Daughters of Disguise (Lady C. Investigates Book 4)

by Issy Brookw

  DAUGHTERS OF DISGUISE

  Lady C. Investigates: Book Four

  Issy Brooke

  Text copyright 2016 Issy Brooke

  All Rights Reserved

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Historical notes

  Chapter One

  Aberystwyth, West Wales, July 1846

  “I think that the danger has passed,” said Cordelia, Lady Cornbrook as she lifted up the heavy wooden sash window and looked out to the quiet street which lay three floors below. Hot air wafted into the room.

  “The danger that we might melt like a candle?” her lady’s maid said. Ruby did not look convinced by her mistress’s pronouncement. She was lying full-length on the floor, her arms spread out and her skirts bunched up at the front. Her stiffened petticoats made a hill of her mauve dress. “It is too late for me, my lady. I believe that I have expired from the heat.”

  “You are altogether too noisy a corpse,” Cordelia said.

  “I will be. I intend on haunting séances and lying to widows.”

  “What an ambition,” Cordelia said drily. She leaned her arms on the neatly-painted frame and inhaled the sea air. She considered making a remark about the refreshing tang of the ocean, but she knew that her maid was irritable and prone to speaking out of turn. Well, even more out of turn than usual. She would inevitably say something indelicate about fish, and Cordelia would have to discipline her, and then her bed would not be made up properly, out of spite. The cycle would continue downwards. And this was supposed to be a holiday, for all of them. As much of a holiday as servants could have, anyway, while still doing everything that was expected of them.

  “The evening draws on,” Cordelia said. “Come, we have not explored this town yet. We shall have a promenade along the front, and begin to soak up the atmosphere of … of … this place.”

  “You can’t say it, can you?” Ruby said, sitting up. Her cap was askew, hanging on to her tumbling blonde curls by a few pins. “You cannot pronounce Aberystwyth.” Ruby trilled the word out with confidence.

  “I am sure I could if I tried. But I am somewhat afraid of getting it wrong and accidentally insulting someone’s mother or ordering a hippopotamus in a shop or something. You know how it is.”

  Ruby struggled up to her feet and began to pin her hair back into place. She sighed. “Well, then, my lady. It does seem a little cooler now. But if this holiday continues as hot as it has been of late, then I fancy we shall have to become quite nocturnal.”

  “I wonder what night activities this town offers?”

  Ruby joined her at the window and looked out. Not a soul passed by on the narrow street below them. “I am not sure it has any activities by day or by night, my lady.”

  ***

  It was the end of July and the whole country had been labouring under a heatwave for many weeks. They had travelled from the south of England by train for most of the journey. Instead of the usual sight of green rolling fields, all the windows had shown an unremitting parade of parched brown and yellow crops, dusty roads and shimmering heat haze.

  Cordelia had chosen to come to the far west of Wales since her adventures a few months previously in London. It had been brought to her attention that she was not, in fact, very well-travelled. She knew that she harboured fanciful notions of what foreign people and places were like, and she wished to see for herself, and make up her own mind.

  A trip to the continent was tempting but she decided to start a little closer to home, by visiting Wales. It was, some people said, a separate country, distinct from England; others claimed it was not a country but a principality, and simply a region of Britain. Cordelia had studied some maps with varying borders and addendums, grown hopelessly confused, and given up. Whatever the people of the place decided that they were, was the correct answer, she thought. The best way to understand the place, she then decided, was from within. So she packed up her things, ordered a few of her staff to accompany her, and spent a few weeks using the postal service to book a suite of rooms in a respectable coaching inn that she had found listed in an up-to-date gazetteer.

  The railway had not yet penetrated to this edge of the county of Ceredigion, and the final miles of the journey had been tedious and rough in a hired coach driven by her own staff. When they had finally alighted the previous day, they had hastily eaten and retired to bed.

  Now Cordelia was feeling revived at last, after spending most of the day in a languid torpor fit for the most romantic of heroines in a terrible novel. She saw her coachman, Geoffrey, drinking in the taproom of the inn. She glimpsed him through the half-shaded window, but did not call to him. Of her stable boy Stanley, there was no sign, and she assumed he would either being talking to the horses in the inn’s yard, or praying somewhere. He was a God-fearing sort, and Geoffrey’s apprentice.

  Geoffrey preferred to worship in alehouses.

  Their inn was situated on a narrow side street that let out onto the main thoroughfare of the town, which was called Great Darkgate Street. Cordelia led Ruby that way. “I wonder where the great dark gate is?” Ruby said.

  The houses either side of them were tall and terraced, painted in bright colours. Many of them had shops at the ground floor, or were inns and public houses. “I suspect there is no gate,” Cordelia said. “It’s an old word for street.”

  “So this is Great Dark Street Street?”

  “Indeed. As Pendle Hill is hill-hill-hill in a succession of languages.”

