by M. C. Beaton
Mrs. Delmar-Richardson threw back her head. “I am come to remove my niece from a den of iniquity.”
Suddenly the viscount’s merry, easygoing manner changed. “Explain your impertinence, madam,” he said frostily.
“I find my niece has fled a respectable home to join the demimonde.”
“I never did like all this country living,” the viscount said with a sigh. He sat down again and took up his glass. “Inbreeding, bad drainage, damp houses—all makes people totty-headed.”
Jean found her voice. “Go away, Aunt.”
“And leave you to bring shame on the family? Never!”
“Dredwort!” the viscount shouted, and when the bald butler oiled into the room, he added, “This lady is leaving, and very quickly, too, if you take my meaning.”
“Certainly, my lord. This way, madam.”
“You have not heard the last from me,” Mrs. Delmar-Richardson declared.
“I do sincerely hope so,” the viscount said equably. “Close the door, Dredwort, there is a dreadful draft.”
“Oh, dear,” Jean said when the door was closed firmly behind her enraged aunt, “now I have really burnt my boats.”
The viscount looked at her in consternation. “You mean I am all you have got now?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“I should have thought of that before I sent her packing,” he said ruefully. “As if those hellcats upstairs weren’t enough.”
Jean winced.
He rose to his feet. “Time I had a talk to them. Go and change for dinner. We eat in an hour.”
The viscount went up the stairs to the schoolroom followed by Dredwort, who produced a key and unlocked the door.
“Now, look here, you two,” the viscount said, eyeing the twins with disfavor, “I haven’t sent for the magistrate … yet. But if you do not behave, if you do not do everything Miss Morrison tells you to do, then I will see you are both charged with attempted murder.”
“You wouldn’t,” Amanda gasped.
“Yes, I would, and gladly. You mean nothing to me. I find you both coarse, common, and dangerous. Nonetheless, you will present yourself at dinner.” He wrinkled his nose fastidiously. “Dredwort, two baths up to their bedchamber and the stoutest housemaids to wash them. If they try to abuse or hit or molest the servants in any way, the servants have my permission to hit back.”
Amanda and Clarissa began to realize their reign of terror was over. Their father had not allowed any of his servants even to complain about them.
Soon both were being ruthlessly scrubbed by womenservants from top to toe.
Jean heard the screams and put her hands quickly over her ears. She assumed the girls were being beaten. She should have been glad of it, but she was not. She herself had been beaten regularly in her youth and she knew it did nothing to improve the spirit.
She was glad when the sounds of shouting and weeping died away. With shaking fingers she opened her trunks, which had arrived from her aunt’s house, took out a plain gray silk gown, and looked at it ruefully. Jean had always longed for more fashionable clothes. She wondered whether she could bring herself to face the twins again that day and then decided against it. She and the viscount would be alone at dinner, for the twins would surely take their meals in the schoolroom.
She went down to the library.
She stopped in the doorway in consternation. Clarissa and Amanda were there, both wearing clean muslin gowns. Their black hair was still damp from the bath. The twins rose and curtsied to her and said meekly in chorus, “Good evening, Miss Morrison.”
“Good evening,” Jean replied faintly as she walked into the room. Amanda said, “We are both mortal sorry we pushed you in. We never thought for a moment you’d any chance o’ being drownded. We’re oh so very sorry and may God strike us dead if we ain’t telling the truth.”
Clarissa thought of that humiliating bath, and tears of rage coursed down her fat cheeks.
“There now,” Jean said, mollified, relieved, and surprised all at once, “we will say no more about it.”
“Unless,” the viscount added sotto voce, “you give me reason to remember it.”
Dinner was a surprisingly pleasant affair, although the dining room proved to be like the other rooms in the house, dark and dismal. The food was plain but well cooked. The viscount talked of plays and parties and balls in London, and the only thing that marred the evening for Jean was the trace of wistfulness in his voice.
“Do you have many friends in London?” Amanda asked suddenly.
