A Lady of Consequence

by Mary Nichols

  “Madeleine, this cannot go on.”

  “What cannot go on, my lord? The ride? The Marquis of Risley taking an actress in his carriage?”

  “You do not have to be an actress.”

  “No, but that is what I am. It is how I earn my living.”

  “I could change that.”

  “Why do you want to change it? If you are ashamed to be seen with me, why did you ask me out?”

  “Because I want to be with you every hour of the day and—”

  “I will not become your paramour, Lord Risley. I do not know why it is that everyone thinks all actresses are harlots….”

  “Madeleine, how can you accuse me of that?”

  “That’s what you have in mind, is it not? That is what the flowers and the presents have all been about, to get into my bed. Deny it if you can.”

  A Lady of Consequence

  Mary Nichols

  Available from Harlequin Historical and MARY NICHOLS

  The Honourable Earl #124

  The Westmere Legacy #151

  The Incomparable Countess #156

  Lady Lavinia’s Match #163

  A Lady of Consequence #169

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Prologue

  1817

  Maddy was alone in the kitchen, the last of the domestic staff to finish her day’s work. All the other servants had done their allotted chores and left her to it. The last to go had been Cook who had told her to ‘Look lively or you’ll not be done before it’s time to get up and start all over again,’ which did little to make her feel any less exhausted.

  There had been a dinner party upstairs and the amount of washing up a dozen people could create was beyond her comprehension: a mountain of plates, tureens, platters, glasses and cutlery, not to mention all the pans in which the food had been cooked. The guests had all departed—she had heard their carriages going over an hour ago—and the family, Lord and Lady Bulford, the Honourable Henry and the two young ladies, Hortense and Annabel, had all gone to their rooms, uncaring that one of their servants still toiled in the nether regions of their London mansion.

  The washing up finished, Maddy set out the breakfast trays ready for the ladies in the morning, filled the kettles with water and went to bank down the fire, her last task before retiring. She would never have been slaving here at all, if her mother had not been killed so tragically, she told herself a dozen times a day. Mama had been run down by a horse and carriage in Oxford Street when she was shopping for ribbon for a gown she was making. She had been a seamstress and a very good one and Maddy herself might have followed in her footsteps if it had not been for the accident.

  That’s what everyone called it, a tragic accident for which no one was to blame. But the day of the funeral she had overheard two of their neighbours talking and they said the young dandy who had been driving the curricle had been racing it and he ought to have been horsewhipped for driving so dangerously along a busy thoroughfare; but then he was an aristocrat and drunk into the bargain, which seemed to be excuse enough for leaving a nine-year-old child without a mother.

  The trouble was she had had no father either, at least not one she knew of, and so she had been sent to an orphanage in Monmouth Street that took in the children of soldiers orphaned by war. She supposed someone had told them her father had been a soldier, which was something she had not known for her mother never spoke of him. She had been sent from the orphanage to Lady Bulford when she was twelve and considered old enough to work.

  The kitchen of Number Seven Bedford Row had been her world ever since; two long years with each day merging into the next, nothing to vary the routine, no one to talk to but the other servants who all treated her with contempt because of where she came from, though that wasn’t her fault, was it? She rarely left the house, except for two hours on a Sunday afternoon, which she spent walking in the parks, pretending she was a lady and had nothing at all to do but look decorative and catch the eye of some young beau who would whisk her away to a life of luxury, such as the Bulfords enjoyed.

  She was too fond of dreaming, Cook was always telling her, but what else was there to do to enliven her day but dream? She was doing it now, she realised, squatting in front of the fire, gazing into the last of the embers and wishing for a miracle…

  Startled by a sudden noise, she looked round, to see the Honourable Henry standing in the doorway with a quilted robe de chambre covering his nightshirt. Scrambling to her feet, she dropped him a curtsy.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Maddy, sir.’

  ‘That’s an unusual name.’ He smiled suddenly and his dark eyes lit with humour. He was, she decided, a very handsome young man. ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘No, sir,’ she said emphatically. ‘It is short for Madeleine.’ She had been Maddy ever since she arrived. ‘That’s a high-stepping handle for a nobody,’ the other servants had said when she told them her name. ‘Can’t have you putting on airs and graces here.’ And so Maddy she had become. She was too bewildered by a second upheaval in her life to care what they called her.

  ‘How long have you been working here?’

  ‘All day, sir.’

  ‘No, I meant how long have you been working for the family?’

  ‘Two years, sir.’ She paused. ‘Is there something I can do for you?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he murmured, looking her up and down. ‘Oh, yes, indeed.’

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  He seemed to come out of a trance and laughed suddenly. ‘I came down for a glass of milk. I don’t seem able to sleep.’

  She walked past him into the pantry where the milk was kept in a jug on the cool floor. ‘Could you heat it up?’ he asked. ‘It would be better warm.’

  She put some milk in a pan and stirred up the fire again to heat it, while he stood and watched her.

  ‘You are a very pretty girl, do you know that?’ he said.

