Adventuress
Page 1
M. C. Beaton is the author of the hugely successful Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth series, as well as a quartet of Edwardian murder mysteries featuring heroine Lady Rose Summer, the Travelling Matchmaker, Six Sisters and School for Manners Regency romance series, and a stand-alone murder mystery, The Skeleton in the Closet – all published by Constable & Robinson. She left a full-time career in journalism to turn to writing, and now divides her time between the Cotswolds and Paris. Visit www.agatharaisin.com for more, or follow M. C. Beaton on Twitter: @mc_beaton.
Praise for A House for the Season:
‘This fifth volume of . . . A House for the Season novels is characteristic of the author as “the outstanding Regency series writer” of 1986.’
Publishers Weekly
‘A romp of a story . . . For warm-hearted, hilarious reading, this one is a gem.’
Baton Rouge Sunday Advocate
‘[Beaton] has launched another promising Regency series.’
Booklist
‘A witty, charming, touching bit of Regency froth. Highly recommended.’
Library Journal
‘[Beaton] is adept at character portrayal and development . . . Plain Jane is sure to delight Regency enthusiasts of all ages.’
Best Sellers
Titles by M. C. Beaton
A House for the Season
The Miser of Mayfair • Plain Jane • The Wicked Godmother
Rake’s Progress • The Adventuress • Rainbird’s Revenge
The Six Sisters
Minerva • The Taming of Annabelle • Deirdre and Desire
Daphne • Diana the Huntress • Frederica in Fashion
The Edwardian Murder Mystery series
Snobbery with Violence • Hasty Death • Sick of Shadows
Our Lady of Pain
The Travelling Matchmaker series
Emily Goes to Exeter • Belinda Goes to Bath • Penelope Goes to Portsmouth
Beatrice Goes to Brighton • Deborah Goes to Dover • Yvonne Goes to York
The Agatha Raisin series
Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death • Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet
Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener • Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley
Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage • Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist
Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death • Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham
Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden
Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryfam • Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell
Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came
Agatha Raisin and the Curious Curate • Agatha Raisin and the Haunted House
Agatha Raisin and the Deadly Dance • Agatha Raisin and the Perfect Paragon
Agatha Raisin and Love, Lies and Liquor
Agatha Raisin and Kissing Christmas Goodbye
Agatha Raisin and a Spoonful of Poison • Agatha Raisin: There Goes the Bride
Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body • Agatha Raisin: As the Pig Turns
The Hamish Macbeth series
Death of a Gossip • Death of a Cad • Death of an Outsider
Death of a Perfect Wife • Death of a Hussy • Death of a Snob
Death of a Prankster • Death of a Glutton • Death of a Travelling Man
Death of a Charming Man • Death of a Nag • Death of a Macho Man
Death of a Dentist • Death of a Scriptwriter • Death of an Addict
A Highland Christmas • Death of a Dustman • Death of a Celebrity
Death of a Village • Death of a Poison Pen • Death of a Bore
Death of a Dreamer • Death of a Maid • Death of a Gentle Lady
Death of a Witch • Death of a Valentine • Death of a Sweep
Death of a Kingfisher
The Skeleton in the Closet
Also available
The Agatha Raisin Companion
Constable & Robinson Ltd
55–56 Russell Square
London WC1B 4HP
www.constablerobinson.com
First published in the US by St Martin’s Press, 1987
This paperback edition published in the UK by Canvas,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2013
Copyright © M. C. Beaton, 1987
The right of M. C. Beaton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in
Publication Data is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-78033-309-0 (paperback)
eISBN: 978-1-47210-446-5 (ebook)
Typeset by TW Typesetting, Plymouth, Devon
Printed and bound in the UK
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Cover design and illustration: www.kathynorrish.com
For David and Alice Lynne McKee
and their daughter, Kelly
ONE
Oh, her lamps of a night! her rich goldsmiths, print-shops, toy-shops, mercers, hardware-men, pastry-cooks, St Paul’s Churchyard, the Strand. Exeter Change, Charing Cross, with a man upon a black horse! These are thy gods, O London!
CHARLES LAMB
Although darkness still fell early across the neat streets and squares of London’s West End, although fog hung in smoky wreaths around the dingy globes of the parish lamps, and not one leaf was to be seen on the trees in Hyde Park, there was an undercurrent of excitement, a rustling, not of leaves, but of taffetas and silks being pinned and fitted. Delicately scented silk blossoms burst out everywhere. That artificial spring, that preparation for the London Season, was making the blood quicken.
Grimy windowsills were being scrubbed white again, shutters were being thrown open to air the rooms, and many members of society grimly prepared for the agonizing ritual of their twice-yearly bath.
All the toys of the Season were being brought out of their boxes – the paints and powders and pomatums, the jewels and fans and enamelled snuff boxes. Who in their right mind would dream of wasting such sweet treasures on the rustic air? Huge cumbersome travelling carriages bearing their weight of aristocratic passengers rolled into Town, as the members of the bon ton, heartily weary of their country estates and of keeping up a facade of clean living to set an example to their tenants, figuratively loosened their stays and looked forward to an orgy of balls and routs and parties.
