Amanda Scott - [Dangerous 04]

by Dangerous Lady

  “I have my clothing for this evening in the carriage, ma’am,” Letty told her. “Since it may begin to rain again at any moment, I wonder if Jenifry and Lucas can take it upstairs and hang up my dress, at least. That is, if they won’t be disturbing you, or …” She paused tactfully.

  Miss Abby nodded emphatically. “Yes, of course. They can disturb no one, for there is no one here to disturb. Nor will there be ever again if Justin has his way. Oh, my dear, we have so been longing to talk to you about all this! And here is dear Jeremiah,” she added when the little monkey’s head popped from Letty’s large muff. “Liza has been asking us every day why Jeremiah does not come to visit her. And today she asked particularly, because no one has come to see us.”

  Fully aware of Jackson’s interest, although he was busily bestowing their wraps, Letty sent Jenifry and Lucas to take her clothing upstairs, and encouraged Miss Abby’s small talk until they were alone in the stair hall on their way up to the drawing room. Then, when Miss Abby paused for breath, she said quietly, “I collect, ma’am, that Raventhorpe has prevailed upon you to curtail your services.”

  “Curtail? Oh, my dear, he has said we must stop them altogether, and indeed, I do not know what we shall do. It is just as we feared it would be, you know, for he has already begun to tell us that he thinks we would enjoy a little holiday at Ramsgate or Brighton. As if anyone could enjoy the seashore at this time of year, particularly after all the rain we have suffered! It would be just more damp air. I tell you, I could not abide it, Letty. Even Liza, who generally loves the sea, refuses to go. I am afraid she wants to stay here for the most foolish of reasons, however.”

  “Goodness, ma’am,” Letty said, settling Jeremiah on her shoulder but keeping a firm grip on his silver chain. “What reason can that be?”

  “She has decided that she wants to marry Justin,” Miss Abby said.

  “What? Mercy, does he know?” Letty stifled her laughter, trying to imagine his reaction if he were to learn that Liza held a tenderness for him.

  “No, and I am not going to tell him. Poor Liza, she is very fond of Justin, but she is fond of most men, I think. She treats them all the same from what I can see.”

  When they entered the drawing room, they found Liza and Mrs. Linford sitting by the fire, the former stitching a sampler, and Mrs. Linford reading. Both looked up at their entrance, and Liza cast her work aside at the sight of Jeremiah. “Oh, the dear!” she exclaimed in delight. “May I take him, Miss Letty?”

  Having not seen Liza since rescuing her from Boverie Street, Letty was a little surprised by the casual greeting, but she said, “Of course you may.”

  With no more than a nudge of encouragement, Jeremiah leapt from her shoulder to Liza’s arms. Finding that she still held his silver chain, and realizing that the monkey had cleverly detached it from his collar again, she reattached it with a laugh, and warned Liza to keep a close eye on him.

  “I hope you do not mind that I brought him with me, ma’am,” Letty added with a smile at Mrs. Linford. “Poor Elvira has contracted a feverish cold, and Jeremiah’s antics have driven her almost to distraction.”

  “He is nearly as welcome here as you are, my dear.” Her next statement belied this generous sentiment, however. “Do take him away to the kitchen or somewhere, Liza. Perhaps Cook can find him a tidbit left over from luncheon.”

  “He likes any sort of fruit,” Letty said. “Or nuts, if the cook has any.”

  “I’ll find some,” Liza promised, hoisting Jeremiah to her shoulder and directing the rest of her conversation to the monkey.

  When they had gone, Letty said, “Miss Abby tells me that Raventhorpe has suggested you might enjoy a holiday by the sea, ma’am.”

  “Indeed, he has, but the sea does not agree with my constitution at this time of year,” Mrs. Linford said.

  “I should think it would not agree with anyone,” Letty said. “What was he thinking to suggest such a thing?”

  “He is determined to direct the course of our lives, Letitia,” Mrs. Linford replied with feeling, “and I will not stand for it. We have notified everyone we can think of to stay away until this little tempest blows over, but I will not allow Justin or anyone else to order my life for me. I do understand his point that your reputation will suffer if by some mischance a scandal erupts. But I think he exaggerates the danger, don’t you? After all, we have weathered many little upsets like this over the years, and none has amounted to more than a storm in a cream bowl.”

