“Indeed, milady, it is so,” said Bessie brightly.
“And Cook tells me that you peddle potions and salves and such. Have you, or have you not, used the kitchen’s commodities in preparing your little remedies?”
“No, milady! I would never…that is…I go out and pick my own, that’s what I…”
“Ah! Then it is true!” interrupted Arabella triumphantly. “You pick your own! To concoct your diabolical preparations!” As she stood up, her chair scraped harshly against the stone floor. Bessie flinched.
Arabella leaned forward over the table, blasting Bessie with her vinegar breath. “I am amazed, madam. Simply amazed! Did you think the kitchen was an apothecary? Look at it! Does this look like an apothecary shop, or perhaps an alchemist’s laboratory?”
Bessie shook her head abjectly.
“No, no, but I don’t understand! Are you telling me that although you know that the kitchen is not an apothecary, yet you continue to pursue your…dark arts here?”
Bessie opened her mouth to say something, then thought better of it and bowed her head again.
“Pah! I don’t understand, I’m sure. You have a perfectly enviable position here. Forty shillings a year! And yet you abuse your position, you abuse my mother’s generous nature…Fortunately I am now in charge, and we shan’t have any more of this nonsense. Is that clear? I will not have it. You will reimburse the kitchen for what is missing. It comes to eighteen shillings and thruppence. Understood?”
Bessie inclined her head a fraction lower. Her neck ached. It was an enormous sum.
“And if I catch you taking a single clove from the pantry again…”
“No, mum.”
“Now this—this child. Bring her to me. I wish to see her.”
Bessie slunk from the room. She had a notion that Lady Arabella was not planning to bounce Lucinda on her knee.
Bessie was right. Arabella did not have a soft spot for children, and her impulse to see Lucinda owed more to diligence than a sentimental nature.
What Arabella saw was a little doll with porcelain skin, dark brown curls, large, limpid eyes and not a single blemish except for the blubbery nose. For Lucinda had burst into tears quite early on in the interview, having never in her short life faced an adult who did not smile at her besottedly, pinch her cheeks, or generally dote.
Arabella glared.
“How old are you?”
Lucinda sniffled.
“Can you recite the Lord’s Prayer?”
A hiccup.
“Can you count to a hundred? Have you any French? Do you sew?”
Arabella was not familiar with children. This was the first child she had ever been called upon to cross-examine, and she was quite disgusted with the girl’s performance. She called for Bessie.
“This child is appallingly ignorant. Have you taught her nothing?”
“Oh, but ma’am, she’s so young yet, there’s plenty of time for lessons…” Bessie herself could neither read nor write—not an uncommon circumstance for a woman of her class, and certainly not something to be ashamed of.
“How dare you argue with me! Take her away! I shall have to think about what to do with the pair of you…”
Upon consultation with her sisters, Lady Arabella decided that the best place for her deceased sister’s bastard was a household where provisions were already in place for the rearing of children—that is, one with a proper complement of tutors, music teachers, dancing instructors and governesses, each charged with conducting a healthily disciplined regimen in an atmosphere of suitably obsequious indoctrination.
Lady Clarissa, the eldest of the Steppys sisters, was living wealthily among the rolling hills of Dorset. Her husband, Sir Edmund Nayerdell, was considered the best fox and stag hunter in the county. Edmund and Clarissa had already produced five children, and in addition to their own brood they were also raising Clarissa’s only brother—young Robert, Viscount Swyndhurst.
The infant Robert’s unforeseen arrival into the world seven years earlier had come as a nasty shock. To assuage Lady Hempstead’s dismay at finding herself saddled with yet another child at this late stage, when she thought she was done with all that, the infant Viscount had been bundled off to board with Clarissa and Edmund, who were only too happy to have some influence over the old earl’s sole male offspring, the boy who would one day control the Steppys fortune.
“Of course she must come to us,” Clarissa told Arabella, with a smirk. Fancy that—Olivia’s brat living at Wriggin Hall for more than four years without anyone being aware of her existence! “We’ll treat the poor little thing just like one of our own, shan’t we, Edmund?”
