M. C. Beaton is the author of the hugely successful Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth series, as well as a quartet of Edwardian murder mysteries featuring heroine Lady Rose Summer, the Travelling Matchmaker, Six Sisters and School for Manners Regency romance series, and a stand-alone murder mystery, The Skeleton in the Closet – all published by Constable & Robinson. She left a full-time career in journalism to turn to writing, and now divides her time between the Cotswolds and Paris. Visit www.agatharaisin.com for more, or follow M. C. Beaton on Twitter: @mc_beaton.
Praise for A House for the Season:
‘[Beaton] is adept at character portrayal and development . . . Plain Jane is sure to delight Regency enthusiasts of all ages.’
Best Sellers
‘Once again the infamous town house on Clarges Street is occupied for a season . . . [Beaton] sets a lively tempo.’
Publishers Weekly
‘A witty, charming, touching bit of Regency froth. Highly recommended.’
Library Journal
‘Entertaining light romance for fans of the series.’
Booklist
‘A romp of a story . . . For warm-hearted, hilarious reading, this one is a gem.’
Baton Rouge Sunday Advocate
Titles by M. C. Beaton
A House for the Season
The Miser of Mayfair • Plain Jane • The Wicked Godmother
Rake’s Progress • The Adventuress • Rainbird’s Revenge
The Six Sisters
Minerva • The Taming of Annabelle • Deirdre and Desire
Daphne • Diana the Huntress • Frederica in Fashion
The Edwardian Murder Mystery series
Snobbery with Violence • Hasty Death • Sick of Shadows
Our Lady of Pain
The Travelling Matchmaker series
Emily Goes to Exeter • Belinda Goes to Bath • Penelope Goes to Portsmouth
Beatrice Goes to Brighton • Deborah Goes to Dover • Yvonne Goes to York
The Agatha Raisin series
Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death • Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet
Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener • Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley
Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage • Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist
Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death • Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham
Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden
Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryfam • Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell
Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came
Agatha Raisin and the Curious Curate • Agatha Raisin and the Haunted House
Agatha Raisin and the Deadly Dance • Agatha Raisin and the Perfect Paragon
Agatha Raisin and Love, Lies and Liquor
Agatha Raisin and Kissing Christmas Goodbye
Agatha Raisin and a Spoonful of Poison • Agatha Raisin: There Goes the Bride
Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body • Agatha Raisin: As the Pig Turns
The Hamish Macbeth series
Death of a Gossip • Death of a Cad • Death of an Outsider
Death of a Perfect Wife • Death of a Hussy • Death of a Snob
Death of a Prankster • Death of a Glutton • Death of a Travelling Man
Death of a Charming Man • Death of a Nag • Death of a Macho Man
Death of a Dentist • Death of a Scriptwriter • Death of an Addict
A Highland Christmas • Death of a Dustman • Death of a Celebrity
Death of a Village • Death of a Poison Pen • Death of a Bore
Death of a Dreamer • Death of a Maid • Death of a Gentle Lady
Death of a Witch • Death of a Valentine • Death of a Sweep
Death of a Kingfisher
The Skeleton in the Closet
Also available
The Agatha Raisin Companion
Constable & Robinson Ltd
55–56 Russell Square
London WC1B 4HP
www.constablerobinson.com
First published in the US by St Martin’s Press, 1986
This paperback edition published in the UK by Canvas,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2013
Copyright © M. C. Beaton, 1986
The right of M. C. Beaton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in
Publication Data is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-78033-306-9 (paperback)
eISBN: 978-1-47210-437-3
Typeset by TW Typesetting, Plymouth, Devon
Printed and bound in the UK
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Cover design and illustration: www.kathynorrish.com
For Raja
He was a type of strange breed of men which has vanished from England – the full-blooded virile buck, exquisite in his dress, narrow in his thoughts, coarse in his amusements, and eccentric in his habits. They walk across the bright stage of English history with their finicky step, their preposterous cravats, their high collars, their dangling seals, and they vanish into the dark wings from which there is no return. The world has outgrown them, and there is no place now for their strange fashions, their practical jokes, and carefully cultivated eccentricities. And yet behind this outer veiling of folly with which they so carefully draped themselves, they were often men of strong character and robust personality.
SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, RODNEY STONE
ONE
Society is now one polish’d horde,
Form’d of two mighty tribes, the bores and the bored.
LORD BYRON, DON JUAN
At the beginning of 1808, fog turned London into a nightmare city. It was not that a London fog was a rarity. What was so odd, so dismal, and so depressing was that it should last so long.
A choking yellow-grey blanket lay over the metropolis, turning day into night. Never had the link boys been so much in demand as they guided their charges through the stifling fog, lighting their way, their blazing torches reduced to mere red eyes of light through the encircling gloom.
Even the elegant streets of the West End had lost their light and airy character as carriages swam like great primeval beasts through the grey swamp, and figures darted to and fro like wraiths.
Passersby shied nervously away from the two great iron dogs chained on the steps outside Number 67 Clarges Street, the sluggishly shifting fog making the animals look real.