“Yes, I am fortunate. I have three in particular, bachelor friends. There’s Mr. John Trump, Mr. Paul Jolly, and Lord Charnworth. We usually meet up at White’s. Oh, that I were there now.”
Jean felt sad. But why should such an elegant aristocrat enjoy being immured in the country and in such company?
All were tired, and Jean was relieved when she was allowed to retire immediately after dinner. The viscount had promised her a generous sum of money to take the girls shopping in St. Giles, the nearest town. Two grooms were to accompany her, and also the underhousekeeper, a thin, wiry woman called Mrs. Pewsey. Jean thought it quite mad that the first thing she did when introduced to Mrs. Pewsey was to check that lady’s figure for signs of physical strength. But someone strong was needed to control the girls in case they got into mischief.
Amanda and Clarissa went up to their bedchamber and held a council of war. “I have an idea,” Amanda said. “Get rid o’ him, and it’ll be easy to deal with her.”
“How?”
“He’s bored. He’s a dilly … dilly … you know, a sort of fop, pining for the pleasures of London. We can write to those friends o’ his, supposed to be from him, and invite them down. He’ll be too taken up with them to keep an eye on us.”
“Fool,” Clarissa sneered. “How can we write such a letter?”
“Gully Thomson,” Amanda retorted triumphantly.
Clarissa let out a long, slow breath of admiration. Gully Thomson lived in St. Giles. He was usually drunk and was reported to be a gentleman who had come down in the world. He gained money for drink by writing letters for the illiterate section of the town’s population.
“We’ll never get a chance to get away from her tomorrow,” Clarissa pointed out.
“So we’ll go tonight.”
It was a six-mile walk to St. Giles, but there was a bright moon and the girls were buoyed up by a feeling that they were about to get even with their persecutors.
They found Gully Thomson in his usual spot, the corner of the taproom of The Eagle. The tavern on the outskirts of the town was a low place, full of smugglers and other criminals. The twins were well known. They often called on Gully and so nobody even bothered to turn and look at them as they would have done in a more respectable inn if two young ladies had walked into the tap.
Amanda was delighted to find that Gully was sober enough to understand what was being asked. “There’s a sovereign in it if you do it right,” she said. “This Lord Hunterdon, Viscount Hunterdon, has three friends who go to White’s. We wants a letter to them gentlemen, telling them that he’s pining for a bit of fun and inviting them all down, and ask them to bring some women. That’ll put that Scotch whore’s nose out o’ joint.”
Gully lifted his traveling writing desk onto the table. He always had it with him in the hope of earning money.
He had done work for Amanda only six months before. Amanda had been smitten by a handsome young gentleman staying at The Crown, a respectable posting house in St. Giles. Gully had written a beautiful letter for her, asking this gentleman to meet her. The letter had been so good that the gentleman had turned up. But unfortunately, one look at little fat Amanda and her beetling eyebrows had made him take to his heels.
“I haven’t got paper of good enough quality,” he said. The enterprising Amanda opened a newspaper she was carrying, which held several sheets of parchment, a seal, a draft copy of that advertisement for a governess that the viscount had se
nt to the newspaper, and a copy of his signature. “I took these from the library,” she said. “I can put them back tonight.”
“Names of friends?” Gully asked. He was a tall, thin man with sparse brown hair that hung in greasy locks about his face. His clothes were shabby and stained with snuff and wine, but his voice was mellow and pleasant, the voice of the gentleman he used to be.
“Lord Charnworth, Mr. Paul Jolly, and Mr. John Trump,” Clarissa said promptly. She had the better memory of the two. “That will be the Honorable John Trump,” Gully said knowledgeably, for he read the social columns.
He bent his head and got to work, beginning, “My dear friends.” In it, he wrote on behalf of the viscount that he, the viscount, was dying of boredom and longing for some jolly female company as well as the pleasure of seeing his friends again.
Amanda scrutinized the letter carefully when he had finished, asking him to read out and explain the words she could not understand.
“I hear you’ve got a new governess,” Gully said. “Why don’t you both learn to read and write properly? You’re supposed to be ladies, and yet your dress and manner is that of peasants.”
