Authors: M.C. Beaton
‘Not he,’ said Joseph. ‘She hehd two lovers afore him.’
‘You see,’ said Rainbird eagerly, ‘the only way to combat a nasty piece of gossip is to provide society with a bigger and better chunk. We shall spread out over the West End before morning and tell the world of the Hayner girls’ jealousy and spite.’
‘It will ruin them,’ said Harriet miserably. ‘And their father trusted me.’
‘Sir Benjamin trusted you, Miss Metcalf, to see they remained ladies of good character. If they go unpunished, then they will remain malicious and go on to ruin someone else’s life. Emily shall be sent packing first thing in the morning. I shall see her off on the stage myself. Now, what happened between you and Lord Huntingdon?’
‘He spoke to me like the harlot he believed me to be,’ said Harriet.
‘Well, it stands to reason he might be in a passion seeing that he obviously loves you very much.’
‘Loves me? The man is a rake!’
‘Miss Metcalf,’ said Rainbird severely, ‘when a man as wealthy and handsome as the Marquess of Huntingdon proposes marriage, you must understand that man is deeply in love. His late wife played him false, you know, and he was very badly hurt by her.’
Harriet looked at the butler with wide eyes. ‘Are we all talked about by London servants? Is there no part of our lives which is not taken apart?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Rainbird blithely. ‘But if we did not listen to gossip, how could we know all these things to tell you – to help you?’
‘But no one will marry Sarah and Annabelle after you talk.’
‘Yes, they will,’ chipped in Jenny fiercely. ‘They’ve got large dowries. There’s fellows would marry an ape, supposing it were wealthy.’
‘And by the look o’ some o’ the dowagers,’ chirped Dave, ‘it’s obvious they did.’
‘No,’ said Harriet with a shake of her head. ‘I cannot believe the girls tried to get me to go to The Rookery. I cannot allow any gossip against them without proof.’
‘What more proof do we need?’ asked Alice.
‘I know,’ said Rainbird. ‘Jenny, fetch Emily down here. She’s the one who’s been spreading the gossip. I’ll make her tell us why. I’m sorry, Miss Metcalf, but I am sure she will say she was under orders.’
Mrs Middleton roused herself from her transfixed state. ‘Brandy for Miss Metcalf, I think, Mr Rainbird, while we wait for Emily.’
A bottle of the best French brandy was produced. Harriet, feeling drained of emotion and oddly at peace, noticed that the brandy was not given only to her but to all the servants, even little Dave.
‘It is now three in the morning,’ said Harriet. ‘You should all have been to bed this age.’
‘We always stay up until our betters have retired for the night,’ said Rainbird. ‘Ah, here is Emily.’
The maid, looking furious, sat down at the table and glared at Rainbird. ‘What’s the reason for sending
her
to pull me out o’ my bed?’ Then Emily saw Harriet, and a look of fear flashed into her eyes.
‘Now,’ said Rainbird, ‘we have absolute proof, Emily, that you have been spreading nasty stories about Miss Metcalf. Did Miss Sarah and Miss Annabelle put you up to it?’
‘I didn’t spread lies,’ said Emily defiantly. ‘All I told was the truth. I did it all by meself.’
‘Do you realize what you are saying?’ wondered Rainbird. ‘Not only will you now be dismissed, but you will never get another job again.’
‘Already got one,’ said Emily, tossing her head.
‘With whom?’
‘That’s my business.’
‘Is it with that lady you was seen talking to in Shepherd Market?’ asked Jenny suddenly. ‘Mary, the house-maid, what told me, said she had ever such green eyes.’
‘It come to me,’ said Lizzie excitedly, ‘the lady Beauty frightened off her horse, her what was with Lord Huntingdon, had green eyes.’
‘Belinda Romney,’ gasped Harriet.
‘See here, young woman,’ said Rainbird, looming over Emily, ‘if Belinda Romney wrote that note to get Miss Metcalf to go to The Rookery, then you’d best tell us. If you won’t talk to us, you’ll talk to the Bow Street Runners.’
‘You wouldn’t,’ said Emily, turning white. ‘They’d never listen to the likes o’ me. They’d transport me. All she’d have to say is that she didn’t know nothing about it.’
‘Then tell us,’ said Rainbird.
