Miss Benwick Reforms a Rogue

by Maggie Fenton

  Bones’ expression darkened. “Oh, I won’t, believe you me.”

  Finally arriving at the door to his workshop, he faced his friend one final time. “Now tell Mr. Fawkes his services are no longer needed and send him back to his cousin, with twenty pounds for his trouble. It isn’t his fault he’s here on false pretenses.”

  “Whatever you wish, yer majesty,” Bones said sourly.

  “And tell Sir Wesley and Pilby—since I know he must have written all of your correspondence—that if I ever catch the three of you colluding behind my back again, there will be hell to pay.”

  With that, he slammed the door in his friend’s scowling face, feeling immensely pleased with himself for having finally gotten the last word with Bones.

  Chapter Four

  The Butler and the Bully

  Davina was rather shocked to find Mr. Hirst in possession of a full staff of servants upon her arrival at the castle’s front entrance. He even had a footman in stiff, elegant livery and an old fashioned wig, who greeted her at the door with a frosty politesse she’d only ever seen in London’s grandest houses. One haughty glance at her muddy boots had Davina wondering if she should have used the servants’ entrance. The rest of Leon’s bespoke articles seemed to garner the footman’s tacit approval, however, since he finally stepped back enough to actually let her pass inside.

  She was shocked yet again. If the outside of the castle appeared a crumbling, gothic horror, the interior was surprisingly habitable. The main hall, a cavernous room straight off the entrance, still had the whiff of the medieval about it, though, with its ancient wood rafters and giant flagstones worn smooth by the passage of hundreds of years and thousands of footsteps.

  An old fashioned chandelier of sturdy oak and ormolu hovered at the apex of ceiling, its candles unlit in the daylight, while a fire burned in the biggest grate she’d ever seen at the far end of the room, chasing off the morning chill. A staircase of carved, gleaming mahogany dominated the other side, curling into the upper storeys of the castle.

  If not for a few servants scurrying about, as out of place in such a setting as pearls on a pig’s ear in their crisp, modern uniforms, she could almost believe she’d been transported into the past. It was definitely the sort of place gothic melodramas were set, but she refused to let her mind go in that direction again. If anything, between her current wardrobe choices and Mr. Hirst’s…lack thereof, this had the all the makings of a Shakespearean comedy.

  At least she hoped it did, for she could really use a happy ending after the day she’d had.

  As Davina followed the footman into the hall, she decided it best not to mention meeting his naked employer in a ditch, lest the man die of distress. No wonder Hirst had run off into the shrubbery instead of facing his staff. How he had managed to employ servants more suited to Buckingham—how they’d agreed to work for a man like Hirst—was baffling.

  But she supposed enough pounds sterling could buy as pompous a serving staff as one desired.

  Before she had a chance to get her bearings, her bag was whisked away by one of the scurrying servants, and the haughty footman was soon replaced with an even haughtier butler. He was dressed from head to toe in solemn black superfine and gave her one sweeping, dismissive glance. Without so much as a twitch of his face, he managed to convey his total disdain for her existence even more thoroughly than the footman.

  His very familiar disdain.

  “Pilby?” she breathed, her stomach dropping to her toes. Oh, hell. She’d barely crossed the threshold, and already she was stuffed. This was definitely not her day. She’d be back in Rylestone Green before tea. “What are you doing here?”

  She could tell the moment the butler recognized her, for his eyes popped wide and his jaw dropped. She’d never seen the man so undone, and she would have laughed at his comical expression if she’d not been so anxious. He’d always been perfectly inscrutable the entire time he’d been employed at Benwick Grange. Even the dowager at her worst had only garnered the barest twitch of a brow.

  But she supposed it wasn’t every day that Pilby saw the daughter of a baronet dressed like a London fop. He was allowed his lapse in dignity.

  He glanced around them furtively, then shooed her across the great hall and into a smaller drawing room. He shut the door and braced his back against it, as if attempting to keep a Mongol Horde from entering behind him.

  “What am I…? What are you doing here, Miss Benwick, and what are you wearing?” He held up his hand to block the lower half of her body from his line of sight, as if a glimpse of her legs would doom him to an eternity in hell.

