by M C Beaton
Mrs. Budley had thought that with such an army of servants there would be little for them all to do except supervise, but the preparations were so lavish that they found they had to work as hard as their servants. Despard was sweating in the kitchens, his white and twisted face hovering over steaming pots like a demon, while Lady Fortescue and the colonel sipped and tasted. “He has excelled himself,” whispered Lady Fortescue to the colonel.
“Don’t tell him,” muttered the colonel, “or he’ll ask for more wages.”
Lady Stanton, too, arose early. Normally, as she had the Marquess of Peterhouse in her sights, she would have slept late in order to be completely fresh and rested for the ball. She had met Charles Manderley at the opera the night before and he had told her that he and the marquess would be there. She planned to look her best and see if she could snare him. But she had a plan other than trapping the marquess, and that was revenge on the poor relations.
So she was in her still-room brewing up an infusion of senna pods. She intended to introduce the resulting concoction into some part of the menu. The guests would cry poisoning and the staff of that hotel would be ruined.
She had sent one of her footmen round to the Hitchcocks with the present of a box of chocolates for Mrs. Hitchcock. When there, he had his instructions to visit the kitchens and find out what was on the menu.
She looked up from her efforts as her butler appeared in the door of the still-room. “Jack, the second footman, has returned, my lady,” he said.
“Send him in here,” she ordered curtly.
Soon the footman was standing at her elbow. “You found out what I wanted?” she asked.
“Yes, my lady. I have a list here. I memorized it and then wrote it down as soon as I had left the house.”
“Very well. I have a further job for you.” She carefully poured the brew into a blue glass bottle. Then she scanned the list. “Ah, turtle soup, the very thing. I want you to take this bottle and return to the Hitchcocks this evening. You got to know some of the servants there?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“Then you will accompany me. As soon as I am at the ball, you will go back to the kitchens and try to introduce the contents of this bottle into the soup. You will earn five guineas for your trouble.”
The footman caught his breath. Five guineas was a magnificent sum. She fished in the pocket of the long apron she wore. “Here is a crown for you for this morning’s trouble. You will not fail me?”
“No, my lady.”
She stoppered the bottle and handed it to him. “See you do not.”
The footman, Jack, gave her a dog-like worshipping look and she gave him a slight smile of approval. “You may take the rest of the day off.”
Jack, puffed up with the importance of his mission, made his way out to the London streets. Free time was a luxury. Legitimate free time, that was. Footmen spent a great part of their days in nervous idleness, because their role was more ornamental than functional, waiting for their master or mistress to summon them, and that involved hanging about the hall or the kitchens. To be at liberty and out in the London streets was like being out of prison. The day was sunny and mild, with a stiff breeze to blow away the pall of smoke and the smells of the London streets. He squared his shoulders and strode purposefully in the direction of the Running Footman, a pub much frequented by servants, just off Berkeley Square. He was a tall, handsome young man, lately come up from the country, and his height and looks had quickly secured him a position. In his plush livery, he appeared an imposing figure but inside his head there still lived a country boy, and his mind still gawped at the wonders of the Town although his face had already become permanently set in what he considered an awe-inspiring sneer.
The tavern was crowded although it was still morning, for that was when the other footmen were supposed to be about their duties, delivering cards from masters who did not wish to call in person on the misses they had danced with the night before, gilt-edged invitations, flowers, poems and gifts. And so they each took the opportunity to drop in to the Running Footman to meet their cronies.
The first remark that greeted Jack caught him on the raw. “Here’s our bumpkin,” cried Lord Ritcher’s footman, a tall, thin man who was jealous of young newcomers to the footman scene.
Jack subsided languidly into a chair opposite. “Bumpkin yourself,” he drawled in a Londonized voice through which patches of country burr still surfaced like dark patches on a badly powdered footman’s head. “I am out on a secret mission.”
Another, kinder, footman laughed indulgently. “You’ll get used to those secret missions, my friend. My lady wishes to set up a flirt, that is all, but they go on about it as if one were carrying secrets to the French.”