Débutantes knew they were being put on the market for sale, and very few saw anything odd or cruel about that. It was the way of the world. They could only pray that he would not turn out to be too old or too ugly. But, in the end, any man would do, for to return unwed after an expensive Season was showing ingratitude to God, who had seen fit to place these young ladies in such an exalted station.
After all, one could have been born to live underground, as one third of the population did, to sweat out one’s days as a servant in some basement or other.
But there were servants and servants. Some were lucky. They wintered in great palaces or mansions in the country and then travelled with their masters and mistresses to a well-appointed town house for the Season. They were well fed and saved from the un
certainties of life.
But for the servants of a certain town house at 67 Clarges Street, every Season was a lottery. Their master, the Duke of Pelham, was barely aware of the existence of this piece of property, for he owned a large mansion in Grosvenor Square. The house in Clarges Street was, therefore, advertised before each Season as being to let. A good tenant meant tips for the servants and, with luck, an increase in their meagre wages, for the letting of the house was handled by the duke’s agent, Jonas Palmer, who paid the servants miserable wages, charged his master higher ones, and pocketed the difference.
Times were hard, jobs were scarce, and the small staff of Number 67 had to put up with the bullying and odious Palmer. The butler, Mr John Rainbird, and the footman, Joseph, had been dismissed from previous jobs for indiscretions which Palmer threatened to broadcast to the world should either show signs of escaping to another master. The rest were tied to the house out of loyalty to their butler, and because it would be nigh impossible to find other work without references, and Palmer would certainly not give any of them a good reference should they wish to leave.
The house had been damned as unlucky, not only because the present duke’s father had hanged himself there, but due to a subsequent series of dramatic happenings. It was a superstitious age. Each year the servants could only hope that someone outside the circle of London gossip, who had not heard of the bad luck of the house, might be tempted to take it. It was offered at a low rent, only eighty pounds, a fortune to some, but little to the aristocracy, who often paid over one thousand pounds for more inferior accommodation.
But the uncertainty, the hard life, and the long boredom of the winters, which had been unusually severe of late, had bound the servants into a tight-knit family. Apart from Rainbird, the butler, and Joseph, the footman, there was a housekeeper, Mrs Middleton; a cook, Angus MacGregor; a housemaid, Alice; a chambermaid, Jenny; a scullery maid, Lizzie; and a little pot boy called Dave.
They had spent a cheese-paring sort of winter, not because they did not have any money, for they had managed to accumulate quite a sum from the previous tenants, but because they all planned to club together and buy a pub. That way, they could escape from Palmer, escape from the servant class, and be free to marry – for servants were not allowed to marry.
They had all been introduced to the joys of education by a previous tenant and had kept up their studies during the winter. But although their increased knowledge had broadened their interests and raised their conversation above mere gossip, it had also caused a certain amount of restlessness. Not one of them was content with the role of servant. The dream of the pub was so near, and yet, at the same time, so very far away. Rainbird had said they would need another two good Seasons before they could make their escape.
On one chilly day when the morning’s frost still glittered unmelted on the street outside, the staff gathered round the table in the servants’ hall for their breakfast and to talk again about the hideous disappointment of the day before.
For Jonas Palmer had turned up with a very fine gentleman, none other than the Earl of Fleetwood. The earl was very grand, very rich, and very autocratic. Palmer had not forewarned the servants of the visit, and so the house was cold and the furniture still shrouded under holland covers.
The earl had marched from one room to the other. It did not take him very long. It was a tall, thin house, with two rooms to a floor. The ground consisted of front and back parlours, the first of a dining room on the front and a bedroom at the back, the second of two bedrooms. The attics at the top housed the servants, with the exception of Mrs Middleton, who slept in her parlour off the back stairs; Lizzie, the scullery maid, who camped out in the scullery; and Dave, the pot boy, who bedded down under the kitchen table.
Alice, the beautiful and languorous housemaid, said she thought the earl was ever so handsome, but Mrs Middleton was of the opinion that he looked too clever to be handsome. The earl had thick black hair, a thin face with high cheekbones that gave him an almost Slav appearance, as did his bright blue eyes, which had a black rim round the pupil and a slight slant at the outside edge. He was tall and well built and immaculately armoured against the world in Weston’s tailoring, sparkling Hessian boots, and one of the most intricately tied cravats the servants had ever seen. But they had all been well disposed towards him until, after his tour of inspection, he had said with a lazy drawl, ‘Too poky by half, Palmer. Not at all suitable. Cold as charity in here. I shall need to find somewhere else.’ And without even a nod towards the listening servants, he had taken himself off.
Now disappointment united them in damning him. Even Dave, who had been considered of too low an order to be present (and because Palmer was unaware of the boy’s existence in the household, Rainbird having rescued Dave from a miserable career as a chimney-sweep’s boy), had managed to catch a glimpse of the earl as he had left by peeping through the railings at the top of the area steps, and declared him to be ‘as cold-looking as last week’s cod’.
