Diamonds and Deceit (At Somerton) Page 3

  “It doesn’t matter, my lady,” Céline smiled, plucking hairpin after hairpin from Ada’s hair.

  “At last,” Ada sighed with relief as her dress shimmered to the floor. Céline bent to pick it up and Ada seated herself in front of the mirror. She opened the drawer and took out a thick sheaf of papers, which she began to read. Rose glanced at them curiously.

  She was exhausted, but she was also longing to talk to Ada about her engagement. She glanced across at Ada, but Ada was reading as Céline brushed her hair and did not look up. The candlelight glinted from Ada’s deep brown hair, from the silver-backed brush, and from the jewels she still wore.

  “Has mademoiselle given thought to her dress for the state ball?” Céline asked Rose, as she drew the brush down in long, soft strokes. “A sample arrived from Poiret—black and pink pearls and a fan of peacock feathers—”

  “Oh, goodness.” Rose stifled another yawn. “I haven’t had a moment to think of anything important, let alone dresses.”

  “Mademoiselle, dresses are always important.” Céline sounded shocked.

  “Yes, of course they are,” Rose said hastily.

  “And particularly for this ball,” Céline went on. Her pretty mouth seemed to be trying to suppress a smile.

  Rose glanced at Ada, but Ada was still absorbed in her reading.

  “What do you mean, Céline?” she asked.

  “What I hear, my lady, is that the season is quite thrown into disarray, with the return of the Duke of Huntleigh from foreign parts,” Céline said, folding up Ada’s ribbons neatly. “Those ladies who have become engaged to be married are trying to disengage themselves, just in case. Those who have not are increasing their efforts toward the state ball. Poiret will be busy. Madame Lucille has not a single free appointment.”

  “Oh,” Rose sighed and yawned at the same time. “Not the Duke of Huntleigh again. I seem to have heard nothing all evening but the scandals he’s been involved in, the extent of his gambling, the reputations he’s ruined.…”

  “And the size of his parure,” Céline murmured.

  Rose coughed. “I beg your pardon?”

  “The Huntleigh parure. A set of diamond jewelry, made for Marie Antoinette originally.”

  Ada glanced up. “The Huntleighs have some Bourbon in their blood,” she said.

  “Oh, I see. But he sounds awful—why is everyone so keen on him?”

  “His father has just died.”

  “How sad.” Rose was startled; tragedy didn’t seem to fit with the image she had formed of the arrogant young duke.

  “He has come into the dukedom and a very large fortune besides,” Ada said. “The Huntleigh reputation isn’t good, but Huntleigh credit is.” She added, “That will do, Céline, thank you.”

  “My lady,” Céline bobbed a slight curtsy and turned to Rose’s hair, her fast, deft fingers plucking out hairpins.

  Rose glanced at Ada as she turned another page and it rustled. “Ada, what on earth are you reading? Aren’t you tired?”

  “It’s the reform bill,” Ada said distantly, her eyes on the paper. “I want to have the most important passages by heart in time for Laurence’s speech.”

  Céline and Rose caught each other’s eyes in the mirror.

  “Do you think it’s really necessary?” Rose spoke gently, but she was worried. There was a small frown line between Ada’s eyes that had not been there before the start of the season. And now it seemed to be there all the time. “You get hardly enough sleep as it is. You will make yourself ill—isn’t it better to wait till the season is over?”

  “Oh!” Ada stood up, quickly and nervously. She crossed over to her bed, still staring at the paper, and lay down, her dark hair spilling in waves across the pillow. “No, I couldn’t do that. I should go mad if I did nothing but visit and dance and dress for the next two months.” She turned another page, seemingly absorbed.

  Rose sighed. “Thank you, Céline,” she said. “You may go now—you must be tired.”

  She turned to Ada as the door closed behind Céline. “Ada, really and truly, are you happy about this engagement?”

  Ada looked up. Her eyes gave as little away as the carved eyes of the caryatids outside.

  “Of course,” she said lightly. “Laurence and I have so much in common. We are bound to be happy together.”