Jack shrugged and called for a pint of shrub. “Nothing like that, no,” he said languidly. “Certainly it is more in the line of carrying secrets to the French.”
A butler who had been passing their table heard this and stopped short. “Hey, young fellow, if you are playing traitor, I’ll have you in the Tower.”
“No,” said Jack, alarmed. “Nothing like that. Englishman to the bone, that’s me.”
“In other words, even his brain-box is English,” sneered Lord Richter’s footman.
Jack relapsed into a sulky silence, but the curiosity of the others at his table had been well and truly whetted and their curiosity spread to the other patrons of the Running Footman. Soon Jack was being plied with drinks. He was sharp enough to know the reason for this generous hospitality, and although he felt a trifle unsteady on his legs when he left, he congratulated himself that he had kept his mouth shut and went back to put his head under the pump and to drink a pot of coffee.
“So that’s what I heard,” finished the page from the Poor Relation. He was closeted with Sir Philip in a small ante-room off the Hitchcocks’s hall.
“Wait a bit,” said Sir Philip. “Begin at the beginning, Tom, and let’s have it again.”
The white-faced little page crinkled up his face in concentration. Although eleven years old, he already had that ancient knowing face of most London children. “Big Jack, sir, is footman to Lady Stanton.”
“Yes, I remember her,” said Sir Philip. “Nasty. Very nasty.”
“He starts bragging about how he’s on a secret and dangerous mission,” said Tom. “They all buy him drinks to see if they can loosen his tongue but he keeps dropping dark hints and patting the left-hand pocket of his coat as if to make sure some-thing valuable is still there but never says nothing that makes sense.”
“Damme, boy, I wonder what it was.”
Tom grinned and thrust a hand into his short jacket pocket and brought out a blue glass bottle. “This, mayhap,” he said. “I picked his pocket.”
“Did you now? Stick by me, lad, and you’ll go far.” Sir Philip held out his hand. “Give it here.”
Tom handed it over. Sir Philip sniffed it and made a face. He had been familiar with that smell during his last bout of constipation. He stoppered the bottle up and said, “Wait here.”
He darted off and studied the guest-list in the library. There was Lady Stanton’s name. It was a long shot, but it could be that Lady Stanton meant to disgrace the poor relations by giving society a good dose of what was euphemistically referred to as the backyard trot. On the other hand, she could have sent her footman out to the apothecary and the silly footman could have considered his lady’s bowels as a matter of great delicacy and secrecy.
He went back to the page. “Just in case, Tom, I want you to wait until I change the contents of this bottle. I want you to take it back and leave it on the floor of the Running Footman hard by where this Jack was sitting.”
Sir Philip then went to the still-room, poured the contents out of the blue bottle into an identical one, washed out Lady Stanton’s bottle and filled it with plain water, and then returned and gave it to Tom, who sped off.
He almost collided in the doorway of the Running Footman with an agitated Jack who had
just discovered that the precious bottle was missing. “Looking for something?” asked Tom.
“I lost a little bottle here a while ago,” said Jack, walking into the tap and beginning to search around the area of floor where he had been sitting.
“Would this be it?” asked Tom, holding up the substitute bottle.
Jack seized it, his face crimson with relief. “You are a good lad,” he said. “Here’s a penny for you.”
Tom took the penny. “Best be off,” he said. “At the Hitchcocks’s getting ready for tonight. Lots to do.”
“I shall probably see you there,” said Jack, made chatty by relief. Normally he would have considered a page—and a hotel page at that—beneath him. “I am escorting my lady but will visit the kitchens or the servants’ hall.”
“My masters have high hopes of this evening,” said Tom. “The food is fit for a king. Better, in fact. I doubt if His Majesty himself has tasted finer.”
“There’s to be turtle soup?” asked Jack with an awful stagy casualness.
“Of course,” said Tom.
“I’m ever so partial to turtle soup myself,” said Jack. “Might see if I can get a sip before it goes upstairs.”
