Diamonds and Deceit (At Somerton) Page 10

  Annie’s look of shock faded slowly, replaced with anger. Rose’s hope that she would be understood faded with it. “I see. You’re too good for your old friends, that’s it.” Annie stepped back, folding her arms. She shook her head hard as Rose tried to speak. “No, no, no. I understand you. You’ve forgotten where you came from, Rose Cliffe.”

  “But I have to learn to be a lady now, and a lady can’t be a maid too, don’t you see?”

  “Yes, I do. I see perfectly well.” Annie’s voice trembled and a tear splashed onto the exercise book. Rose moved toward her impetuously, wanting to hug and comfort her, but Annie backed away. “No thank you, Lady Rose. I’ve learned my place. I won’t trouble you again. I’ll just go on the streets and be a fallen woman because there’s no other future for a silly fool who trusted in her friends and lost her place—”

  “Annie, don’t take on so.” Rose could have laughed at her melodrama, but she knew Annie didn’t see it that way. “You won’t have lost your place. I’ll get it back for you. My mother won’t hold this against you.”

  “I won’t go back there. They’ll laugh at me.” Annie shook her head, tears flying.

  “Well, then I’ll get you a better place. Or a better job. You won’t be left high and dry, Annie, of course not. If you want to be a lady’s maid I’ll help you, but you working for me…it just won’t be right, Annie. You can see that, can’t you?” Annie’s sobs told Rose that she couldn’t. Rose moved toward her again, but Annie backed away and her sobs turned hysterical. Rose hesitated, not knowing what to do. A small scuffle behind her made her turn.

  It was the tweeny, she realized, after a moment of trying to place the mousy little creature who trembled at the door. “Oh…” She had forgotten her name. “Can you please look after Miss Bailey? Bring her a cup of tea.” She hesitated, trying to remember how Annie liked it. “Milk and two sugars. And please tell me…when she has decided what she would like to do.”

  The tweeny bobbed a curtsy and went into the kitchen. Annie had sat down and was sobbing at the table, her head in her hands. Rose paused at the door and glanced back. The tweeny’s arm was around Annie, and she was whispering comfortingly to her. Annie nodded as she spoke. Rose was glad Annie was being looked after, but a stab of loneliness pulsed through her heart as she looked at the warm scene before her. It was a world she had left behind her, like a lost glass slipper in the snow, and she could never go back to it again.

  Charlotte gazed down from the window of her dressing room into sun-dappled Milborough Square. In her hands was an envelope, and inside the envelope was a stiff little piece of gilded card. Charlotte had a drawer full of such cards, all inscribed with the names of the best hostesses. Each one held memories collected over three seasons of dancing and flirtation and more. But this one was different. This was a dance card for Mrs. Verulam’s costume ball. It would take place on the last night of the official London season. The last night of Charlotte’s third season. Charlotte had known the season would end, of course, but somehow the invitation made it real. She had been out for three seasons and she was still not engaged. Not yet.

  “Ward,” she said, turning from the window.

  Stella, who was folding clothes quietly in a corner of the room, looked up.

  “I’d like you to take a little note over to the Duke of Huntleigh for me.”

  The pause before Ward replied, “Yes, miss,” was just long enough to be insolent. Charlotte noted it, for future reference. For now, she simply drew out her writing case. It had simply never occurred to her that the duke might not know of Rose’s disgraceful history. But the man had been out of society for so long it was hardly surprising. She began the letter.

  Dear Alexander—

  When we know each other so well, it seems silly to address you as Duke!

  I wanted to thank you for your invitation, which we received this morning. I have been simply longing to see the Rite ever since I first heard of it. I am so excited I can barely sleep for thinking of it.

  So kind of you to invite my stepsister Rose as well. The dear girl deserves every opportunity she can get to improve herself. As you might imagine, the season is rather overwhelming for a former housemaid, but I think she has been handling it all with admirable humility.

  Now I’m going to be shockingly unconventional and extend my own invitation to you. I propose that we visit an exhibition together. There is an exhibition of Futurist art on Heddon Street. As you know London is so far behind the European capitals in terms of art, it would be a crime to miss it, don’t you think?

