Lady Be Good

by Meredith Duran

  How could someone so pretty, so fortunate in her circumstances, and so widely admired by handsome young gentlemen in need of a fortune, be so unpleasant? In her shoes, Lilah would never have stopped smiling. Every door in the world stood open to Catherine Everleigh. She only needed pick which one she felt like exploring, as the mood took her.

  Instead, she buried herself in business. Nothing else seemed to bring her joy.

  Her gloom was a subject of some speculation among the Everleigh Girls. “See if you can crack her,” Vinnie had advised Lilah, in an uncanny echo of Palmer’s instruction. “They say she had a lover once, but he was too proud to marry a woman whose family was in trade. I’m sure that’s what left her so shriveled inside.”

  Vinnie, Lilah feared, was a secret romantic. The truth was probably much less interesting: Miss Everleigh had been cursed by a fairy at birth, to be as ugly in her disposition as she was beautiful in looks.

  But all this was irrelevant. She could be an actual monster, for all it mattered. Lilah would still win her over—and get her betrothed to the viscount by the last week of June.

  “I’m a very quick learner,” she offered. “And very motivated, miss, to learn as much as I can from your admirable example.” For instance, she’d not known that ladies never handled money. For a brief, happy moment, she’d imagined that the coin purse Miss Everleigh had thrust at her on the platform at Paddington was for her.

  But, no. Apparently it was her job to tip everyone, sparing Miss Everleigh’s delicate hands from the touch of filthy lucre.

  “I’m sure you’re very shrewd,” Miss Everleigh said, in a tone that suggested shrewdness was the province of lepers. “But my task at Buckley Hall is not to play tutor to the ignorant.”

  “Naturally,” Lilah murmured. In the concealment of her skirts, she made a fist so tight that her knuckles throbbed. “I shan’t impede your duties, I promise you.”

  “Of course not. I would not let you.” And with that pronouncement, Miss Everleigh pulled out a book and began to read.

  Had Lilah wished earlier for a spot of conversation? She now sank most gratefully back into silence. The sights of a country road offered ample diversion. She had only been outside London three or four times in her life, always to Margate. That was where the common folk went on their holidays, to take the sea air and clear their lungs of soot.

  But coastal Kent looked nothing like its verdant interior. Here, the soil must be rich and fertile, for oaks grew in abundance alongside the road, and in the openings through the trees, Lilah spied endless rolling fields of green and yellow, bushy crops she could not name, which waved in the unseen breeze.

  The carriage took a fast turn, causing them both to gasp and reach for their straps. “This coachman!” Miss Everleigh snapped, and banged the ceiling. The vehicle instantly slowed, the driver already having been chastened thrice for his speeding.

  Lilah had no sympathy for him. Once at their destination, he would get to leave.

  The coach crested a gentle slope, and suddenly the vista opened up. In the distance, at the top of a green grassy knoll, perched a house of . . . terrible proportions.

  Lilah must have made a noise—a gasp of horror, she didn’t doubt. Miss Everleigh laid down her book and leaned forward to take the view. “Oh,” she said quietly. “Buckley Hall.”

  The building was long and squat, no more than two stories, built patchwork in red brick and pink wash, with long, narrow windows that stretched from ground to roof. Above these windows, strange turrets were capped by copper-topped cupolas, which stretched like taffy into fantastical points.

  Lilah had never seen anything like it before. Would they find skeletons in the cellar? And Egyptian mummies in the attic? A delicious shiver coursed through her. “How awful,” she said with relish.

  “Awful!” Miss Everleigh cast her a blazing look of dislike. “Buckley Hall is a marvel. One of the premier examples of the Tudor Gothic style.” She frowned. “Remodeled through the course of several generations, naturally.” Sitting back, she opened her book again, saying sharply to the page: “It is a national treasure.”

  “Oh, quite.” Lilah battled temptation and lost. “You must tell Lord Palmer so. He will be very glad to hear it, I think. He called it a ‘ramshackle pile.’ ”

  “Did he?” Miss Everleigh peered up, scowling. “When did you speak with him?”

  Lilah wanted to kick herself. “I overheard him, the night of the ball.”