Edmund grunted. He was not interested in children, let alone a bastard sired by someone else.
Clarissa turned back to Arabella. “As for the nurse. You say that she also cooks?”
“I told you!” said Arabella evenly. “Don’t you listen? I would rather not have to tell you everything twice, Clarissa. She helped herself whenever she felt like it, Widow Ben swears to it.”
“What I was thinking was, our kitchen could use another set of hands…Wait—let me speak! I know you are upset, dear, I know you would throw her out. But I could find it in my heart, I do think, to overlook her trespass. It is a shame, of course, a crying shame, the creature simply delving into the larder without permission. Still, Arabella, one must forgive. It is our Christian duty.”
She sighed, overcome by her own magnanimity. A glance at her husband revealed that he was not attending. She stared in the gigantic gilt mirror opposite. Some day he would realize how lucky he was. After all, how many men had wives endowed with such a pleasant disposition, such kind instincts and such…womanly attributes as she?
Bessie was heartbroken. She had no choice but to take the kitchen job in Dorset, for she had become so attached to the child that even an inferior post was better than being parted from her lamb. But Thomas…poor Thomas would be left behind.
Poor Thomas had in fact found the courage to ask Arabella if there might possibly be a position for himself in her sister’s house. But the very intimation (raised by his impudent suggestion that Bessie and he might “stay together”) that these servants had been mating, right here under her nose, while she—the Lady Arabella Steppys—was doomed to spend her life as a maid, albeit not in the domestic sense of course, sent her into such an apoplexy that Thomas considered himself lucky to have held on to his post at all.
5
THE CUCKOO IN THE NEST
Lucy-doosy, quack-quack goosy…”
Lucinda had had it with her mean cousins. Blinking away tears, she stormed out of the nursery and stomped down the back stairs, three at a time and avoiding the cracks. She had meant to go for a walk outside, but when she opened the door and saw the snow coming down, the desire for fresh air left her. She pushed open the door to the hot and steamy kitchen instead. A dozen pairs of concerned eyes looked up.
“Lucy, lamb, what’s the matter?” Bessie exclaimed, bustling over to her.
“Nothing. I just came down to see what smells so good.” Lucinda was not about to confess to her unpopularity in the nursery. “What’s that? Quaking pudding?”
“Yes, my pet. Marchpane too. Company tonight. And we haven’t forgotten you. Whitepot for the nursery—your favorite!”
“Lucy, Lucy!” Two pint-sized urchins ran up to her: Tom, whose job it was to tend the fire and turn the spit, and who was so small for his age that they called him Tom Thumb; and Audrey, scarce any bigger, who had been employed in the kitchen as bottle washer since the age of five.
Lucinda’s spirits lifted. It was hard to say which was worse—to be ignored by her cousins, or to be the butt of their jokes. From the time she had arrived here as a little girl, the pestering had been fairly relentless. But down here she was special, the brightest star of the universe. Here they were overjoyed to see her and overflowing with love for her. Her own love surged in return.
“Bread pudding? What are you doing,
Bessie, trying to fatten me up for market?” To the little tykes tugging at her skirts, she whispered, “You two will have my portion, I shall see to it.”
Bessie shook her head and pursed her lips. “I just wish you would put on some weight, lamb.” Turning to the others, she sighed, “She’s really much too thin, if you ask me. One of these days she’ll blow away in a west wind…”
“Lucinda laughed. “The things you say, Bess! Anyway, do we really want to be like one of your jellies, all blubbery—boing! boing! boing!—when we walk…?” The two tiny kitchen helpers giggled. There was no danger either of them would ever grow plump, even with Lucinda’s habit of slipping them tidbits when no one was looking.
“You look fine to me, sweetheart,” purred Mrs. Kettle, the head cook.
“A lovely young lady!” said Lena the laundress.
The entire kitchen staff agreed.
