Euphemia and the Unexpected Enchantment

  The Fentons, Book 3

Alicia Cameron

Dedication

To Alan,

the personal assistant who doesn’t get paid.

©Alicia Cameron, 2019 The author’s rights have been asserted. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real events is coincidental

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Prologue

Lady Aurora Fenton was in her bed, involved in taking little snippets from her breakfast tray, whilst reading some letters that had arrived for her. She was a beauty of indeterminate age, swathed in a frothy lace concoction (surely from Paris) and known as one of the most fashionable ladies in London. Her days as the keeper of a house of cards had accustomed her to late hours, and she found it hard to dress before 11 of the clock. Her husband, a trim elegant figure, in a fashionable dark suit but with an added gold silk waistcoat, which might have belonged to another age, re-entered her chamber, and perched on the bed to steal from her coffee cup and breakfast dainties. Since he had left her chamber a mere hour ago, she had, of course, made some subtle changes to her appearance. Her hair, though still falling on her shoulders in the same torrent that he had so recently let fall through his fingers, had been dressed at the front, her lace peignoir assumed over her delicate shoulders, and perhaps the merest touch of colour applied to the cheeks. She looked, as usual, the most desirable woman in the world, and Mr Wilbert Fenton, so long a rake, could never stop giving thanks for his luck in marrying her.

‘Oh, Wilbert, Miss Fleet has written to say she has quit the London house to travel to Durant at last!’

‘Felicity home! No doubt,’ he drawled, ‘you have arranged for us to go to Durant at the earliest possibility.’

‘Well, of course! And you need not pretend that you are not just as eager to see our dear girl as I am.’

‘I hope Miss Fleet is not embarrassed by the newlyweds.’ Fenton said, nibbling on a slice of apple. ‘If like us, they are apt not to want interruption.’

‘She lived very happily with them in London. Felicity told me she was discretion itself.’

‘I’m sure she was, poor little soul. And she’ll be happier with Felicity than with the dreadful Lady Ellingham.’ Mr Fenton now nibbled his wife’s fingers, which that lady regarded with indulgence.

‘She could hardly,’ Lady Aurora said, reminiscently, ‘be less.’

Chapter 1

A loud and booming voice shouted ‘Pollock!’ and an unnaturally tall and imposing figure entered the inn taproom, dipping his head to enter, then blocking the light from the entire doorframe.

‘Oh!’ cried a timid little lady, dropping her chocolate over the bodice of her best, if rather dull, grey poplin gown. The giant stopped and regarded both her and the large stain that was spreading over the front of her dress. She was a very small, slight lady of perhaps forty years, with a thin face that was given light by the enormous brown eyes that filled most of it. For the rest, her lips were a trifle thin, her nose of no particular interest, her hair an undistinguished brown pulled back into a simple knot and adorned by the plainest of muslin caps, with only some pin-tucks to give it shape.

‘Where’s Pollock?’ he demanded, his eyes firing at her from beneath beetle brows. He was around fifty years, if she was any judge, and it was a striking rather than handsome face. A shock of wiry hair around his dark features. Deep set dark eyes dominated his strong square face, making him look like the villain from one of her favourite Gothic novels. His large frame and barrel chest was further exaggerated by the many-caped driving coat he wore. His cravat was carelessly knotted, his boots dusty. He was like a once fashionable man gone to seed.

Urged to speak, the lady seemed embarrassed not to be able to help him. ‘Is — is that the name of the proprietor? I’m afraid, sir, that I do not know.’ Distractedly, she dabbed at her dress with her napkin, with little effect.

The massive man looked down at her pursuit. ‘What happened to your dress?’

‘It … it is nothing, sir.’

‘Did I make you jump? My niece is forever saying I should lower my voice.’ He looked down at the stain once more. ‘You should change your dress.’ This was issued in the same commanding tone, which made her jump again.

‘I cannot. But mayhap I can dab away…’

‘No other dress?’

She wished he would not shout so. ‘No,’ she excused herself. ‘You see, I am travelling to my friend’s house with only my night things, for my trunk has been sent ahead.’

‘You cannot travel in that—’ he indicated her dress, to her intense mortification, saying so at a volume that she was surprised did not raise the house. But the tap boy seemed to have disappeared, and the inn, at this early hour, was remarkably deserted. They were quite alone. ‘Come with me!’

‘I … I—’

He had turned and reached the double doors to the taproom, which were left open, then turned back to her. ‘Come!’ he ordered.

The lady automatically jumped to her feet, and followed meekly, picking up her cloak and bonnet as she did so. Very few steps took her to his side and he looked down at her appraisingly. ‘As I thought, your shoulders at my waist…’ She thought she saw a tear in his eye, but he began to walk again, and she ran after him, taking three steps for the giant’s every one. She put on her bonnet as they left the inn, and flew her cloak over her shoulders as they walked. A high-perch phaeton stood in the yard and when he had reached it, the giant turned and made a bow. ‘The name is Balfour. May I know yours?’

‘I am Miss Fleet.’ And so saying, the little lady made a curtsy.

‘Now that we are introduced,’ he said, grasping her by the waist, and lifting her into the phaeton. She gasped and shook even more, holding onto the side of the carriage. ‘Never been in a high-perch number, eh?’ he said, in a booming voice she supposed was meant to be heartening. ‘Hold on and it won’t kill you.’ He jumped in beside her (his weight causing her to bounce on the seat) and released the reins.

Miss Fleet, adjusting her grey bonnet with dignity, said quietly but firmly, ‘I have been a passenger in the Viscount Durant’s high-perch phaeton on many occasions.’ Her bravery overtook her, and she trembled once more.

‘Ho! So you know Sebastian?’ said the man called Balfour, manoeuvring the horses through the tall inn-yard gates.

‘I am travelling to his home.’

The man was kept occupied by a cart coming out precipitately from a farm road. Once they had gotten around it and no wheels had ended in a ditch, Miss Fleet made a shy enquiry.

‘Excuse me sir, but where are you taking me, and for what reason?’

The man gave a shout of laughter. ‘You should ask that before you get into a carriage with a fellow, not after.’

‘I did not precisely get into the carriage—’ she protested. Then she seemed to tremble again. ‘I beg your pardon.’

He took a second to look down at her, and the big harsh face seemed to be laughing. ‘For what, pray?’

‘I … I—’ she could not think of precisely why. ‘For my impertinence,’ she ventured.

He laughed uproariously. ‘Oh, mighty impertinent you are.’ He wiped a hand over streaming eyes. ‘You should strive to rein in your impertinence at all costs.’ He slapped his knee at his own good joke, and then he made a turn with the phaeton and began to make his way to a tidy manor house a half-mile in the distance.

Miss Fleet clutched at her reticule, glancing sideways at the edifice. The man, not the manor house.

A groom ran forward to grasp the reins as they reached the house, and the tall front door was already open, a liveried servant in attendance. Her companion jumped down and while Miss Fleet was deciding how she might make an attempt with dignity, he was at her side reaching for her waist again, and she had the heady feeling of being swung down without her volition once more. He looked down at her.

‘A little pocket Venus!’ he whispered.

Miss Fleet looked up at him with her very large eyes, hardly believing her ears, but trembling never the less.

‘Oh, not you!’ he muttered and let her go, walking up the steps to his manor, and greeting the dogs who ran to his side.

Miss Fleet followed, at a pace, but with a wary eye on the dogs.

As she caught up with him, she heard him say to the footman. ‘Send for Evans! And bring some refreshments to the blue room.’

‘The blue room sir?’

‘Yes!’ he fairly shouted. ‘The blue room.’

‘Your Lordship!’ The footman bowed in an apologetic fashion.

The room whose door he opened was indeed blue, with pale blue silk on the walls, and on the upholstery of the delicately wrought furniture set about the room. In her enchantment, Miss Fleet stopped on the threshold, quite forgetting to be terrified. It was a lady’s sitting room, she thought, but quite the prettiest she had ever seen. It was of a modest size, a little larger than merely cosy, with one big window of perhaps sixty panes taking up the middle of a wall, and the most heavenly curtains at the windows: on a blue ground, humming birds of every possible hue flew around. The furniture was trimmed in gilt, two elegant chairs, one considerably larger than the other, sat on each side of a charming fireplace, an escritoire was on one wall near the window, with everything a lady might want to write with, and to add to the perfection, a white-painted and gilded harpsichord was on the other side of the room. The ceiling was high, of course, and some cherubs held up each corner, and clustered around the ceiling rose.

‘How lovely!’ she sighed, despite herself.

She noted then that he had stopped, seemingly stranded in the middle of the Chinese carpet, and he looked around saying, ‘Well. Well! Yes, well, well!’ as though he did not know quite what to say. He too seemed to be looking around the room, and he put his hand to his chest as though in pain.

Miss Fleet ran forward, touching his arm and guiding him to the larger of the two chairs by the empty fireplace. ‘Sit, sir!’ she said, ‘Please, you are not well.’

‘Nonsense!’ he barked. ‘I am very well.’ But he sat nevertheless, dropping precariously onto the chair, which no longer looked large.

‘May I ring for some water? Is there perhaps some medicine …?’

‘You are eye to eye with me now …’ he seemed to look at her from a great distance, ‘and your voice is as soft as mine is loud …’

It was like the moment when he had said those strange words to her outside. He was not really speaking to her.

‘You sent for me, sir?’ said a stentorian voice, and Miss Fleet turned quickly, jumping at the tone. It reminded her, in tone if not in accent, of the terrible Lady Ellingham, to whom she had been a companion until very lately. So swiftly did she turn that she almost fell over, but a large steadying hand righted her. She had been touched by male hand more in the last hour than in any time since the death of her papa.

The maid, because thus she undoubtedly was, stood very tall in the doorway with her hands crossed before her.

‘Take this lady, Miss … eh… Fleet, to Her Ladyship’s room and give her the blue muslin.’

‘Her Ladyship’s gowns are packed, my lord,’ said the tall maid with a sour look.

His Lordship stood up. ‘Then unpack them, Evans, and help the lady change. Then see to her dress.’

‘Very well, sir,’ said the maid and turned saying, ‘this way, miss!’

Miss Fleet followed her, since she could not for the moment think what else to do. His Lordship’s burst of anger seemed to have brought him back to himself, so she had no qualms in leaving him. She wished to protest that it was not at all necessary, but she did not wish to disagree with him in front of his servant.

The maid led the way up a broad staircase, emanating displeasure. Miss Fleet was almost overpowered by it, but tried to straighten her back. If her dear Felicity could face such outright aggression as she had in the last year before her engagement to Viscount Durant, when the dreadful, untrue rumours had been spread, then so would she. She was no longer Lady Ellingham’s unpaid companion, she was a friend and (albeit distant) relation to a viscountess and possessed an exorbitant sum of money in her reticule given to her by the viscount before he left upon his wedding trip. It was given to allow her to make any purchases she might want and to order a chaise-and-four, as she was to join them (after the two months of the trip) on their country estate. But a chaise-and-four was hardly necessary, she had felt. She was used to the stage, and she could not think of anything she needed to buy beyond some toiletries for the journey. She had been left in their London house in the interim, with servants to see to her every comfort – most especially enjoined so to do by the new viscountess. This gentle treatment had, she supposed, beefed up her spirits a little, for she resolved not to be beaten by a sour face. She had seen a great many sour faces in her previous existence, and no doubt she could cope.

She thought, too, about the dresses being packed up. Was Lady Balfour to go on a trip? But no, Miss Fleet believed, by some little things that she had observed, that perhaps Lady Balfour had recently died.

Evans opened the door to a bedchamber quite as charming as the sitting room. She went directly to a carved wooden box, searched through the tissue paper layers, and found a blue muslin gown, which she shook out.

‘I cannot wear that!’ said Miss Fleet. ‘It is too lovely…’ She had considered the looking for a dress rather doomed as she had climbed the stairs. Unless there was a full paper of pins to be used, her height made it quite impossible for the lending of dresses that her dear Felicity had suggested. (‘Never mind, Euphemia,’ as the viscountess now called her, ‘we’ll have some made up when we reach home.’) But as she looked at the dress before her, a figured muslin in the same blue as the sitting room, over a satin slip, Miss Fleet felt it beyond her position entirely. The detailed embroidery on the bodice, the sleeves and around the hem made it a very expensive, but still simple gown.

‘She did look lovely in it.’

There was a wistfulness in the maid’s tone that made Miss Fleet ask, ‘Her Ladyship is dead?’

‘The baroness died these two years since.’

She did not speak again, but her demeanour as she untied Miss Fleet’s laced back and removed her stained but sturdy poplin, causing the heavenly blue to fall over her head, let Miss Fleet know how undeserving of the dress she was. But she was astonished to see herself in the mirror when she wore it. She looked … different. Not a poor relation anymore. She had not let her dear Felicity buy her clothes, though Mrs Aurora Fenton, acting as Felicity’s guardian, had insisted on having her outfitted for the wedding, at least. That dress, though lovely, Miss Fleet had insisted be quite plain, like herself. This dress was made for a Lady of the Manor.

And what is more, beyond the need for a pin or two at the side of her bodice, (for she knew herself to be preternaturally thin) it fitted her precisely. Her serviceable but now very plain-looking boots poked beneath the hemline just the right amount.

The maid looked down too. ‘The boots are stained, too, miss. You’d best give them to me. She moved to another coffer where she lifted some cream satin slippers. ‘These might do, miss.’ While these would complete the outfit, the tone was still hostile. Miss Fleet wondered ghoulishly if there were poisoned needles inside and the maid was in a plot to kidnap her. But she was no young girl to be kidnapped for either money or beauty. She took them therefore, just because the pearls sewn above the toes needed to be caressed. ‘They will not do for travelling,’ she said, with as straight a back as she could muster, ‘so I must not wear them. How beautiful they are.’

‘Her Ladyship herself stitched the tops, and I simply put them together.’

‘But the stitching is very fine, Evans. Very fine.’

‘I’ll get your boots and dress in an hour, miss,’ said Evans, in a rather gentler voice. ‘Just you put these on.’

But Miss Fleet’s feet were rather smaller than the mistress’s, and Evans had to stuff the toes with cotton, which made it just possible to keep them on. ‘I could attach a ribbon, miss, er,’

‘Fleet. I am Miss Fleet.’