Inside Number 67, the servants felt the fog had crept into their very souls, so grey and miserable did their lives seem. It was a new year and already they were on the threshold of another London Season. But the bad luck that had haunted the town house in Clarges Street continued to haunt it, and it looked as if they would lack a tenant, which meant no tips to augment their miserable wages.
The house was owned by the tenth Duke of Pelham, a young man who owned so much property, including a large mansion in Grosvenor Square, that he was barely aware of the house’s existence. The management of the house, the letting of it, and the payment of the staff were left to his agent, Jonas Pa
lmer, cheat, bully and liar.
Napoleon’s armies held all Europe in an iron grip and threatened the security of Britain. Times were hard. Servants could not hope to find new employment without references. Palmer had said he would never give any of the servants at Number 67 references and, furthermore, he would give any planning to leave a bad character. This allowed him to continue to pay the staff very low wages while charging his master proper wages and putting the difference in his own pocket.
A good tenant was the servants’ only hope. A generous tenant might raise their wages for the length of the rental and might even provide them with the necessary references. But their hopes of ever seeing another tenant were very slim.
Number 67 was damned as unlucky.
The ninth duke had hanged himself there. The year after that, the first family to rent the house for a Season had lost all their money through their son’s gambling and the second tenants, the life of their beautiful daughter, Clara.
The third tenant, a Scottish gentleman, Mr Roderick Sinclair and his ward, Fiona, whom he had presented as his daughter, had been generous to the staff and good luck seemed to have come to the house at last. But Fiona Sinclair had married the Earl of Harrington and had gone abroad with him on their honeymoon. They had disappeared without trace and were feared dead.
Once more the house was advertised in the daily newspapers.
A HOUSE FOR THE SEASON
Gentleman’s residence, 67
Clarges Street, Mayfair.
Furnished town house. Trained
servants. Rent: £80 sterling.
Apply, Mr Palmer, 25 Holborn.
It was possible to rent a house in a middling part of the town for £80 for a whole year. But in Mayfair, where one could expect to pay at least £1,000 a year rent for unfurnished and unstaffed accommodation, the sum of £80 for the few months of the Season was very modest. Most hopeful mamas arrived in London some time before the Season began, to lay the ground for their daughters’ coming-out. Therefore anyone in the ton knew that a house rented for the Season included two months before and at least one after. The Season began at the end of April and lasted until the end of June when most of exhausted society followed the Prince of Wales to Brighton.
Mr John Rainbird, butler of Number 67, stood out on the step and gloomily surveyed the Stygian scene. Life had looked so promising last Season. Their tenants had been so generous that Rainbird had planned to buy a small pub in Highgate and take his ‘family’ – the rest of the staff – with him. But while they had all been away from the house at Fiona Sinclair’s wedding, their money had been stolen. All suspected Jonas Palmer, but they had no proof. So instead of glorious, independent freedom, they were all still chained to the town house – as chained as the iron dogs on the steps at Rainbird’s feet.
The long wars with Napoleon raged on, a quartern loaf cost one shilling and ninepence, and the starving poor died daily in the streets. The servants, who were paid only enough to keep body and soul together, foraged for what they could. Only that morning, Angus MacGregor, the Highland cook, had set out to walk to the country beyond Kensington to search for firewood; Mrs Middleton, the housekeeper, genteel daughter of a curate, had plucked up her courage and gone to Covent Garden to see what vegetables she could find; and little Lizzie, the between-stairs-cum-scullery maid, was at the baker’s to see if she could purchase a loaf of stale bread.
The chambermaid, Jenny, and housemaid, Alice, were indoors, dismally cleaning and polishing the empty rooms, for Jonas Palmer delighted in surprise visits and would walk from room to room wearing a pair of white cotton gloves with which to run over every ledge to make sure there was not even one speck of dust.
Rainbird sighed and shivered. Joseph, the tall footman, minced up the area steps and came to stand beside him. The two men looked into the shifting fog in silence. Joseph was tall, fair, and good-looking, his round blue eyes fringed with fair skimpy lashes that were his private despair. Rainbird was much shorter than Joseph with a sinewy acrobat’s body and a comedian’s face. He had a pair of clever, sparkling grey eyes, which usually shone with good humour but of late had been as dull and sad as the weather.
One large flake of snow spiralled down and landed on Joseph’s nose. He brushed it away. ‘A pox on this weather,’ he said, his voice high and affected. ‘It does give a fellow the blue devils.’
‘Perhaps you might not feel so bad if you stirred yourself to do something,’ said Rainbird sharply. ‘Have you cleaned the silver?’
‘No,’ said Joseph sulkily. ‘Eh’m tired of cleaning the demned stuff.’
‘Then do it now,’ said Rainbird crossly. ‘Remember you and I are in a worse position than the others should Palmer take against us.’
Both men had been dismissed from tonnish houses for crimes of which they were innocent. But they had been declared guilty, and Palmer always threatened to broadcast their misdemeanours should they not jump to his every bidding, which would mean that neither would have the hope of finding employment ever again.