  Miss Everleigh remained staring, her suspicion plain. Not a dumb woman, more was the pity. “You make it a habit to eavesdrop on our guests?”

  The charge was ridiculous. “No, miss. But Mr. Everleigh instructs us to attend closely to their conversations, so we might better know their tastes and preferences.”

  Miss Everleigh wrinkled her nose. “Yes, of course he does. Some auction houses trust in the quality of their curation to entice clientele. But my brother insists on cheap flattery and pandering.” Here she paused, obviously waiting to see if Lilah would take the bait and make the mistake of agreeing—and thereby insult her own employer.

  Lilah offered a shy, bashful smile.

  With a snort, Miss Everleigh snapped shut the book. “Quality,” she said, “and beauty are not solely the functions of the physical object itself—be it a vase, a painting, or a house. Provenance, Miss Marshall, is a key constituent of value. Is that word too French for you to grasp? History, then, is what I mean. The richer an object’s history, the more value it possesses. And this house”—she tipped her head toward the window, and the view it offered of the monstrous squat palace drawing nearer—“is rich in history, indeed.”

  It seemed Lilah would be tutored, after all. “Yes, miss. I’m certain you’re right.”

  “You need not take my word for it,” Miss Everleigh said crisply. “The Barons Hughley were descended directly from a member of the Conqueror’s court. They survived the War of the Roses, and the depredations of Henry Tudor. They saw Queen Elizabeth crowned. This house was built by one of her favored courtiers. Eustace de Hughley was his name.”

  Her lifted brows suggested this name should mean something. Lilah wracked her brain, but try as she might, she could not recall reading of Eustace de Hughley during her visits to the library at Everleigh’s.

  Catherine Everleigh sighed. “The astronomer.”

  “The telescope!” Lilah’s exclamation made her new mistress twitch.

  “Many telescopes,” Miss Everleigh said coldly.

  “But surely one of the finest examples of his scientific acumen was the telescope auctioned at Everleigh’s as part of the Houston estate,” Lilah rejoined instantly. “Why, many scholars believe that that very specimen provided a crucial inspiration to Galileo.”

  Her reward for this recitation—which she had repeated almost verbatim from the catalog for the Houston auction—was a slow blink from the woman opposite.

  “Yes,” Miss Everleigh finally allowed. Before this triumph could register, she quickly continued, “Of course, it’s the women of the family who are most notable.” Her pause felt challenging.

  Lilah could think of no satisfactory reply. She nodded.

  “The Hughley women were visionaries,” Miss Everleigh said. “In every recorded generation, one finds evidence of spirited, noble, freethinking lady scholars. This house and its many alterations are almost solely the work of the Hughley women.”

  Was that how Miss Everleigh saw herself? As spirited, noble, and freethinking? Fine euphemisms, Lilah thought darkly, for rude and unfeeling.

  She checked herself. If she meant to win the woman’s trust, she could not afford to think this way. She must cultivate a sympathetic, interested, and transparently grateful air. “How lovely,” she said. “It’s so rare to hear of a noble family distinguished by its womenfolk.”

  “Ladies,” Miss Everleigh said through her teeth.

  Evidently womenfolk was one of those words that unwittingly betrayed Lilah’s origins. She made a note to strike i
t from her vocabulary. “I would be most grateful to learn more of the family’s history.”

  “Indeed.” Miss Everleigh leaned forward again to gaze at the house, which was very nearly upon them now. “It will be an honor to walk in their footsteps,” she said more softly. “They managed so well to blend their scholarly pursuits with familial duty.”

  Lilah’s instincts pricked. Was that a pensive note in Miss Everleigh’s voice? Very cautiously, she said, “They were great ladies.”

  “And even greater matriarchs. All the Hughleys of note had several children. Happy families, by most accounts.” Miss Everleigh seemed now to have forgotten to whom she spoke, for she no longer sounded stiff in the least, only . . .

  Wistful.

  Miss Everleigh wanted a family of her own. She wanted to be a scholar and a . . . matriarch!