  He’d always been a prude.

  She decided to brazen her way through, the same as she’d done with Mr. Hirst. “I’ve run away, Pilby. The same as you did. I’ll have you know, my mother didn’t leave her bed for a fortnight after you left. It was quite inconvenient.”

  The color quickly drained out of his cheeks at the mention of the dowager. “I couldn’t bear it any more, Miss Benwick! I had to leave!”

  “And so you did. Like a thief in the night,” she teased, rather enjoying watching the unflappable servant squirm like a chastened schoolboy.

  “There was no other way, miss. You know what she’s like!”

  He did make a fair point. “Alas, I do indeed.”

  “If I had told her I was resigning, she would have strung me up by my boll…” He cut himself off abruptly and cleared his throat, remembering his audience. Davina was just impressed he was capable of crude language. She hadn’t thought he had it in him, what with all of that starch in his collar. “Leaving without notice was my only recourse, Miss Benwick,” he finished.

  “And so you’re here now, working for Mr. Hirst?” She didn’t know how much of an improvement that was over working for her mother.

  He drew himself up defensively. “It’s not so bad, miss. And for all his odd ways and the occasional explosion, Mr. Hirst is a sight easier on my nerves than your mother.”

  “Explosion?” She was as intrigued as she was alarmed.

  “It is not as if that is anything new, after living with Sir Wesley,” he said dryly. That was fair enough, though her brother hadn’t blown anything up in years. “And don’t think I hadn’t noticed you evading my questions, Miss Benwick. What are you doing here, dressed like…like…”

  “Like Mr. Hirst’s new secretary?”

  Pilby’s expression turned even more disapproving at the mention of her feckless cousin. “I knew of Master Leon’s…appointment here,” he said dubiously. “Don’t tell me he put you up to this.”

  That did rather sound like her cousin. “Leon had nothing to do with it.” For once. “He’s eloped.”

  “Eloped!” Pilby sniffed. “I can’t say I’m surprised. What poor chit has he absconded with?”

  “Miss Nettie Dalrymple.”

  Pilby looked horrified. “Well. Perhaps it is your cousin I should be worried about,” he said crisply. “Miss Dalrymple? Really?”

  “That’s what I said,” she muttered. But no one ever bothered listening to her, did they?

  “But what of you and the earl? I thought you were to be wed to him.”

  She sighed. She supposed he would find out eventually. The way that gossip flew among servants, she was surprised news from the grange hadn’t preceded her here by wind current alone. “I was supposed to marry him this morning.”

  “What!”

  “I ran away, Pilby. I couldn’t go through with it.”

  “What!”

  She indicated her blackened eye, and Pilby’s lips tightened. He didn’t look surprised at all, however. He’d never cared for Dalrymple either. It was perhaps the only thing he and Leon had ever had in common. “I didn’t know what else to do, so I came here.”

  “Masquerading as your cousin. Your male cousin.” Pilby looked as if he still couldn’t quite believe his eyes. “You can’t expect to remain here like that.”

  “I aim to do just that, Pilby. You thought
I was a man until you recognized my face, didn’t you?”

  Pilby floundered for several seconds. “Well, yes. But…”

  “But what?”

  “But what if you’re discovered? You’ll be ruined!”

  She rolled her eyes. Was that what he was worried about? “I was ruined the moment I left Rylestone Green in the mail coach. But better ruined than married to Dalrymple.”

  He couldn’t seem to disagree with this, but he didn’t look at all reassured. “For all that he’s a generous employer, Mr. Hirst can be a ruthless man. So is Mr. Bonnet. If they should discover who you really are…”

  “What are they going to do, lock me in the dungeon?” she scoffed.

  Pilby considered the question seriously, which was very worrying. “Mr. Hirst couldn’t be bothered, to be honest. But Mr. Bonnet might.”

  She gaped at him for a long moment. “Your answer would seem to suggest that there is an actual dungeon here.”

  Pilby’s look was dry as dust. “It’s a castle from the twelfth century. Of course there’s a dungeon.”