‘Miss Fleet. If you thought you was — were — going to fall in them.’

‘No. I don’t suppose I shall. It seems a shame to spoil them with a ribbon.’

Evans stood, brushing at her apron. ‘As to that, Miss Fleet. It is nice to see them worn again.’ Her voice caught. ‘From the back, you could almost be—’

‘Thank you Evans. I’m sorry I — thank you.’ And Miss Fleet made her way to the blue salon once more, walking carefully in the too-large slippers.

She hesitated before she entered. She had left the maid with tears in her eyes — what might she do to the husband? But a mirror next to the door saved her, for reflected in it was a portrait that hung behind her, glimpsed through the doors of a grander salon. Miss Fleet turned, and glided towards the portrait. It was of a young woman wearing the fashions of thirty years ago.  In a sylvan setting, wearing a frothy muslin gown, much fuller than those of today, the young beauty sat in an enormous brimmed straw hat with broad yellow ribbons caught under her chin in a charming bow. She had startling, naughty blue eyes, and her blond curls were wide beneath her bonnet, then coaxed into a ringlet over one shoulder. Her gaze was both challenging and merry, her stature diminutive, and one tiny, lazy hand played with a pup’s ear as others gambolled around her. A pocket Venus indeed. Euphemia Fleet felt a tug of sorrow for the man who now awaited her in the blue salon, at losing not just such a beauty, but such a force of life. She stopped worrying that she would conjure up his beloved too well. Yes, the inhabited dress might cause him pause, but she was no beauty. She turned away, back towards the blue room. As she raised her hand to tap at the door before she entered, she glanced in the mirror once more. It was as if Her Ladyship was urging her on.

He had been sitting in the grand blue chair as she left him, and so she found him once more: one hand at his chest, looking deep into the flames of a fire that now burned cheerily in the grate. His breaths rasped and were shallow, but he looked up as she entered, and he stood, his eyes alight, clutching at his chest again. ‘My lady!’ his other enormous arm reached for her, and he collapsed into the chair.

‘You are unwell,’ said Miss Fleet, gliding towards him hurriedly. There was a sweat on his brow as she touched it, and she hardly knew she had taken the liberty. She loosened his cravat, then rang a bell, which was almost instantly answered by a hall footman in green livery. It seemed as though the baron could not breathe. She was bent over the giant and his lips were forming something that she had to lower herself to hear.

‘Her gown. You look so like in figure, so like…’

‘Yes, but it is only her gown, not she. Hush now—’ she turned to the servant, ‘Your master is ill—’ she began.

‘Begging your pardon miss, but I’ll just fetch his draught.’

‘Yes. Do that first.’

The giant was saying more. His voice came in hoarse tones, just audible as she was so near. ‘Lady Balfour was so beautiful in that gown, so lovely in everything she did. You move like her.’

‘I’m honoured. But I don’t think it does you good to think of it just now. Close your eyes, and breathe deeply.’ His breath had become shallower and laboured, and she looked around the room for some water that she might apply to his brow.

A neat man hurried in, carrying what Miss Fleet sincerely hoped was His Lordship’s draught. He poured it, hardly looking at her, and forced the milky liquid down his throat.

‘Dammit Tinder!’ Miss Fleet was glad to hear that his complaint was nearly at his normal volume.

‘Sir! I thought you unconscious!’

‘No, merely obeying Miss Fleet’s adjuration to close my eyes. She is afraid I’ll be undone by the sight of her in the blue gown.’ He grinned toward Miss Fleet, who was hovering on the other side. ‘Do tell her that these attacks are unforeseeable,’ he said to Tinder. ‘Though the sight of her is enough to raise the senses.’ He smiled at her then, in a different way, a way that no man had ever — was he flirting with her? It seemed flirting of an advanced kind, for though his face was only now regaining its colour, the lazy smile was one that she had seen on Viscount Durant’s face as he indicated he wished to be alone with Felicity, his viscountess. It had made her blush to see, though naturally she had affected not to notice, and to have business elsewhere in the house. But now the colour washed over her face in the hottest blush she had ever known.

But this too was addressed to a memory, she reminded herself, not to her.

‘You should rest, sir,’ said the small valet in his knee breeches and neat cutaway coat, throwing Miss Fleet a rather jealous glance. ‘Are you well enough to let us take you to your room?’

‘No, Tinder. Leave me.’

‘Bring some water, some flannel, and a little brandy, if you please,’ ordered Miss Fleet gently.

He had closed his eyes again, and now looked up at her. ‘If that’s for me, I’ll allow you to tend me only if you will sit in the other chair afterwards.’

‘I cannot!’ she protested, ‘I really must go. My coach leaves the inn at noon.’ But the valet pulled on her sleeve.

‘It’s best to agree with him and keep him calm, miss, after an attack,’ he whispered. ‘If he gets upset, then it can flare up again.’ Aloud, he said. ‘I will bring back your brandy, my lord. But just a glass to sip, mind.’

‘And I interrupted the lady’s refreshments at the inn, bring something, Tinder.’

‘I—’ she began.

‘Do not say me nay.’ He closed his eyes and smiled again. ‘I said that to my lady once.’

The brandy and flannel were brought, and Tinder set a footstool for his master, taking off his massive boots with remarkable efficiency. It was apparent that the giant did not favour the skin-tight mode of today’s fashion. Miss Fleet was not used to the sight of male stockinged-feet, and was rather glad when the valet draped the thin quilted cover over him. He cooled his master’s brow, and left the room reluctantly at his master’s gesture.

‘You’re sitting in her chair,’ he said, amazedly. ‘You look like you belong there.’

‘I most assuredly belong elsewhere: namely on the stage-coach going to Durant.’

He smiled at her. ‘Your first sign of temper. Mild, but I liked it.’ His voice was going stronger, but he rested back in the chair. A tray arrived, and he watched intermittently as she ate from it delicately. ‘So lovely,’ he said, and fell asleep. Miss Fleet’s cheeks were tinged with colour and she felt inordinately moved that a man should speak so to her — but she knew he was addressing another.

She sat with him for another hour, listening as his breath slowed and deepened, and felt his head to check that he had no fever. He looked so like a wounded bear and she was free to take stock of him. His hands were bigger than her body from chin to waist. She held one briefly, and her own hand disappeared entirely. The hands were shapely though, perhaps he too could play the harpsichord like his lady? His great barrel chest seemed like the strongest in all the world, and yet his insides were capable of laying him so low.

She felt pity for him. He had obviously indulged his lady’s taste in many things. The pretty chair she sat in was more suited to her size than any she had ever known. It had a foreshortened seat, so that she could rest back, and lowered legs so that her feet did not dangle in the air. She could imagine the other little lady here, in her fine dresses, sitting opposite her big Bear, discussing their days. He obviously missed her so much that seeing another wear a dress of hers made him ill. When she was satisfied that he was somewhat better, she left the room.

‘Could you send Evans to me?’ said Miss Fleet to the butler, as she walked from the hall. He was a slight but tall man, and his eyes met hers with more warmth than his position might usually allow. All the household must be concerned about their master. Miss Fleet smiled at him comfortingly, conveying she hoped that all would be well with Lord Balfour. ‘I’ll be in the other salon. His Lordship is asleep.’ She crossed the hall and entered into the salon of the portrait, elegantly furnished in pale shades of green. She was never going to catch the stagecoach now, she feared, and was doomed to spend another night at the inn. The Durants were not expecting her on a particular day, thankfully, but she felt herself to be in limbo, her simple plan averted.

She sat for some time, awaiting Evans, her eyes with little to do but take in all the taste and thought of comfort that had gone into the planning of this room. She judged that this part of the house was more modern, in the style of Mr Adam, than the ancient building attached at the side. The barony was medieval, she supposed. But the room had a light modern elegance, with a degree of comfortable touches, some pillows, some footstools and tables placed carefully. Some screens were dotted around, too, to be easily moved to exclude any draughts. A book placed on the little table by the fire suggested that reading was not limited to the library. This house was a home, and not simply a denizen of good taste. She picked up the book idly, and noted that it was in Greek, sadly beyond her education. Only gentlemen learned Greek and Latin, said Papa, and moreover forbade her reading even in English, beyond the bible and religious works. She descried some story in both, and so was ripe for the novel, as soon as she had left home. Her father would have been shocked, and she read each new book with a frisson of guilt and enjoyment.

Finally, she began to feel that the maid was delaying to some purpose, and she opened the door of the chamber to summon another servant to see what was amiss, when she saw Evans in the hallway with Tinder, who might actually be whispering to her. She cried ‘Evans!’ and the woman arrived with a return to her more closed-off demeanour.

‘Please bring me my dress and boots, I need to depart quite soon.’

‘The blue muslin dress my master desires that you keep, miss. Your own is not quite dry. Nor are the boots.’

Euphemia Fleet flushed. Surely the boots, at least, would have dried out by the kitchen range.

‘The master is calling for you.’ 

Chapter 2

It was to an upper room, close to the one she had already entered, that Miss Fleet was ushered. She was accompanied by Evans and Tinder as she crossed the threshold, so she felt adequately chaperoned, though nervous at entering a gentleman’s bedchamber. His Lordship was propped up on a vast bed, his hair a mane around him as he rested against the pillows. He was dressed in a white night shirt with an open collar, which displayed a sliver of hirsute chest beneath his powerful neck column. Miss Fleet averted her eyes quickly, shaken by the masculine musk of the room and by the physicality of the massive figure on the bed. She stopped so abruptly that Evans had difficulty to avoid falling into her.

Then Miss Fleet looked at the grey face of the man who held his hand out to her. She moved soundlessly forward, as was her wont, and she touched his hand for a fraction of a second. It had almost been, for a moment, like the hand of her papa on his death bed, seeking solace. His breathing was laboured, but he managed to say, ‘Pray do not be angry with me, dear lady.’

‘Hush now, my lord. I am not angry. I have only missed my coach, but I shall return to the inn presently, if your groom will drive me, and you may rest easy.’ She looked at his great dark eyes shyly, but compassionately. She was a little concerned about his colour. She found herself moving a wisp of wiry hair from his eyes, in a gesture that looked like a caress. ‘I beg your pardon,’ she said, her voice a squeak once more, and pulled her arms to her body.

‘It is not for that I apologise,’ the giant was saying. She looked at Tinder, who met her eye from the other side of the bed, where he had tried to apply a compress to Lord Balfour’s head and had been shrugged off. Tinder’s eyes held a grave warning. ‘It is that I had your valise sent over here from the inn.’ He saw her shock and repossessed himself of her hand. ‘I am a selfish beast, my lady said many a time. But your presence calms me, Miss Fleet. And the sawbones tell me that I need—’ he paused to take several painful breaths, ‘to be calm when my attacks occur. Will you not stay?’

‘Your Lordship—’ began Miss Fleet.

‘Miss,’ said Tinder, in a voice of warning, ‘Evans has had a truckle bed made up in your room. She will stay with you this night. And my lord has asked me to advise Lord Durant that you make a visit here.’

‘Are you — very angry?’ he asked, his eyes looking so like a lost puppy’s that Miss Fleet was moved. She suspected that she was being manipulated in some way, but she was not sufficiently habituated to being considered at all, to avoid being flattered by His Lordship’s concern for her feelings.

‘I am not. But I think you would be better served to rest sir, and let me return to the inn. It may be that seeing another in the garments of the late Lady Balfour has brought on the attack…’

‘Perhaps,’ he said, and trapped the hand she sought to remove with his giant paw. ‘But I am calmer now. Your voice calms me. If Evans sets a chair for you, will you not sit and talk to me?’

Evans did so, and Miss Fleet, being given back her hand, acquiesced and sat. It was late afternoon now, and the sun was setting, so Tinder had lit a candle and placed it on his master’s nightstand, between Miss Fleet and him. The servants moved to chairs set against the walls in opposite dark corners, Tinder to continue to attend his master and Evans stayed too, as a chaperone of sorts, she supposed. Miss Fleet could almost feel that she and His Lordship were all alone in the candle’s glow. ‘But what on earth can I say?’ she mused aloud.

‘It does not matter. Tell me about your life, Miss Fleet. Who are your family?’

‘Of close family, I have only a sister and her husband left in all the world, I’m afraid. She married when Papa was still alive, and moved from the rectory to London to marry a lawyer, Mr Fishbourne, whose clients, I believe, are mainly wool-traders. They have a very modest home, and after Papa died, I went to live with them, but it did not suit. I took up rather too much space you see, and—’

His Lordship’s cry of ‘You?’ gave way to a laugh and then a cough, and Miss Fleet found herself patting his hand in comfort as she had her father’s in his last days. She smiled at his joke though, and said, ‘Well I am small, but they still had to devote their only spare chamber to me and when his mother came to visit, it was indeed awkward.

‘Did your father leave you unprovided for?’

‘Well, he had very little, you see, and of course my cousin in India inherited.’

‘I do not understand. Was it entailed property?’

‘Not at all. But gentlemen must inherit, is it not so? My papa advised me, on his last days, that I must stay with my sister, or seek employment as a governess.’

Something had made the gentleman’s breath shorten once more, and Tinder darted forward, but he gestured him away. ‘And — then?’ he managed with difficulty.

‘This is all very dull sir. I was seeking a post as a governess, when my brother-in-law remembered that Papa had mentioned that a second cousin of ours had married a Lord Ellingham, and he wrote to Lady Ellingham about my —’ Miss Fleet looked into her lap and began pleating the folds of blue satin, ‘— straightened circumstances, and she was happy I stay with her, so all was well,’ she added brightly.

‘In a post of companion?’

‘Well, I wasn’t employed as such, but I suppose I performed the duties. I ever tried to be grateful to Lady Ellingham for the roof and the nourishment that she provided me.’ Her voice had become small again and there was a short silence.

‘How long for?’

‘Ten years.’

His voice lowered. ‘Was it very dreadful?’

The kindness in his voice almost overwhelmed her and she said, ‘She was a little eccentric, of course. But the happiest thing occurred. Last year, another relative of Lady Ellingham’s came to stay for a few weeks, and she taught me to laugh a little.’

‘What about your situation was amusing?’ he asked.