  She signed her name, placed the letter in the envelope, and sealed it before handing it to Ward.

  One could, if one was organized, kill several birds with one stone.

  The afternoon spread golden wings over London, over the rattle of the carts and the impatient blare of motor horns, the stench of horse manure, and the stink of petrol. The Underground Railway, like an imprisoned dragon, roared and rushed through the earth, disgorging sooty, shaken passengers from its grasp. From South Kensington to Aldgate, it surged to the surface like lava.

  Yes, Stella thought as she closed the back door of Milborough House behind her and walked out onto the street, her yellowand-black best dress—one of Lady Charlotte’s cast-offs—swaying with her movement, her parasol twirling as elegantly as that of any lady of fashion, all the action was under the surface. Nursemaids strolled past her, pushing baby carriages, but Stella saw past the demure caps and ribbons to the watching footmen at the railings, the whispers they exchanged, the quick, guilty kisses.

  The smart set of London lived within a few square miles, and Stella didn’t have far to walk to reach the Duke of Huntleigh’s London residence. She crossed Milborough Square, Lanchester Gardens, Grosvenor Square—each one lined with Georgian mansions, formal and white-clad as vestal virgins—and reached the airy space known as Park Square.

  She paused to laugh at a Punch and Judy show that had drawn a small crowd to the shade beneath a plane tree. The puppets jabbered and danced about.

  If you kept all the strings at your fingers’ ends, Stella thought, if you knew when to pull each one—you could make sweat break out on a marquise’s brow. You could cause a duchess to wince, a debutante to blush. Who wanted to be a lady when you could be a puppeteer? It was very easy to steam open letters, and she had chuckled before she left at Miss Charlotte’s clever strategy to shake the duke loose from Rose. But—she paused to inhale the scent of the deep-red roses that grew in the square—she had her own strategies.

  Just before she left, Ellen the tweeny had come up to her holding a few scraps of red silk petals. Exactly like the torn silk rose from her mistress’s dress that Stella currently kept hidden in her top drawer. “Please, miss,” she had said, with a nervous curtsy. “I wondered if you knew where these belonged.”

  Stella had taken the silk petals and refrained from squealing with joy. She had known that they would turn up. Things always did. “Now, tell me, Ellen,” she had said, turning the petals this way and that so the vivid color caught the light like drops of blood, “where exactly did you find these?”

  Somerton

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Cliffe,” Georgiana exclaimed as she entered the drawing room, out of breath from hurrying. “I had to see Cook about the dinner menu for tonight.”

  Mrs. Cliffe jumped and looked up. She quickly slid the notebook she had been scribbling in under her papers.

  “No, please go on with your work.” Georgiana came across the room, feet sinking into the thick Persian carpets, and took the chair next to her. “I suppose you’re noting questions to ask her?” She reached for the letter that lay on the occasional table, the thick yellow paper covered in firm, neat writing. “Mrs. McRory, isn’t it? I see she worked for the Prime Minister. How interesting.” She glanced at Mrs. Cliffe’s flushed face. “Are you hot? It is rather too late in the year for a fire.”

  “Not at all.” Mrs. Cliffe said. She was breathing rather quickly, and glanced
down at her notebook again. Composing herself, she went on, “Shall we ask the lady to come up?”

  Georgiana rang the bell. As she waited for Cooper, she hoped fervently that this interview would be the last one. So far not a single applicant had been suitable. The agency shrugged its shoulders and apologized; more interesting work in town, service was no longer as desirable as it once was, a national crisis. Georgiana sighed. She had enough to worry about with local crises. Priya was unwell again, Annie had handed in her notice—so strange, she had seemed such a reliable girl—Sir William had gone on a weeklong binge after his latest argument with her father, and Lady Edith had engaged a Russian spiritualist to purge her soul. All she had succeeded in doing was purging her wallet.

  “Mrs. McRory,” Cooper announced, holding open the door. Georgiana sat forward with a welcoming smile.