  ‘No.’ Standing over the fire had made her face red, but now she felt an extra warmth flood her cheeks. ‘You shouldn’t say things like that, sir.’

  ‘Why ever not? It’s the truth. I’ll wager there’s many a young blade dangling after you.’

  ‘No, sir. I’m not old enough for young men to dangle after, even if they were allowed, which they are not.’ Lady Bulford had made that quite clear when she first arrived and though she hadn’t known what her ladyship meant at the time, she had found out since and a great deal more about the ways of the world and young men in particular, which would have shocked her mother if she had been alive to hear it.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘My goodness, you are well grown for your age. My mother must feed you well.’

  She did not feel disposed to tell him that she lived on leftovers, not only from the family table but from the servants’ table. She was a drudge and only one step up from the dogs and cats who lived in the yard and were the last to be fed. She poured the milk from the pan into a glass and handed it to him. ‘There you are, sir. I hope you sleep better for it.’

  ‘Oh, I am sure I shall. Will you be going to bed soon?’

  ‘As soon as I have washed up this pan and banked down the fire, sir.’

  ‘Goodnight, Maddy.’

  ‘Goodnight, sir.’

  He disappeared, carrying his glass of milk, and she turned back to the fire. Fancy the master’s son noticing her and calling her pretty! Was
she pretty? Her mama had always said she was and made her beautiful dresses and brushed her dark hair until it shone like velvet, but that had been a long time ago and now her clothes were a skivvy’s uniform and she was too tired to do more than rake a comb through her hair to get the knots out. If only…

  If only Mama had been alive, she would be living with her in the small apartment over the dressmaking establishment that she had set up and which provided a decent living for them both; she would be learning how to create gowns and pelisses and pretty underwear and hats. Mama said they would make a name for themselves as the foremost modistes in London and that the upper crust would all flock to be dressed by Madame Charron and her charming daughter. Their name wasn’t Charron, of course, it was Cartwright, but Mama said the French name sounded grander.

  She pulled herself out of what was becoming another of her fantasies and dragged her exhausted feet up the back stairs to her tiny room in the attic, one of a row that housed all the female servants in varying degrees of comfort according to their status.

  She was climbing into bed five minutes later, when she heard footsteps on the stair. She paid little attention at first, assuming it was one of the maids coming back from fetching a glass of water, but when they stopped outside her door, she sat upright, her heart in her mouth.

  The door opened and the master’s son, wearing nothing but a night-shirt, stood facing her. He was smiling. ‘Don’t be alarmed, my dear,’ he said, shutting the door behind him and quickly crossing the room to the bed where she was so startled she could do nothing but sit and stare at him. ‘I still can’t sleep.’

  ‘You want me to go down and fetch you some more milk?’ she asked, her only thought that she would never get to sleep at this rate.

  ‘No, my dear Madeleine,’ he said, sitting on the bed beside her and taking her hand; it was red raw from the all the washing up she did, but he did not seem to notice. ‘I think I could go to sleep if I could cuddle up to you.’

  ‘Sir!’ She was astonished and confused and, in some way, strangely excited. Her heart was beating in her throat and that one strangled cry was all she could utter.

  He smiled. ‘You are so warm and so beautiful. You have the body of a goddess, don’t you know, and I cannot sleep for thinking of it. I want to touch you, touch your warm, pink flesh, feel you, kiss you.’ He leaned forward and, taking her head in his hands, bent his mouth to hers. His lips were soft and moist and his breath smelt of the wine and brandy he had consumed. His hands began to roam over her body, pulling up her nightgown and forcing her legs apart.

  She realised suddenly that what he was trying to do was wrong. Hadn’t the women at the orphanage told her all about men’s carnal desires, hadn’t she been warned time and time again, against allowing her maidenhood to be taken before she had a wedding ring on her finger? It was, she had been told, the worst of sins, and they cited examples of children whose mothers had never been married. Bastards they were called. It was what happened if you lay with a man before the wedding night.

  Some of them had called her a bastard, saying her mother had never been to church with her father, whoever he was, but she had furiously told them of her hero father, who had died fighting for his country, simply to shut them up. Now, in a sudden flash of insight, the servants’ talk began to make sense. This was no fantasy, no wished-for miracle, but a nightmare.

  ‘No!’ she cried, trying to wriggle out of his grasp. ‘You mustn’t.’

  ‘Mustn’t?’ he queried, throwing himself on top of her so that she was effectively imprisoned under the weight of his body. ‘But, my dear Madeleine, it is not up to you to say what I mustn’t do. I do as I please. You are a servant and must do as you are told. You would not want to be turned off without a character, would you?’

  ‘You wouldn’t do that?’ she asked fearfully.

  ‘I could, but I won’t, if you are a good girl.’ He buried his head in the valley between her breasts.

  ‘I am a good girl,’ she said, struggling to free herself. ‘Please let me go.’