Thoroughly frightened now, Emily choked out her story. The girls often sent her out on errands. Mrs Romney had fallen into conversation with her, asking her if she were the Misses Hayner’s maid. She had seemed to have developed a knack of turning up when Emily was in some shop or bazaar. Emily loved to talk, and it appeared Mrs Romney loved to listen. Mrs Romney had said lightly that Harriet had stolen Lord Huntingdon away from her. Emily had poured out her version of Harriet and Sir Benjamin. One confidence led to another. Mrs Romney had said it would be fun to worry Harriet by sending her a letter saying the twins were illegitimate. If Harriet swallowed such a story and went to The Rookery, she would only get a fright, and even if she did not go, it would worry her to know she had a secret enemy.
‘Then when it didn’t work, when it only brought Lord Huntingdon to her rescue,’ said Emily, her hands trembling, ‘Mrs Romney grew angry with me and said if I had gossiped about her in the country, I could gossip about her in Town. My ladies did not want me to do it.’
Harriet let out a slow breath of relief. Belinda Romney of the uncertain morals and cracked reputation was an enemy she could understand.
‘She promised me twenty pound and a job if I did my part well,’ said Emily desperately. ‘Oh, Miss Metcalf, twenty pound is a lot of money for the likes of me.’ She buried her face in her hands and began to cry in earnest.
‘I suggest you return to your home in Upper Marcham immediately,’ said Harriet. ‘I do not want to see you again.’
Rainbird nodded to Jenny, who led the weeping and unresisting maid out.
‘Now, let me see,’ said Rainbird. ‘We must move quickly to fight gossip with gossip. London must know of Mrs Romney’s spite and as soon as possible. Joseph, you will position yourself between White’s and Brooks’s in St James’s and gossip to the waiting grooms and footmen. Alice, you will go with Jenny; Miss Metcalf will lend you caps and cloaks so that you may both look like lady’s maids. Go to Almack’s in a hack and enquire after Miss Metcalf, affecting not to know she has left. Show shock and alarm. Go into the room where the ladies leave their wraps and gossip to everyone who will listen. MacGregor, you had best go to Boodles. It is, as you know, next door to White’s and Brooks’s, but Joseph will have his hands full. Talk to the coachmen and footmen. Mrs Middleton, take Lizzie and go to Lady Bellamy’s. Say you are looking for your mistress and find an excuse to gossip. She is having a ball, and some folk may have gone on there from Almack’s. I, myself, shall go around the coffee houses. Dave, you guard the house while we are all away. We shall all meet back here in an hour.’
Dimly, Harriet felt she should protest, but matters appeared to have been taken out of her hands. Alice and Jenny followed her up to her bedchamber and selected caps and cloaks, giggling with excitement. Rainbird hovered impatiently in the doorway and then ordered Harriet to bed in an abstracted way, as if his temporary mistress were one of the maids.
Harriet lay in bed and heard the shufflings and bangs and bustles as the servants of Number 67 cheerfully set out on their gossiping campaign. How could she face the girls in the morning?
Now
she
disliked
them.
That they had gossiped about her to the village of Upper Marcham instead of telling her of their suspicions about her was too much finally to take. And in a way that knowledge hurt where knowledge of Belinda’s spite could not. Harriet had turned down two of the best catches on the Marriage Mart, and all because of Sarah and Annabelle.
Before she fell asleep, Harriet came to the conclusion that Sir Benjamin Hayner had not liked his own daughters simply because they were unlikeable girls.
The Marquess of Huntingdon was engrossed in a quiet game of whist at Boodles. Boodles had a large bay window that commanded a good view of St James’s Street. Club history had it that a famous duke had enjoyed the prospect because he said he liked sitting ‘watching damned people get wet’. It was a more soothing club than the politically minded Brooks’s (Whig) and White’s (Tory). It even boasted a ‘dirty room’ where all coins were boiled and scrubbed so that they might not sully the hands of the gamblers.
The marquess glanced idly out of the window. Surely that was one was of the servants from Number 67! There was a large Highland-looking man with a shock of fiery hair, who was talking earnestly to a rapt audience of coachmen and footmen. The last time the marquess had seen him, MacGregor had been trying to catch Beauty. As he watched, one of the marquess’s friends, Jimmy Fotheringay, drove up in his phaeton. He jumped down and eyed the listening group of servants and strolled over to them. He asked a question. The group parted to leave MacGregor in centre stage. With many wide gesticulations, the cook began to talk.
The marquess turned his attention back to the game. In ten minutes’ time, Jimmy Fotheringay burst into the room, his eyes roaming this way and that until they settled on the marquess.
‘Huntingdon!’ he cried. ‘You have never heard such scandal!’
‘Go away,’ said the marquess. ‘I have had enough of London scandal to last me until the end of my days.’
