella.

  —Charles, Baron Bowen

  It had been raining for weeks and weeks. Rain chuckled in the gutters and ran in streams in the kennels in the middle of the London streets. Rain pounded down with merciless democracy on the slums of Seven Dials and the quiet streets of Mayfair.

  A government lottery sledge scraped its way along Clarges Street, and the resultant wave from its progress sent a miniature Niagara Falls tumbling down the area steps of Number 67 Clarges Street and sent a tide of muddy water dashing over the white silk stockings of the footman, Joseph, who opened the door just in time to receive the full benefit of the flood. He let out a squawk like an outraged parrot and retreated back through the kitchen and into the servants’ hall.

  “Look at meh stockings,” he screeched. “Bleck as pitch.”

  “Go and change,�
�� said the butler, Rainbird, testily. “It’s not the end of the world.”

  But Joseph—tall, fair, effeminate, and vain—would not be comforted. “It is the end of the world,” he said mournfully, sitting down at the table next to Rainbird, removing one buckled shoe and emptying the water from it out onto the kitchen floor, then taking off one stocking, and then studying his own naked foot with surprise as if he had never really noticed it before. “Eh hehve never known such rain,” went on Joseph in accents of strangulated gentility. “Rain, rain, rain, and no tenant for the Season.”

  “As to that,” said Rainbird cautiously, “I received a note from Jonas Palmer saying he would call on us today. Mayhap he has some good news for us.”

  Several pairs of hopeful eyes turned in his direction. The staff of Number 67 had just finished breakfast. Apart from Joseph and Rainbird, seated round the table were the Highland cook, Angus MacGregor; Mrs. Middleton, the housekeeper; Jenny, the chambermaid; Alice, the housemaid; little Lizzie, the scullery maid; and Dave, the pot boy. They were an oddly assorted group of people, welded into a closely knit clan, or family, by peculiar circumstances.

  Number 67 Clarges Street was still damned as unlucky. It was owned by the tenth Duke of Pelham, the ninth duke having hanged himself there. Although Number 67 had managed to find tenants for the past two Seasons, the dramatic happenings which had occurred to them while living there had made the polite world wary of choosing it as a town residence. Palmer, the agent, paid the servants rockbottom wages, while charging his young master higher ones. He had collected unsavoury facts about Rainbird and Joseph and threatened to ruin them should they try to leave. The hold he had had on the others was simply that he would not give them references. Jobs in London were impossible to find without a reference, and scarce enough even if one had one. The previous tenant, the new Lady Tregarthan, had supplied the staff with glowing references, but they knew that no household would take them en masse. They had become so close, they were reluctant to part and dreamed instead of saving enough money so that they could buy a pub and run it as a joint effort.

  Rainbird was the “father” of the family. He was a wellset up man in his forties, with a wiry acrobat’s body and a comedian’s face. Mrs. Middleton—the “Mrs.” was a courtesy title—was the daughter of a curate who had fallen on hard times. She was, as the French so delicately put it, a lady of certain years, with a face like a frightened rabbit, which was mostly overshadowed by the huge starched frills of the caps she liked to wear. The cook, MacGregor, was Highland, emotional, and had a temper to match his shock of fiery red hair. Jenny was quick and dark, with brisk, nervous movements. In contrast to the chambermaid, Alice, the housemaid, was blond and Junoesque, with slow, languid movements and a voice like rich Cornish cream. Little Lizzie, less waiflike than she had first been when she had entered service, had a pale face, thick nut-brown hair, and the large trusting eyes of a puppy. She was seated next to Joseph, instead of down at the end of the table where she belonged—but the servants rarely observed their caste system when the house was untenanted. Although only the scullery maid, she was treated with a certain amount of rough affection by the others. Dave, the pot boy, was a wizened little Cockney. He was only fourteen, but his early years as a chimney sweep’s apprentice had stunted his growth and aged his face.

  All hated Jonas Palmer, the Duke of Pelham’s agent, although they did not know that the young duke, who owned a larger town house in Grosvenor Square, was unaware of their existence. They had heard the duke had finished his studies at Oxford University and had gone to the Peninsula to fight Napolean’s troops.

  Despite the fact that all had ended happily for the previous tenants of the past two Seasons after their adventures, the house could not seem to lose its name for being unlucky, and during this age when gambling fever was at a height and superstition rampant, the future of its staff remained uncertain. The Duke of Pelham had hanged himself there, and that seemed enough to put a curse on the place, which all went to show the power of the class system. Servants committed suicide with amazing regularity, but their parting with the world did not put their masters’ town residence into bad odour. But a duke committing suicide—ah, well, that was an entirely different thing.

  The servants depended on a successful Season as much, if not more, than any matchmaking mama. Because of their abysmally low wages, they looked forward to the tips they would gain from the Season’s festivities.

  Rainbird rose to his feet. “We had best make sure this place is spotless before Palmer comes,” he said. “It would serve you better, Joseph, if you put your back into your work instead of paddling out on the street.”