  The woman who bounced through the door was as unlike Mrs. Cliffe as could be imagined. She was so short that for a moment Georgiana thought there had been a mistake and a child had been sent instead. But it took her the barest instant to see the stern, furrowed brow, the hairy chin and the determinedly pinched mouth. Mrs. McRory was small, but only in the way that a bullet is small.

  “Ma’am,” she said, dipping a brief curtsy to Georgiana. Georgiana had never been on the receiving end of quite such a dismissive curtsy. Without waiting to be invited, the woman strode across the floor—if such a small woman could stride; it was more the action of a tightly wound spring unleashed—and seated herself in the chair Georgiana had intended to graciously invite her to sit in. Her legs dangled, swinging in her rusty black skirts. “Shall we begin? I usually commence my interviews exactly on time.”

  “Er—of course. Yes, certainly.” Georgiana sat back, flustered, and cast a nervous glance at Mrs. Cliffe, who was watching with raised eyebrows.

  “You will no doubt want to know about my previous employers,” Mrs. McRory began. She had a slight Scottish accent. “My last employer was Lord Malmesbury, but I found it impossible to continue once he had engaged a French chef. Neither my morals nor my temper could allow it. I hope, my lady, that you do not intend employing any such person.”

  “I think there is very little chance of that,” Georgiana said, thinking of the accounts.

  “My chief motivation is bringing order to the disorderly,” Mrs. McRory announced. “Order to the disorderly,” she repeated, rather as if savoring the thought. “I cannot abide waste. I abhor indolence. Under my guidance, servants discover in themselves heretofore untapped reserves of energy, resolution, and moral fiber. Before I rose to my present elevated position”—at this Georgiana had to bite her cheeks to stifle a smile—“I was a Good Plain Cook. Some cooks pride themselves on their ability to make a fowl last three days. I made a fowl last a week and then served him up as consommé to our late, lamented monarch.” She smiled with a look of deep inward satisfaction. “Who honored me by saying I had produced an Unparalleled Confection of Delicacy.”

  Georgiana found herself speechless. She glanced at Mrs. Cliffe.

  “You would be expected to arrange large country events such as weddings, shooting parties, and balls,” Mrs. Cliffe said. “Does your experience in London—”

  “Done it,” Mrs. McRory snapped. “Maharajah of Petampore. Foreign gentleman. Required a season for his eldest daughter. Butler died. Heart attack. Ordered the entire thing myself, including male staff.”

  Georgiana rustled through the references, feeling she ought to regain the initiative. “References all in order,” Mrs. McRory said. “I looked in on the laundry room on my way up and ordered the linen. Very disorderly.”

  “Yes, we’ve lost our first housemaid, Annie,” Mrs. Cliffe murmured. “Well, I…can’t think of anything more to ask, Mrs. McRory. We’ll be in touch.”

  Mrs. McRory bounded to her feet with such energy that Georgiana was afraid she felt insulted. But as the woman jerked her abrupt curtsy and surged to the door, she realized that it was just the speed and decisiveness with which she moved. James arrived only just in time to open the door for her. Mrs. McRory, who came approximately to his waist height, looked up at him through narrowed eyes, then reached up to tap him on his shirt front.

  “Stain. Disorderly. I always have my footmen wash their linen in Patchcock’s Peculiar Granules. Stains vanish with Patchcock’s.”

  She disappeared through the door, and James, looking flabbergasted, hurried after her. Georgiana managed to hold her giggles back until the door had closed behind her. “Did you ever see such a person?” Georgiana was half laughing, half admiring. “My footmen! I wonder what Cooper will have to say about that?”

  “I should think it would shake him up a bit, and no bad thing, my lady.” Mrs. Cliffe was smiling too. “He has been letting things slide while His Lordship was in London.”

  “You’re right.” Georgiana was sobered again. Making the disorderly orderly. Well, they certainly were a disorderly household. Perhaps Mrs. McRory was just what they needed.

  “Her references are certainly excellent.” Mrs. Cliffe was glancing through them again. “I must write to check them, of course, but really…”

  “She’s the best we have seen so far,” Georgiana said, finishing the sentence.