‘But this concerns the lady you proposed marriage to!’
The marquess’s companions downed their cards and pricked up their ears.
‘You forget yourself,’ said the marquess in an even voice.
‘But she has been made the target of scurrilous gossip. That sweet angel has been pilloried by her two useless god-daughters and nigh killed by Mrs Romney. You have never heard such villainy.’
One of the card players, Lord Targarth, heaved his large bulk up from his chair. ‘Go away, Fotheringay,’ he said sleepily. ‘You never proposed to anyone, did you, Huntingdon?’
Had it been anyone less innocent and ingenuous than Jimmy Fotheringay, the marquess might have called them all to order and might have refused point blank to discuss his personal life. But affection for the ebullient Jimmy, combined with sudden sharp curiosity, made him say, ‘I proposed marriage to a certain Miss Metcalf. She refused me, and that’s an end of it.’
‘But no, it isn’t,’ cried Jimmy. Words tumbling out, he described the jealousy of the twins, the perfidy of the lady’s maid, and the plot by Belinda Romney to have poor little Miss Metcalf permanently lost in The Rookery.
While more gentlemen crowded around to listen, the marquess sat very still, cursing his late wife for having poisoned his brain so much that he could no longer recognize goodness and virtue when he saw it. He remembered his behaviour and blushed for the first time in his life. He wanted to run from the club to Clarges Street, to rush into her bedroom and beg her forgiveness. Around him, the gossip grew in strength. The ladies left behind by their clubbable loved ones would have been amazed at the amount of gossip the flower of the masculine
ton
could bandy about.
Within another hour, Belinda Romney had hired assassins to kill Harriet in The Rookery and, mad with jealousy because Huntingdon preferred their godmother to themselves, Sarah and Annabelle had tried to poison her morning chocolate. Had not that cook said so? Had not he told them of his suspicions and fed a little of the chocolate to the kitchen cat? And was not that brave animal as stiff as a board some two minutes after lapping up the noxious mixture? Mac-Gregor had said nothing of the sort, but when this tale emerged from inside the club to the ears of the servants outside, he considered it a very fine story indeed and said without a blink that it was all perfectly true. Tongues wagged and heads nodded.
At last, the marquess was able to persuade his friends to return to their game.
All hopes of wooing Harriet had fled. He had believed a thoroughly nasty piece of gossip as easily as any senile dowager. She would never forgive him. What lady would?
Sarah and Annabelle sensed something was wrong when Jenny rather than Emily appeared in answer to their ringing bells. Emily, said Jenny with flashing eyes, had been sent off. Longing to question Jenny and yet quelled by her hot, angry stare, the twins did not dare.
Looking out of the window later, Sarah saw bouquets of flowers and presents beginning to arrive. She let out a cry of excitement. ‘Our beaux have sent us gifts. Let us go downstairs. We had better ask Harriet why Emily is gone.’
Harriet was sitting with Miss Spencer. Rainbird and Alice were carrying in more vases. Bouquets and parcels lay in heaps at Harriet’s feet.
‘You should have sent them up to us, Harriet dear,’ cooed Sarah.
‘Why?’ said Harriet harshly. ‘They are all for me.’
‘They cannot be,’ cried Annabelle. ‘Nobody likes you.’
‘Society has traced all the malicious gossip back to your maid,’ said Harriet, in a new, flat, hard voice. ‘It was Belinda Romney who contrived with Emily’s help to get me to go to The Rookery. But it has come out that both of you had Emily spread gossip about me in Upper Marcham. How could you give a servant such power? It was enough to turn her head. How could you pretend to be so loving and so affectionate and hate me behind my back? Well, I don’t like either of you anymore. Were it not for the affection and esteem I had for Sir Benjamin, I would leave you to your own devices. Go to your rooms and wait until I call you.’
She rose to her feet, and the twins shrank back in the doorway, clutching each other.
‘It’s your own fault,’ shouted Sarah. ‘You took Papa’s affection away from us. He preferred you to us . . . his own daughters. We
hate
you.’
‘I know,’ said Harriet calmly. ‘And I do not care. Go!’
She pointed to the door. Beauty advanced on the twins, his teeth bared.
With squeaks of alarm, they turned and fled.
‘I must get out, Josephine,’ said Harriet. ‘The atmosphere of dislike in this house suffocates me.’
‘Then we shall go for a walk in the park,’ said Miss Spencer. ‘You must tell me everything again, Harriet, for I cannot quite take it in. But do leave that wretched animal behind. He looks even more evil than when I last saw him.’