  She decided that she was better off not knowing if Pilby were truly serious about Hirst’s bloodthirsty man-of-affairs. On the bright side, at least he wasn’t dragging her back to Rylestone Green by her ear yet. He was just waiting to be convinced otherwise, she was certain of it.

  Pilby had always had a soft spot for her, and she planned to capitalize upon it mercilessly. She’d been so worried about actually getting to Arncliffe Castle that she’d not thought about what would happen when she arrived. And she’d certainly not expected to be recognized.

  If she were to leave on the mail coach tomorrow, where would she go? She’d barely had enough pin money to make the two hour coach trip, much less get to London and her cousin Astrid—a fate she’d rather avoid anyway.

  And while she’d seemed to convince the inhabitants of the castle of her gender so far (well, except for Pilby, obviously), she had no doubt she’d be found out in no time, should she be tossed out into the wider world. She wouldn’t stand a chance. She had to convince Pilby to keep her secret.

  “Please don’t tell anyone. Please!” she pressed, trying to look as pathetic as possible. “I can’t go back, Pilby. I just need some time to sort all of this out.”

  “As Master Fawkes?” he cried incredulously.

  “Well I certainly cannot be myself right now.”

  His expression went through several painful looking contortions, and Davina had a horrible feeling that Pilby was about to say something she didn’t want to hear.

  As if on cue, however, the door at Pilby’s back swung open, nearly knocking the butler off his feet. He recovered quickly, his expression smoothing itself into its usual supercilious serenity, as a large, swarthy man appeared in the doorway. He was not quite the Mongol Horde Pilby had been expecting, but he was close.

  The man was not as tall as Hirst, but he was twice as wide, and built like a squat oak tree. His face was square and pugnacious, with a lumpy nose that looked as if it had been broken one or twenty times in his life, and cauliflowered ears—not the sort one wanted to cross.

  The man scrutinized Davina with an intensity that was more harrowing than Hirst’s had been, and she prepared herself for the worst. There were no immediate signs that she had been exposed, however. Instead, the man seemed inordinately fixated on examining the plump folds of her cravat and her tasseled boots, as if they were exotic creatures he didn’t quite know what to do with.

  Well, of course he didn’t. A man who matched a salmon-colored jacquard waistcoat with that jacket could hardly be expected to appreciate Leon’s exquisite tastes.

  The man was nattily enough dressed in a black silk cutaway with shiny brass buttons, but his fine-fabricked clothes were just a little bit off on his thick frame, his buttons just a little bit too bold, and his hair just a little bit too greased with pomade, for him to be taken as anything other than a cit like Hirst. The man needed a better tailor if he wanted to pass himself off as a gentleman.

  Though Davina didn’t think he stood much of a chance of succeeding in that particular endeavor, however talented his tailor was. Judging from the elaborate fox heads (or badgers, it was hard to pinpoint the exact species) embossed on the buttons and the general color choices, the man seemed to have a taste for ostentation that would not be tamed.

  “Me ears are burning, Pilby,” the man said with a scowl. “If I ain’t mistaken, I were the topic of conversation afore I entered.”

  Well, if Davina had any doubts about his origins, his unabashed accent put them to rest. It was ten times worse than Hirst’s. This had to be the man-of-affairs.

  Pilby’s professional indifference was not enough to hide the small curl of disdain at the corner of his lip. He didn’t like Mr. Bonnet any more than Mr. Bonnet liked him, it seemed. “Mr. Bonnet, I was just acquainting Mr. Fawkes with the household…”

  “Come a day early, ‘ave ya?” Mr. Bonnet interrupted rudely, canny gaze still fixed on Davina’s Hobys.

  Davina decided to feign ignorance. “Have I? Oh, dear.”

  Mr. Bonnet finally tore his eyes away from her boots at the sound of her voice. His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Has Sir Wesley sent us ‘is infant cousin, then? We was expecting a grown man, not someone still in swaddling.”