  Letty nodded, understanding how the two old ladies felt. At the same time, however, she realized that she did appreciate Raventhorpe’s taking a hand. That he had persuaded them to curtail their activities could only prove a blessing.

  “Soon we shan’t be able to pay you our rent,” Miss Abby said sadly.

  “Surely it hasn’t come to that, ma’am,” Letty protested. “The rent is quite small. Mr. Clifford told me it can never be more than forty pounds a year.”

  “To your Mr. Clifford that may be small, my dear, but it is not so to us,” Mrs. Linford said. “Much of what our friends pay for our services goes to the servants, you know, and to pay for our food and theirs, as well as the rent.”

  “But surely you don’t believe I will cast you out, ma’am. I promise you, rent or no rent, you are welcome to live in this house forever and a day.”

  “We have our pride,” Mrs. Linford said stiffly. “I thought we had made that clear to you, Letitia. We have never had to depend upon the charity of others, and we do not wish to begin at this late date.”

  “People would know,” Miss Abby said in anguished tones. “They would all think we had somehow come to ruin through not seeing to things properly, and that is so grossly unfair, when dear Miranda has managed so very well all these years. How could we ever hold up our heads again?”

  Tempted though she was to point out that people were likely to think more highly of a pair of suddenly impoverished gentlewomen than they would think of those gentlewomen running a house of assignation, Letty held her tongue. As she strove to think of something constructive to say, sudden distant shrieks put her forcibly in mind of the day Jeremiah had interrupted Catherine and her lover.

  Leaping to her feet, she looked accusingly at Miss Abby. “I thought you said there was no one—”

  “But there isn’t!” Miss Abby, too, had jumped up. “That’s not just Jeremiah shrieking. I can hear Liza’s voice, too. Oh, mercy, what can it be?”

  “The servants will soon tell us,” Mrs. Linford said placidly.

  “I don’t think we should wait,” Letty said, hearing another feminine scream. “That came from neither Jeremiah nor Liza.”

  Hurrying to the landing with Miss Abby at her heels, she realized the noise was coming from below. Catching up her skirts, she ran downstairs, where it became clear that the noise originated somewhere beyond the green baize door in the wall below the sweeping curve of the stairs.

  The door was slightly ajar. Letty hurried to it and flung it wide.

  More stairs spiraled downward. As she hurried down toward a corridor at the bottom, the pandemonium increased in volume.

  “Oh, don’t hurt the poor thing!” Recognizing the shrieking voice as that of the maidservant, Mary, and seeing Liza in the midst of a group of people gathered in a doorway along the corridor, Letty ran toward them.

  Liza, who was holding Jeremiah’s silver chain but not the monkey, caught sight of her and screamed, “Miss Letty, hurry! He’s going to stab Jeremiah!”

  Others saw her then, and a hush fell over them, allowing her to hear Mary say clearly above the monkey’s angry chattering, “Put down that dagger, sir. He meant no harm. Oh, please, put it down!”

  “Verdammter Affe! Ich werde ihn ermorden.”

  Pushing her way through the group huddled round the door, Letty said sharply, “You will murder no one!” Pulling up short at the sight of Charles Morden with a bedsheet wrapped around him, waving a wicked-looking dagger, she exclaimed, “Good mercy, si
r, what are you doing here? What is all this?”

  At the sound of Letty’s voice, Jeremiah darted out from under the bed, holding a white cravat aloft like a banner as he ran toward her. Leaping to her arms and then to her shoulder, he hurled rude epithets at the man still waving the dagger.

  Mary crouched near the bed, struggling to cover herself with a quilt.

  Realizing that the maid was naked, Letty snapped, “What’s going on here?”

  “It’s that Mary,” Liza said. “He don’t like her, and that’s true, Miss Letty.”

  “Don’t be foolish, Liza. Jeremiah does not dislike Mary.”

  “Not him,” Liza said indignantly. “Him!” She pointed to Morden, who had been trying to adjust the hastily wrapped bedsheet.

  Morden glared at Letty. “You seem to like pushing in where you are not wanted,” he said in a guttural growl. “First at court, and now here. Women should not push themselves forward so. Go away now. No one wants you here.”

