by M. C. Beaton
“On the contrary, I am newly returned.”
“How goes it with our troops?” asked Jenny, who had not the slightest interest in the war but longed to make it appear to her watching friends as if he were enraptured by her.
He began to talk. Jenny looked down at her gown to make sure it was hanging in the correct folds. She wished she could take out her mirror to assure herself that she was looking as beautiful as ever.
“I am sorry you find my account tedious.” The harsh voice of the duke penetrated her thoughts.
“I find it fascinating, sir,” said Jenny, her face flaming.
“Then why,” said the duke in measured tones, “were you fiddling with your gown and straightening your gloves while I was talking?”
The answer to that one was that Jenny had never had to bother about being anything other than beautiful before. “I assure you, sir,” she said sharply, “that I was listening to every word.”
“So what did you think of my story of Wellington falling from his horse?”
“Vastly interesting.”
“I never told any such story,” said the duke.
“Really,” said Jenny, fanning herself vigorously, “you are determined to take me in dislike.”
“Not I. But I dislike rudeness, and you are rude. You might do your partner the courtesy of listening to him.”
Jenny batted her long eyelashes and flirted with her fan, two manoeuvres that would, she knew from past experiences, have a devastating effect on any man with a heart.
The duke scowled at her and poured himself a glass of wine. The pair surveyed each other in high irritation. They were a perfect match. The duke was used to people hanging on his every word because of his title, and Jenny was accustomed to slavish devotion.
“The trouble with you, miss,” said the duke, his eyes wandering down the long table, “is that you consider yourself the queen of this provincial little town. A Season in London would soon put you in your place.”
“And what is that place, your grace?”
“Why, that of a little nobody.”
“You,” said Jenny, “are the nastiest man I have ever met. You are pompous and unkind. You are full of ideas of your own importance. No, I shall not go to London, and thank goodness for that, for if I did, I might have to see yourstupid face again, and again suffer from your stupid uncouth manners.”
“If you were a man,” said the duke, becoming very angry indeed, “I would call you out.”
Jenny rested her chin on her hand and smiled up at him sweetly. “But I am not. Here you are at a country ball and must make the best of it.”
His ice-blue eyes glinted. He rose to his feet and walked a little away. “Come, Fergus,” he said loudly to his servant, “I find the impertinent company of Miss Jenny highly tedious.” And then he walked from the room.
Jenny sat stricken, shaking with the shame of it all.
“Good Heavens!” cried Lord Paul, jumping to his feet. “What has come over Pelham? He is usually the soul of courtesy.”
“Sit down, my lord,” said Lady Letitia quietly. “One scene is enough this evening, I think.”
Lord Paul slowly sat down. “I think you should let me go after him, ma’am,” he said, “and demand an apology.”
“Wait until later, my lord,” said Lady Letitia calmly. “Jenny can be quite infuriating, and she has had her own way with the gentlemen for too long. Only see! She has been joined by young Mr. Partridge. He will pay her fulsome compliments, and she will soon forget about your friend. Let us talk about something else. I gather you are to be in London for the end of the Season?”
Jenny should have been comforted by both Mr. Partridge’s compliments and his criticisms of the Duke of Pelham. Had he known, vowed Mr. Partridge, that this duke should prove to be such a lout, then he would never have given up his room to him. Jenny was better off here in thecountry, with good honest people and where she was not prey to the insults of London dilettantes and rakes.
But Jenny was miserable. Her beauty had saved her from insult or criticism at all times in the past. She felt it crumbling away, leaving her naked and gauche—a country bumpkin with neither wit nor conversation.
Lady Letitia covertly studied her niece’s downcast face while listening to Lord Paul’s suggestion that she should take Jenny to London for what was left of the Season.
“You may say, ma’am,” said Lord Paul, “that your niece is better suited to the quiet ways of the country and that the blandishments of London might turn her head, but would it not be better to expose her to some of them now? What if she should marry some staid country swain who decides to take her to Town one day and finds her head completely turned? What sort of wife would she make then?”
