Naughty In Nice (3 page)
Authors: Rhys Bowen
At that moment Hamilton, our butler, appeared with that uncanny sixth sense that butlers seem to possess that someone has arrived, however quietly one creeps.
“Welcome home, my lady. Most inclement weather, I understand.” He helped me out of my sodden overcoat. “Shall I have your maid run you a bath? Tea will be served shortly.”
As if on cue Fig appeared at the top of the stairs.
“I thought I heard voices in the front hall,” she said, coming down cautiously with one hand on the banister, attempting to look as frail as La Dame aux Camélias, but not quite accomplishing it with her sturdy, horsey body and her ruddy, outdoor complexion. “I think we’ll take tea in the morning room today, Hamilton. It’s so much cozier in there.”
“I remember your telling our American guests once that nobody ever went into the morning room after lunch for any reason,” I couldn’t resist reminding her.
“Economy, Georgiana. One uses less coal in a small room. Rules have to be bent unfortunately. I never thought it would come to this, but it has.” She scowled at me critically. “You look like a drowned rat, Georgiana. Go and have a bath, for goodness’ sake—if your maid can be trusted to run one for you without flooding the place again. Really, that girl is too hopeless for words. Tell Lady Georgiana what you found her doing this morning, Hamilton.”
Hamilton gave an embarrassed cough. It was against the servants’ code to tell tales on one another. “It really wasn’t important, Your Grace, and I have spoken to the girl.”
“He asked her to help clean the silver and do you know what she did?” Fig’s strident voice echoed up the stairwell to the balcony above. “She lifted her skirt and started polishing the salt cellar with her flannel petticoat. Can you imagine?”
I thought this was rather funny, but I tried to keep a straight face. “It saves on cleaning cloths, I suppose,” I said.
“She claimed that was the way her ‘old mum’ always did it,” Fig continued, eyeing me triumphantly as if it was I who had been caught out. “Hopeless, Georgiana, simply hopeless. Surely you can manage to find someone better?”
“One can’t afford to pay a top-class maid from an allowance of zero,” I said sweetly. “Which is the amount I am currently receiving from the Rannoch coffers.”
Fig flushed. “Binky has no obligation to support female relatives past the age of twenty-one,” she said, “even if he had the money to do so, which he hasn’t. Times are very hard, Georgiana. We are having to cut back to the bone as it is, and I think Binky is being jolly generous, allowing you to stay on at Rannoch House with us.”
“I expect Cinderella felt much the same way,” I said.
Hamilton coughed again, not wishing to overhear this conversation. “I’ll instruct the girl to run your bath, then, shall I, my lady?”
“Don’t bother, Hamilton. I’m going upstairs anyway. I can run it myself.”
“Yourself, my lady?” His tone implied that I was about to sell fish from a barrow in the East End.
“It’s really not hard. One turns two taps and puts a stopper in,” I said. “I’ve done it before.”
“As you wish, my lady.” Hamilton bowed and retreated behind the baize door.
“Really, Georgiana, you must learn to be a little more sensitive,” Fig said. “Servants should be allowed to do their jobs. They’ll become lazy if they are not constantly being given things to do. And your girl is lazier than most to begin with. You must give her a stiff talking-to, and if you don’t, I will.”
I sighed and dragged my weary feet up the stairs. One doesn’t realize how tiring it is to stand for several hours. Walking is no problem. I could tramp through the heather all day, but standing in one place with cold feet is dashed uncomfortable. I stopped off at the second-floor bathroom and turned on the taps full blast, then I went through to my bedroom. The curtains were drawn and the room was in half darkness. I flung down my jacket on the bed.
There was a scream. I believe I screamed at the same time as a figure reared up from my bedclothes. My heart was still beating fast when Queenie’s round, vacuous moon face came into focus.
“Queenie. What are you doing lying in my bed?”
She got up in leisurely fashion, stretching like a cat. “Sorry, miss. I must have dozed off. I always get a bit sleepy after me dinner, especially when it’s stodge. You know, steak and kidney pud. And we’ve been getting a lot of stodge lately, let me tell you.”
“That’s because Her Grace the Duchess is trying to economize,” I said.
“When it suits ’er,” Queenie replied. “I noticed she got through half a pot of Cooper’s Oxford marmalade with her breakfast toast this morning when she thought no one was looking.”
“Queenie, it’s not your place to comment on your employers,” I replied, although I was secretly delighted to have this little tidbit about Fig to bring out when necessary. “Times are hard and Her Grace economizes as she sees fit. You are lucky to be fed and clothed in this house. There are plenty of girls waiting to take your place, you know.”
“I’m sorry, miss. And I’m sorry about dozing off, I really am. I was putting your clean clothes away and I just happened to sit down for a moment and before I knew it, bob’s yer uncle and my ’ead just hit that pillow.”
“You really are hopeless, Queenie.”
“Oh, I know, miss. My old dad used to say he’d pay someone a thousand quid to take me off his hands if he had the money.”
“And for the millionth time, Queenie, let us please try to get one thing straight. I am Lady Georgiana Rannoch and so I am not a miss. I am a lady. So the way you address me is ‘my lady,’ not ‘miss.’ Can’t you please try to get it right?”
“I do try, miss—Lor’ love a duck, there I go again, don’t I? My old dad used to say I must be twins because one person couldn’t be so daft. I do try . . . me lady . . . but it just sort of slips out. I mean, you look like a miss, don’t you? You don’t have a crown on your head or a snooty expression or nothing. Not like her downstairs, who looks at me like I was something the cat brought in.”