It was perhaps this shared misfortune that made Rainbird tolerate the effeminate and often waspish footman. Rainbird was also perhaps the only person who saw the shrinking, sensitive creature under the affectations.
‘Dave isn’t doing nothing,’ whined Joseph.
‘Dave is cleaning out the chimneys.’
‘So he should,’ sneered Joseph, ‘seeing as how it’s the only trade he knows.’
Dave had been a chimney boy, rescued by Rainbird from a harsh master. Palmer was unaware of his existence. Dave was unofficially the pot boy.
‘Go inside. You weary me, Joseph,’ said Rainbird.
Joseph flounced off, and Rainbird turned his gaze back to the swirling fog.
Lizzie came scurrying out of the gloom, her pattens clack-clacking on the stones. She was carrying something wrapped in a shawl.
To Rainbird’s surprise, she ignored his greeting and plunged down the area steps like an animal fleeing to its burrow.
He nimbly ran down after her. Lizzie went through into the servants’ hall, whatever it was she held in her shawl cradled against her breast like a baby.
‘What have you there?’ demanded Rainbird.
Fog lay in bands across the room, which was dimly lit by one evil-smelling tallow candle in the centre of the table. Lizzie silently unwrapped her shawl, took out a large crusty loaf, and put it on the table. Then she sat with her head bowed.
Rainbird walked forward and picked up the loaf. ‘This is fresh, Lizzie,’ he said. ‘You only had a penny for a bit of stale bread. How did you come by this?’
Lizzie’s eyes, enormous in her thin face, looked sorrowfully at the butler. Two large tears spilled over and cut two clean tracks through the fog-grime on her cheeks.
A sudden horrible thought struck Rainbird. ‘You didn’t, Lizzie. I mean, you didn’t go with some man . . . ?’
‘Worse than that,’ shivered Lizzie.
Rainbird sat down. Alice and Jenny came into the kitchen demanding to know what the matter was, and Dave made them all jump by appearing down the chimney, covered in soot.
‘I think I got abaht free bags full, Mr Rainbird,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’ll sell the soot this afternoon. What’s up wiff our Liz?’
‘Same as all of us,’ drawled Joseph. ‘Hunger.’
‘Go on, Lizzie,’ urged Rainbird. ‘Tell us.’
The scullery maid brushed the tears away with her fingers. ‘I went to Partridge’s,’ she said.
Rainbird gave a click of annoyance. ‘What took you there? That’s the most expensive baker in Mayfair.’
‘Brown’s in the market didn’t have no stale bread. I thought a grand baker’s might have some but folks wouldn’t think of asking. So I went in.’
‘And?’ demanded Jenny, the chambermaid.
‘And there was this fine lady with her two daughters.’
‘Garn,’ said Dave. ‘Fine ladies don’t buy their own bread out o’ shops.’
�
��They was doing it for a sort of joke,’ said Lizzie. ‘“See, my dears,” said the grand lady, “you should never leave the shopping to servants all the time. One should occasionally go oneself to check that the prices tally with those in the housekeeper’s books.” One of the daughters stares at me and says, “But mama, one has to meet such common people like that dirty little servant girl.” “It is not even ladylike to notice that class of person,” says the mother. They all had baskets like Leghorn hats, flat and open and decorated with silk flowers. Partridge was charging two shillings and threepence for a large loaf and they bought six,’ said Lizzie, her remembered awe drying her tears.
‘They swep’ past me. “Get out of my way, little peasant,” says the mother, and, as she went past me, this loaf fell from her silly basket, and quick as a wink I caught it before it fell to the ground. They didn’t wait. I ran after them as they were getting in their carridge and I says, “Please mum, you’ve dropped your loaf.”
‘“Oh, mama,” says one of the girls, “don’t touch it. She’s probably got lice.”
‘“Then it will do the servants,” says the mother, leaning out of the carridge window to take it from me.
‘I found meself shouting, “Then I’ll keep it,” an’ I wrapped it in my shawl and ran as hard as I could. They screamed, “Stop thief!” and hands grabbed at me out of the fog, but I darted into a doorway and hid there until the shouting died away. So here I am,’ she ended miserably.
Rainbird took a deep breath. ‘Lizzie, if they had caught you, you would have been hanged, or, at the very least, transported to the colonies.’
‘I am in mortal sin,’ whispered Lizzie.
‘So you are,’ crowed Joseph. ‘That Pope o’ yourn will damn you to hell.’ Then he gasped as Jenny drove her sharp elbow into his solar plexus.
‘I think God will forgive you,’ said Rainbird, ‘but whether he will forgive that woman and her daughters is another matter. Dry your tears, Lizzie. You must never do anything like that again.’
The tall and Junoesque Alice walked slowly round the table – everything Alice did was slow and languid. She put her arms around Lizzie and said, ‘Don’t cry. You be a good girl.’
Plain Jane Page 1