“Watch your tongue or you don’t get paid,” Amanda snapped.
“Watch your own or you don’t get this letter,” Gully said.
It was finally agreed that Gully, given some extra money, should send the letter express by the mail coach in the morning. Then the sisters walked off.
“What’ll we do to her tomorrow?” Clarissa asked.
“Nothing. Hunterdon is quite likely to get us sent to prison. We do what she asks. We behave like model misses and then we wait and we watch. Come on! Race you home!”
The next day, the viscount found he was becoming more bored and more irritable. Getting grateful families out of the workhouse and putting them back in their homes should have given him a warm feeling of philanthropy, but it did not. He felt he was performing a long, tiresome series of duties. The only thing that gave him any slight pleasure as he passed money freely to the poor was that old Mr. Courtney would have been furious. The reason that the viscount passed that long day in ordering repairs to roofs and windows, hedges and walls was a feeling that the sooner it was all done, the sooner he could return to London and enjoy himself.
“Yes, yes,” he said testily as a weeping woman along with her husband and five children were reinstated in their cottage, “I am sure you are very grateful, but you must not kiss my hand. I do not like it. Strive for some dignity, please. You are only being returned to your home.” He pushed open the low door of the cottage. “Where is your furniture?” he asked, looking around.
“The bailiffs took it, my lord,” the man said.
“Of all the miserable old scroungers, Mr. Courtney was the worst. You must have somewhere to sit. Not a pot to cook anything in.” He walked back outside and faced the squad of outdoor servants and workmen who had been following him from cottage to cottage. “The roof needs repair,” the viscount said, squinting up at it. “I want basic foodstuffs for the kitchen here and the necessary pots and pans. I need beds and bedding and furniture. The castle is full of horrible stuff just lying there. Take what you need out of the guest bedrooms and the kitchens and bring it all over on the cart. In fact, you had better load up several carts because we have so many places to restore to good order. You will all be working well after sundown and so you will all get extra wages if you do your work well. Mr. Peterman, this family is Trent, is it not? Very well, take a note. Trent. Everything for the household needed. Ask Mrs. Moody to help you. Where is the next hovel on the itinerary?”
“Becket’s farm, half a mile away. We took Becket and his family from the workhouse.”
“So because of Mr. Courtney’s evil parsimony, one good farm has been lying fallow? Tcha! On we go. Will this day never end?”
And so the golden viscount, who seemed like an angel to families who were being restored to their homes, brushed aside all gratitude. All day long, carts rumbled along the roads from the castle, bearing furniture, food, and pots and pans. “There will be nothing left in the castle,” Mr. Peterman pleaded.
“Good,” the viscount said. “Nasty, gloomy stuff. Great chance to get rid of the lot of it.”
And so the workmen labored busily. A huge four-poster with silk hangings was delivered to the Trents. The posts had to be sawed down so that it would fit into the tiny cottage bedchamber, but the grateful Mrs. Trent took the brocaded silk hangings and subsequently the whole Trent family were to be seen on Sunday, finely dressed in clothes of silk brocade.
Finally, the viscount ended up at the farthest-flung farm on his estate. To his surprise, it appeared prosperous, and the farmer, Mr. Tulley, and his family looked well fed.
Pouring ale, Mr. Tulley said that he had managed to keep the farm at a reasonable rent by threatening to kill Mr. Courtney if he raised it. “He believed me, too,” the farmer said with a grin.
“But the old skinflint would have made even more money,” the viscount pointed out, “if he had made the farms pay.”
“He liked humiliating people,” Mr. Tulley said.
“Like meat and drink it was to him at the end. Liked that better than money.”
The viscount finished his ale and, being offered more, gratefully accepted it. The farmhouse parlor was pretty and bright with flowers. He was reluctant to return to his own gloomy home. For the first time that long day, he remembered Jean Morrison and wondered how she fared in St. Giles.