“You are most persuasive, my lord,” said Lady Letitia with a laugh. “I shall think it over.”
The Duke of Pelham remained in a seething rage as Fergus prepared him for bed. “Your grace appears to have been monstrous put out by that chit,” ventured Fergus at last.
The duke said something that sounded like “grummph.”
“Not like you to take it so much to heart,” went on Fergus doggedly. “Not as if you have any liking for the ladies.”
“I am not a misogynist,” said the duke with a reluctant smile. “My purpose in visiting the Season is to find a wife.”
Fergus nearly dropped the pile of damp towels he was holding.
“A wife! Why?”
“I need heirs,” said the duke testily, “and I cannot go about having them by myself.”
“Have you really thought about it?” asked Fergus cautiously. “You’ll need to woo one of ’em, your grace, and pay ‘em pretty compliments.”
“Fiddle,” said the duke cynically. “When did a rich English duke ever have to put himself out over any female? I simply select one and snap my fingers.”
“Unless, of course, the female happens to be someone like Miss Jenny Sutherland,” said Fergus slyly.
“Do not mention that creature’s name again. Too much puffed up by her own consequence.”
“Like some I could name,” muttered Fergus.
“Did you say something?”
“No, your grace. Nothing at all.”
In the carriage home, Lady Letitia said to Jenny, “I said, I have decided to remove to London. Did you not hear me? Oh, I had forgot. You hardly ever listen to anybody.”
“That is not true!” said Jenny hotly. “I was merely taken aback by the suddenness of it all. I have quite decided I would not like to go to London after all.”
“You have, have you? Well, on this occassion, miss, I am going to get my own way. Lord Paul Mannering persuaded me I should take you.”
“He did?” Jenny sat back and remembered Lord Paul’s harsh, handsome face. He was a trifle old, but he was a lord. His interest in her was just as it should be. Jenny’s vanity slowly returned, warming her whole body.
“Then of course we must go,” she said with a little laugh. “Lord Paul must not be disappointed.”
Now, what, wondered Jenny, seeing her aunt’s sad shake of the head and infinitesimal shrug, was there about that remark to offend her?
Chapter
Two
Marriage, if one will face the truth, is an evil, but a necessary evil.
—Menander
“Are we going straight to Clarges Street, your grace?” asked Fergus, sitting up on the box of his master’s travelling carriage beside the duke, who was driving.
“No. I shall call on Palmer at his office in Holborn. I want to look at the books.”
“Do you think him dishonest?”
“Perhaps. He seemed strangely reluctant in his letter to allow me to reside in Clarges Street. He appeared shocked and amazed that I had even remembered the place. He told me there is a staff of servants there, as the house is let every Season. He added that as the house had been let for this Season, perhaps I might prefer to put up at an hotel. I told him to evict the tenants—probably very high-hande
d of me—but he has made me suspicious. He wrote back to say the house was haunted by the ghost of myfather. I then wrote to him to tell him not to be such a crass fool and to expect my arrival.”
Fergus shivered. “Perhaps it is, your grace.”
“Nonsense. Utter nonsense. I am surprised at you, Fergus. My father was a selfish old man, and quite mad. Having successfully quit this world, he certainly would not want to come back into it.”
“Perhaps he had no alternative?”
“I refuse to believe in a divine punishment which subjects the soul to haunt a Mayfair town house. Pull yourself together.”
Palmer was waiting for them, as he had been waiting, day in and day out, since he had first received the news of the duke’s impending arrival. The duke had written to him from Bristol.
Jonas Palmer’s heart plummeted as he looked down from the window and saw the Duke of Pelham climbing down from the box of his carriage. He remembered the duke as a slim, pretty youth, more interested in his studies than anything to do with his vast estates. Palmer had not seen him since the duke had gone to the Peninsula to fight for his country. That pretty boy had turned into a tall, commanding figure of a man.