  They looked at each other and shared a thoughtful nod.

  London

  The Theatre Royal on Drury Lane was crammed with people who had heard of the dramatic reception of The Rite of Spring in Paris and were eager to see it repeated in London. Rose strained to hear the overture above the chatter of voices as she followed the others to the duke’s box.

  “I heard it was unlistenable—primitive—Nijinsky has gone too far.”

  “A moral scandal—unspeakably shocking—”

  “Stamping and banging and not a tune to be heard!”

  She squeezed between perfumed dowagers, feathers from expensive hats tickling her nose. Alexander was nowhere to be seen, though she felt her heart beating rapidly, expecting to see him at every moment.

  “I am so glad the duke offered us his box,” the countess said loudly as they went through the crowd. “It would be insufferable to sit in this crush.”

  “And speaking of the duke,” Charlotte murmured behind her fan, “where is he?”

  The attendant bowed as he showed them through the velvet curtain into the box.

  “Has the duke yet arrived?” the countess demanded of him.

  “I could not say, my lady.” The attendant bowed and backed out.

  “Or has been instructed not to say.” Charlotte sighed and seated herself.

  Rose and Ada exchanged glances as they sat down.

  “I don’t know what to expect,” Ada said. “I suppose it will be interesting. I adored The Firebird and Fokine’s choreography, but the Rite has had such a violent reaction in Paris.…”

  “I’m sure there is something to it.” Rose sat forward, her chin on her hands. She wondered where Alexander was. She longed to see him, to smile at him and have the chance to apologize for her rudeness. He must have known the countess would never have taken her to the performance without his invitation, and she was touched that he had remembered their conversation on the subject—even though she had been so unpardonably rude about his paintings.

  Before they could speak of it further the lights dimmed, the curtain rose, and The Rite of Spring began.

  Rose realized in an instant why the reaction in Paris had been so violent. This was not the voluptuous, breathtaking beauty of The Firebird or Scheherazade. A bare and wintry scene filled the stage, the dancers moving in violent spasms. The gorgeous embroidery of fairy tale was ripped away to leave the clean bones of the story within: the merciless sacrifice of youth and beauty in an eternal, powerful rite as rhythmic as the changing seasons, or the pumping of blood through the human body. Rose couldn’t repress a feeling of rising, heady, drunken excitement, as if she were hearing and seeing the future rushing toward her at the speed of the fastest motorcar.

  “Rite of Spring!” Th
e countess sniffed. “It’s the ugliest thing I have ever seen. Spring is flowers, beauty, elegance.…”

  And new life, thought Rose, and the savage pain of throwing off the past. But the only person who would understand that was Alexander. She was dying to hear what he thought about it, dying to tell him that she thought she understood better now, what he was trying to paint, thought she could see a way now, to make music that didn’t ring as false as the laughter of the audience.…

  The audience fidgeted, laughed, catcalled. Rose thought, angrily, that they had made up their minds before it had even begun. They had come to see a riot, not a ballet.

  When the interval bell rang, the countess rose at once.

  “Worse than I expected. And the wretched Huntleigh isn’t even here!”

  Rose jumped to her feet as the door of the box opened and a man entered—but it was not Alexander. It was Sebastian, and she saw at once the tension and strain on his face, although he spoke lightly. “Good evening, everyone. I heard you were here, so I thought I’d make an appearance.”

  “About time too! Where on earth have you been for the past few days? Everyone has been asking about you.”

  “Are you all right?” Rose scanned Sebastian’s face. She could see he looked tired and troubled.

  “Not really. I’ve just heard that Oliver’s pleading guilty.”

  “No!” Ada sounded shocked. “But why?”

  “Oh goodness, not more of this penny dreadful,” Charlotte groaned.

  “I’ve been called as a witness and he wants to save me from going to court,” Sebastian said, ignoring his sister and speaking directly to Rose.

  Rose’s eyes widened. Of course, if Sebastian ended up in court, the newspapers would see him as fair game. And then…everything might come out.