Jean, to her amazement, had had a successful day. The girls were quiet and obedient. She chose bolts of cloth for dresses for them and for herself. She had meant to choose cloth for gowns that would be suitable for a governess, but the dark little mercers contained an amazing supply of the best French silks and India muslins, and Jean lost her head and shopped for herself as if she were about to make her debut in London.
On her return, she found a dressmaker waiting for her, hired by Mrs. Moody on orders from the viscount. Jean had bought patterns, and together, she and the dressmaker, sitting on the floor of the drawing room that had inexplicably lost all its furniture, planned new wardrobes.
Then dinner was served to her in the dining room, which was still furnished, but the viscount did not arrive. Jean was told that the library was also still furnished, along with the tale of the viscount’s generosity to the cottagers, went there with the girls after dinner, and announced she would read to them.
Amanda and Clarissa stared at her in dumb fury. They had had a terrible day. The thought of new gowns bored them. Having to be polite for a whole day, a thing neither could remember having done before, was tiresome and exhausting. And now she was going to read to them.
But mindful of the viscount’s threat, they settled down in the library.
In St. Giles Jean had bought three volumes of one of the latest novels. Although the girls were obviously in need of moral instruction, she was sure they would simply fall asleep if she tried to read a book of sermons. The first thing, Jean decided, was to get them interested in any form of literature, and Jean guiltily admitted to herself she had also bought the books for her own enjoyment.
She started to read. Amanda and Clarissa, slumped side by side on the sofa, listened, at first stifling yawns and then with growing interest. When the headless monk walked down the stairs of the castle in Italy and Lady Felicity swooned in the prince’s arms, they sat up. Jean read on while the girls leaned forward, finally hanging on every word.
A footman came in, lit a log fire in the grate, and retreated quietly.
An hour later the door opened and the weary viscount walked in.
He stood for a moment, surveying the scene. Jean Morrison was reading steadily, the light from an oil lamp above her head shining on her magnificent hair. The fire crackled cheerfully, and Mrs. Moody, inspired to artistic talent by the increase in wages, had filled bowls around the room with scarlet and red roses.
Jean saw him and stopped reading. “Go on,” the twins crie
d in unison.
“Tomorrow,” Jean promised with a smile. “I did not realize how late it was, my lord. Bed for you, young ladies.”
“Stay, Miss Morrison,” the viscount said. “Amanda and Clarissa, you will find a lady’s maid waiting for you. She is not very well trained, but she will do for the moment. Treat her with courtesy.”
Amanda and Clarissa went out and closed the door, and then went slowly up the stairs. “If she’s going to read us them adventures, why get rid of her?” Clarissa asked.
“Silly, we’ve got to do our lessons, ain’t we?” Amanda remarked. “We’ll soon be able to read them ourselves. No governess is going to tell us what to do. Besides, she is only a governess and she shouldn’t be sitting with the master. Get ideas above her station. Think he’ll ruin her?”
“Don’t think he sees her as a woman and that’s a fact,” Clarissa commented.
In their bedchamber a burly-looking woman was waiting for them. She silently brushed their hair, got them ready for bed, and tucked them in. Clarissa felt guiltily that it was pleasant to be cared for, and she liked her new clean hair that felt silky to the touch. But she adored Amanda and everything that Amanda said or did must be right.
“Did you have any trouble with them today?” the viscount was asking Jean.
“No, they behaved very well, my lord, and I am convinced they are good at heart. I gather that a great deal of furniture has gone from the castle to the cottagers.”
He told her of his day while her green eyes glowed with admiration.
“You are very good.”
“I am motivated by my own interest. I have been studying the accounts. Mr. Courtney inherited a fortune to begin with and then made more over the years by gradually raising the rents. In the past few years the power of making people miserable far outweighed the pleasure of money.”
“How dreadful! It is no wonder that Amanda and Clarissa have turned out the way they are.”
“I think, on the contrary, they were treated with indulgence by their father. That is what ruined them. They were allowed to do and say as they liked and not one servant was allowed to reprimand them. I think they have inherited their father’s—if he was their father—love of power to cause misery.”