  They walked on. The town was quiet. A few people passed by, carrying baskets on errands or dashing from work to home. Somewhere, a child was crying and a dog barking, but the loudest noise came from the seagulls wheeling overhead in a spiral of screaming white.

  They reached the end of the street and went over a crossroads. Up ahead they saw a building which, as they got closer, turned out to be the Reading, Billiard and Assembly Rooms. A handful of dark-jacketed men were in a group on the steps, talking with animation, but Cordelia could not make out a single word that was being said. They passed by, and then Cordelia nearly squealed in delight.

  “Oh! Look, a ruined castle.”

  Ruby sighed. “How wonderfully picturesque,” she said in a flat voice as they reached the site. “And also, how small. I don’t think this really qualifies as a castle, my lady.”

  “Of course it is. And what a magnificent backdrop!” Cordelia gazed out at the vast, flat ocean before them. “I fancy that I might see Ireland from here.”

  “I doubt it. I can see nothing.”

  �
�I see infinity. I see broad horizons, potential, mystery and hope. I see futures when I look upon a scene such as this, Ruby. Do you not see such things?”

  “Futures?” Ruby almost snorted with derision and Cordelia tore her eyes away from the achingly blue sea. Her maid, usually so bouncy and full of life, was standing with rounded shoulders and a down-turned cast to her mouth. “Oh, my lady. My future? It is as empty as that view.”

  “But you have a place with me. What concerns you? I shall never cast you off, you know. No matter how difficult you may be, or how much you vex me. No, Ruby, you may not fear. You will always be in service with me.”

  Ruby huffed and turned away, but it was not her usual huff. There was a sad and plaintive air of resignation to it.

  Cordelia shook her head even though her maid could not see her exasperation. What more could I say to reassure her, she thought with annoyance. I would do as much as I possibly could to ensure that my maid is happy. Yet she acts as if I am doing her a disservice!

  “The sky is not as clear as it was before,” Ruby said suddenly. She pointed out to the vast blueness where the horizon was simply a shading of one blue into another blue. “See. There are clouds lowering, and they seem fearfully dark.”

  “They do indeed. A storm would be welcome, would it not? It would clear the air.”

  They prowled around the ruins of the castle but it did not take long. There were only a few walls still standing and few were above head-height. “I had heard that Wales was full of glorious castles,” Ruby said. “I know I sound like a snob from the city, but I am unimpressed.”

  “I do not think it is the finest example, it is true,” Cordelia said. “But this town will simply serve as a base for our explorations. We can take a trip to Harlech, for example. I have seen prints of that place; it looks very … castle-y.”

  Aberystwyth Castle now concluded, they walked on, heading south. Although for many people, the working day was almost over, they found the docks to be teeming. It was a small yard, and devoted to ship building and its allied trades. Cordelia and Ruby found a vantage point on a slight rise, and watched men scurry to and fro, hollering and shouting at one another.

  A small ship was tied up against a wharf, and barrels were being unloaded, rolling down a narrow gangplank and stacked up in a pile. Others were being taken into one of the many warehouses that lined the dock area. Everyone worked swiftly, but with a great deal of loud banter that rolled along like the rumbling barrels.

  Cordelia heard the approach of a cart from the right. There was a well-dressed man sitting at the front, and walking beside the stout pony were two shabby poorer folk, both men, with lined faces. These were not bantering, nor laughing, nor appearing in any way to be enjoying their work like the ship yard men were.

  As they were only a few dozen feet away, she raised her gloved hand in greeting, and addressed a cheery, “Good day, sir!” to the man who was atop the cart.

  The man glanced her way but briefly. He had thick black eyebrows that met in the middle, and high cheekbones that gave his long face a triangular look.

  He turned away just as quickly, and spoke in a long barrage of Welsh to his men, who did not look Cordelia’s way. Instead they peeled away from him and began to sort through the piles of rubbish and refuse that were heaped up in corners. The man on the cart pulled the pony up short as another well-dressed man with a managerial air to his sharp walk approached the cart.

  There was a quick conversation, and money changed hands. The two poor men were busy loading the rubbish onto the cart, and soon they were coming back past Cordelia once more.

  “I say,” she said, quite affronted at the man’s rudeness. “It is a lovely evening, is it not?”

  He did not even look her way. He snarled, possibly to his men, possibly to his pony, possibly to Cordelia herself.

  “Well,” Cordelia said to Ruby as they stared at the man’s disappearing back. “I don’t think much to that. They say they want to make this into a fashionable destination. I would suggest they need to make the locals a little more welcoming.”

  “That is only one local,” Ruby pointed out. “He is not representative.”

  It was true that everyone else they had met, so far, had been wonderful and warm. Cordelia thought of their landlady, an indomitable character who had impressed Cordelia from the moment that she saw the woman’s immaculately coiffured hair, carefully co-ordinated gown, and wide selection of newspapers in the public rooms of the inn.

  “I wonder what Mrs Jones has for our meal tonight?” Cordelia wondered. “Let us get back. And I shall press her about that man, too.”