“I’ll wait for the leftovers as usual,” remarked Tom, his sharp little eyes scanning the footman’s face.
“Wouldn’t touch the soup afterwards,” said Jack earnestly.
“Why?”
“Cos turtle soup goes on the turn after a few hours … like cream.”
“Never heard o’ that one.”
“Sure as sure. I’ve taken a liking to you, boy. Leave the soup alone.”
“And that’s what he said,” reported Tom to Sir Philip half an hour later.
“So she’s up to her old tricks,” mused Sir Philip. “Well, well, we’ll see what we can do.”
Mrs. Budley and Miss Tonks found they had little time to get dressed that evening. Lady Fortescue and the colonel seemed to have been overcome by a sort of perfectionist desperation. Glasses which had been washed in soap and water and polished with a soft cloth were not considered shiny enough, and so she and Miss Tonks had been sent to the still-room to prepare a glass polish by making a paste of calcined magnesia and purified benzine, and when that was ready, it was to be applied to every glass and they all had to be polished again.
Like Lady Macbeth trying to get the damned spot out, Mrs. Budley scented her hands, but the smell of benzine seemed to cling to her skin. But at last she was ready and dressed in the new jaconet gown and with the silk flowers in her hair.
“You cannot possibly wear that!” screeched Miss Tonks.
Mrs. Budley paused in the doorway. “Why?”
Miss Tonks blushed delicately. “You have fine shoulders, Eliza, but you are showing too much of them.”
Mrs. Budley ran to the long glass. The low neckline exposed the top halves of her breasts. Yes, it was a trifle low but there was no time to change. The first guests would soon be arriving.
Lady Stanton had reverted to her more dashing style of dress with a view to catching the eye of the eligible marquess. It was an age when fashion was based on the draping of Greek statuary: the minimum of clothes was still the fashion, causing one country girl to report on London ladies: “They ran about with hardly any clothes on them and their faces painted red.” In fact, so red were the faces and so grand the feathered headdresses that often society women presented the appearance of some strange bejewelled aboriginal tribe. At the opera house, an experiment had been tried of posting doormen there for the express purpose of banning prostitutes, but the operation was cancelled after so many ladies of the ton had been refused entry.
Not that Lady Stanton seemed particularly naked, for she had covered every visible part of her body in thick white lead. Like a number of her peers, all expression on her face had to be shown in the eyes. One could not dare laugh or grimace for fear of causing cracks to run across the mask of white lead.
Lady Stanton was trusting to her footman to deal with the humiliation of the poor relations. She knew from past experience that to try to humiliate one of them in public would bring the malice of Sir Philip down on her head.
Although escorted to the ball by Mr. Jasper Brackley, she planned to disengage herself from him as soon as she arrived. She wanted to advertise to the marquess that she was fancy-free.
Jack, the footman, was on the backstrap and had whispered that he had the bottle ready. It never crossed his simple mind that he might be doing something very wrong. Like Sir Philip, he had recognized the smell of senna pods and thought Lady Stanton merely meant to play a trick on society. He adored her. He thought that she was showing an endearingly puckish sense of humour.
No sooner had they arrived than Lady Stanton gave him a quick nod. His heart sang. Her escort, Mr. Jasper Brackley, was looking at her curiously. It is our secret, thought Jack triumphantly.
He ran lightly down the area steps to the kitchens, which were in an uproar. How easy it was to fall into conversation with the kitchen servants. How miraculous that no one seemed to be looking his way when he lifted the great silver lid of the soup tureen and emptied the contents of that bottle into the turtle soup.
He had slain a dragon for his lady.
Mrs. Budley was serving negus. Several of the matrons had been her friends in the past, but all affected not to know her. She had been prepared for this but it still made her long to throw the glasses of hot wine in their stupid faces.
In fact, she now regarded the whole of society with a jaundiced eye. A group of pinks of the ton were clustered around the champagne fountain, quaffing tankards of the stuff and laughing uproariously at a beefy-looking Corinthian who was holding forth.