‘Well, Felicity found so much amusing.’ Her eyes began to look a little timidly mischievous, and the dark eyes from the bed held hers. ‘Do you know, Lady Ellingham wore the same bonnet that she’d had bought for her on her honeymoon, for forty years?’

‘I’ve heard of her, of course. Quite mad, they say! And you spent ten years there?’ There were breaths between each sentence, and he seemed a little angry.

She said, reassuringly, ‘But I saw my sister once a week for an hour and I was also permitted to attend the circulation library. I had every new novel, I assure you. It was my sheer delight, for Lady Ellingham meant to read them but didn’t, so I was quite free to read once she was abed, or out for the evening.’

He seemed to detect her real enthusiasm, and he asked her, ‘Tell me the story of the last novel you read, for it is such a while since I read one. I am tired now, so you may be for me like my old nurse as a child, who when I was ill, would tell me stories at night until I went to sleep.’

‘You may not share my taste sir. I shall not tell you the last, but my favourite tale. It is about a young man named Florian and his love for Ellena. But a wicked priest wishes to part them …’ It was an hour later when the first scene of the story reached its blood-curdling climax, and Miss Fleet heard the soft snoring of sleep, with a calmer breath, and she got up as silently as she had entered, and moved from the room.

Evans showed her to a room much further along the corridor, thankfully not Lady Balfour’s chamber, and helped her undress. Miss Fleet, living in the viscount’s house for the last weeks, was now accustomed to this attention, and let her. ‘I have to tell you, miss, that when I attempted to remove the stain from the bodice of your gown it became bleached. I am most sorry.’

She was brushing Miss Fleet’s hair before the dressing mirror and Miss Fleet met her eyes kindly. ‘There is no need to worry, Evans. Lay it out for tomorrow. I shall put my cloak over it as I travel on tomorrow’s stage.’ It occurred to her that Evans, too, had heard the tale of her position in life: hardly higher than a servant’s. There should have been a diminution of respect in her bearing, but incredibly, it seemed to have increased. ‘Is there an earlier one on the morrow?’

‘I do not — think so, miss,’ said Evans, averting her eyes, ‘But I imagined that you would wish to see how His Lordship fares in the morning before you go leaving in the afternoon, so I have cut out the bleached part of the bodice and I am going to insert some nice fabric I have to replace it. It won’t be quite ready first thing, miss,’ she hesitated. ‘Unless you were wishful I stay up this night?’

‘Of course not, Evans. You are quite correct that I will wish to stay in the morning, though I do think His Lordship’s breathing was better, do not you?’

‘Yes miss,’ agreed Evans, and went to pull back the bed clothes.

Miss Fleet sighed when she thought she might even now be going to sleep at Durant Court, but she did know that the Bear’s intentions had been good, and that she was glad somehow to be of use to him.

Early as Miss Fleet arose, Evans rose earlier, and delivered some hot chocolate in a tiny cup with roses on it, to her in bed.

‘I know you wish to say “careful” to me Evans,’ Miss Fleet said, in her quiet way, ‘but I assure you that if Lord Balfour’s voice does not scare me to death, I shall not spill it.’

Evans gave her twisted grin. ‘No guarantee of that in this house, miss,’ she said wryly.

Miss Fleet got up and washed, and saw that the maid had laid another dress out for her to wear. She looked at it admiringly, but dubiously. Would yet another inhabited dress be any good for His Lordship’s condition? It was evident that these artefacts had a profound effect on him. But Evans was now calmly sewing a new bodice onto Miss Fleet’s grey poplin, and the blue dress was nowhere to be seen. It did not seem worth complaining of, so she put on the new gown. It was a more practical morning dress, Miss Fleet considered, with long gauze sleeves and gauze above the low bodice, made up to the throat. But the simple white muslin, sprigged with yellow primroses, seemed much too young for her. As Evans buttoned it at the back, Euphemia Fleet observed herself. Evans had done something with her hair. She had let a lock or two escape, and had seemed to twirl it idly about her fingers, even as she told Miss Fleet about the breakfast awaiting her, and the weather today. The hair now made little ringlets at each side of her face. It had seemed that Evans had formed the same simple coil as she usually achieved herself, but it was more expertly done and gave her a crown of hair that gave her another, welcome, inch in height. It was lovely, but Miss Fleet resolutely put her cap on top.

She came down the steps and heard the booming tones of the Bear. ‘Well, Miss Fleet. I am all agog to know how Florian rescued Ellena.’

She entered a smaller salon, where everything had been set for a breakfast as cosy as any in Viscount Durant’s London house, but of a volume befitting a Bear. She regarded the great figure carefully, even as she said, ‘Good morning, Baron. I trust you are well?’ He was close-shaved and his shirt was starched and smart. His great frame was also housed in a light coloured waistcoat to the neck and a blue superfine coat over very clean buckskins and boots. He bowed from the waist, and she saw that the dress had had an effect, but his skin was no longer grey and his lungs seemed to be the great bellows that she had first heard them as. She was relieved.

‘Very well, but I shall have a relapse if you do not continue,’ he boomed at her playfully.

She laughed shyly, and began, over coffee, rolls, fruit and some slivers of beef, to tell him of the awful machinations of the heinous cleric, Schedoni. As with her friend Felicity, she was apt to get carried away in the telling, and so it proved. The most ghastly parts of the tale she told in relished detail, gesturing with her hands to her throat in a dramatic way, making the fainting motion of Ellena, and the terrifying eyes of Schedoni. The baron laughed, and he laughed heartily.

At one point she saw the butler, Tinder, and Evans all in the hall looking at them through the open door with interest. She recollected herself, and returned to her quiet, unobtrusive self.

‘Would you care to see the garden, Miss Fleet?’ When he saw her hesitate, he added, ‘There is no hurry. My coachman will take you to Sebastian’s house, it is but three hours from here.’

‘I could not—’ she began.

‘And I could not let you go on the stage after the kindness you have shown me. And Sebastian would not forgive me.’ She was still hesitant. ‘I cannot imagine he expected that you would use the stagecoach as your mode of transport when he asked you to join them, now did he?’

She sighed. ‘No he did not. Thank you sir, I will accept your kind offer.’

He held out his great arm in a courtly manner, ‘The gardens then?’

She rose and took his arm, and though she was piqued by the thought that he was really offering his arm to another, she still enjoyed the unwarranted attention. She knew he only did so that he might walk beside a slight figure that reminded him of a beloved wife, and therefore she would repress her feelings of hurt. What price a sting to her spirit if she could offer that little time on memory’s pathways to a grieving man? It was only a morning walk, after all.

The gardens were past their best, she could see, but there was more than enough in the carefully tended walkways for Miss Fleet to really enjoy. Tall hedges screened sheltered walks and opened into secret little havens where benches had been placed to allow yet another sylvan scene to be viewed. One of these little clearings, which was almost totally enclosed, allowed the warm sun in and kept the wind out, and Miss Fleet nodded happily as the baron raised an eyebrow to a bench placed there. ‘It is so peaceful. Almost like my father’s empty church, where I sat as a girl.’

‘I think it my favourite place,’ the big man sighed.

Miss Fleet said quietly, ‘Do you want to speak of her, sir?’

‘Not really. She was everything to me and I lost her.’ The voice was low and deep, and Miss Fleet’s arm, still somehow entwined with his, dared to squeeze a little, before pulling away a little guiltily.

‘I am so sorry for your loss. But you only have to look at God’s new day to know there is a great deal left here for you.’

‘I assure you, I am not often morbid. I had not been in the blue room for two years you know, but I had such a fancy to see you there that I braved it. It was a little too much all at once, and at these times my blasted lungs seize up.’

‘It must be very frightening.’

‘No. Just dashed annoying. And it sets Tinder off into cursed nursemaid’s behaviour and I will not have it!’ His brows were drawn down, but the memory of his attack was between them and as their eyes met somehow they smiled.

‘Tinder is very devoted.’

‘Yes, damn him. I’m minded to get myself a valet who does the job and doesn’t give a—’ he stopped the oath, but she had jumped in.

‘Indeed. But you will not.’

‘Of course not. I’m stuck with him.’ He sighed ‘Enough about my schoolboy complaint. How long do you spend at Sebastian’s?’

‘Indefinitely. I am to make my home there with my friend, the viscountess.’ She stood up, and they began to walk on, and she looked at him carefully. ‘I suppose you think me selfish, to invade the home of such newlyweds? But they were so insistent.’

‘No, indeed,’ he said, looking ahead, but taking her hand to rest on his arm again. ‘You have earned your pardon after ten years with Lady Ellingham.’ He pulled her around gently back towards the house saying, ‘Look! This is the best prospect of the house, I believe. What do you think of it, my dear lady?’

It was a fine prospect indeed, in three-quarter view of the front and one side, with the light stone glinting almost white in the sun today. A nearby stream was visible, as well as some of the prettiest of the garden walks. It was not intimidating, but charming. She wondered if the gardens, which mixed the formal and the informal: creeping roses on a side wall and wisteria clamouring over fences, (glorious in summer, she supposed) offsetting the geometric flower beds at the front, was the product of the late Lady Balfour’s taste. It was rather like the house with its Palladian geometry mixing with the informality of extra pillows and footstools in the salon. ‘It is quite perfect.’

He gave a bear growl that seemed, in feeling, to be more of a purr, and said with pride, ‘So do I. Many houses are grander, but I would not swap a one for Balfour Court.’

They moved ahead a minute, and Balfour asked her to relate her knowledge of Viscount Durant and the young wife whom he had not yet met. Skirting the unfounded rumours around Felicity’s reputation, she described her meeting with the young girl in Lady Ellingham’s house and their shared love of novels, and how Felicity had been saved from the old mad woman’s quirks by moving into Lady Aurora’s house with her and Mr Wilbert Fenton. ‘She became the rage of town, I believe, for she is so beautiful. But still we met each week in the circulating library, and she told me all her news. It was as though I went to all the balls and splendid occasions myself.’ Her eyes shone up at him, and he patted her arm companionably. Even these slight attentions made her blush and tremor, but she continued talking of her dear Felicity to calm herself. ‘And she had a way of making me less afraid of Lady Ellingham, too, for she had such merry eyes when Her Ladyship said something stern. Meeting my dear Felicity changed my life, even before the viscount and she insisted that I leave Lady Ellingham’s. I did so, expressing to Her Ladyship how very grateful I was for her bounty in the intervening years, but she was very angry with me, and though I have gone to her house since, she will not admit me.’

‘If that grey poplin dress is an example of her bounty, I do not think a deal of it.’

‘Oh well, I did not go out in town, you know, so she felt I had no need of new clothes, and she was quite right. And dear Felicity has asked more than once to refurbish my wardrobe, but I will not allow it. It is too much.’

He stopped then and undid the strings of her cloak, standing very close to her as he did so. She held her breath. He was too close, too large not to feel intimidated. She could not resume breathing until he finished, and he swung her cloak over his arm. ‘Now, that dress becomes you so much better,’ he said. She looked down at the gaily coloured flowers to hide her blushes. ‘Lady Balfour,’ she agreed firmly, as though to depress her own and his flights of fancy, ‘had very good taste. It is very lovely, but it is too young for me. A spring gown for a spring maiden.’

‘It is lovely, and you look lovely in it.’ He looked down at her and she trembled at the kind pity in his eyes, ‘As though your own spring had come once more.’

‘Please do not say such things, Lord Balfour. You mean to be kind, but I assure you, you are not. I am plain and nearly forty, and I know it well.’

He hesitated. ‘I will not talk on this subject and spoil our walk, though I could take issue with you. Tell me more about your beloved Felicity. I will be happy to know that my friend has such a prize, even if she is only half so beautiful and good as you say.’

‘Oh, I am not given to exaggeration,’ said Miss Fleet.

‘You? Who sent shivers down my back at your retelling of Mrs Radcliffe’s novel?’

‘But I assure you, it is just that terrifying!’ said Miss Fleet, seriously. But she saw that he laughed at her and they moved on, and she continued to talk of her friend, the new viscountess. ‘Before she left for Europe she said to me “Euphemia” (for that is my given name) “you have always said nothing ever happens to you. Well after your move to Durant, see what adventures we will have together.” She smiled up at him, her head almost bent to her back. ‘Look what an adventure I shall have to tell her about before I even arrive there.’

‘And what title should you give the tale?’

‘Euphemia and the Wounded Bear!’ she said at once.

‘Euphemia meets a bear with a thorn in his paw and pulls it right out. And then he becomes a handsome prince, I heard such a folk tale once. You are to be disappointed in the transformation to a prince, I suppose, but you do weave a magical spell.’

‘Do not be absurd!’ she smiled a little, for since Felicity had left, she had missed being teased.

‘Euphemia,’ he mused. ‘I have never known a Euphemia. I like the name very well. It means well-spoken, in the Greek, I think. And you speak only fair words.’

They had reached a little fence, designed to keep a few sheep in a paddock to make pets of them, she thought. There was stile before it, which she found herself lifted onto in a minute, by dint of his hands once more around her waist. ‘Sir!’ she protested. ‘You must not.’

He had vaulted the fence nimbly and was reaching over to take her waist once more, but she pushed his arms wide. ‘This may be what you wished to do with your wife, but it is not at all appropriate to do so with—’

‘Oh no,’ Lord Balfour said as he bore down on her, ‘with my wife I wished to do like so!’ In a fraction of a second he had tipped her slight form over his shoulder and he was running like a youth across the field, with her screaming some reprimand that was indecipherable. His big bear arm grasped the back of her knees, her bonnet became dislodged from her head and she saw her blue cape fly over a hedge. It was insane, absurd, scandalous behaviour, but the headiest feeling of her whole life. Her hair was falling from its pins, she must look ridiculous, and suddenly a crack appeared in her personality. She laughed and laughed. As soon as he heard it he slowed his bounding run, let her gently to the ground, only to pick her up by the waist again and turn her round and round like a child. He let her go. They were both laughing, and she was trying to get her breath again.

‘Lord Balfour! I have lost my bonnet!’

‘Your hair is down. You look so…’ Suddenly, he took a step towards her and scooped her up to him, kissing her hair and lips in sudden abandon. Her lips moved beneath his, when he moved to kiss her eyes and face she tilted toward him and made sounds she had never made before. Even as he moved down her slim neck, she leant back to accommodate his insistent mouth, until he kissed the soft ruff at the throat of the dress, and suddenly she grew stiff.