‘We don’t want his sort here,’ said Joseph, the effeminate footman. ‘Eh was speaking to Luke and he told me all sorts of things.’ Luke was first footman at Lord Charteris’ town house next door.
‘Like whit?’ demanded Angus MacGregor, the Scotch cook.
‘Lahk he was merried and he beat his poor wife to death,’ said Joseph.
‘My stars!’ cried Mrs Middleton, her faded timid face reddening with shock. ‘When was that?’
‘Eight years ago,’ said Joseph, his genteel accents slipping as he lifted The Moocher, the kitchen cat, down from his lap, leaned his elbows on the table, and prepared to gossip for all he was worth.
‘He had only been married a short bit,’ said Joseph, ‘when they was down at their place in Sussex. His lady had gone out walking in the wood near the house on the estate wiff ’er little dog. The servants ’eard terrible cries and smashing sounds coming from the wood, and ’er dog, he run home all on ’is lone. They rushed interrawood and found ’er, all blood and battered, she were. ’Orrible, it was.’
‘Well, how did they come to think his lordship had done it?’ asked Rainbird cynically.
‘Afore she died,’ said Joseph, ‘she turned ’er beautiful blue eyes up to the heavens and murmured “Peter”. That’s the earl’s Christian name, swelp me if it ain’t.’
‘Then why wasn’t the earl put in the Tower?’ asked Lizzie.
Joseph looked at her haughtily. He still expected Lizzie to hang on his every word, although the girl’s uncritical devotion to him seemed to have somewhat faded of late. He rummaged around his vocal chords for his genteel accent.
‘Because,’ he said haughtily, ‘he’s a member of the aristocracy, thet’s why. They cen get away with anything they lahk. Besides, Luke says as how the earl was out hunting somewhere else.’
‘So he couldn’t have done it,’ snapped Jenny, the chambermaid, who had little time for Luke.
‘But it was a derk day and no one had seen him on the hunting field for some time,’ said Joseph triumphantly. ‘They hadn’t enough evidence to heng him, but everyone knows he did it, says Luke.’
Rainbird glanced at Mrs Middleton’s stricken face. The tale of the murder had made her look quite faint.
‘I have never known Luke tell anything other than a pack of lies,’ he said roundly. There came a growling, roaring noise that shook the house.
‘What’s that?’ cried Jenny. ‘Thunder?’
‘No,’ said Rainbird. ‘Coal. It’s so long since we’ve heard the sound of any being delivered, you’ve forgotten what the noise is like. Joseph, go up to the pavement and make sure the coal-hole cover is back on. Palmer wants us to light fires in every room, so at least we’ll be warm at his expense.’
Joseph stalked off, his back stiff with outrage. He obviously thought checking coal-hole covers was beneath him.
Lizzie rested her pointed chin on her hands and looked at the butler with wide pansy-brown eyes. ‘You know, Mr Rainbird,’ she said, ‘I thought th
e earl was a fine-looking gentleman. I took a dislike to him because of disappointment and all, but I can’t believe Luke’s story. I thought Lord Fleetwood looked kind.’
‘But he was so contemptuous,’ said Jenny. ‘And he never even looked at us. It was as if we didn’t exist.’
‘Well, we don’t,’ said Rainbird reasonably, ‘not as far as the aristocracy is concerned. We’ve been spoiled by some unusual tenants. Hey ho! Lackaday! Why don’t you send us down a tenant, O Lord!’
‘That’s blasphemy,’ said Mrs Middleton.
‘That’s a genuine prayer,’ said the butler, a smile lighting up his clever comedian’s face. Angus Mac-Gregor was peeling potatoes. Rainbird leaned over, extracted six, and proceeded to juggle them expertly. ‘Keeping my hand in,’ he said. ‘I may go back to working the fairgrounds like I did as a boy.’
‘Don’t even say such a thing,’ said Mrs Middleton. The ‘Mrs’ was a courtesy title, and the spinster harboured hopes of being able to marry the butler once they had their pub.
When Mrs Middleton saw that pub in her mind’s eye, it was always summer, a sparkling English summer filled with the scent of roses and honeysuckle, and lazy with the drone of bees. It would be a fairly new building, not one of those dreadful Tudor places. The Tudors never could build anything right with their low beams that hit you on the head, and their nasty thatched roofs which harboured rats, and their non-existent drains, mused Mrs Middleton, who was convinced the Tudors had built like that out of sheer wilful spite rather than ignorance. She would never wear black again, but ginghams and coloured lawns and muslins. She would rarely wear an apron, so that the customers would know she was the lady of the house and that the landlord was her husband. Rainbird would change, become stately and distinguished, and cease to remember his juggling or his acrobatics or magic tricks. Perhaps if they were really successful, they could expand into a posting house, and have droves of servants to attend to all the lords and ladies who came to stay. In her imagination, Mrs Middleton could see the portly bulk of the Prince of Wales descending from his carriage outside the posting house as she and Rainbird stood on the steps to greet him. And then just as she was curtsying to His Royal Highness, she was jerked back to the real world by the heavily accented Scotch voice of the cook.