His voice clearly reached Mrs. Budley’s ears.
“After giving a view holloa we ran off with the Charlies in full cry after us, when Sir George, who had purposely provided himself with a long cord, gave me one end and ran to the opposite end of jermyn Street with the other in his hand holding it two feet above the pavement. The old Scouts came up in droves, and we had ’em down in a moment, for every mother’s son of the guardians was caught in the trap, and rolled over each other, slap into the kennel. Never was such a prime bit of gig! One old buck got his jawbone broken; another staved in two of his crazy timbers, that is his ribs; a third bled from the nose like a pig; a fourth squinted admirably from a pair of painted peepers. Their number however increasing, we divided our forces and marched in opposite directions. Our party sallied along Bond Street, nailed up a nosy Charlie in his box and bolted with his lantern. The others weren’t so fortunate, for the baronet’s brother and his friends were safely lodged in St. James’s Watch House.”
This description of tormenting the watchmen, who were mostly elderly, was greeted with whoops of delight from the listeners. Then the laughter died and all the men round the fountain stared avidly towards the door. Lady Stanton came sailing in.
Mrs. Budley’s first thought was: How can I attract any man like Peterhouse with such women as this around?
Lady Stanton’s muslin gown was so fine that it was like gauze and worn over a pink silk underdress and pink silk stockings, also so fine that they gave the naughty impression that she was wearing nothing underneath. Her heavy gold hair was ornamented with dyed ostrich feathers in rainbow colours. She had the height to carry such a headdress and she moved with a languid grace. She approached the fountain and then stood laughing as the men each rushed to fill a glass and hold it out to her.
“Lady Stanton,” muttered the colonel in her ear. Mrs. Budley looked at her with renewed interest. This then was the lady who had been Harriet James’s rival. She herself had never seen her before, as the trouncing of Lady Stanton had taken place in the hotel dining-room, where Mrs. Budley was rarely expected to be on duty.
And then, with a lurch of her heart, she saw the marquess standing in the doorway, magnificent in evening dress, accompanied by a tall friend.
Charles Manderley, for it was he, immediately
joined the courtiers around Lady Stanton. The marquess walked forward to join him. Lady Stanton glowed at him, her feathered fan waving to and fro, the largeness of her eyes emphasized with kohl. Charles Manderley said something and took her arm to lead her forward and introduce her.
And then the marquess saw Mrs. Budley. He crossed to the table where she was serving negus, and to the amazement of the ladies gossiping about the table and holding glasses of the hot mixture, he made a low bow and said, “Your servant, Mrs. Budley.”
She swept a low curtsy. “My lord. It is indeed a pleasure to see you again.”
“What are you doing here?” he asked, puzzled. “Are you a friend of Mrs. Hitchcock?”
“No, my lord. Mr. and Mrs. Hitchcock have engaged the services of the Poor Relation for this evening.”
“Do you need to do such a menial task yourself?” he asked, finding himself growing angry. He looked about him. “There seem to be plenty of waiters and footmen.”
“Part of the deal is that we serve the guests ourselves. Do you wish a glass of negus, my lord?”
“No, I do not.” He looked curiously at the others. That must be Lady Fortescue, the one who was handing a glass of wine to a young buck with such hauteur that he was actually stammering out nervous thanks, and the tall old gentleman beside her was surely Colonel Sandhurst. Sir Philip he recognized despite that awful wig, and the thin, nervous female of indeterminate years with “spinster” and “poor relation” stamped all over her must be Miss Tonks.
He turned his attention back to Mrs. Budley. She was a servant, and if he stood much longer talking to her, it would occasion comment. And yet, he was reluctant to leave. He had thought her a pretty and amiable lady, but now she looked alluring, with the well-cut gown showing those stunning breasts. In fact, the effect of those white mounds, partly revealed by the low neckline of the gown, combined with the open innocence in her eyes, was strangely seductive.