  “Perhaps you are not aware that this is my house, Mr. Morden. If anyone is going to get out, it is you. How dare you seduce a maidservant beneath this roof!”

  To her shock, he smiled, and the smile was not pleasant. “I know this is your roof, girl,” he said. “However, you evidently do not know what goes on beneath it. Perhaps you should ask Mary if I seduced her, nicht wahr?”

  Involuntarily, Letty glanced at Mary, and saw the maid look away with tears rolling down her cheeks. Turning back to Morden, Letty said, “You may be sure that I will talk to Mary, but no one who threatens my pet with a dagger is welcome in this house. Now, get your clothes on and get out before I send someone for a constable. Here is your cravat,” she added, detaching that article from Jeremiah’s clutches and handing it to Morden.

  “Better you think twice, I think, before you are calling for a constable,” Morden said. “I have powerful friends. They can do you much harm.”

  Knowing he spoke no less than the truth, Letty nonetheless was determined to conceal her fears. Meeting his gaze, she said, “Do your worst, for I, too, have powerful friends. And considering the way things are going in Parliament just now, you may soon find that mine are significantly more powerful than yours are.”

  “That is quite true,” Miss Abby said, startling Letty, who had forgotten that the old lady had followed her. Miss Abby went on, “Jamaica will very likely bring down the present government, you know. Everyone says so. Not that one would expect you to understand about that, of course, being a foreigner like you are. Come away out of there at once, Mary. You should be quite ashamed of yourself.”

  “What’s all this, then?”

  The group in the doorway parted instantly at the sound of the strident voice, and the imposing bulk of Mrs. Hopworthy loomed on the threshold. Arms akimbo, she exclaimed, “Miss Abigail! Lady Letitia! Mercy, mercy, what goes on here?”

  “Well may you ask, Mrs. Hopworthy,” Letty said, catching hold of Jeremiah before he could leap from her shoulder, and affecting a calm she did not feel. “Mr. Morden was just leaving,” she said. “You may take that sheet with you, Mr. Morden. I am sure the bootboy can show you somewhere you can dress.”

  His face scarlet now, and muttering furiously under his breath, Morden brushed past the outraged housekeeper.

  Sure that he was cursing her, and wondering how much he knew, Letty shooed the others back to their work and told Mary to get dressed. “We are going to retire to the housekeeper’s room, Mary. Come to us there as soon as you have dressed. I want to talk to you.”

  “Yes, my lady.” Mary’s voice was hoarse, her eyes downcast, and her cheeks still streaked with tears.

  Turning to leave, Letty said, “Mrs. Hopworthy, perhaps you will just make sure that Mr. Morden has left the house before you join us.”

  “Yes, my lady, I certainly will.”

  As the housekeeper bustled off on her mission, Letty said, “Miss Abby, I do not want to distress Mrs. Linford unnecessarily, but I failed to consider that perhaps you would prefer to conduct our talk with Mary upstairs.”

  “Oh, no,” Miss Abby exclaimed. “Not until we find out what she was doing with that dreadful man. Miranda will be so vexed, she will very likely say we must turn her off without a character without even hearing what she has to say, and I don’t think I could bear that. Mary has been with us since she was the merest child.”

  “He don’t like her. He likes me best. Here, Miss Letty, here’s his chain.”

  Astonished, Letty turned to find Liza behind her, holding out Jeremiah’s silver chain. In the course of watching Mrs. Hop-worthy dismiss the other servants, she had forgotten all about the girl. Now she did not know what to do with her. If she sent her upstairs to Mrs. Linford, Liza would give her, at best, a garbled account of the incident. Nevertheless, it was unthinkable to allow her to witness the forthcoming scene with Mary.

  Taking the chain, she said quietly, “Liza, I think perhaps you ought to—”

  “Mary did a bad thing! He don’t like her. He likes me best. He told me so!”

  “Liza, please …” Then she realized what Liza had said. “What do you mean, he told you? When did Mr. Morden tell you anything?”

  Glaring at her, Liza burst into tears, whirled about, and ran up the stairs.

  “Oh, dear, now you’ve upset her,” Miss Abby said. “The poor thing don’t know what she means half the time, I’m afraid.”