“Queenie, that’s enough. Go and make sure my bath isn’t overflowing, then come back and lay out something suitable for dinner—a dinner dress, Queenie. Not a tweed skirt. Not my ski sweater. The green velvet will do.”
“Uh—sorry, miss, but I didn’t quite manage to get the little stain out of the skirt. Remember you dropped a bit of gravy on it and you asked me to get it out?”
“That’s all right. I don’t suppose it matters if there’s a speck or two left.”
Queenie wrinkled her little button of a nose. “It’s a little bit more than a speck, I think you’ll find.”
With great foreboding I opened the wardrobe. On one side of the green velvet skirt there was a circle about six inches in diameter where the velvet had been rubbed completely clean of its nap. It looked like a Labrador we’d had once who developed a skin complaint and had to be shaved in places.
“Queenie!” I let out a sigh of exasperation. “What have you done this time?”
“I just gave it a bit of a scrub, with your nailbrush, you know. That gravy was stuck on like cement.”
“The gravy was a speck, Queenie. You have managed to turn one speck into a major disaster. If you didn’t know how to clean velvet you should have asked one of the servants.”
“They don’t like me, miss. They think I’m dead common.”
“Go and attend to my bath,” I snapped. “And I’ll have to see if I have any dresses that you haven’t managed to ruin yet.”
She had never heard me speak to her as severely. Her eyes opened wide and to my horror brimmed over with tears. “I’m sorry, me lady, I really am. I know I’m clumsy. I know I’m hopeless, but I do try.”
I felt rotten as she slunk away, head down like a defeated dog. I knew I should get rid of her, but I’d grown strangely fond of her. She had come with me to the far corners of Europe. She’d been jolly brave in the face of danger and she hadn’t cried or begged to be taken home from the most disagreeable of circumstances. And there was the other fact that she wasn’t costing me much—apart from dressmaker bills for alterations of ruined skirts.
Chapter 3
Rannoch House
Still January 15, 1933
Still January 15, 1933
I felt a lot more cheerful after a hot bath and went downstairs, looking forward to tea and toast—and maybe even a slice of cake if Fig had developed a sudden craving for Victoria sponge. I was about to enter the morning room when I heard Fig’s voice.
“It’s like a miracle, isn’t it, Binky? An answer to our prayers.”
I paused outside the door wondering what this miracle could be. That Fig was expecting twins? That she’d received an unexpected inheritance?
“I suppose we can afford the fares somehow,” came Binky’s hesitant reply.
“Nonsense. We’ll actually be saving money. We’ll be eating their food, won’t we, and we won’t have to heat this house. We can send the servants back to Scotland and close up the place.” I was about to enter the room when she added, “Oh, Lord, what are we going to do with Georgiana? I hope she won’t be difficult about being turned out.”
“We can’t turn her out,” Binky replied. “I do have an obligation to my sister. We’ll take her with us.”
“Take her with us?” Fig’s voice rose so that I would have heard it even if I hadn’t been standing with my ear pressed to the door.
“It will do her good. Great opportunity to meet some suitable chaps and find herself a husband.”
I stood there with my hand on the doorknob, frozen in an agony of suspense. Where were they going and would I want to be taken with them, even if Fig agreed?
“We’ve given her plenty of opportunity to find herself a husband already,” Fig said icily. “We paid for her season, didn’t we? And she’s just come back from hobnobbing with most of the eligible young aristocrats of Europe. She turned down poor Prince Siegfried. She’s a hopeless case, Binky. She’ll wind up an old maid or a kept woman, like her mother.”
“Oh, I say, that’s a bit thick, old bean.”
“Well, why isn’t she married yet? She’s twenty-two. The bloom is already starting to fade. It’s all the fault of that O’Mara person.”
“He’s not a person, Fig. He is a peer’s child, just like you and me.”
“An Irish peer. They have different rules of behavior over there. And the family’s bankrupt. He has no inheritance and no profession. He’ll never be able to support a wife, as I’ve told Georgiana before. I blame him entirely. He has seduced her, Binky, and now she won’t think of marrying anyone suitable.”
“Maybe she’ll meet someone on the Riviera,” Binky said. My eyes shot open at this remark. “Romantic setting and all that, what?”
“Binky, much as I would like to help your sister find a suitable husband, I must protest. Do you know how much a ticket on the Blue Train costs? And we’ll have to pay for my maid and you’ll need Frederick—we’ll send them third class on an ordinary train, of course, but it will still be a considerable expense.”
“Then what’s going to happen to Georgie? She can’t go on living here with no heat and no servants in the middle of winter.”
“Of course she can’t,” came Fig’s impatient voice. “The house should be closed up properly. She’ll just have to go back to Scotland if she wants to continue to live at our grace and favor. We have to keep Castle Rannoch running anyway. She can take little Podge back with her when we leave, and give him some lessons. He’s almost four. It’s about time he learned to read and write.”
“You want to send your son back to Scotland, Fig? You don’t think he should get the benefit of sun and sea with us?”
“Children flourish with a firm routine, Binky. And it would be two more tickets to France. We’d have to pay Nanny’s ticket as well.”
“Well, I think the little chap should come with us,” Binky said, more firmly than he usually spoke to Fig. “I never had much to do with my parents. My mother died when I was a baby, as you know, and Father was always gadding about. I was left up in Scotland with Nanny and then shipped off to school at the first opportunity. I know how lonely it felt.”
“Very well, if you insist.” Fig sighed. “I suppose we won’t have to pay a separate ticket for him if he shares our berth on the train, will we? But I really do draw the line at Georgiana. It’s money we simply don’t have, Binky. Simply don’t have. You must be firm but tell her nicely. We’d love to have her with us but it just isn’t feasible.”
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