The Mysterious Maid-Servant (2 page)

“I have no wish to accept charity, my Lord.”

“Although you need it,” the Earl remarked dryly.

Again the colour rose in her thin cheeks and he added,

“Is there no other money coming into your home except for what you are bringing in?”

“N-no, my Lord.”

“Then how have you been living until now?”

“My mother – embroiders very skilfully – but unfortunately her fingers have stiffened and so for the moment she cannot – work.”

“Then you will accept one pound a week from me.”

There was again a definite hesitation before Giselda responded,

“Thank you my Lord.”

“You will take a week’s wages now,” the Earl said. “There is a guinea in the top right-hand drawer of the chest. You will then change into your ordinary clothes and have luncheon with me before you go home and fetch me that ointment you spoke of.”

“Have – luncheon with you, my Lord?”

“That is what I said.”

“But it would not be – right, my Lord.”

“Why ever not?”

“I – am a – servant, my Lord.”

“Good God! Are you trying to teach me etiquette?” the Earl exclaimed. “A nanny may lunch with her charges, a Tutor may lunch with his pupils, and if I require the woman who is nursing me to eat at my bedside, then she will do as she is told!”

“Yes – my Lord.”

“Follow my instructions and send the housekeeper to me immediately. I will see Batley first. I expect you will find him outside.”

Giselda gave the Earl a quick glance, then picked up the brass bucket. She did not look at him, but went out closing the door quietly behind her.

The Earl leant back against his pillows.

There was some mystery here and he liked a mystery.

Batley came in a moment after the door had closed.

“I am engaging that young woman as my nurse, Batley.”

“I hope she proves satisfactory, my Lord,” Batley replied, speaking in the repressed, offended voice that he always used after the Earl had cursed him, which they both knew was little more than play-acting.

“She is no ordinary maid-servant, Batley,” the Earl went on.

“No, my Lord. I realised that yesterday when I saw her downstairs.”

“Where does she come from?”

“I’ll try to find out, my Lord. But I imagines as they’ll know little. They’re short-handed and the Colonel likes his household full at all times.”

That was true, the Earl knew.

Colonel Berkeley, who was his host and who owned German Cottage, was a man who expected perfection and created hell if he did not get it.

The uncrowned King of Cheltenham, William Fitzhardinge Berkeley was the oldest son of the Fifth Earl.

He had sat in the House of Commons six years earlier in 1810 as one of the Members for the County of Gloucester, but he resigned his seat on the death of his father when he expected to enter the House of Lords as the Sixth Earl of Berkeley.

His claim to the Earldom, however, was not sustained on the grounds that the marriage of his parents had not taken place until after the birth of their first three sons.

The Dowager Lady Berkeley, however, convinced her fourth son, Moreton, who was in fact her eighth child, that this decision was wrong and he refused to accept the title or the property.

Colonel Berkeley, as he continued to be called – ‘Fitz’ to his family and friends – therefore was treated as head of the family, the owner of Berkeley Castle and the family estates.

A tall, handsome man, Colonel Berkeley was also a martinet, an autocrat and, where Cheltenham was concerned, a tyrant.

The Spa was his hobby and he lavished his time and his wealth upon the place where his utterances and his flamboyant tempestuous way of life was a constant source of gossip and excitement both to the townsfolk and to the visitors.

Not that he cared what was said. He was a law unto himself and no party was a success without him. Riots, dinners, Assemblies and theatrical performances were arranged to suit his convenience.

Being a bachelor he was desired as a son-in-law by every scheming mother in the county, but he had no intention of sacrificing his freedom until he was ready to do so.

Therefore German Cottage, in which the Earl was staying at present, had entertained many beautiful and glamorous visitors who were intimately connected with the Colonel, but did not wear his ring on their third finger.

The Earl had met the Colonel in the hunting field and they had become close friends with a common interest in sport.