And Lucinda was able to skip upstairs to face her cousins with a fresh dose of pluck.
“We are having company tonight,” she announced importantly.
“What do you mean, We?” sneered Sarah, closest in age to Lucinda. Sarah had taken it upon herself never to let Lucy forget who was legitimate and who was not. “Your parents are having company tonight, are they?”
“Perhaps she means the cook-maids are receiving the chimney sweep,” remarked Robert. Even though Robert, the Viscount, was treated with greater deference than the other cousins, he could be just as childish and mean as the rest of them.
“Or a turnspit,” giggled Catherine, one of the twins.
“The swineherd!” gleamed little Samuel.
Quick and easy retorts were never readily available to Lucinda. A shrug of the shoulders and a lame “You’ll see…” were all she could muster.
It was only when she had retreated, crestfallen, to her little footstool by the window that it came to her: she should have let on that she knew what was for pudding, then refused to tell. She opened her mouth. But it was too late: the moment had passed. With a sigh she picked up her charcoal and opened her little sketchbook.
“Lucy-cinder, sitting by the wind-er,” she heard one of them whisper, followed by snorts of laughter.
But it didn’t matter, because she was already drifting into another world, a world where they’d all be sorry they had made fun of her; a world where a pair of strong arms caught her by the waist, lifted her onto his steed and galloped away…
“Let’s go!” said Mrs. Limpid sharply, “Lucinda! That means you too! They are expecting you downstairs.”
Lucinda got up from the footstool and smoothed out her crumpled skirt, suddenly conscious of her drab smock. The others had changed into better finery. They had no reason to resent playing the part of model children on show for the visitors. Lucinda, however, had refused to get up from her post by the window. She had gone on staring at the drifting snowflakes and daydreaming about her handsome knight and his daring rescue. She had been planning to avoid the evening’s embarrassing ritual altogether by sneaking out just before Mrs. Limpid arrived to round them up, but she had been so engrossed in that other world that she was trapped now in this.
“Children!” exclaimed Lady Clarissa, as if the appearance of eight children in her dining room were a startling surprise. “Let me present the children to you, Captain,” she chirruped, turning to one of the visitors, “They did so wish to meet you.”
There were six guests for the children to make their curtsies and bows to. The Blandys, Henrietta and Samuel—neighbors and frequent visitors to the manor; next, the children’s two married aunts and one uncle; and, last, a stranger.
“This, my dears, is Captain Henry Beaupree, my very favorite soldier,” crooned their mother.
The captain looked sternly at the young faces staring up at him. He was not a connoisseur of children and, examining the dwarfish crew, wondered what all the fuss was about. Here there were mouths slightly open with tongues protruding; a fair number of missing or rabbity front teeth; freckles, pockmarks and blemishes, skinny shoulders, pudgy little hands with dimples instead of knuckles, daft grins, protruding ears and, Lord! even a runny nose.
“Nice, very nice,” he finally muttered in recognition of something rather more appealing: two young maidens, one blonde and rosy-cheeked, the other dark-haired with skin as white as snow.
The audience was over before the children had had a chance to take in all the glittering sights of the dining room. Their mother had even forgotten to invite them to approach the sideboard piled with sweetmeats and nuts—ordinarily the best part of the ritual.
“Now run along, dear ones,” said Clarissa, catching in the reflecting glass the tender picture of a mother kissing each child warmly on the forehead, even Lucinda, that cuckoo in her nest.
“He’s a captain, he wears a sword, and he said I looked very nice,” boasted Sarah to Mrs. Limpid.
Lucinda looked at Sarah. She had been so mesmerized that she had forgotten for a moment Sarah’s presence beside her. Could it have been Sarah the stranger had been looking at with those piercing eyes? It could have been. Sarah’s hair hung loose and fair, and little pillows of round flesh were beginning to show at the top of her tightly corseted bodice. Her mouth was a rosebud, and matched in color her satiny cheeks. Her eyebrows were thick and downy, and the eyes underneath, although somewhat colorless and close-set, held a perfectly benign expression. Sarah was her father’s favorite. She reeked of lavender-water and self-possession.