  “Ignore him,” Ruby said, but in vain.

  Cordelia had a habit of sticking to a matter. She considered it one of her better traits.

  Chapter Two

  The weather broke, all right. The following day opened to torrential rain. It came down in relentless sheets, and Cordelia took up refuge in one of the snugs in the inn. It was a small, private room that ladies — and others, who also needed privacy — could hire. The snugs in this inn let out into the saloon bar, which was a classy affair that catered for a better class of traveller. Even the inn’s poorer tap room was, according to Geoffrey, “a little above itself” and he had declared it too good for the likes of him. But due to the incessant rain, he could not find a rougher sort of pub, and he too was stuck in the inn. Stepping outside would earn one a drenching within moments.

  Although Cordelia did not venture into the downpour, others were not so reluctant. Cordelia gave up on trying to be as reserved as a lady ought to be, and she propped open the door from the snug to the saloon, the better able to people-watch — and to eavesdrop.

  She settled herself in the snug and awaited the arrival of Ruby, listening to the comings and goings of the people passing by. When, after half an hour, the maid had not appeared, Cordelia emerged into the saloon and put her head through to the tap room. The air was thick with smoke in there, and she could barely see. “Geoffrey? Stanley? Have you seen Ruby?”

  Geoffrey grunted a negative reply, and Stanley leaped to his feet and declared that he would go to search the maid out. He came back to Cordelia while she was still in the saloon bar, talking to a serving maid and ordering some food to be brought to the snug.

  “She isn’t there,” the lanky young man said in his usual stammer. “I’m sorry, my lady; there is no sign. Shall I go out for her?”

  “Do you know where to look for her?”

  Stanley went as red as the setting sun. He was like a heatwave of his very own. “My lady,” he replied.

  “That is not a reply.”

  He coughed and stared at the floor. “She went out this morning and she was dressed up nice,” he eventually managed to say.

  Cordelia laughed. “Oh, that was quick work of her!”

  “My lady, it isn’t right.”

  “No, I agree. It reflects badly on me as a mistress to allow my maid to be so free and loose.”

  “It reflects badly on her soul,” Stanley muttered.

  “Well, as to that, perhaps she doesn’t have one.”

  Stanley didn’t like joking about religion but nor could he bring himself to correct his mistress. The resulting conflict froze him rigid in an unhappy turmoil. Cordelia relented and dismissed him.

  The landlady of the inn was leaning on the bar, listening without shame. Her name was Angharad Jones, and she was a stout, tall widow with a wide smile and an elegance to her way of dressing that would have looked very well in London. “Your maid is a bright thing indeed,” she said in her lilting way.

  “She is, and a hussy besides. Usually she is not so swift in her matching, however. Lately she has been … secretive.”

  “Servants are.”

  “No, more so than usual. Something troubles her, perhaps.”

  “Is she…?” Mrs Jones said, raising one eyebrow in a way that all women discussing such matters would immediately understand. Is she pregnant?

  “No, n
o,” Cordelia said, and she felt sad as she explained. “With her history and her carryings-on, if not by now, then never, I should say.”

  Mrs Jones fell silent for a respectful moment. “And so it is a life in service for her, is it?”

  “Indeed it is.”

  The door to the street blasted open and a small man dodged in, shaking himself in a cloud of droplets before coming to the bar. He spoke in Welsh to Mrs Jones, who answered in a rat-a-tat spray before calling to one of her serving lads and sending him into the kitchen.

  “Do most people speak Welsh here?” Cordelia asked. “For it certainly seems that way.”

  “They do,” Mrs Jones said. “And there are some who can only speak it. If you go north, into the hills, you will find many who speak nothing but the language of heaven. To the south, though, and the east, they are moving to English and I do hear that in some of the schools, they are even punished for speaking Welsh!”

  “Surely not. That is criminal.”

  “I tell you the truth, now. But here we are a proud people and we will hold to our own.”

  “Very good,” said Cordelia. “Are there some who can, perhaps, speak English but choose not to?”

  Mrs Jones pursed her lips. “There are fools everywhere,” she said, which Cordelia took to mean “yes.”

  Cordelia pressed on. “Yesterday, we went walking to the harbour and looked at the ships there.”

  “Tan-y-cae, that is.”

  “Tan — uh, yes, there. We saw a man riding a cart with two other men alongside and though I did greet him, and I would swear that he understood me, he ignored me, and it was surprisingly rude. The men with him were collecting rubbish. Who was that?”

  The serving lad emerged from the kitchen carrying a bowl of what seemed to be hot stew or soup and passed it to the man who had come in from the rain. The man paused before he took the bowl, wrapping the ends of his sleeves over his hands so that he did not burn himself. He looked up at Mrs Jones, who shook her head sadly, and said to Cordelia, “That would be Davies y Sbwriel, that would. Dafydd Davies. He’s the Scavenger.”