  Had the heavens opened and angels announced they were on Lilah’s side, she could not have felt more relieved. For if Miss Everleigh wished her noble scholarship to be accommodated within a fecund marriage, there was hope after all.

  Lilah would have her wed to Palmer before the last week of June!

  “Of course, it came to nothing in the end.” Having remembered herself, Miss Everleigh sat back, subsiding into her typical gloom. “The line has ended. The barony has been retired.”

  “But not the house,” Lilah said, trying hard to conceal her happiness. “Nor their legacy, Miss Everleigh. You’ll make sure of that.”

  Wonder of wonders, the look Miss Everleigh cut her was only half-suspicious. The other half, Lilah felt sure, was hopeful.

  Rupert Hughley had been rich in land and dusty souvenirs, and sadly short of cash. What minimal staff he’d employed, Christian had kept on. Perhaps that had been a mistake. The house looked very ill-kept, a thick layer of dust mantling every exposed surface. Furthermore, the housekeeper—already a suspect figure, for obvious reasons—did not seem to know her way around.

  “This wing’s never been used,” she grumbled as she led him down the hall.

  “The furniture would suggest otherwise,” Christian said politely. Through the opened doors to left and right, he spied various objects swathed in white sheeting.

  Mrs. Barnes shrugged. For a woman of advanced age, she had a great many iron-gray curls springing from her scalp. They formed the widest point of her body, for below them, she was as stringy and straight as a beanpole. “Baron Hughley—rest his soul!—did not like this wing. Two generations ago, p’raps, it was favored.”

  “The layer of dust would suggest longer yet.” He rubbed a finger across his nose to forestall a sneeze.

  Mrs. Barnes snorted. “Well, it’s not for lack of my trying to keep it clean. But the silly girls that Lord Hughley—rest his soul,” she muttered quickly, and crossed herself. “The girls what he insisted on employing, they won’t set foot in this wing for fear.”

  “Fear of asthma?”

  Mrs. Barnes impressed him by replying with a rusty laugh. “That, too,” she said. “And don’t think I hadn’t suggested we sack them and start afresh. But no, Lord Hughley”—she crossed herself, and Christian, catching on now, chimed in with her:

  “God rest his soul.”

  “Indeed.” She gave him an approving look. “Church-going man, are you? And a proper hero to boot! Happy day for us, Lord Palmer. But I needn’t tell you that. I expect the whole village turned out to greet you.”

  “Yes, they were very kind.” A troop of schoolchildren had been marched into the road to shower his coach with flowers. The horses hadn’t liked it. But the schoolchildren had seemed to enjoy the impromptu lesson in how a coachman cursed. Their parents and the mayor had looked . . . less pleased.

  “At any rate . . .” Mrs. Barnes clicked her tongue. “Lord Hughley was too sympathetic to the maids, I think. Maybe the ghost scared him, too.”

  “The ghost!” He’d no idea that he’d inherited a spirit. “Very fearsome, is he? Rattle some chains now and then?”

  “And occasionally knocks things off the shelves,” she said. “A pity, I’ve often thought, that ghosts so rarely make themselves known by tidying a place. As to this one, I’ve not seen him myself. He likes to keep to the spots where the cleaning goes hardest.”

  He grinned. Questionable toilette aside, he rather liked his new housekeeper. “Well, Mrs. Barnes, I cannot claim any expertise in ghost hunting, but I will seize the authority to hire and fire staff. If you’d like to handle that business, I’ll give you a free hand.”

  “Isn’t the hand I’m lacking.” She drew up outside a set of arched double doors, trussed in iron; they looked more appropriate for a medieval fortress than for a genteel country home. “It’s the coin,” she said. Not for the first time today, she ran an appraising look over Christian’s figure.

  Only now did he understand the cause for it. She was trying to judge the relative fullness of his pockets. Difficult, of course, when he still wore traveling clothes.

  “Market rate, Mrs. Barnes,” he said. “And not a penny more.”

  Her broad smile made her eyes sink into a hundred fine-lined creases. “Very good, my lord. Very good, indeed. I do think—”

  Raised voices from within the room interrupted her.

  “Put that down!”

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Enough! Your incompetence beggars disbelief!”