It must have been Sarah.
In bed, Lucinda’s head pounded and she felt the same searing sensations that usually accompanied her daydreams. Only this time it was the stranger she was thinking of. Was it he? He had seemed so…so stern, and so disdainful. And yet…No matter how hard she tried to change the subject and conjure up her other dream-world knights, she could not banish him from her sleepy mind.
In Lady Clarissa’s bedchamber, a battle was in full swing. The good lady was screaming at her husband.
“It is not true! I have not been making eyes at him! All I ever have from you is accusations! This is so unjust! Of course the captain had to sit next to me—he was the guest of honor. Would you have me banish him to the foot of the table? Don’t laugh! Edmund! I forbid you to laugh! Just because there are some men who do appreciate me…”
She caught sight of herself in her looking glass, and wished Edmund were the sort of man who said, “Begad, but you are beautiful when you are angry…” But the reality was that she no longer appealed to him, now that her skin was no longer smooth as snow, now that the outline of her form was rumpled with fat, each layer the badge of yet another pregnancy. It infuriated her.
“And you! How dare you complain! Don’t you think I know about your nasty habits? Take that—Annie, for instance. There goes another chambermaid. What, do you think it is easy to find good help? I cannot go on like this, spending half my days engaging new maids. The trollop! I knew she was a bad egg, another bun in the oven, and the yeast yours, I have no doubt…”
Edmund grinned. He rather enjoyed his wife’s culinary euphemisms, and was hardly ashamed of his own robust appetites. He was a full-blooded male, and he liked to spread his seed around. All he was trying to do was point out to the woman that she’d made a fool of herself tonight.
“Clarissa-a-a-” he drawled, “will you quiet down like a good gel, or shall I be obliged to return to my chamber and make some other arrangement…?”
He had to admit it was not the most tactful approach, but he enjoyed needling her when she was like this.
“’S-truth, and to accuse me of making eyes at men!” she brayed. “And you, sir? You…you…I have seen you ogling that little minx Lucinda. You were ogling her tonight. Were you not! She is just your cup of tea, isn’t she! All lanky and no flesh on her. Don’t think I hadn’t noticed. Well, sir, you shall not have her. She is my poor sister’s child. I shall see to it that you lay not a finger on her—it’s the least I can do for Olivia. If only—I wish now that I had never taken her
in! There’s gratitude for you, a child I have raised as my very own…I should have seen it coming, I should have known she would repay me thus!”
Edmund closed his eyes. It was painful to have to listen to more of this ranting. But damn if she hadn’t just put an interesting notion into his head. The child in question—what was her name, Lucinda, was it?—had grown into an attractive little proposition. And whereas he would never tamper with his own flesh and blood, this one was no relation—at least no blood relation, was she? His deceased sister-in-law’s bastard. Fair game, then.
“Clarissa-a-a,” he repeated. And yawned. “Enough! Half a minute and I shall be asleep…”
Clarissa sniffed, dried her eyes, and snuggled down beside him, like a good gel.
6
WHO’S THE FAIREST
If Sir Edmund had been a crony of Henry Beaupree’s, which he was not, the two men would have found that they shared something in common: namely, the opinion that illicit dalliances were far more satisfying than those sanctioned by matrimony. Where they differed, however, was that Edmund had a wife to be faithless to, while Henry had the bachelor’s perk (some might call it duty) of dallying with the faithless wives of others.
In accepting Lady Clarissa’s invitation to a week of hunting in Dorset, extended over the basset-table in the Duchess of Ricksborough’s salon, Henry thought that the lady’s offer was intended to make her husband jealous, so that a little gallantry was all that was required of him. It was disconcerting, therefore, to find himself surrounded that first evening in Dorset by not one, but three married women vying for his attention. It was clear from the family resemblance—a disproportionately long expanse of upper lip drawn tightly over the front teeth—that they were related to each other.
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