‘Sir!’ she said, this time in a tone of general outrage. He let her go immediately, the great dark eyes the wounded beast once more. It has only been a few seconds, but it had seemed… She moved briskly to the house, shaken, stirred and humiliated by his behaviour and her own. Never had she been touched in this way, never had she been so wanton, never had she shown herself so without character. She was angry, so angry, too, that he should so use her. She tried to find enough pins in her head to make the simple coil once more, her strands of hair the wreck of her respectability reforming. She entered the house by the side door they had used to exit, and in the hall she met Evans coming from the blue salon.

‘Evans, is the dress finished?’ She barely had control of her voice.

‘No, ma’am. In half an hour or so, miss. I just came to ask if you fancied anything after your walk, miss.’ The maid looked a trifle worried at Miss Fleet’s change in manner.

‘Never mind. Lord Balfour will not mind if I borrow this one. Could you send a footman to look for my cloak and bonnet? I’m afraid I carelessly dropped them and they blew away. Near the sheep’s paddock. And have the coachman bring round the horses. I am to set off immediately for Durant. Bring down my bag, please.’ Euphemia was used to delivering many orders, some of them awful, to servants for Lady Ellingham. But this was the first time she had ever issued such a string of orders for herself. 

‘Yes miss,’ said Evans stiffly. ‘At once!’ She took an appraising look at the state of Miss Fleet’s hair. Surely it was tidy, but not in the manner she had started the day with. She closed her mouth grimly and mounted the staircase to a footman.

This errand was not necessary, for the slightly dishevelled figure of Lord Balfour had entered, clutching a bent straw bonnet and her cape. The butler relieved him of them and Evans turned at her name, which her master used in a subdued voice. ‘Evans, find Miss Fleet another bonnet will you? I appear to have stepped in this one while I searched for it.’ Evans curtsied and ran up the stairs.

An interested footman and butler were appearing disinterested at the stiff tableau of Miss Fleet, stock still in the hall, with his Lordship looking supplicating at her.

‘Miss Fleet, I—’ He stopped. His voice seemed to induce a spasm in her body that she could not disguise. ‘Might I … I … beg you have a word in the salon?’

Her bosom heaved. It needed only this. ‘The blue salon?’

‘I— no—.’ He stopped again, realising his mistake and walked to the larger salon, the butler discretely opening the door.

Euphemia moved forward to follow him and stopped on the threshold, confronted by the portrait of the beauteous Lady Balfour in the full bloom of her youth. She grasped her hands before her and nearly juddered back when His Lordship came towards her again, but he only moved past to shut the door so that they might not be overheard. She moved to the fireplace, to stand beneath the painting, determined that he might look full in the face the differences he was trying to ignore. She felt tears threaten her, but she was too outraged to let them fall. She lifted her chin and looked at him. He was so penitent looking, but she was not fooled. He had played on her love for wounded animals quite enough.

‘I am so sorry, Miss Fleet. I had no intention, none at all, of behaving in such a way.’

‘Which way? Lifting me from my feet and running away with me?’

‘We were laughing at that.’

‘I suppose I was therefore responsible for what happened next?’

‘My dear Miss Fleet, I never meant to … not until I had spoken to you, had asked you to be my wife.’

Miss Fleet, who had thought herself well beyond the age where any hope or faint dream of such a thing as marriage should be offered to her, could never have believed that when it was —  and by a handsome baron —  her primary emotion would be anger. As it was, anger had featured very little in Miss Fleet’s life. But so many feelings were tumbling passionately inside her, and they were erupting as never before. ‘You do not want a wife sir, you want a mannequin to animate your dead wife’s clothes and sit in her chair and — and — no doubt many other things you miss. You want a clockwork woman.’ He grunted and tried to find his voice, but she continued. ‘No doubt you think your high standing and good looks should make me grovel at the thought of having such an offer made to me—’

‘No, you are wrong—, please, Euphemia! I have frightened you, you who have been so sheltered all your life—’

‘I should be honoured to receive any respectable offer of a home and companionship from a decent man. A quiet, contented life. But you offer me so much more. How could I live knowing that when we kissed you were really kissing a dead woman?’

She left the room then, and he let her go, great head bent in sadness, perhaps. Her words must have wounded him, she could hardly believe she had uttered them. But she was too angry to care. She escaped to the blue room to compose herself, caressing the white gilded harpsichord with her fingers. She wiped the hot tears when she heard the horses and found Evans awaiting her in the vestibule, bonnet and cape in hand. She put them on dumbly. He did not come to see her off. She could not have faced him, so she was glad. She sat in an old fashioned but luxurious coach, with an unnecessary hot brick for her feet and a fur rug cast over her knees by Tinder himself. He looked full into her eyes when he finished and it seemed as though he would have said something, but did not. He stepped back and Evans handed her night bag, and said, ‘Your dress is within, miss. It lacks some stitches yet.’

‘Do not worry Evans. I can finish it. And thank you for all your work.’

‘It was a pleasure, miss.’ She disposed a basket of provisions from cook. ‘The master asked that you have these things to lighten the journey miss.’

Miss Fleet, overcome, merely nodded.

‘Oh miss,’ said Evans, suddenly pleading, ‘can you not stay? You do him so much good, my master.’

Miss Fleet could barely speak. ‘Thank you Evans. But I cannot!’

Evans shut the door and the coach moved away. Was it really only thirty hours since she had entered this house? The butler raised a sad hand to her. Tinder stood, looking wounded, and Evans beside him, tall as Euphemia had first seen her, but evidently moved. Somehow, she too felt the pain of parting from them. It was hardly credible that she should feel so after this short time, but they had gone through the shadow of death together, and had silently acknowledged, by looks and gestures, their shared fear and relief.

The carriage passed the small sheep paddock.

She could not look.

Chapter 3

Arriving at the great estate of Viscount Durant, Euphemia found herself bone weary. She was vaguely aware of a very large and handsome house in some light coloured stone surrounded by beautifully landscaped gardens. Her eyes had shed enough reluctant tears on that journey for a sea, but when she had espied the house, she had ruthlessly obliterated them with the aid of an ill-used handkerchief. She fell out of the carriage and into Felicity's outstretched arms with a plucky smile on her face.

‘My dearest Euphemia! How I have missed you.’ Felicity was a tall dark beauty, still very young, with the gift for dispensing happiness suggested by her name — even in her darkest days, when Miss Fleet had first met her. She was dressed even more elegantly than when they had last met, as befitted a new viscountess, in a silk day dress of the finest Parisian cut. It was a deeper colour, too, than her maidenhood had allowed, a cherry red that suited her dark beauty particularly well. Some silk rosebuds had been artfully arranged in her coiffure, and she looked so grown up that Euphemia smiled through her tears.

‘Felicity, you look so elegant.’

‘My continental polish, Sebastian calls it, and he laughs at me very much. But you too look so very lovely, my dear Euphemia. I am so glad you bought yourself a new bonnet! And such an elegant one.’ Miss Fleet had forgotten the bonnet, which she had not even regarded. They were walking through the huge oak door, three times their height, arm-in-arm together, and Euphemia was beginning to calm herself.

‘It is mere borrowed finery, my dear. My own bonnet had an accident this morning.’

‘Well, come and see Sebastian. He wanted to come out to greet you, but I said I must have you for myself at first.’

The relaxed, elegant figure of Viscount Durant came forward to greet her as she entered the salon, and he took both her hands. ‘My dear Miss Fleet, Euphemia! Welcome to your new home!’ He stood back a little. She still wore her bonnet, but her cape was open and he spied the dress with the yellow primroses. ‘I declare you I have never seen you look lovelier!’

Euphemia, who had been shyly smiling at him, suddenly wrenched her hands free. ‘Oh, do not say so,’ and ran from the room, with Felicity following her, with a confused backward glance at her beloved.

Alone in her lovely room, Miss Fleet looked at herself in the bonnet she had never seen. It was a blue silk poke bonnet, probably chosen by Evans to match her old cloak. The yellow flowers at one side referred to the borrowed dress, too, and she had to admit it suited her. She looked anew. With all the compliments flying, could it really be that she was passably handsome? Is this what clothes did for one, even when one had been crying, or trying to stop crying, for three hours? She did not want to be told she was looking lovely, as he had. She could not bear it. It was all kindness, of course, but she would rather be overlooked than wear things that obliged people to remark. She did not wish to hear any of The Bear’s words again. Did he really propose? Was she mad to refuse him? She imagined telling her staid sister that a giant baron had offered for her, and that she had refused him.

If Theodora could even be brought to believe such a thing, she would have her sister sent to a lunatic asylum for the refusal. No one could understand. She caught sight of herself again. Was the spirit of Lady Balfour somehow softening the lines of her face (or was that the bounty of the viscount’s London home?) and giving her a new elegance? She would put the dress and the bonnet away, after today, and with them all memories of the baron and her own wanton behaviour.

Then perhaps, everything would be the same again. This feeling of being awake after a long sleep watching other people’s lives was not comfortable. As she looked out of the window, she saw all things with a new clarity, and an aching sense of connection. It was as though when she had seen such a sylvan scene before, there had been some grey medium between it and her. The cocoon she had spun about herself to stop feeling so much, perhaps. A light had been switched on within her, but with it came the pain. She felt everything too much, she relived each moment with him, not as she remembered Papa and Mama, but in a visceral way. The memory of his loud voice and teasing smile shook her physically. And the waves of heat that took over her whole self when she remembered his kisses was not just humiliation, but something else … something much stronger. She could not allow herself to think of him, yet the thoughts arose in her and overpowered her. His great mane of hair, those deep dark eyes, his booming laugh. But she would stop it. She would.

At the same time she was worried for his health. She replayed the scene in the salon where they parted and could not remember any rasping in his breathing, not even after her cruel words. She wished she could take them back, but she could not. But he was well, she had to believe it. Perhaps she might write to Tinder or Evans for news. But she was being ridiculous, and she knew it. Baron Balfour was none of her affair, and she would put him away tomorrow with the sprigged muslin gown.

‘Well, I cannot account for it, Sebastian,’ said Felicity when she had come downstairs after seeing her friend disposed in her bedchamber. Quite naturally, she found herself sitting on his knee, answering his open arms as he lounged in the elegant scroll-ended sofa nearest the fire.

He kissed her soundly before saying, ‘I have never known Miss Fleet to display such emotion. Try as I might, I could never get her to be more than a little mouse in my presence.’

‘Now she is afraid that you will wish her gone, but I put her mind at rest on that score at least.’ As she heard the door opening, she slid from his knee with practised ease and sat beside him. Rutland disposed of the tea tray on a small table which he put near his mistress and she began, in a very wifely way, she thought, to make the tea.

Sebastian grinned, watching her, ‘Well, if she becomes a watering pot over dinner…’

‘Bastain!’ she said, but saw that he was still grinning.

‘I must admit, that when you broached the subject of Miss Fleet’s coming to stay with us, I had some doubts. But in the weeks she spent with us in London before the wedding trip she was a delight. She had a trick of disappearing suddenly when I wished to kiss my wife…’

‘She read your wicked eyes. I know I do.’

‘But what on earth did I do to upset her?’

‘I do not know, she will not tell me. But I think she was overwrought before she came here. The friend of yours whom she visited, he could not have upset her in any way? I think she will tell me all when she is a little rested. She assures me she shall be down for dinner - I adjured her not to change, for I believe she needs the rest.’

‘I hardly think that Balfour would have upset her. He is great fellow, who has become something of a recluse after the death of his wife. He is a loud and booming giant of a man and I suppose he might have scared our little mouse somewhat.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Felicity, ‘she does jump at loud voices, like Lady Ellingham’s in one of her worse moods. Never mind, we shall make her comfortable again. But I wonder how she knows Lord Balfour?’

At dinner that night, Lord Durant asked this question. Miss Fleet, still dressed in her muslin with primroses, looked as neat as ever, but somehow the face that Bastian had thought a little closed and tight was somewhat softer. She answered quietly, though, and he thought perhaps she had prepared her answer.

‘I had a little accident and a chance meeting with Lord Balfour meant that he took me to his home nearby. Then, I am afraid he had an attack—’

‘His old trouble, I see…’ said the viscount.

‘And I felt I had to stay until he felt restored.’

‘So like you, dear Euphemia. And Lord Balfour is now well?’ asked Felicity.

‘He was ill for some hours, but the next morning he was quite himself.’

‘A loud and booming sort of man, my husband says.’

‘Oh yes, the first time I heard his voice I jumped.’

‘So would I have, I’m sure. I did when Aunt Ellingham shouted at me.’

‘Oh, you were so much braver than I, Felicity.’

‘You were both splendidly brave as I remember it, but I will not have that lady’s name turn our stomachs at this, your first meal at Durant, Miss Fleet.’

They laughed then, Euphemia shyly behind her napkin, and Felicity was glad to see her look more relaxed. Bastian had a temper, but he had never displayed it since their marriage, and he had always been kinder than his reputation. She had known he would make her friend comfortable.

Felicity genuinely believed that her friend would confide her upset at the outset of her visit. But Euphemia did not. She seemed almost her quiet self, but Felicity noticed a certain unevenness of spirits — despite her friend having herself well in hand. She had, initially, tried to act rather as a poor relation might, running to bring Felicity her shawl, or stooping to pick up her work threads before she had time to retrieve them herself, and Felicity had had to be firm.

‘You are not here to be a servant, Euphemia, but part of the family. You must do as you please at all times, and not run after me.’

For the next week, Euphemia dressed again in the brown cambric or the grey poplin that Felicity had seen so often before, the grey with a new paler insert in the bodice that had been necessitated, said Euphemia, by a spill of chocolate. Felicity had seen her working on the bodice, and said. ‘Oh that pearl grey damask is very pretty, where had you it from, Euphemia?’

Her friend’s face had shut once more and she said merely, ‘Oh, I had it given to me.’

‘We shall have some dresses made for you now you are here, Burton tells me that there is an excellent woman in the village, a Madame Blanc.’

‘Oh, there is no need, my dear,’ said Euphemia.