Colonel Berkeley, who had his own pack of harriers at the age of sixteen, now at thirty hunted his hounds in the Cotswold and Berkeley country alternately.

He had made the Berkeley Hunt staff abandon their historic tawny coats and instead wear a scarlet coat with a black velvet collar and a flying fox embroidered in silver and gold.

The Colonel was very popular as a Master and was always ready to pay liberally for poultry destroyed or any damage done by his hounds.

At the moment he was at the Castle, which was why the Earl was staying alone at German Cottage, but the twenty-five minutes from Berkeley to Cheltenham meant nothing to him and he would ride far further when he was hunting.

It was the fashion in Cheltenham to refer to the magnificent and impressive mansions with which the town abounded, as “cottages”. They were in fact nothing of the sort, and the Earl found the luxury with which he was surrounded very much to his taste.

He was well aware that the best hotel in town,
The Plough
, would not have provided him with anything like the comfort he could enjoy as the Colonel’s guest.

It did not strike him in the least reprehensible that he should steal one of his host’s servants because he required her services for himself.

He sent for the housekeeper and told her of his plans. Because the woman was used to the ways of her master and found the ‘quality’ invariably incomprehensible in their behaviour, she merely curtsied and told the Earl that although it would be difficult she would try to find someone else to replace Giselda.

“Why difficult?” the Earl enquired, looking around him at the lavish furnishings.

“Well sir – girls are not always willing to work at the Castle or house,” Mrs. Kingdom replied with a little cough of embarrassment.

The Earl suddenly remembered that one of his friend’s chief preoccupations was the begetting of illegitimate Berkeleys. Incorrigible where women were concerned, he had been told that there were thirty-three children within a radius of ten miles of the Castle.

It was therefore all the more surprising that Giselda should be working at German Cottage, but he fancied that she was not aware of her employer’s reputation.

“What do you know about the girl?” the Earl asked the housekeeper.

“Nothing, my Lord – but she is nicely spoken and obviously a better class than most of the applicants for the job, which were not many. I took her on, hoping she’d turn out satisfactorily.”

“You must have noticed that she seemed rather frail for the type of work you assigned her?”

Mrs. Kingdom shrugged her shoulders.

She did not say in so many words, but she implied that either a domestic servant could do the work or she could not. In the latter case there was only one remedy – to be rid of her.

The Earl, who was used to dealing with both men and women in his position of command, sensed all that Mrs. Kingdom did not say.

“Giselda will by my servant and I will pay her wages,” he said. “As she does not sleep in the house, she will require a room in which to change her clothes if she wishes to do so.”

“That’ll be seen to, my Lord.”

Mrs. Kingdom curtsied politely and left the room.

The Earl shouted for his valet.

“Food, Batley! Where is the food I ordered?”

“It’s coming, my Lord. It’s unlike you to eat so early.”

“I will eat when I please,” the Earl said sharply, “and tell the butler I want a bottle of decent claret.”

“Very good, my Lord.”

The Earl watched the two footmen bringing in the table, which they set beside his bed. Then they carried in a tray of cold meats that would have stimulated the appetite of an epicure.

Colonel Berkeley, unlike many of his contemporaries, was as interested in food as in drink, and the Earl, when he had been abroad, had learnt to appreciate the more subtle flavours of Continental cooking.

‘Tonight I will order a different sort of meal,’ he thought.

He realised he was interested in his experiment to see how a starving person would react to a sudden abundance of food.

How often in Portugal had he wished he had a hundred bullock carts full of grain to distribute among the women and children?

But as it was, the troops often went hungry and there was nothing to spare.

He had never expected to find starvation in England, which even after the long years of war with Napoleon seemed to be a land flowing with milk and honey.

Giselda came into the room looking very different from the way she had left it.

She was wearing a plain blue gown, which the Earl recognised was slightly old-fashioned. At the same time it was by no means the type of garment that would have been worn by a servant.