  “I didn’t even get as far as the street,” whined Joseph, his basic Cockney vowels creeping back into his genteel accent like blobs of grease surfacing on a pot of soup. “I jest opened the bleeding door and got hit by a wave.”

  “Why did you not say so!” exclaimed Mrs. Middleton. “Dave, you get the floor rag and help Lizzie clean up the mess. Jenny and Alice, come with me. We had best light the fire in the front parlour.” The two maids followed the housekeeper upstairs.

  It was a typical town house of the period, being tall and thin. On the ground floor there was a hall with a drawing room to one side, consisting of front and back parlours. On the first floor, there was the dining room, with a double bedroom at the back. On the second floor, there were two bedrooms, and then there were the attics at the top where the servants slept, with the exception of Lizzie and Dave. Lizzie bedded down in the scullery, and Dave slept under the kitchen table.

  There was a ghostly air about the rooms where all the furniture was shrouded in holland covers and all the clocks stood silent, as if time out of Season did not count, as if the hours waited only for the return of all the noise and glitter, gossip and broken hearts, that another fashionable London Season would bring.

  Jenny and Alice bundled the holland covers off the chairs in the front parlour. “At least we haven’t taken any stuffing out of these seats,” said Jenny. The servants had, in the past, often augmented their meagre income by removing the stuffing from the beds and upholstery and selling it, so that you could always gauge the hardness of the times at Number 67 by the discomfort you had when either sitting or lying down. Last Season had been very profitable, and, for once, they had all passed a tolerable winter. But funds were beginning to run low.

  Joseph had become convinced last October that Prime ‘Un would win at Newmarket races and had talked everyone but Rainbird and Mrs. Middleton into letting him put most of their savings on the wonderful horse. But the horse had fallen on its nose halfway down the course, and so the furious butler and housekeeper had had to use up their savings on keeping the rest of the ashamed and destitute staff warm and fed.

  Rain trickled down the windowpanes as Jenny and Alice dusted and polished. “It is cold in here,” said Mrs. Middleton. “I shall fetch Joseph to make up the fire and wind the clocks. You know Mr. Palmer expects us to be prepared to receive people at all times.”

  Soon a fire was crackling on the hearth, and the clocks were busily ticking away, bringing with their chatter and chimes a feeling of expectancy. Time had returned to Number 67 Clarges Street. All that was now needed was a tenant.

  Jonas Palmer arrived an hour early, hoping to catch them unprepared, but Rainbird was used to the agent’s ways and had made sure everyone was ready at least three hours before his expected arrival.

  “Where’s Alice?” demanded Palmer, glaring with his bulging eyes at Jenny, who was setting the tea tray on a table in the front parlour.

  “Alice is out on an errand,” said Rainbird. The butler did not like the way the agent always leered at the beautiful Alice and undressed her with his eyes, and so he had told the housemaid to stay belowstairs. Jenny left the room, and Rainbird looked expectantly at the agent.

  “Do well for yourself, you lot,” said Palmer grumpily, stretching his thick legs out towards the fire and glancing around the well-kept parlour.
Rainbird waited patiently. It was useless to argue with Palmer.

  Palmer slurped his tea noisily. It was amazing, reflected Rainbird, how the agent could manage to drink a cup of tea with the spoon still sticking in it and not jab himself in the eye.

  “I spoke to his grace t’other day,” said Palmer, “and he said to me, he says, them servants at Sixty-seven are too highly paid.”

  Rainbird looked at Palmer, his grey eyes suddenly sharp with suspicion. “Does the Duke of Pelham actually know what we are being paid?”

  “ ‘Course he does. Don’t I take the books to him regular?”

  “And how was it in the Peninsula?” asked Rainbird sweetly. “Hot?”

  “What?”

  “The Duke of Pelham has been in Portugal since last summer, so if you were speaking to him, I assume you plodded over the high mountains in order to achieve that end.”

  “Don’t take that hoity-toity tone with me,” growled Palmer, turning red. “You’re nothing but a womaniser who wouldn’t have no pay at all if it weren’t for me.”

  Rainbird had been dismissed from Lord Trumpington’s household for having been found between the sheets with a very naked Lady Trumpington. The fact that my lady had practically dragged him into bed was not taken into account. Rainbird was dismissed in disgrace and, had it not been for Palmer, would have found it very hard to get another post, as Lord Trumpington had called him a mad rapist to anyone who would listen.

  Servants were always wrong. It was the custom for a man of society to take his footman along when he dined from home. The footman’s job was to pick his master up from under the table at the end of the meal and manage to get him home without occasioning any Methodist remarks about drunkenness. But should the master behave so badly that his far-gone inebriated state was impossible to conceal, as in the case of a certain lord who insisted on performing entrechats in the middle of the dining table, then it was the footman who was accused of drunkenness and dismissed.