‘But Burton says she is a French émigré with six children to feed, so I think it only right that we help her by ordering you some gowns. I, too, will have some made from the fabrics I bought on my wedding trip. But Lady Aurora writes that I must wait until next month when she and Mr Fenton come, so that she can see what I have. Then she will design some dresses for me.’

‘Yes, I am so glad that Lady Aurora will finally see you in your home.’

‘But in the meantime, my dear Euphemia, Madame’s children must eat.’

Euphemia laughed, and Felicity was glad to see it.

‘We shall go tomorrow.’

But by tomorrow, there was no need to go to Madame’s, for when Felicity and Euphemia returned from their morning walk (while Bastian met with his agent in the library) a large coach was pulled up outside the white columns, and a number of bags and boxes were being unloaded under the eye of a rather terrifying looking servant.

‘Evans!’ exclaimed Euphemia. Felicity looked down at her friend, but she was already moving off after her shock.

‘Isn’t that the coach you arrived in, Euphemia? Lord Balfour’s?’

‘Yes! I—’ she answered, but she was near enough to the maid now to talk to her over the welter of servants carrying the packages. Felicity noticed a number of hat boxes among them and wondered. ‘Evans,’ said Euphemia, a little sharply, ‘what is the meaning of this? Lord Balfour is not here?’

Evans bobbed a curtsy. ‘No miss. His Lordship sent me. He hopes that I may stay a few days to alter the gowns, miss. He sent these.’ Evans made her steady way forward and held out two notes, one addressed to the viscount.

‘What’s this?’ said the viscount, coming languidly out of the house to meet them, ‘Are the Fentons arrived early? This is a lot of baggage, even for Lady Aurora, unless she’s moving in.’

Felicity was watching her friend, who was standing stock still, clutching the letters to her heaving bosom, her cheeks a high colour, obviously trying to repress some powerful emotion. Felicity, in sheer amazement, thought it might be anger. ‘Is not one of those letters for Bastian, my dear?’ she prodded, gently.

Euphemia held it out, dumbly. Obviously still under some pressure of feeling.

The viscount opened it, and read the brief contents. ‘Richard wants us to house a maid, so that she can work on these,’ he vaguely gestured to the boxes which, mercifully, had reached their end, ‘to fit them to Miss Fleet.’ He raised his eyebrows at Miss Fleet, still standing stock still, the other letter crumpled in a fist at her side, obviously still trying to control herself, Felicity noted concernedly. ‘Yes, you are of Lady Balfour’s small stature, come to think of it, Miss Fleet. I daresay they will become you well.’

‘Oh,’ said Felicity, when her friend seemed unable to answer. ‘I expect the lovely white and yellow muslin was one you borrowed when you spilt the chocolate on your grey poplin, and he realised—’

‘Excuse me,’ said Euphemia, evidently barely managing to get out the words, ‘I must go—’

‘Euphem–!’ said Felicity, and would have followed if the viscount had not held her back.

‘Let her calm herself a little. Something about this gesture of Balfour’s has upset her. He’s not known for his subtlety and she may be embarrassed by it.’

‘It is very kind of him, but I expect she feels of it as charity, for she does not want even I to buy her clothes. Was Lady Balfour so like Euphemia?’

‘Not at all, except in figure. They were an odd looking pair, a gruff giant and a fairy princess, strangely mated. But they were very happy together. And Lady Balfour had exquisite taste in clothes. Having met Miss Fleet, I expect that Balfour thought that this would be a practical solution as to what to do with his wife’s affairs. It seems eminently sensible. Perhaps she feels they are two years out of fashion?’

They had re-entered the house during this conversation, and Felicity sat down on a sofa facing his and laughed. ‘She, who has been wearing ten-year-old gowns? I hardly think so.’ She stood up again. ‘I know you advised me to be patient, but I cannot wait. I’m going to her now to ease her feelings.’

Euphemia was in her chamber when Felicity found her, holding up an exquisite blue muslin gown, with a satin under-dress of the same hue. Felicity held back in the doorway, for the strange, stern maid who had given her friend the letters was talking to her. Felicity knew she was eavesdropping, but it was her house after all, and she felt she needed to do so to understand her friend’s evident pain.

‘It is quite finished, miss,’ the maid was saying. ‘I was able to do so because we had not removed the pins. The rest of them will only take a few days to finish, miss, if you will let me measure. And His Lordship also ordered me to make what changes you might like, miss, to adjust them to your taste. Especially the bonnets miss, he asked me to adjust the colour and trims to suit your colouring, miss.’

‘They are her clothes!’ said Euphemia passionately.

‘But so very beautiful, miss. And almost made for you. They could be of use to few women else. And my mistress would have been happy to know they were worn — for though generous, waste she could not bear.’ She took the blue dress from Euphemia’s hands, and said in a gentling tone that is used to sooth infants, ‘You did look so lovely in it, miss. And what can it matter to you that they are my lady’s attire? You never met her.’

‘No,’ said Euphemia. ‘But I cannot accept them.’

‘Then the moth will have them, and that does seem a pity.’ Euphemia said nothing, and the maid continued. ‘He is so set on this miss, that if I return with the boxes, I believe he might have another attack.’ She seemed to be looking at Euphemia closely, ‘And I know you wouldn’t want that.’

‘No—’ said Euphemia, weakening. Felicity thought it time to intervene.

‘I came to see what riches Lord Balfour sent.’ She looked at an array of gowns laid across the bed, the chairs, and every other available surface. ‘Oh, how fabulous these are. Lady Balfour must have been a London hostess of the first stare,’ she said, holding up a cream silk evening gown with one enormous silk rose in the same fabric, under the bodice.

‘My lady never visited town,’ said Evans quietly.

‘Never? Then how came her gowns to be so fashionable?’

‘She had the fashion magazines, miss, and she loved to copy and adapt the latest designs. Beautiful things made her happy.’

‘Her whole house shows that,’ said Euphemia in a removed voice.

‘Well, you will look lovely in this dress.’ Felicity turned to the maid, ‘Evans is it? Could you have it ready for tomorrow night? We will have some guests for dinner.’

‘It is too fine for me,’ said Euphemia flatly.

‘Nonsense! You will look quite the thing,’ she grasped her friend’s hand and sat her on a pile of dresses on the bed, joining her. ‘Euphemia, I know that this is an overwhelming gift for such a slight acquaintance, but believe me it makes sense. Why, these gowns might have been made for you, and it would be such a shame to throw them away.’

Euphemia’s large eyes looked into Felicity’s equally large, and very kind eyes. ‘I suppose it would. But bonnets, too!’ she said so tragically it almost made Felicity laugh. ‘He sent me bonnets!’

Felicity jumped up and looked, taking a green silk from a hat box, saying, ‘This must go with that French pelisse. Oh, how smart you will be, Euphemia.’

‘I cannot wear such a profusion of flowers.’ Euphemia pointed to the pink ribbon flowers tucked inside the brim at one side to add a little dash.

‘Why not? The other became you so well.’

‘I would look ridiculous, in my position.’

Euphemia’s eyes fell and she clutched at her hands, gripping back something. Felicity led her gently up.

‘Come, let’s walk again, you are a little emotional.’ She turned, and said with her customary kind smile, ‘Your position is a member of the family in the Viscount Durant’s home. How can your dress be too fine for that? Evans? Please put away the gowns for the present, I believe Miss Fleet to be rather overwhelmed by Lord Balfour’s generosity.’

‘Very well, Your Ladyship. Perhaps…?’ said Evans, holding out a claret merino wool pelisse to Euphemia, ‘I think there is a chill in the air, miss.’

Euphemia put it on, as though defeated, and she headed towards the door.

‘I have the bonnet for that, miss.’

‘My straw will suffice, thank you, Evans.’

She did not speak on her way downstairs and it was not until they arrived at the little bench in the walled garden that Felicity said, ‘Dearest Euphemia, will you not tell me what occurred to you on your journey to make you so upset? Your letter in response to my invitation was so joyous that I made sure you were looking forward to coming. So it is only your meeting with Lord Balfour that can have upset you so. Sebastian says that he is a giant with no subtlety of manner, and that he may have said something blunt to upset you.’

‘I am happy to have come here, dear friend. The home you give me here means so much to me —’ her voice changed, becoming harder, ‘and it gave me the power to refuse Lord Balfour.’

‘Lord Balfour offered for you?’ Felicity was all agog. ‘Dearest, did you not think him honourable, or do you dislike him? Had you not just met him?’ She realised that she had shot out her questions in a line, and could not expect them to be answered all at once.

‘I had just met him, but it didn’t seem that way…’ Euphemia’s eyes looked into the distance, remembering. Felicity stirred, suddenly wondering, but stilled herself so as not to break the beginning of the confidences. As she watched her friend, some part of her could not help noticing how well the claret wool pelisse became her, a high curved collar, like gentlemen’s shirt points framing her face, drawing attention to her large eyes. It had a double breasted bodice with large blue buttons and navy braiding. Felicity felt a little covetous. ‘We spent many hours with each other in the two days, for he needed me to talk — to calm him during an attack. I don’t think anyone has wanted me to talk that long in all my life.’

‘So he offered for you?’

Miss Fleet gave a bitter laugh, a sound that shocked Felicity. Her little friend was angry. ‘Oh, not for me. He offered for a doll to wear his beautiful, dead wife’s clothes and sit in her sitting room, and walk where they walked together, and, and—’ her voice cracked, her rage broke and she sobbed unrestrainedly into her hands.

‘Oh come here, my sweet friend,’ said Felicity gathering her into her arms. ‘He expressed himself badly, I suppose. He is a rough man, perhaps.’

‘A bear!’

‘A bear, yes, but from what Sebastian has said, a good man. Perhaps he wanted contentment in his later life, someone to be his companion and he phrased it wrongly.’

‘Oh, he wants no simple companion. I may have been honoured to receive such an offer, might even have accepted such a thing for my own true home and—’ she seemed to recollect what she said and looked pleadingly at Felicity. ‘You understand that I am not ungrateful—’

‘Of course not. I understand completely.’

‘He wants more than a mere companion, he wants his beauty back. He wants his love, and he has shown me by putting his hands on me so—!’ Her breath caught. ‘I cannot speak of it.’

Felicity was shocked and alarmed. ‘Hush now, my pet. Do not distress yourself. If he treated you disrespectfully, or roughly, if he frightened you, you must put those thoughts away. You are safe now. I can see that Lord Balfour must be less than a gentleman, whatever Sebastian says, to have given you such a disgust of him.’

‘Oh, but Felicity, I was not disgusted at all.’

Felicity held her, amazed.

Euphemia returned to her room, to lie down before dinner, and to will herself to stop this crying immediately. The viscount must never see her so or he would wish for her departure, and rightly so. Years of training deserted her and her feelings were churned about like so much butter. The room was mercifully returned to its normal state, excepting the blue gown which had been laid out for dinner by Evans. She sat on the bed and picked up the letter he had written, whose seal she had not yet breached. Her hands shook as she opened it.

My dear Miss Fleet,

I have apologised for my behaviour, and I cannot yet explain it, even to myself. To see you laugh, to see you so lovely,

‘Lies!’ she cried, almost throwing the parchment aside, but she read on…

…standing in front of me like that, I lost my head. There is no excuse. I frightened you, manhandled you, when I should have been begging you respectfully like an honest man, to be my wife. Instead, I shocked and disgusted you. How I wish I could go back to the moment before that, when you were looking at me and laughing, when I should have bent my knee to you, begged you —.

But I did not. I know you are making your home with Sebastian, and I hope that sometime in the future we might meet again as friends, at least.

‘I will be far from here if ever I know you are coming. I shall never see you again!’ Euphemia cried it aloud.

…It was not her dresses that made me wish you to stay with me, you know. At first, I admit you were so like in size that you brought her back to me a little. To see you, so small and neat among her things brought me joy. But it was yourself that drew me further, Miss Fleet. You must know that to be so.

‘If only that were so,’ Euphemia cried aloud, as though to Lord Balfour himself. She stood and regarded herself in the mirror. Something had happened to her face, she knew not what, it looked somehow different, but her hair was still a shade of brown called mouse, her lips thin and nose nothing at all. She could not compare to the ravishing beauty of the portrait. She would be found wanting by him every day of her life. ‘I do not know it.’ she said as she turned back to the paper, addressing Lord Balfour again.

…Do not think that my sending the gowns is an attempt to woo you. I know, if anything, that it may make you angrier at me. But, dear lady, I am letting go of them to their new home. Who else can they be of use to? And though I dreaded that you would be offended, I thought too that you, who have had so little given to you in this life, might find some joy in wearing gowns that better display the lady you are…

‘No, the other lady that you wish me to be!’

… and that you would feel more at home in those grand surroundings, already dressed for the part. I know your sensitivity makes you feel yourself a mere pensioner, not realising what you give to those around you. You melted the frozen heart of Evans, and the jealousy of Tinder. In such a short time, you cast a balm upon this place.

Please, my dear Miss Fleet, do me the infinite honour of accepting my gift, knowing, as you do, that it cost me nothing at all. I wish that you had stayed at Balfour Court and I could have bought you brand new gowns of your own, not stained for you by any other feeling. But my boorish behaviour has undone my hopes. You are like a shy fawn and I would have been better to gentle you, instead I hurt you…

‘But not in the way you believe!’ she told him.

…My every hope is for your health and happiness, my dear.

If we should not meet again, please know I will never forget you.

Your humble servant,

Richard Audley, Baron Balfour.

Never had Euphemia received such a letter. It had been her dream to own just a few love lines from any man who had shown her partiality. But there had been none. A quiet life in the country with her stern vicar father, a short time in town with her sister, then ten whole years with Lady Ellingham, barely introduced to anyone (since she was of no importance). No one noticed her. No one had ever made her so angry as he. She did not believe she’d possessed such anger. Last year she’d been angry for Felicity of course, for the dark aspersions cast on the name of the sweetest friend in the world. But for herself, never. She had acceded to her lot with hardly a whimper, accepting it as her due. She was now being offered the moon and stars, a home of her own and a grand position, and she could not take it. How could she? Eventually, he would be bitterly disappointed. He would see her clearly, and not those things he’d recognised from another. And he would be broken-hearted anew.