A small muslin collar encircled her neck, tied with a bow of blue velvet ribbon and the same in the shape of small muslin ruffles encircled her wrists.

They hid the prominent bones on her arms, but nothing could disguise the taut lines of her chin or the shadows beneath her cheekbones.

Now that she had removed the large mobcap, the Earl could see that her hair was fair and brushed back from an oval forehead.

It was arranged in imitation of a fashionable style, but he had the feeling that, like its owner, the hair had grown thinner and was limp and lacked buoyancy through lack of nutrition.

She stood just inside the door and after a quick glance at the table and the silver dishes piled high with food she looked only at the Earl.

“I am waiting for you to join me,” he said, “and because I think under the circumstances you would prefer it we will wait on ourselves – or rather you will wait on me.

“Yes, my Lord.”

“I would like a glass of claret and I hope you will join me.

Giselda lifted the decanter from a side table and filled the Earl’s glass, then she looked at the glass set for her and hesitated.

“It will do you good,” the Earl said.

“I think it would be – unwise, my Lord.”

“Why?”

Even as he asked the question he knew it was a stupid one and substituted another.

“When did you last eat?”

“Before I left here yesterday evening.”

“Did you have a big meal?”

“I thought I was hungry, but I found it difficult to swallow.”

The Earl knew this was inevitably the result of malnutrition.

“I suppose you took home what you could not eat?” he remarked in a practical tone.

“I could not do – that.”

“They would not give you the food?”

“I asked the chef if I could have a half chicken, which was left from your dinner and which he was about to drop into the waste bin.”

She paused before she went on,

“He did not answer me, but threw what was left of the chicken to a dog which had already eaten too much to be interested in it.”

She told the story without any emotion in her voice. She was just stating a fact.

“Sit down,” the Earl said. “I want to see you eat and let me say before we start that anything that is left you can take home with you.”

He saw Giselda stiffen.

Then she said,

“You make me feel ashamed. I was not begging when I told you that story.”

“I had already decided before you told it to me what I intended to do,” the Earl said. “Now eat, child, and for God’s sake stop arguing with me! If there is one thing that infuriates me it is when someone argues with everything I suggest.”

There was just a suspicion of a smile on Giselda’s lips as she seated herself.

“I am sorry my Lord – and I am in fact very – grateful.”

“Then show it by putting some food inside you,” he said. “I do
not
like thin women.”

She smiled again.

As he helped himself to a piece of boar’s head, she took a slice of tongue on to her plate, then waited while she passed the Earl the sauces to embellish the meat he had chosen.

If he had been expecting to enjoy the spectacle of someone very hungry making up for long weeks of want, he was to be disappointed.

Giselda ate slowly and daintily and long before the Earl had finished she could eat no more.

The Earl persuaded her to drink a little claret, but she would only take a few sips.

“I have grown used to being without,” she said apologetically, “but now with the money you have given me, we shall fare better.”

“I imagine it will not go far,” the Earl said dryly. “I am told that prices have increased enormously since the war.”

“That is true, but we will still – manage.”

“Have you always lived in Cheltenham?”

“No.”

“Where did you live?”

“In a small village in – Worcestershire.”

“Then why have you come into town?”

There was a moment’s silence and then Giselda replied,

“If your Lordship will excuse me, I would like now to go home and collect the ointment you will need for your leg. I am not certain that my mother has enough. If not, she will make some more and that will take time. I would not wish you to be without it tonight.”

The Earl looked at her.

“In other words, you don’t intend to answer my questions!”

“No – my Lord.”

“Why not?”

“I would not wish your Lordship to think me impertinent, but my home life is private.”

“Why?”

“For reasons that I am – unable to tell – your Lordship.”

Her eyes met the Earl’s and it seemed as if there was for a moment a battle of wills between them.

Then the Earl said in an exasperated tone,

“Why the hell must you be so secretive and mysterious? I am interested in you and God knows I have little enough to interest me lying here day after day with nothing but my blasted leg to think about!”