Palmer scuttled behind his desk, opened a ledger and began to write as if sweating over the cares of the duke’s estates.
The door opened, and the duke strode in. “Goodness, it’s hot in here,” he remarked, and, going to the window, jerked it open, then shrugged his driving coat off and tossed it in a corner. He pulled up a chair and faced Palmer.
“Now,” said the duke, “out with it.”
“I do not understand, your grace. Out with what?”
“I want the reasons why you tried to put me off takingup residence in Clarges Street. All that fustian about ghosts.”
“My lord, I swear it is true,” said Jonas Palmer, one fat hand clutching at the region of his heart.
The duke leaned back in his chair and studied the agent from head to toe. Palmer was short and stocky, with a fat, beefy, belligerent face. “You don’t,” said the duke in a chill voice, “look to me like a man who believes in anything at all spiritual or supernatural.”
“People have seen the ghost,” said Palmer. “Bad things have happened since the death of your beloved pa—”
“The late Duke of Pelham, to you, sirrah,” corrected the duke sharply.
“Since the death of the late duke. A murderer’s been taken, a girl killed and—”
“And all because you appear to have been singularly lax in your choice of tenants. If bad things have been happening there, it is not because the house is accursed, but because the people you allowed to inhabit it have loose morals. So we will have no more of your nonsense. Let me see the books.”
“I have them here, your grace,” said Palmer.
The duke produced a quizzing glass and began to turn over the pages of the ledgers. “I see you have been renting the house for eighty pounds for a Season. Odd’s life, man, you could have demanded a thousand!”
“If you ask about, you will find it is not only I who consider the house accursed,” said Palmer. “I could not get anyone to take it for more. I swear to you, I have served you faithfully and well—”
“Enough. Servants. Let me see. They are not paid very well, surely.”
“Well enough,” said Palmer. “They only work for the length of the Season, so to speak.” Palmer wondered what the duke would say if he knew exactly how very little the servants were really getting and how that very little was written down in the correct set of books, not in the doctored ones the duke was studying. For Palmer himself pocketed the difference in the servants’ wages. “They have no reason to complain,” he added, thinking as he did so that the servants dare not, or he would expose the shady pasts of that butler and footman and make sure that the rest of them never got another post.
“Well, I don’t suppose I need to worry about the place too much,” said the duke, finally closing the books. “I shall sell it as soon as the Grosvenor Square mansion is decorated. You will arrange for the servants to find new employment in my other establishments.”
“Yes, your grace.”
“Good. Now describe the servants at Clarges Street.”
“There is a butler, John Rainbird, and a footman, Joseph. Then there is a chef, Angus MacGregor, and housekeeper, Mrs. Middleton. There are three maids. The housemaid is Alice, the chambermaid is Jenny, and there is a little scullery maid, Lizzie.”
“And my arrival is expected?”
“Yes, your grace. Your grace, if I might say so, when we sell the house, I should not be putting myself out over these servants. I fear they are Jacobites and Radicals.”
“Odso! Then why did you not get rid of them?”
“I only just discovered they were getting above themselves.”
“You can still get rid of them in one minute.”
Palmer began to sweat. His spite against the servants had landed him in a trap. Rainbird, the butler, would tellthe duke the truth about the paucity of their wages if he thought he had no hope of future employment. While Rainbird had that hope, Palmer had been able to hold the threat of a bad reference over his head.
“Perhaps I was too hasty in my strictures,” said Palmer hurriedly. “Your grace will no doubt decide for yourself.”
“I pay you and pay you well,” said the duke acidly, “so that I may not be plagued with such pettifogging questions as to whether servants have turned Jacobite or not. Now, on this one occasion, I shall deal with the matter myself. But you will present yourself before me tomorrow with the ledgers dealing with my other properties and make sure the estate agents at each place know that I shall be calling on them this year and expect to find the land in good heart and the tenants’ cottages in good repair.”
The duke rose to his feet, picked up his coat, and strode from the room without another look at Palmer.