  Rose hardly knew what to say. She knew Ada was sending her certain messages: not to ask questions, to accept and smile. In the course of the season she had begun to realize that the veil Ada wore, of good breeding, tact, and grace, was a veil of steel, not silk. It protected her…and yet it also separated her. Not just from people like Lady Gertrude, but from Rose, in whom she had once confided everything.

  “I mean…” Rose hesitated. “Do you love him?”

  Ada’s smile was brief. “Love grows, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose so,” Rose said quietly.

  Ada turned away, then seemed to think better of it and looked back. “Rose, I can do good as Lady Fintan,” she said. “I can change England for the better. That’s important, don’t you think?”

  Her gray gaze was level, and Rose knew that whether she agreed or not with Ada’s decision, she had to respect it. “Of course,” she said quietly. She stood up, pulling her Indian silk shawl around her shoulders. “Good night, Ada.”

  “Good night, Rose,” Ada replied.

  Back in her own bedroom, Rose found a fan of fashion magazines and illustrations on her dressing table. She sat down and flicked through them, reading Céline’s neat annotations: This velvet column is very elegant, no, mademoiselle?…This one is too ultra, I think.…The dull gold would be very flattering to your complexion.… Rose put them down with a sigh. Céline was certainly an exemplary lady’s maid, she thought. Even for someone whose job was to be attentive to the details of fashion, she seemed quite passionate about dressing Rose well. But what was the good of being dressed well, Rose thought—glancing at her jewel cases and fan cases, hat boxes and drawer after deep mahogany drawer of fur-lined, sequinned, beaded luxury—if it meant she couldn’t be happy? If it meant Ada couldn’t be happy?

  She drew her writing case toward her. She had promised to write to Annie, and now was as good a time as any. It seemed like a lifetime ago that the two of them were maids together at Somerton. And yet nothing had changed for Annie.

  Rose began to write, wishing she could say the things that were really in her heart. But that wasn’t possible. Her life was an Eden compared to Annie’s, and she knew it.

  Writing to Annie took her longer than she had expected, and she was glad to slip, yawning, into bed just as it grew light. Even now there was no silence; the rattle of a cart in the street outside and distant street cries haunted her until she fell asleep.

  Somerton

  Annie Bailey came hurrying down the servants’ stairs of Somerton Court, cap askew on her mousy hair. Five to eight, and she had time to snatch a piece of toast if she was lucky, before she had to fill the coal scuttles and carry them up four flights to the bedrooms. She could already hear Cook shouting orders, and swung to one side as the footmen hurried past with their silver trays held high, delicious smells of bacon and eggs and kidneys wafting out.

  “Here,” James paused to say, “have you heard the news? Lady Ada’s engaged!”

  “I’m miles ahead of you,” Annie replied. “Saw the telegram when Mr. Cooper took it up.”

  “Good news, ain’t it?”

  “For our wages,” Annie grinned. They all knew how close to the wind the family had been sailing—Lady Ada’s marriage would put that right, at least for the moment.

  “Get a move on, James! It’s breakfast you’re giving ’em, not lunch!” Cook shouted from the kitchen. James ran on up the stairs and Annie went down into the kitchen.

  “Toast me some bread while I wash up, Martha,” she told the scullery maid, and headed for the sink to rinse the ashes off her hands from laying the fire.

  Martha went on talking to
Thomas without pause as she moved from the washing up to the toasting fork. “It’s like every night I can hear the scream, and the Horrible Thud,” she said, shuddering.

  “What are you on about?” Annie demanded, shaking her hands dry.

  “The blinkin’ murder, as usual. I wish you’d give it a rest, Martha,” Thomas said. “Pass me that kedgeree.” He grabbed it from Cook’s hands and hurried back upstairs.

  “I might rest, but his poor murdered spirit won’t be so lucky,” Martha said darkly.

  “I don’t know about his poor spirit.” Annie checked her reflection in the piece of broken mirror lodged on the windowsill, and straightened her cap. “I met Simon Croker, and he was a nasty piece of work, I can tell you—not that I’d wish him dead. I think it’s a shame about Oliver.”

  “So do I,” said Cook, taking a moment to look up from her breakfast-time preparations. “Poor lad. I can’t imagine he’d be capable of murder.”