She put the letter to her heart and threw herself passionately onto the bed, all hope of discipline thrown to the winds.

Chapter 4

The viscount entered his wife’s dressing room as she stood before the glass, adjusting the neckline of a ravishing gold silk gown, and made his languid way towards her. His wife was not deceived by his languor however, and nodded away her maid. He kissed her neck and shoulders and she leaned back into him so that he grasped her waist firmly. ‘No, my dear. We will be late for dinner!’

‘When will you learn, my love that dinner in a viscount’s house begins only when the viscount appears?’

‘Well, it is very unkind to cook, who is trying out a new recipe I brought from France of soufflé. It will collapse, and if it does, so will poor cook.’

‘As usual, I am astounded at your knowledge of the servants’ feelings, as well as deeply uncaring of same.’

‘If I believed that, Bastian, I should leave you for a Captain of the Guards. But I know you sent your valet back to bed today when he was suffering from a head cold.’

‘Only because I did not wish to be infected.’

‘Your old nurse, when I visited her in her cottage, said that you had never been sick a day in your life!’

‘Because I take precautions.’

She turned and he kissed her, and for a moment, it seemed that the soufflé must fall. But Felicity looked worried, and pulled away. ‘I am concerned about Euphemia.’

‘Mmm?’ said Bastian, kissing her neck.

‘Bastian!’ he pulled away and looked at her. ‘Things are different than we thought. Lord Balfour has offered for Euphemia.’

‘Richard? And she refused him?’

‘Yes. And the tragedy is, I think she really cares for him.’

‘I would say they did not have much time to know their feelings, but I knew how I felt about you from the very first.’

‘Nonsense! Your only thought was that I was the same height and age as Lady Letitia.’

‘Well, perhaps not from the very first. But soon.’ He teased and kissed her again. ‘Anyway, if she likes him, why didn’t she say yes?’

‘It is all wrapped up in those gowns he sent. She is very like Lady Balfour in stature, and she had need of a gown because there was an accident when he shouted—’

‘He does that!’

‘Yes, well, it was in the inn taproom, where they met, she spilt chocolate on her gown and then he fairly ordered her into his carriage—’ Felicity continued.

‘Now what kind of gentleman treats a lady like that?’ said Durant, shocked.

She regarded him narrowly, knowing he referred to their own first meeting. ‘No kind of gentleman at all,’ she said, and he laughed. She continued, ‘So he took her to Balfour Court, to his wife’s own sitting room, and sent her to change her gown for one of Her Ladyship’s, and then when he saw her, he had an attack of asthma I think she named it, and so then she knew he was using her to bring back the ghost of his wife.’ Felicity finally took a breath and shuddered dramatically.

‘Sounds like one of those ghastly novels you two are so fond of.’

‘Yes, but this was real. And then when he was so ill — the malady disturbs his breathing, you know — he wanted her to sit and talk to him to calm him, and the servants said he must not be crossed, for it would make him worse…’

‘That is true — any agitation inflames the lungs, I have seen it happen.’

‘Well, she was in the shocking position of sitting at the bedside of a gentleman she hardly knew—’

‘Wicked old Balfour, I didn’t know he had that in him.’

‘I know you are joking, but do not, my love. Apparently, that strange servant, who was also devoted to Lady Balfour, sat in the room with her the whole time.’

‘No damaged reputation, then?’

‘Yes, but the next day he was quite well and they went for a walk, and I’m not sure what happened, but he overturned her and ran off with her or something — she was crying and I didn’t quite understand what she was saying — and then he caught her in his arms and kissed her. Quite roughly, I believe.’

‘Well, upon my soul!’ despite himself, Durant was nearly as surprised as his viscountess. ‘She must have been terrified, poor timid little Miss Fleet.’

‘That is just it, Bastian. She liked it!’

‘I do not understand. Why then did she refuse him?’

‘She fears that she can never match to the beauty of his dead wife. That he will be forever searching for something within her that he can never possess. She could have said yes if she did not love him so.’ A tear fell from his lovely wife’s eyes, but Bastian was frowning.

‘What gave her that idea?’ he said. ‘Oh, I know. That dashed portrait. The gowns!’ He turned to leave the room. ‘George!’ he said to a footman as he headed away from the stairs, and along to another chamber. ‘Tell cook to delay the soufflés until I arrive.’

George took this blandly, but departed a broken man.

‘What are you doing, my love?’ said Felicity following him.

‘Correcting a misunderstanding, my sweet.’ He stopped and shooed her away as he did his dog. ‘I can manage this better on my own, I think.’

She turned and looked at him over her shoulder, her glossy ringlets dancing, ‘I will not be your dog, my lord. I’ll have you know I’m a viscountess now, and I expect to be treated so.’ She moved in a very stately way downstairs, and His Lordship grinned. Then he turned and knocked on Miss Fleet’s door, only for it to be opened by the dragon-maid, Evans. ‘Is Miss Fleet yet dressed?’ he enquired.

‘Yes sir. She is about to go to dinner.’

‘Viscount?’ Miss Fleet called, and appeared on the doorway.

‘I require a word with you, Miss Fleet. Can you send your maid away?’

Alarmingly, Evans stood her ground.

‘Please leave us, Evans.’

‘Yes, miss. If you say so.’

Now that the viscount was in, he seemed to have lost his sangfroid. How to begin?

‘My lord?’ Miss Fleet was enquiring, timidly.

The viscount properly looked at her. She was wearing a blue muslin dress and she looked a little regal. Her hair was arranged somehow differently, and it drew attention to her fine eyes. ‘On risk of making you upset again, my dear Miss Fleet, you look quite lovely in that gown.’ She blushed. ‘Not a good way to start when I have just asked your maid to leave your bedchamber,’ he said reflectively, almost to himself. But she smiled shyly. ‘Miss Fleet, I came here to talk to you since it appears you are under a misunderstanding about Lady Balfour.’

She stiffened.

‘Lady Balfour, Miss Eversham that was, was indeed the belle of the county, I believe, though it was before my time. She had a season in London, where Lord Balfour met her. But she was already engaged to someone else.’ Miss Fleet sat down heavily on the bed, and the viscount drew a chair near to it. ‘One day, as she walked to the park, she fell under some horses.’

Euphemia gasped.

‘Many bones were broken, and some eventually healed – though she had some pain in walking too far. But those on her face did not heal well. I’m afraid a doctor made an ill attempt at setting the bones, and she was terribly disfigured. She looked ever after like a cracked-mirror figure of herself. Her jaw bone and cheek bone were mismatched on one side, and her eye drooped from her socket. Her suitor left her, and Lord Balfour offered for her. She sent him away, time and again, afraid to see anyone. But he came, he looked at her, and asked her again. She said yes. I believed they were devoted to each other, and Lady Balfour made Balfour Court into a beautiful home. I knew her as a child, and accepted as all children do, whatever they see. I only knew she was kind to me. She therefore let me visit as an adult, and I was very happy to do so. She never visited London again, had high hedges built so that she could walk on the estate unnoticed. Balfour managed to go to town sometimes, and to visit friends. But mostly he stayed at Balfour Court, though she could never have asked it of him.’ He stood up. ‘There. I have righted a false impression. Dinner will await you, dear Miss Fleet.’ He looked at her returning colour and held out his arm. ‘Or are you ready now?’

She took it and glided alongside him, trying to work out what, if anything, this changed.

She was not much use as a raconteur at dinner. She hardly spoke at all. Eventually both the viscount and Felicity stopped trying to draw her out, and left her to her pondering.

Later, when Evans was unpinning her hair, Euphemia asked her, ‘Lady Balfour was very beautiful, was she not?’

Evans stopped for a second, then continued, ‘My master told her so every day, miss.’

‘Yes, yes I see, Evans.’ She met the maid’s eye in the glass, ‘And in your view, Evans?’

‘My mistress was as kind and beautiful a lady as ever lived, miss.’

Euphemia’s eyes shone. ‘I’m sure she was, Evans.’

Evans continued with the unpinning and then said, gently, ‘Just, as in a different way, you are, miss.’

Perhaps a tear fell. It was difficult to say, for Evans was lifting the blue dress over Euphemia’s head.

Miss Fleet twisted and turned in her bed that night. It did not matter, did it? Whether Lady Balfour was beautiful in the eyes of the world or damaged. She was who the baron wanted, not Euphemia. Or only as a dressing doll. Yet it did somehow make a difference. First, in showing that his kindness was real, that his character was truly noble. But she had always intuited that. How come she to know him so well in so short an acquaintance? Well, he had been open with her, and encouraged her to share her story. Who in all these years, besides Felicity, had been interested? But he had been. She had known it from the nature of the scant remarks he had been able to make as he lay there, at the way he opened his eyes at some points, to let her see that he understood the pain and struggle she did not mention. Yes, he was a kind man and a sensitive one, behind his bear-like clumsiness of expression sometimes. And when they talked and walked the next day they had been so comfortable together. There was so much laughter, too. Until… She would not think of that.

She sat up and lit a candle and read his letter for the fifth time. He did not say why he wished to marry her. He did not say he loved … because he could not lie.

She felt again herself in his arms, his mouth on hers — and it was as though it was still happening, a course of heat moved through her body. For once in her life, whatever his motive, a man had been inclined to her. A good man.

But then there was the shame of her response to him, of letting him glimpse her own desperation to — she hardly knew what. But she cast her head in her hands with humiliation.

She understood now that moral fibre, developed over years, could be crushed in a second by passion. Had she not believed him to be kissing another woman, would she ever have resisted him? The feelings he had let loose in her were so strong. Passion, she supposed. She had read of it in books, and now she felt such a physical yearning to be near him that she could almost ride bareback in her nightdress to find him.

‘Euphemia,’ she said to herself sternly, ‘Control yourself.’ But it seemed a vain command.

In the day came Evans, ready to pin some dresses on her even before breakfast. After submitting to this for a half hour, she went downstairs and told Felicity so. The young viscountess said, ‘Let us devote the day to it. I’m gasping to explore all those lovely things. I’ll come to your room, and I’ll bring the gift we brought you from Rome. In all this excitement, I have forgotten it.’

So it was that the day was spent trying on gowns and being pinned into them. Felicity’s eagle eye had been trained by Lady Aurora’s exceptional taste, and she was occasionally able to suggest a change of ribbon trim on a sash to reflect the colour of Euphemia’s eyes, or contrast better to her hair. Euphemia herself was amazed at how changed she seemed in each dress. It was almost that a shade of moods could be created by fabrics.

‘It is certainly the case that these might have been made for you, Euphemia. So little alteration necessary. You looked so radiant in the green. I have never seen you in green before.’ She realised that the constant praise seemed to upset her friend, unused to compliments as she had always been, so she said. ‘Let us to the bonnets.’

There were ten of these, two that Felicity declared a little démodée and needed to be remodelled in a more modern style. Evans took careful notes. Euphemia’s input was constantly for simplification, removal of flowers or a feather. But once the bonnets were on her, she was overruled, both by Felicity and the looking glass. The bonnets transformed her into another woman, someone à la mode, stylish and very nearly (and this was quite ridiculous) handsome. She began to enjoy herself a little. Evans packed up each gown and took a number of them to the sewing room, the first being tonight’s cream silk.

‘You may wear it with this, my dear,’ she said, and pressed a box into her hands. It was lined in satin and contained a ruby pendant, small but with an Italianate setting that Miss Fleet really was enchanted by.

‘Oh, Felicity!’

‘Sebastian found it. It is quite old, you know. Perhaps a love gift for a lady from two centuries ago. We thought you would like it. You could wear it this evening with the lovely silk gown.’

Euphemia wore the yellow-sprigged muslin once more, and Felicity could not help saying, ‘Oh, you look such a fashionable little thing! What would Lady Ellingham think if she could see you now? I do think Evans has a way with your hair. Let us leave off caps today and walk like wild things with our hats off.’

They went companionably down the stairs arm-in-arm, then, as they reached the hall, they heard a carriage draw up outside.

‘Bastian,’ Felicity called, ‘I believe it is your guest arrived early! We shall have our walk nevertheless, my dear’ she added to Miss Fleet. ‘Let us go through a side door, to avoid being seen.’

They did so, and the day was fine enough to permit the short wild walk that Felicity suggested, and they moved to the walled garden, which, vast as it was, still provided enough shelter from the wind to feel that you were in an interior space. The peach trees trained on the walls had shed their fruit, of course, but there were still some apples and plums to be had. The little paths between vegetable beds were like a map of miniature city streets, and the ladies wandered around them, meeting an old gardener with a sackcloth apron tending some cabbages. ‘Oh Grimes!’ Felicity said, ‘How splendid all this looks. But I need to talk to you about the roses in the bed near the house. Come with me.’ Felicity said, ‘Stay here, Euphemia, I will be back in but a moment!’ The viscountess got to the door in the wall of the garden, peered through it, looked back at her friend, and said, ‘I’m sorry, my dear!’

Euphemia was only confused for a second before the terrible betrayal occurred to her, and that, even before Felicity had disappeared with the gardener, and the huge figure replaced them in the doorway.

‘You!’

He lurched towards her, and she stepped back, almost overturning herself as her foot hit soft earth rather than path. He was with her in two bounds, righting her, and then he stepped back a huge step, giving her space. If only he had not touched her, she might have been stronger, but that searing touch on her arms made her tremble. If only he did not look so apologetic, so worried, so hesitant, so just like the wounded bear, she could tell him to go. But she was silent.

‘Durant wrote to me last night. He seemed to think you more than angry, Miss Fleet. He thought you —’ he hesitated, ‘— unhappy.’ She just looked at him. ‘He said he told you something of my life with my lady. Will you let me explain more?’

She nodded, still looking into the big wounded eyes, hardly daring to breath.

‘Let us sit, you will get a crick in your neck looking at me.’ He moved towards a stone bench and Miss Fleet found herself remarking, ‘I will still get a crick in my neck.’

He laughed shortly. ‘Then you stand and I will sit and you will judge the truth in my eyes. I could think of a better arrangement, but—’

Suddenly, Euphemia imagined herself sitting on his knee to better look in his eyes, and blushed. ‘Are you quite well, sir?’