  He looked up. ‘When I’m done with you.’ He was not smiling now, but grimly determined and in a way that stiffened her will to resist. Had he continued to ply her with compliments, to whisper endearing words and been gentle, who knows if she might have succumbed? Such was her longing to be loved by someone, to be seen as a human being with feelings, to be treated with tenderness, she might have given up struggling. But, unused to being denied anything, he was angry. And that made her angry too.

  She used the last of her strength to push her knee sharply into his groin and heard him yelp with pain as he leapt off her. She rushed for the door and, pulling it open, fled along the corridor and down the stairs in her nightgown, making for the safety of the kitchen. But she never reached it. She ran slap into Lord Bulford, who had left his bed and was coming along the landing, tying the cord of his undress gown, to see what all the commotion was about.

  ‘Where’s the fire?’ he roared.

  ‘Fire? I don’t know anything about a fire,’ she said.

  ‘Then what’s to do?’

  ‘Your son is in my room,’ she said, without stopping to think of the consequences such an accusation might have. ‘He tried…he shouldn’t have…’

  ‘My son? Don’t be ridiculous, you impertinent baggage. What would my son want in your room?’

  ‘George, what’s going on?’ Lady Bulford, having hastily donned a peignoir, joined her husband.

  ‘This ill-bred chit has accused Henry of going to her room.’

  Her ladyship looked Maddy up and down, her lip curled in distaste. ‘She is clearly demented. Been having a dream, I shouldn’t wonder. Or mistook one of the footmen. If she has been entertaining them in her room, there is only one thing for it…’

  ‘I have not been entertaining anyone in my room,’ she retorted, forgetting that it was simply not done to answer back. ‘Your son came uninvited. Do you think I don’t know the Honourable Henry when I see him? He came down to the kitchen for milk and I gave him some, then he waited for me to go to bed and came to my room…’

  ‘Good Lord! The effrontery of it,’ Lady Bulford said to her husband. ‘As if Henry would look twice at a misbegotten nobody like her.’ She turned back to Maddy. ‘What were you hoping to gain by this Banbury tale, money?’

  ‘No, my lady, all I want is to be allowed to go back to bed and not have people coming to my room uninvited.’ She spoke very clearly, enunciating her words as her mother had taught her. ‘Will you please tell your son his attentions are not welcome.’

  ‘By God! I’ve heard it all now,’ his lordship said, his face growing purple with indignation. ‘Go back to bed, is it? And who with, may I ask?’

  ‘No one. I am tired, I have been working all day…’

  ‘Oh, well, if it’s overwork you are complaining of, that is easily remedied,’ Lady Bulford said. ‘You may pack your bags and leave this instant. Your services are no longer required.’

  ‘But I’ve done nothing wrong.’

  ‘Making false accusations against my son is wrong and impudence to your betters is wrong and complaining about your work is wrong, when everyone knows I am the most benign of employers.’

  ‘And so is rushing about the house in your nightwear in the middle of the night,’ his lordship put in, eyeing her appreciatively from top to toe.

  ‘I only did it to escape.’

  ‘Then you may escape. Permanently. You may go back to bed, but I want you gone by the time I come down for my breakfast.’

  ‘But, my lord, where will I go?’

  ‘That is no concern of mine. Back where you came from, I suppose. And do not expect a character…’

  ‘My lord, I beg of you…’

  ‘Enough. I am not going to bandy words with you. Get out of my sight before I throw you out here and now.’

  Maddy went back to her room, relieved to find her unwelcome visitor had gone, and flung herself on the bed, sobbing her heart out. Why didn’t th
ey believe her? It was so unfair. Where could she go? How could she live? Who could she turn to? She couldn’t go back to the orphanage, she was too old for that now. Must it be the poorhouse?

  If Henry Bulford had an ounce of shame, he would admit what he had done and exonerate her. But she knew he would not. He was one of the upper crust, people with more money than they could spend in a lifetime and they thought that meant they could do as they liked, just as the young dandy who had run down her mother thought he could do as he liked. People like her were the lowest of the low and didn’t matter.

  But gradually her misery turned to anger and anger made her strong. She would not be cowed. She was as good as they were, better than they were, and one day she would prove she did matter. One day she would beat them. One day they would have to acknowledge her as their equal; if she trampled on a few aristocratic toes to get there, so be it. And if one of those aristocratic toes turned out to belong to the Honourable Henry Bulford, so much the better. She did not know how she would do it, nor how long it would take, but nothing and no one would stand in her way. She would make her dreams come true; she would be a lady.

  Chapter One

  1827

  The curtain came down on the last act to thunderous applause. The cast took several curtain calls, but everyone knew it was really Madeleine Charron the audience wanted. She had the theatre world at her feet; all the young men of the ton and several who were not so young were raving about her, including Duncan Stanmore, Marquis of Risley.

  ‘I don’t know which I admire more, her looks or her acting ability,’ he said to his friend, Benedict Willoughby, as he rose with everyone else to clap and call bravo. ‘Both are bang-up prime.’

  ‘If you’ve got your sights set on her, you will come home by weeping cross, don’t you know?’ Benedict said. ‘Unlike most of her kind, she is very particular.’