  Annie didn’t reply at once. The kitchen door was ajar to let out the heat, and there was a view out across the courtyard to the stables. As Annie watched, a boy with tousled dark-blond hair and freckles crossed the cobbled, straw-strewn yard, leading Lady Georgiana’s white mare, Beauty. He was so handsome that Annie couldn’t help staring. The new stable boy, she thought. Of course, Mr. Cooper had mentioned engaging someone. He disappeared around the corner.

  “What I’m wondering,” Martha said behind her, “is whether he’ll get murder or manslaughter. Murder’s hanging. Here’s yer toast, Annie.” She banged a plate onto the table.

  Annie turned away from the window and sat down to eat, still thinking about the handsome stable boy. It would be fun to go to the fair with him.

  “I’ve never seen a hanging,” Martha went on.

  “You wouldn’t go and watch!” Annie was half shocked, half fascinated.

  “I’d feel I had to, just to get the sense that justice had been done,” Martha said virtuously. “Did I say as how I hear his bloodcurdling scream and hear his skull cracking against the stone floor every night like that jam pot James dropped last Sunday—”

  “Yes,” chorused everyone, “you did.”

  “And we wish you’d give over when we’re trying to eat!” Annie said through a mouthful of toast. “Poor Oliver. He was a good valet to Mr. Templeton, for all I’ve heard, better than that Croker. Better looking too,” she added sadly.

  “But it’s such a scandal for the house,” Martha went on. “I can’t go near the conservatory without a shudder—”

  “And quite right too,” said a firm, quiet voice from the doorway.

  Annie jumped. Mrs. Cliffe was framed in the kitchen doorway, an elegant, sober figure in black. Annie dropped her eyes and an awkward silence fell. It was hard to be the same around Mrs. Cliffe these days, not now they knew all about her and Lord Westlake. And yet no one, she noticed, dared cheek her to her face.

  “You have no reason to go anywhere near the conservatory,” Mrs. Cliffe said, giving Martha her sternest glance. “A shudder is the least you ought to feel if you find yourself so far out of your place.”

  Annie glanced around at the others as Mrs. Cliffe went on down the corridor. Their expressions were resentful, except for Cook, who looked concerned.

  “She’s a nice one to talk about getting out of her place,” Martha whispered with a rebellious snigger.

  “That’ll do, Martha.” Cook wasn’t laughing, and her voice was low.

  The bell rang out, the new electric sound shrilling through the kitchen.

  “Ugh!” Annie groaned and put her toast down. “Lady Georgiana? What does she want at this time?”

  “Off you go, Annie.” Martha grinned. “No rest for the wicked.”

  Annie ran for the stairs. The world might have turned upside down for Mrs. Cliffe and Rose, but for everyone else it was work, work, work as usual.

  “Oh, Annie,” Georgiana Averley said, turning to the door of the music room as Annie entered. “Could you tell Cook it will be I who sees her at eleven, not Lady Edith? Lady Edith has a headache, I’m sorry to say.” Georgiana winced at the lie, but she could hardly tell her that her cousin William’s wife was drunk again. “And we are expecting Mr. Simmons, Papa’s agent, for dinner, so there will be one more, but she needn’t go to too much trouble—the fowl will stretch, I am sure, and perhaps there could be another vegetable dish—I leave it up to her.”

  “Yes, my lady.” Annie dipped a curtsy and went out. Georgiana sighed and went to the piano. Her heart was hardly in the practicing. She missed Ada so much. She wondered how much longer she could keep Edith’s drinking habits concealed. The servants would surely notice sooner or later.

  Think about it later, she told herself. She closed her eyes and lost herself in the music. Waves of waltzes swept her along, then she swung into the new ragtime. In London they would be dancing to this, the beat of the feet on the pavements, the roar of the engines, the glare of the new electric lights around Piccadilly. She could have gone to London with her sisters. She should have gone to London. Plenty of girls her age were out, it wasn’t fair. She was so much stronger now, her chest hardly ached at all when she ran—

  “Georgie! There you are.” The door banged open; her hands skidded into a discord. Michael Templeton strode in, the customary frown on his face. “What are you doing—oh, tinkling on that old thing.” He flung himself down on the sofa, mud from his shoes scattering across the rug Annie had just cleaned. “Do you believe it? Your father just wrote that I am to go back to Eton. I know this is Mother’s doing! Why can’t the pair of them just leave me alone?”