‘Quite well. The dashed condition comes and goes, often for months at a time, and I am more often well than not. My father had it, and died young. My uncle too, and he still lives at eighty. I feel you should know that. Had I died young, the entailed property and barony would have passed to my brother of course, but there would have been enough, would still be enough, to keep my widow in comfort.’

She swallowed and nodded, and he sat on the bench as she stood facing him, almost eye-to-eye. He began.

‘My lady was so badly damaged by the accident, you see, that she did not want to see anyone but a very few friends. We lived perfectly contentedly together, she was a talented and beautiful lady that I was proud to call my wife. She reigned in her little kingdom like the queen she was, but never ventured further.’

‘You loved her, but it must have been difficult for you.’ She longed to caress his big broad face, and smooth away the pain she saw there, but she was still.

‘No, I was happy. I had only to look at some of the bargains my friends had made as a wife,’ he growled a laugh, ‘and I knew myself to be fortunate indeed.’

‘You had no children…?’ Euphemia was leading him to answer one of the night-time questions that had so robbed her of sleep.

He sighed, but did not break contact with her eyes. ‘This is the delicate thing to say to you, my dear. My wife was fragile. Her face could hardly be borne to be touched and my big monster of a body could never bear to … press upon her … her limbs.’ 

Miss Fleet gasped and blushed. But she, too, did not look away.

‘So when you said I was kissing another, it was never true. And I could hardly believe what I was doing, I am such an animal! You, too, are fragile, and I let my passion for you overwhelm—’

He stopped, for Miss Fleet was now on one large knee, her legs dangling between his, her little arms around his huge neck, looking him straight in the eye. ‘I am strong, not fragile,’ she said firmly. He too gasped, and was kissing her in a moment, not gently at all, but fiercely and ravenously. She threaded her fingers through his wiry mane and drew him closer. ‘Oh, my love, my love,’ he finally whispered at her throat. ‘You have bewitched me.’

She kissed his eyes and his wet cheeks and moved towards his lips once more, her body inclining into him, but he took her by the waist, as he had before, and lifted her away from him, and set her firmly on the ground.

‘We must not kiss again right now.’ He saw he had wounded her again, ‘I could eat you whole, with a spoon, my love,’ he said, lone large finger tracing her cheek, ‘but I will not dishonour you so. Let us walk a little and talk of our wedding.’

‘I seem to be inclined to be a fallen woman,’ said Miss Fleet, wonderingly, walking by his side once more. ‘How loose you must think me. But I have never loved before, you see, and I do not seem to be able to temper my feelings.’

His great booming laugh rang out, ‘I hope you never do.’

‘I did not know myself capable of so much passion.’

‘I did, when you told me the story of Ellena and that idiot Florian, with such animation and ghoulish intensity. And then you laughed so much when I ran with you in the garden. You were so light and full of joy, I could not stop myself.’

‘I never was so before, a big wounded bear of a man brought that out in me.’ She held on to his arm and skipped a little to keep up. ‘I hope … I believe…’ she said tentatively, blushing as she did so, ‘that when one wishes to marry quickly …?’ He looked down at her, with a slightly perplexed look. ‘Is it possible, sir…’ she said dancing ahead of him and turning towards him, looking up into his eyes, ‘… that you might procure a special licence?’ He picked her up then, and whirled her around, his great booming laugh mingling with hers.

Felicity was in her bedchamber, and alerted by the laugh, which she was surprised did not shake the windows, looked down into the walled garden and wept for joy. ‘Oh Bastian! Look!’ she said, as he was behind her. He joined her and watched as his friend Balfour shook poor Miss Fleet’s bones by spinning her around. By the tinkling laugh they could just hear below the boom, she seemed to be enjoying it.

‘Well,’ remarked the viscount, ‘it looks like you’ve lost your companion, my dear.’

She turned in his arms, ‘And who would have thought that the Viscount of Durant would play Cupid?’

As the baron set her down and bent towards his Euphemia, he stroked her face gently with his great paw, ‘Euphemia is such a mouthful, my love. You will be just my Fawn to me.’

‘And you, sir,’ she said, equally tenderly, ‘will always be my Bear.’

Epilogue

‘Oh, Bastian,’ said Felicity reading a letter over the breakfast table, ‘Richard and Euphemia are back from their wedding trip and will pay us a visit next week.’

‘Excellent!’ said her husband, still reading The Sporting Magazine.

Lady Aurora Fenton, the most elegant lady in London, and a mother figure to the viscountess, said, ‘How long was her trip, my dear?’

‘Near four months now,’ said Felicity, still reading.

‘It must be pleasant for Balfour to be able to travel with this wife, since his first stayed so much at home,’ said Mr Wilbert Fenton, equally elegant, if a little florid in dress around the waistcoat area. He was fond of Miss Fleet, who had risked much to help them find Felicity when she had left them last year. Though that had turned out not to be necessary. ‘And I love to think of Miss Fleet discovering the world, after the life she’s had.’ Though he drawled, as usual, he sounded sincere.

Bastian was reading his journal. ‘I told you so, sir!’ he said, addressing Mr Fenton, ‘Fighting Nancy came in at 20-1!’

‘Well, it is lucky that I put a monkey on it.’ Wilbert Fenton said, coolly.

‘How much is that, pray?’ asked the innocent young viscountess.

‘Five hundred pounds,’ the others chanted, gamblers all, and Felicity smiled.

‘Such an amount. Do gentlemen always bet such large sums?’

‘Frequently,’ said Lady Aurora sadly.

‘It amazes me,’ said Mr Fenton, crossing his legs, ‘that now that I do not need the money, I never seem to lose. It becomes tedious.’

‘I know Richard a little,’ said Lady Aurora, reminiscently, buttering a hot roll. ‘When I was finished being afraid of him, I liked him very well. He has such an imposing presence. I was very sad to hear of his first wife’s death, for he mentioned her fondly. It is wonderful to think that he will have a sensible companion like Miss Fleet to spend his quiet life with.’

‘Well, from the tone of this letter, they hardly seem to be living a quiet life. Climbing mountains inhabited by bandits in Spain, only to view a little church she wished to see. It sounds so exciting. She writes:

I was always so afraid of life, my dear Felicity, but I cannot be afraid of anything now as long as The Bear is by my side!

…That’s what she calls him, isn’t it romantic?’ said Felicity, with shining eyes.

‘And what animal might I be to you, my love?’ enquired Durant with a heavy sarcasm.

Mr Wilbert Fenton looked up. ‘I see you as a kitten, myself.’ He lifted his journal to avoid the well-lobbed roll Durant threw at him.

Felicity laughed, and continued to read, ‘Balfour saw off three banditos on his own, Euphemia says — and she was obliged to hit one on the head with a stout branch.’

‘Well done, Miss Fleet!’ said Lady Aurora, laughing.

‘The new Lady Balfour is a different creature than we believed, it seems,’ said Mr Fenton.

Felicity had continued to read. ‘Oh!’ she said, shocked, turning her face to her husband’s. He twitched the sheet from her hand and she pointed to a line.

‘Well,’ said Durant, smiling broadly, ‘we must cast aside your vision of quiet companionship in the sunset of Balfour’s life, Lady Aurora.’ She raised her humorous brows in enquiry. ‘Lady Balfour is in an interesting condition, with offspring due in five months’ time!’

‘A cub!’ said Lady Aurora, amazed.

‘That was quick!’ said Mr Fenton. ‘Let’s hope The Bear was very gentle with our poor Miss Fleet.’

‘Oh,’ said Felicity with merry eyes, taking a sip of her chocolate, ‘I don’t think she’d like that at all!’

‘Well,’ said Lady Aurora, summing it up for them all. ‘What an unexpected enchantment.’

Author’s Note:

Dear Lovely Readers,

I can say that now not just in hope, but in the knowledge that I now possess about some of you. I must truly have some of the loveliest readers around. If you have just found this book and like it, please explore my world on

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P.S. I’ll add a chapter of Book 1 of Francine: Francine and the Art of Transformation to tempt you. This is my Edwardian series, set in the time of Downton Abbey, and Francine is an inspirational woman.

Francine and the Art of Transformation

(Francine, Book 1)

Chapter 1

Out in the street Francine took care that her bronze silk dupion dress did not get wet. It had come to her a few seasons ago from her mistress, she who now looked from the upper window of the elegant London terrace, a picture of desolation. There was nothing to be done about that, or about her petticoats, the damp would creep up, stained by the rain-soaked pavement.  It was ten of the clock or thereabouts and although Francine had foreseen something of the kind, her ejection from the house at this time of night had taken her by surprise.

But why? Maximum impact - that was Mr Curlew’s style. The trouble was that she had given herself away. Before him her demeanour had always been utterly detached. He had delighted in showing off his little cruelties to his wife and Francine had done no more than look bored. Any comforting or conversation between lady and maid had occurred when her husband was out of the house, and his man and spy, Stepping, was far away. But one evening when her ladyship had come home from a ball wearing his bruises on her arms she had passionately cast her arms around her maid and Francine held her, stroking her hair. But the master had followed and burst in, and Francine saw her downfall in his eyes. There must be no place of refuge for his silly little wife. He would plot the most painful time for her sacking.

In this moment, Francine must take care of herself. She hailed taxi, and Gilbert the footman, who had run from the back of the house, now opened the door for her.

‘Sorry Frankie.’

‘Chin up, Gilbert.’

He pressed something into her hand, ‘From her ladyship!’

She grasped his hand a little, ‘Look after her, but don’t do anything imprudent. Tell her I will be fine.’

‘I’m sure she’ll write you a recommendation. Not to worry. I’ll get it to you, if you let me know where you’ll be.’

‘Don’t let her do that. He is waiting and watching for her to slip up.’

‘Then what will you do? Cast off without a character …’

‘Get back in before they notice, Gilbert.’ He handed her the little hatbox that was all she had had time to pack.

‘I’ll pack your box and send it on to you. Best send your direction care of the Dutton’s man. He’ll pass it to me.’

‘Gilbert – I do believe there is more of the spy in you than I thought. Go or he’ll have you, too,’ Francine laughed.

She gave the cabbie the direction of a respectable hotel at the edge of the West End, and she saw his surprise. He’d grasped that she’d been turned off and no doubt wondered why she would spend her limited resources on an overpriced hotel, fit for quality.

Francine opened her palm. There was a hastily written note - I’m so sorry, what will I do without you? - wrapped around a very generous three guineas. This would take care of two weeks in the hotel at least and by then she would have marshalled her forces.

Francine was aware that she, like her sad lady, was supposed to feel prostrate at this time. But she had never seen the world as others did. To be laid off without a character was the worst fate to befall a maid, it could begin an ever decreasing spiral into destitution, and death. But Francine would never be destitute. She had some powder in her little reticule, in a twist of dark blue paper that ensured that. Life could bring surprises, and in the gambles to come she may lose, but there was always the possibility of oblivion before destitution.

Some saw this as sin, punishable by Hell. But Francine knew that Hell was on this earth, not another.

In her dark past, she had known the destitution of her mother and had no intention of repeating it.

There had lived in the squalid rooming house that was her childhood home, a law writer, a man of education who had slid down in the world, now making a few meagre shillings from copying briefs for a solicitor. Mr Paignton taught her to read and write, telling her that she might thus improve her situation to that of lady’s maid. He talked funny and Francine (or Netta as she was then) was a natural mimic. She clowned about, but he was serious about correcting her, and she knew why now. Her mother beat her for wasting her time, but her mother beat her in any case, so little Netta did not desist. He taught her to be neater in her habits and to resist the blandishments of men, who would seek to use her as they had used her mother. This last had struck her. To be her ranting, raving, filthy and stupid mother (taken in by the lies of obvious villains) was something Netta wished to avoid at all costs.

Her friend died of a consumptive disorder. Netta found him and took the three shillings and sevenpence that he had hidden in the clock, his watch and chain which was, thankfully, out of pawn at that time and she left. She walked to Grosvenor Square and watched the servants more nearly than the great ladies. What did they wear on their afternoons off? At the first pawnshop she saw, she bought herself an outfit such as they wore, padding her front a little, since she was still but a tall child.

Her conversations with Mr Paignton had made her understand that she could not easily gain entry to the large houses without starting as a lowly kitchen maid and gaining herself a character. But Netta had been gripped with her mentor’s stories of his European travels and she wished to jump some steps and thought herself equal to the task.

In her plain garb and her worn but venerable lace up boots (which she had exchanged for the watch - but not the chain) Netta used two of her shillings to get to Dover on the stage coach. She haunted the two inns for her prey. Honeymooners or worse. Young ladies persuaded to elope with their young men. Or mistresses accompanying gentlemen. It was a plan made with her mentor when he had come to understand her resourcefulness.

She found a promising pair of dissolute souls and offered her services for room and board and her passage to France. A servant would add to their consequence – she did not need to say so. Under their tutelage ‘Francine’ was born. Her new mentors had taught her well. They were a pair of adventurers who preyed on young rich gentlemen who travelled the continent with too much money and insufficient occupation. Francine felt little pity for most, but had occasionally spoken a word of warning to the most innocent, or the kindest.

Francine watched and learned. Living high to catch a fish on a hook she understood, but why, when ‘in the money’, the couple had been unable to make dispositions for their future she did not understand. Francine was a survivor. Stupidity was intolerable to her, though risk she absolutely embraced.

After some weeks her master had opened her bodice and had begun to interfere with her, she had struggled but he did not stop until he found the padding there.

‘What age are you?’

‘Ten,’ she said. And he pulled back in a hurry.

‘You little adventuress!’ he barked, laughing. ‘Do yourself up and don’t be alone with a man again, be it master or servant. Do you understand me?’

Francine did. After two years jobbing about with those two, she had become fluent in the French tongue, gained a knowledge of high fashion, a way with ladies’ hair and a manner more superior than her master and mistress. She was eventually poached by an Italian Contessa whose scandalous liaisons were the talk of European society.  She gained a great many half-guineas and guineas for messages passed, and a plethora of gifts from her generous Contessa. When the lady met her match and determined to return to the Italian Castello of her birth, Francine decided to accept the offer of a Mr Curlew to look after his new little wife, Lady Elizabeth, since their maid had been struck down on their honeymoon.

Mr Curlew was not to Francine’s taste, but he was rich, his wife was young and charming and they were due to return to England in the near future. Francine, now posing as a French maid, was anxious to see London once more. She was just seventeen years old, but as experienced (in many ways) as many a seventy year old.