  “I’ll be leaving you to it,” Mrs. Barnes said hastily, and scurried off down the hall.

  “How kind of you,” Christian said dryly.

  He opened the door. The scene within would have been remarkable even without its players: the two women faced each other across jumbled piles of books, in a vast room topped by a rib-vaulted ceiling straight from some Gothic cathedral. The light pouring through the stained-glass windows painted their scowls in shades of crimson and teal.

  “Ladies,” said Christian. “Good afternoon to you both.”

  With the instincts of a performer, Lilah Marshall immediately dropped her scowl for a smile, giving him a neat curtsy for accompaniment.

  He really must remind her that it was not he who required charming. But God help him if he didn’t have a soft spot for performers. She’d have made a fine hero; she knew how to beam on command.

  Catherine Everleigh acknowledged him with a regal nod. “Lord Palmer,” she said. “I trust your journey was pleasant?”

  “The train was on schedule, so I cannot complain.” He stepped through the maze of piled books, taking note of the bizarrely medieval flagstones and the bare shelves that lined the walls. This seemed an odd strategy on Catherine’s part, not to mention an exhausting one. “I see you’re hard at work,” he said. “It must have taken all morning to remove these books from the shelves.”

  Lilah made some noise. It sounded like a warning.

  Alas, it came too late. Catherine Everleigh huffed. “I certainly would not dream of removing books from their shelves for storage on a damp stone floor. This disorder you see was the work of some lunatical house-maid—though if any remain in the place, I’ve yet to see them. Why, last night I had to ring the housekeeper for fresh sheets on my bed!”

  “It was very awful,” Lilah said blandly. “Miss Everleigh encountered a stain.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “Yet you remain focused on your task here. How commendable.”

  By the way she averted her gaze, she understood the rebuke. But her shrug did not look properly chastened.

  He turned to Catherine. “My abject apologies. It distresses me to think that you received anything other than the warmest and most, er, hygienic welcome. Rest assured that I have spoken with Mrs. Barnes. She has been given full liberty to hire new help.”

  After a moment, Catherine nodded. But her mouth pressed into a tight line.

  He offered her a very sympathetic smile. “I do hope that you’re not regretting your trip here.”

  “Oh. No.” She blinked, looking startled by the notion. “This house is a treasure trove, of course. These books—som
e of them are quite rare indeed.” She gestured toward a rickety table, upon which several volumes rested. “First printings. Newton, Donne. To say nothing of the French literature.” Here her tone grew cold again, her glance toward her assistant peculiarly vehement. “None of which belong stacked together—”

  “You gasped at the cover,” Lilah said brightly. “The satyr, with no clothes on his bottom half. For your health, I thought it best disguised.”

  Christian coughed to cover his laugh. Evidently old Rupert had cultivated racy tastes in his reading. “Shall I—”

  “She cannot read French.” Catherine spoke in a high, tense voice. “Did you know that, Lord Palmer? Can you credit it? An assistant who knows no French!”

  “I did believe us still in England,” Lilah said to him. “But Miss Everleigh informs me au contraire.”

  “That is not how one uses the phrase!”

  “A late lunch,” he said hastily. “Perhaps? Anyone hungry?”

  “Famished,” said Lilah.

  “Exhausted,” Catherine snapped. “I will retire for an hour. One does hope that the staff can manage to scare up some clean water, so I may wipe off this grime.”

  Gathering her skirts, she stormed for the door. But at the threshold, she stopped quite abruptly and turned back. “Lord Palmer,” she said.

  “Miss Everleigh,” he replied.

  “Good afternoon to you.”

  He bowed.

  The door slammed behind her, leaving him to wait silently beside Lilah as the sound of Catherine’s footsteps faded. Seven, eight, nine, ten—

  Both spoke at once.

  “I instructed you to befriend her—”

  “That woman is a witch; there’s a reason she has no friends!”

  “Well,” he said, “and there’s a reason you’ve no choice in the matter. You’re a thief, and not a clever one. You got caught.”

  “I’m a very good one,” she said bitterly. “Only I was out of practice.”

  “So you’re a career thief, then! How fascinating. Tell me more.”