  If she had, in fact, been a man, she would have been very offended. But it seemed Mr. Bonnet was operating under the same misapprehension as Hirst…which was much better than guessing the truth, she supposed. Better they thought her too young than too female. She tried to muster up some semblance of indignation, however, for form’s sake. It wasn’t hard, especially when she focused on the ridiculous fox-head buttons.

  “I am five and twenty, Mr. Bonnet,” she said as briskly as she dared.

  He seemed unconvinced of this, though it was ironically one of the few things she wasn’t lying about. “Suppose it doan matter ‘ow old you are, as long as you can do yer job.” He said these last two words as if they were a curse, making his opinion of Leon’s profession painfully clear. He gave her another skeptical once over. “But it’s neither ‘ere nor there, as yer services are no longer required.”

  “What?” she cried, and if she meant to convince Mr. Bonnet of her maturity, she failed miserably, her voice cracking at the end as if she were indeed a spotty adolescent.

  Mr. Bonnet’s face twisted into an unpleasant scowl. “You ‘eard me, lad. Piss off, as we says where I come from.” He extracted a banknote from his waistcoat and shoved it into Davina’s hands, as if it were the most inconvenient thing he’d ever had to do. “‘Ere’s what you was owed for the month, and doan expect a farthing more. You can stay the night, but yer to leave come morning.”

  She tucked the five-pound note into a pocket—five pounds, for an entire month! No wonder Leon was always pockets-to-let! Though it was more pin money than she’d ever received in one go—and glanced at Pilby. He looked suspiciously resigned to her marching orders, however, so he’d be no help. He was doubtless relieved he wouldn’t have to deal with her for very much longer.

  She could already see that she’d get nowhere arguing with Mr. Bonnet, though—and she didn’t fancy trying anyway. He looked like the type to settle his confrontations with his fists, and she’d had quite enough of that, thank you very much.

  “Where is Mr. Hirst right now?” she demanded.

  Mr. Bonnet seemed astonished that she had the temerity to ask such a question. His look of surprise quickly transformed into a scowl. “In ‘is workshop, and likely to be there all day. He woan want ta be disturbed, so doan get no ideas about bovering him. It were hisself what ordered ya gone from the premises. The mail coach will be back from the border at dawn. See that yer on it.”

  With that, the unpleasant man barreled out of the room, leaving her and Pilby alone once more. She turned her best pleading look on the butler. He seemed determined to resist her this time, however.

  “You heard what he said, Miss Benwick,” Pilby said
gruffly. “Best to go back to the Grange and sort out the mess you’ve made. Surely Sir Wesley will help you, if you but ask him.”

  She huffed in frustration. Pilby had a lot more faith in her brother than she did. “If I thought that would work, I would have done so. You know how he is when it comes to our mother. He’ll capitulate to whatever she wants just to keep the peace.”

  “But you can’t stay here,” he insisted. “Mr. Hirst is not one to change his mind once he’s made it up.”

  “We’ll see about that,” she muttered. “Just show me where his workshop is, Pilby. I can convince him to give me a chance.”

  Pilby threw his shoulders back into parade rest and avoided meeting her eyes. It was clear his mind was made up too.

  She really didn’t want to have to do this, since she’d always liked Pilby. But she was desperate. Pilby didn’t seem to understand quite how desperate, but he would soon find out. “I’ll tell mother where you are,” she threatened.

  Pilby’s face blanched completely, and he staggered back a little, clearly not expecting such a low blow. “You wouldn’t!”

  She hardened her heart despite his horrified look. “I would, the minute I returned to Rylestone Green, if you don’t help me now.”

  “Miss Benwick!” Now he was the one sounding a bit desperate.

  “She’ll be delighted to know where you ran off to. She’s been trying to discover it for weeks. The last I heard, she was determined to make it so no other proper household in England would employ you.”

  This was a load of rubbish, but it did sound like something her mother would do. Pilby definitely thought so as well.

  A bit of awe edged into Pilby’s expression behind his general alarm. “You’re more like her than I ever thought!”

  She immediately understood his implication, and she didn’t like it. People had compared her to her mother—or simply lumped them together—for years, but this was new. “How so?”

  “You’re a bit ruthless, just like her, when it comes to getting what you want.”