She kept up the French maid act for a while. But by degrees she had come to know the servants at Curlew’s house and some of them knew that she was a Londoner.

Curlew had inherited wealth from his father’s mines, but was not a man of family. He had more or less bought his social position by marrying a wife from an impoverished aristocratic family. So much, so usual. But Curlew had the entitlement of inherited wealth without any character. His servants were not family retainers, and over time they had all come to the side of his lovely wife, who knew from long training and her own sweet nature how to treat the staff. But everyone in that house was powerless to help the poor lady, who was subject to visits from her husband pursuing his rights with no care to gentility. He dressed her as befitted his opulence, he required her attendance at social events, where he paraded her like a prize mare. She feared producing an heir because she could not bear the thought of a baby subject to the cruelty she had shackled herself to till death, she confided to Francine. By employing a few of the Contessa’s tricks, the maid helped her mistress to avoid this for the moment. These measures could not be relied upon to last, Francine knew.

Now at the hotel, Francine told the clerk that she was sent ahead to prepare a room for her lady, a Mrs Houston-Fraley, who would arrive in two days. There should be a truckle bed for herself in the room as her mistress was of a nervous disposition. She paid in advance for three days. It was as well, she had no desire to be challenged in her right to stay there by the impeccable judge of social stature that is the English hotelier. She was a superior lady’s maid. She had aped better in her day, but it would be simpler like this. But she would not inhabit the truckle bed.

She did as she always did, planned.

In a pocket sewn in under her skirt there were some folded bills and some gold sovereigns, a great deal more than a young person such as she should possess. She was now twenty-two years of age, and she ought to be terrified, but was, instead excited. Her box, when it arrived, would contain another two travelling dresses, a simple lawn cotton morning dress that her lady gave her for days off, and in addition to the brown button boots that she wore at the moment, another two pair, in grey and black handmade by her lady’s boot maker, bought by her lady who took a little delight in giving the bills to her husband who never checked but would not have approved. This and some satin slippers that she had re-dyed were what she possessed. In London at least.

Francine took off the straw hat trimmed with a thick band of bronze silk, its back brim turned up to accommodate a host of bronze silk roses, which perched on her high coiffure. She had been obliged to simplify this hat and the fabulously cut silk dress, so as to retain the sharp look of a well-sought after maid, but to keep cognisance of her place – not a lady. It was a delicate line. The ladies’ maids of Grosvenor Square dressed in their employers’ discards, often better than many country ladies, but must not rival their mistresses. Francine was tired of the line.

She was at last in bed wearing a frothy concoction of lace and muslin which had been damaged on her ladyship’s honeymoon nightmare. It had been repaired and retained by her maid and now, with her hair around her shoulders and her pretty neck exposed, she looked like a young bride. But Francine was never to be a bride, she knew that. She had a mission.

The next day before breakfast she had written two missives which she would leave at the desk to be delivered very early that morning. One let the neighbouring butler have her direction and the other was to a certain Captain Carstairs. It was brief.

Her Ladyship’s position is everything you fear and more. You need have no compunction in rescuing her. If there is no heir in the next year, and perhaps even if there is, she will probably meet with a fatal accident.

In America less questions are asked and a young couple like yourselves may make a life. For starting capital, look beneath the coping stone on the left-hand side of your doorway. The emeralds are true. The ones in the necklace she wears are paste. As a soldier, I expect you to think of her and not of your honour. She has earned the life these stones may give her.

Her ladyship may worry about the promises she made before God. Convince her that the life you will live henceforth will be one of service.

Mr Curlew has breakfast at his club this morning – take your chance.

Gilbert the footman may be trusted with any message you wish to convey to her.

A Well-wisher.

She went down to breakfast in a little anteroom kept for upper servants. Francine was not alone in her reserve. Some of the valets and maids were chatty, but some held themselves apart as did Francine. She had adopted her accent again, French enough to set her aside from the chattier maids – foreigners were strange; everybody knew that.

After this meal, she retrieved her bonnet and jacket and marched into town. She came, at last, to a street with iron railings which prevented travellers from falling down the stairs that led to basements. A number of these had been converted to shops, many frequented by the fashionable ladies of the surrounding streets. She stopped at one, her entrance heralded by a tinkling bell. It was quite a small shop, with seats and looking glasses enough for four women at once with surplus seating for companions. Empty at the moment, for the lace peignoirs would not yet have been cast off nor the morning chocolate consumed in the fashionable houses. A woman in a dark bombazine dress with enormous leg of mutton sleeves in the French fashion came bustling from the back shop.

‘Francine, my dear!’

‘Violette!’ they held hands and she was led behind the mochette curtain to take tea. When they were comfortably seated at last, Francine said placidly, ‘I have been cast off without a character.’

Violette took this with remarkable aplomb. ‘Oh dear.’ She sipped some chocolate.

‘Indeed.’ Francine sipped likewise.

‘Poor Lady Elizabeth…that man is a brute.’

‘I have taken care of that – if I do not mistake my man.’

‘Have you set someone to murder him?’ Violette’s vowels nearly slipped into plain Violet the chambermaid’s.

‘No, merely to take her away.’

Francine’s companion barked a laugh. ‘Leaving Curlew with a cuckold’s reputation? Let’s see him buy his way out of that.’

‘How is his son?’

‘My son. Never his. He enjoys the country. My mother writes me every week.’

‘Will the loss of Lady Elizabeth’s patronage harm your custom?’

‘I do not think so. Seeing my confections on Lady Elizabeth has already worked its charm. Lady Murray has intimated that she may bring the Countess di Flavio on a visit.’

Violette showed Francine the accounts for the month. Francine raised her brows. ‘Your artistry knows no bounds …’

‘Ten percent, though it should be more …’ she handed Francine an envelope.

Violette could never forget what her friend had done for her. She had been mere Violet Pratt, a chambermaid in Grosvenor Square, most sorely used by Curlew. Cast off when the pregnancy became apparent.

Violet had re-trimmed hats for her mistress with incredible finesse and Francine had seen in this a way to help her. First she had arranged for her care at an institution of nuns, and her child had been sent to her mother. The nuns had seen to it that Violet remembered her shame each day of her confinement, but Francine had given her hope: somehow she procured Violet the lease of a tiny shop, the purchase of milliner’s tools, her first girl to help her. Secretly the newly born ‘Violette’ sketched and sketched and the construction of hats began before she had even left the tender care of the Sisters.

‘God does not blame the victim for the actions of the thief, yet the Sister’s seek to blame you for what was taken from you.’

Violette had cried at the giving up of her child to her mother, but glad that Francine gave her the means to provide for him. Francine had shown her, moreover, that it was not simply hard work that was rewarded with success, but a knowledge of the ways of the world. That a lady’s maid should possess the means to set up a business had shown Violette how much the younger woman could teach her. And she was an eager student of Francine. Her vowels aped the upper class (a little clumsily, it must be said), her dress was transformed by an outrageous French touch and she was instructed by Francine to skip the deferential and move towards a stylistic certainty of speech. ‘No madame - certainly not. I will not allow you to purchase this - to set off your beauty I have a hat that few ladies could wear …’

To Violette’s surprise, the establishment had become the fashion within a month. Lady Elizabeth came, of course, at Francine’s suggestion, and was provided with the fiction that her erstwhile chambermaid had inherited a little money which she invested in the shop. She was delighted to recommend her, since she really was a talented designer.

‘I passed him in the street last Tuesday.’

‘Who?’

‘Mr Curlew.’

Francine was still. Curlew still possessed the power to destroy Violette’s life, should he choose. And being Curlew, he would choose.

‘I was so afraid - but then I did what you would have done. I crossed his path.’

Francine nodded. Better to know than to live in fear of anything.

‘He looked at me direct and still did not know me.’

Francine took in the boned and bustled dress, the high coiffure which would have been covered by one of her sharply styled bonnets and was not surprised. Violet had been a snivelling chambermaid with whom he’d taken his violent pleasure. Violette, this stately woman of business, bore no resemblance.

‘I foresaw Mr Curlew’s revenge and have begun a new enterprise,’ Francine sipped at her tea. ‘Sometimes I may apply to you for aid, for which I will, of course reimburse you.’

Violette put down her cup, looking offended. ‘Anything I can do for you,’ she said, ‘I will do for no reward. You are the authoress of my independence.’

It was obvious to Francine that this last expression was rehearsed. Violette made a great study of gentility in order to front her business with style. ‘Do you wish to take meat from your child’s mouth?’ Francine said severely. ‘What have I always said to you?’

‘Plan for the future. Beware of men. My fashionable state might change with the whim of one bored lady. I must have a secondary plan.’

‘And have you?’

‘My mother has taken a house by the sea. I shall be able to buy the lease very soon. We had a talk and she insisted in posing as my child’s dear nurse, not Grandmother so that I may appear later as a respectable widow. I need a few more years to collect the capital to buy a small annuity for our support.’

‘And if some lady should cause you to lose business meantime?’

‘Then I have enough to move to a fashionable watering place, Bath or perhaps Harrogate nearer to my child and become fashionable once more. Two years and a half is all that I need.’ Violette’s hands were clutched around her delicate lawn handkerchief in a demonstration of will.

‘With the help of my new venture, perhaps not so long.’ Francine dove into her reticule and removed a sheet of paper. It was an advertisement torn from The Gentlemen’s Review:

The perils of an unsuitable match are life-long. The families of many young ladies are taken in by men who misrepresent their character, breeding or financial worth. Discreet inquiries into prospective husbands undertaken for diligent parents. Contact PO Box 532, London, in the first instance.

Violette and Francine had often discussed that the trouble with genteel families is that they treat their daughters like a ladder:  towards wealth perhaps (the settlements) or towards social enhancement (marry above your own station). But Francine knew, from experience, that there were many families who entered as naively into marriage contracts as their daughters did. It was perfectly admissible in Francine’s morality to marry for advancement, but not to suffer degradation for the rest of your life. 

For a moment she remembered her sad Lady Elizabeth, she hoped she could be persuaded to escape with the captain. Violette handed her a handkerchief discreetly.

It seemed to her that there was an opportunity here. An opportunity that would no longer necessitate one to rise at dawn and stay up until one’s lady arrived home from a ball in the wee small hours.

‘If Lady Elizabeth’s family had known about him perhaps,’ Violette said, ‘she would not have endured the life she has.’

‘I am not so sure. Her mother, at least, might have still taken the settlement money.’ She could not compete with rampant greed. ‘Well, I have caused this advert to be placed in all the county periodicals. I can save those I may. I have received twenty-seven enquiries already.’

‘But how on earth can you find out what the families can’t?’

‘Who knows a gentleman’s situation better than anyone?’

‘The servants!’

‘Indeed.’ Francine smoothed her gloves over her fingers. ‘And that will be the level of our contacts.’

‘Will you not be in danger of a diligent valet reporting you to his master?’

‘We shall first set someone on the gentleman to watch his habits. Visits to certain places in London will indicate character. We will observe how he treats his servants, for that is also an indication and lastly, we shall look for the most disaffected of servants and seal their tongues with shillings.’

‘What help can I give?’

‘Those gentlemen who do not pay their bills. Or who pay bills for more than one lady. There is always talk, is there not, amongst the dressmakers and tailors of the city? Don’t you hear tales?’

‘There was a tailor in the city, Sandler, who has had to flee his debtors this week. Brought down by Lord Whitelaw and his cronies. Ordered much and nary a one paid.’

‘It is too bad. I trust you keep a handle on your client’s bills?’

‘There are difficulties, but I have a number of solutions.’

‘Do tell…’

‘Well,’ said Violette with a little pride in her own machinations, ‘I assess the fashionability of the client. Lady Enderbury arrived for example, and I know from the conversation of the clients that her consequence is enormous. But her husband does not pay his debts.’

‘So?’

‘I of course make her all the hats she desires. It is not necessary to ask her to give my name. Her beauty is such that she will be asked.’

‘Not a loss then.’

‘Indeed.  I have had countless clients as a result. For just the cost of nine hats. All ladies are treated wonderfully in the shop, but if enquiries indicate that a lady is one who does not pay, then I offer the hats to be delivered in three months.’

‘And they refuse of course. The season will be over.’

‘I apologise profusely and cite how very busy I have become. There are also, if needed, a couple of very ugly hats in the back room that we use on clients who obviously have very little means and intend to walk the park wearing garments that they have no intention of paying for. They leave looking for another milliner.’

Francine sat back and smiled. ‘You are a clever and wonderful woman.’ She paused. ‘I think, don’t you, that we could train a couple of girls as kitchen maids and infiltrate the homes of our suspected gentlemen.’

Violette’s eyes clouded. ‘Only if they carry a cosh.’

Francine held out her hand. ‘Agreed.’ They shook on it.

As she left the shop, she thought of Violette’s companions in the convent. Francine was no fool. Many of those girls might be too far from a clean working life for her to help.  But the waste of women could not be supported.

A carriage halted her progress crossing the street. As it past, she saw a hat that Violette had trimmed, one with a lace veil in pale blue to match a handsome travelling dress that she herself had ironed two days ago. The carriage moved past and a little squeal went up. Two faces, one veiled in blue and one with handsome military whiskers leaned from the window. A hand flew up. A handkerchief waved.  Francine fought down her joy lest she dance in the street.

She turned the street corner, calm once more. A band of women walked carrying a banner .Women’s Suffrage, it said.

Yes, thought Francine dispassionately, but meanwhile …

Read on:

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Also by Alicia Cameron

           Audiobooks:

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Angelique USA                

Beth: coming soon

Clarissa USA

Delphine USA

Honoria USA:

Felicity USA

Francine USA

Regency Romances:

Angelique and the Pursuit of Destiny

Beth and the Mistaken Identity (The Fentons Book 2)

Clarissa and the Poor Relations

Delphine and the Dangerous Arrangement

Euphemia and the Unexpected Enchantment

Felicity and the Damaged Reputation

Honoria and the Family Obligation (The Fentons, Book 1)

Edwardian/Victorian Romances:

Francine and the Art of Transformation (Francine Book 1)

Francine and the Cost of Love (Francine Book 2 - coming soon)