  “I think she knows very well this time,” Letty said thoughtfully as she reattached the monkey’s chain to his collar.

  SEVENTEEN

  “OH, WHAT IF MIRANDA comes downstairs to see what caused all the row?” Miss Abby wailed when they stepped into the housekeeper’s sitting room.

  “Since the row has stopped and we have not yet seen her, I think we are safe for the moment,” Letty said calmly, stroking the monkey, still on her shoulder.

  “He’s gone, my lady,” Mrs. Hopworthy said when she joined them. “Would you like some tea? I can have one of the girls bring some in at once.”

  “No, thank you, Mrs. Hopworthy. Do sit down.”

  “Perhaps I should go and hurry that Mary along,” the housekeeper said.

  “I’m here, ma’am,” Mary said in a small voice from the doorway.

  “Come in and shut the door,” Letty said.

  “Please, my lady, am I to be turned off without a character?” Tears still trickled down the maid’s damp cheeks.

  “It’s what ought to happen to you,” the housekeeper said with a sniff before Letty could speak. “Carryings-on with menfolk is what I won’t tolerate, girl.”

  “We was only trying to help,” Mary said with a sob.

  “We!”

  “How were you helping, Mary?” Letty asked quickly before the housekeeper could further unburden herself of her outrage. “I don’t understand.”

  “Our ladies have been so worried, ma’am, about how they could get enough to pay the rent if his lordship was to make them stop letting people come here like they do. We thought we should help them, don’t you see? Me and some of the others thought … Well, we knew that some of the men what comes here likes us, and when they offered us money for … well, for what they wanted, it didn’t seem like such a dreadful thing. Mr. Morden, he’s that handsome, ma’am.” Mary shot a sidelong glance at Miss Abby’s scandalized expression and fell silent.

  Frowning, Letty said, “I did not realize that Mr. Morden was one of your patrons, Miss Abby.”

  “Nor did I, my dear. Indeed, I don’t believe he is.”

  They looked at Mary.

  Flushing deeply, she said, “I don’t think so either, ma’am, but he did come here once with Sir John Conroy, and he flirted with me. So when he came round asking would I like to make some extra money … Oh, my lady, please don’t turn me off. I send half my wages to my mother to help feed my little sisters.”

  Letty said sternly, “I will see if I can persuade Mrs. Linford to let you stay, Mary, but you must never again allow someone like Mr. Morden to have
his way with you. How many of the other maids have done anything like that?”

  Mary bit her lower lip, looking from one to the other. Then, with a sigh, she said, “Most of ’em lately, my lady. Mostly, they just gives a good time to the coachmen what comes with our ladies’ friends. I’m the only one that’s done it with anyone grander. We all get paid, though,” she added with an earnest nod. “We’d not have done it without we got the money, Miss Abby. We slipped it into the housekeeper’s jar, the one what she uses to pay the tradesmen.”

  A moan escaped Miss Abby’s lips.

  “You may go now, Mary,” Letty said. “Tell the others they must stop, too. I think perhaps you had all better forfeit your half-days until we get this sorted out.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Mary shot a frightened look at Mrs. Hopworthy, but when the housekeeper only pressed her lips tightly together, the maid fled.

  “I don’t like this, my lady,” Mrs. Hopworthy said when the door was safely shut again. “It is not my habit to keep immoral girls in service here.”

  Stifling a sudden impulse to point out that morality had not, until this moment, seemed important to anyone in the house, Letty said only, “I am sure it is not your practice, Mrs. Hopworthy. Presently, however, we have more problems to worry about, and I am convinced that Mary and the others thought they were helping.” She could not resist adding, “One can scarcely blame them if they did not quite understand that what they were doing is wrong.”

  Again the housekeeper pressed her lips to a thin line. Letty noted that she was careful not to look at Miss Abby.

  Poor Miss Abby was scarlet. “What have we done? Oh, Letty dearest, what have we done?”

  “We can talk about that upstairs,” Letty said. “I believe Mrs. Hopworthy wants to make certain the other maidservants are not neglecting their duties.”

  “I do,” Mrs. Hopworthy said grimly.

  “Please send someone to ask Jenifry Breton to come to me in the drawing room,” Letty said gently. “I want her to take charge of Jeremiah.”