Palmer groaned aloud. He had instructed the agents of each estate not to waste money on petty things such as repairs to roofs and windows. That way, he felt secure in channelling off a sizeable amount each year from each property before depositing the rest of the money in the duke’s bank.
But there was still time to cover his traces. The duke had said in his letter he planned to stay in London for the rest of the Season. Then he would probably follow the Prince Regent to Brighton like the rest of the aristocrats.
It was unfortunate for the servants of Number 67 Clarges Street that the day of the duke’s arrival in Town should prove to be so perfect. They had waited and waited for him to come, rooms gleaming, fresh linen on the beds, liveries and gowns brushed and pressed, their behaviour stiff and formal, their manner that of the most correct of London servants. But as the days passed and the duke did not come, they began to become bored with waiting. That morning had dawned sunny and beautiful. The pall of smoke that usually hung over London had rolled away. A warm breeze danced along the London streets, and dust motes swam in the great shafts of sunlight that cut down through the spaces between the tall buildings.
All the windows of Number 67 were open to let in the warm, fresh air. Unknown to Palmer, the servants were nearing the end of their servitude. Season after Season, they had tucked away their tips, saving and saving, until they had now amassed enough to buy a pub. The only reason they were still servants was because of the arrival of the duke. They planned to impress the duke with their manner and behaviour, win his trust, and then tell him how little Palmer was paying them, having guessed correctly that Palmer was probably pocketing the difference between their low wages and the ones he claimed to be paying them. They knew that if they taxed the duke with this on his arrival, he would probably not believe them. A duke’s agent was a very powerful man, and the duke would believe Palmer and accuse them of lying. They would never get the revenge on Palmer they craved.
Because Rainbird, the butler, and Joseph, the footman, had been dismissed in disgrace from previous employment—although innocent of the charges—Palmer had
kept them bound to the house in Clarges Street with threats to ruin their characters should they try to work as servants anywhere else. The others had stayed out of loyalty to their butler and because, without a good reference, they, too, could not hope to find other work. Now, all that no longer mattered. Freedom lay ahead at the end of this very last Season.
It was Joseph who started all the trouble that beautiful day—silly, fair-haired, effeminate Joseph. He wore shoes two sizes too small for him—small feet being considered aristocratic—and the heat of the day had already begun to make his tortured feet swell. His cravat, crisply starched, jabbed into his chin. This duke would not come, grumbled Joseph to himself, and one of the most beautiful days of the year would be spent sweltering indoors.
Then there was that magnificent boat.
Angus, the Highland cook, had created a beautiful model of Nelson’s flagship, the Victory, complete with cannon and sails. It fascinated Joseph. He wanted to see it sail and had begged the cook to let them take it to the reservoir in the Green Park, just along the road. Angus had refused, but only because this duke was about to descend on them.
There would never be another such perfect day for sailing that boat, thought Joseph pettishly. It was folly of Rainbird to keep them kicking their heels as servants when there was no need for it. He went moodily upstairs. Mrs. Middleton was singing in a thin, reedy voice as she arranged fresh flowers in the vases in the front parlour. Alice and Jenny were polishing and dusting rooms that surely did not need any more polishing and dusting, and Lizzie, the scullery maid who also acted as between-stairs maid, was polishing the banister with beeswax.
Rainbird was down in his pantry, sampling some claret that had arrived from the wine merchant. Angus was cooking up delicacies in the kitchen, and Dave, the pot boy—the one servant of whose existence Palmer remained unaware, Rainbird having rescued the boy from a cruel master of a chimney-sweep—was helping him.
“Lizzie!” called Joseph. Lizzie stopped polishing the banister and looked down at the footman. Joseph was anelegant and handsome creature, but the sight of him no longer made little Lizzie’s heart beat any faster. On the contrary, she surveyed him with a mixture of misery and guilt, for Joseph and the others fully expected Lizzie to marry the footman as soon as their days of servitude were over, and poor Lizzie had not the courage to tell the footman she did not want to be wed to him.