  Georgiana sighed. She loved her stepbrother. Just one smile from him—rare as those were these days—could make her heart race like a runaway train. But sometimes, she had to admit to herself, he was very annoying.

  “Well, for what it’s worth, I think they’re both right,” she said. Michael sat forward with an angry exclamation. Georgiana raised her voice to drown him out. “What on earth are you doing here but moping around and making yourself miserable? You must get something to do, and you’re too young for the army—”

  “Only by one year!” Michael protested.

  “It doesn’t matter. You must go to Oxford or Cambridge, there’s no help for it. You’re not going to inherit, you know,” she added bluntly. “And you don’t have a title, so I can’t imagine any heiress marrying you.”

  Michael scowled. “I’ve told you a thousand times, I’m marrying Priya.”

  “Ssh!” Horrified, Georgiana got up and closed the door. “You mustn’t say that so loud. Anyone could hear!”

  “Why shouldn’t I say it aloud? I don’t care who knows it. I love her and I’m not ashamed of that. I’m proud.”

  Georgiana took a deep breath, struggling to contain her pain and annoyance. It was not simply that it hurt to be reminded that her own love was not requited. If the servants got wind of the fact that Michael and the nursemaid were secretly engaged, Priya’s life would become very difficult.

  “Really, Michael, you are terribly childish sometimes,” she began. Michael interrupted her.

  “That’s rich, coming from you. You do nothing but flutter around after Mrs. Cliffe, with your head full of dinner menus and dramas about laundry lists.”

  Georgiana blushed angrily. “For your information, I’m trying to learn how to manage this house.”

  “Well, that’s a waste of time,” Michael sneered.

  “How can you say that? So many people’s lives are tied to this place.”

  “Mine isn’t.” Michael jumped to his feet. “You act as if Somerton is all there is, as if you’ll be able to fritter your whole life away giving orders to Cook and entertaining the vicar to tea. But things aren’t like that anymore. We’ve got automobiles and airships and telephones. There are a thousand things that a man with some energy can do. I’m going to get out of here, and earn my own living. Priya and I will live a real life, away from this…museum.”

  He stormed out o
f the door, leaving another set of muddy footprints going out.

  “Oh, the silly—!” Georgiana broke off and rang the bell. Her face was hot, and she felt tears of annoyance prick at her eyes. If Michael ever bothered to think about anyone but himself, he would have considered that Somerton wasn’t just a museum. For everyone who worked here, it was their whole life. That wasn’t a responsibility that could be lightly thrown away. Michael might talk about the modern world, but Somerton was her world, here and now, and she was determined to make it a good one.

  “Drunk again,” Cook said when Annie gave her Lady Georgiana’s message. She was up to her elbows in bread dough; flour dusted everything around her. “I feel sorry for Lady Georgiana. You can see she’s trying her best, but she’s only a girl.”

  “There was a man from London at the door the other day,” Martha said, looking up from peeling the potatoes. “Cooper got rid of him. He didn’t say, but I’m sure it was about Sir William’s debts. He mentioned horses.”

  Cook shook her head as she began kneading again. Lord Westlake’s nephew had always been trouble.

  “It’s a bad business altogether. I wish he wasn’t the heir.”

  “Well, Lady Ada’s marriage should sort things out,” Annie said, only half listening.

  Instead of going back to her work, she hovered at the back door, watching the stable boy as he worked.

  “Don’t think we don’t know who you’re looking at,” Martha said over her shoulder.

  Annie started and turned to face her. “And why shouldn’t I?” she said, returning to the kitchen and pausing to glance in the greasy piece of mirror that sat above the sink. She tucked her hair in tidily, and set her cap on her head at a more flirtatious angle. At least as flirtatious as a housemaid’s cap could be. Martha nudged her out of the way to tumble the potatoes into the sink.