Beth and the Mistaken Identity Page 14
‘How amusing. I shall be in the hall, with your bonnet and pelisse, just like the perfect lady’s maid, in an hour.’
‘I must to breakfast.’
‘What about mine? I was told to be in the kitchen for six o’clock.’
‘You will not be fed if you missed it.’
‘I am becoming rather tired of being a lady’s maid,’ Miss Sophy said.
Beth went down to breakfast, and was pleased to note the marquis’s absence. He was desperately disappointed in her, she knew. He wanted her to confide, but he would soon find why she could not. Emmi made a bright and talkative breakfast companion, avoiding all mention of today’s errand. Beth knew her intention was to console, and she tried to conceal her own heart.
As soon they were in the hall, where Miss Sophy stood pert and upright, holding her pelisse and bonnet, next to Cécile who was holding Emmi’s. They put them on, and Beth looked away from Miss Sophy’s dancing eyes to Dobson’s, who nodded. The plan was in action. They moved to the carriage, and a footman opened the door, where the marquis was discovered inside. As Emmi mounted, Beth saw Sophy’s eyes dart to the footman who had appeared with her and Beth’s bags, and was securing them onto the back with leather straps. She looked at Beth, who met her gaze squarely.
‘Where are we going?’ she said in an urgent whisper.
‘Horescombe House,’ Beth answered.
‘How dare you?’ But she wasted no more time on words and grasped at her skirts, whirling around. The tall figure of Frost blocked her path. She tried to move around him, but he moved too, and when she twirled in the other direction, she found another large figure block her path.
‘You may as well get in,’ said Beth quietly.
‘I shall tell them!’ hissed Sophy.
‘Do. All will be known in ten minutes at any rate.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the Horescombes do not deserve to worry for you one more moment. You affect them more than you know.’
Sophy shot a furious look at her, but entered the carriage. It was a silent journey to Horescombe House.
The old timbered building was a triangular oasis in the new London. There was even a drive, and they drove down it, the tension mounting.
They got down and the marquis, his face grim, pulled at the old bell by the tall oak doors, and they all four waited.
Suddenly Beth broke the silence. ‘No!’ she said to herself, ‘It must be me.’ She turned to Wrexham, who stood stiff and pale and said, grasping his arm so that he looked at her. ‘It is she who is Sophy Ludgate, and I who am the maid.’
He froze and she heard Emmi gasp. The door opened and she was glad.
Chapter 14
After a brief, devastated glance at Emmi, Wrexham made his way inside with the party as though in a dream. They were shown into a fine old room, with the enormous fireplace alight at this early hour. The general was not present, only Lady Ernestine, wearing an odd dress made of poplin, as though she were about to garden, and two other older ladies he did not recognise. They were perhaps in their forties, and one had dark brows and a fierce energy about her, while the other, with a fluttering hand and an ever moving glance reminded him of his mother’s cousin, Cynthia, who only waited for the next blow to befall her, and annoyingly sought to please him to an excess. He was still reeling from shock, but he took all this in in a second. The maid, or Miss Ludgate, moved forward to Lady Ernestine, but her ladyship patently ignored her, choosing instead to greet him and his sister with her mannish handshake and simple apologies for the aggravation he had been put to. Wrexham supposed he said what was wanted in reply, he hardly knew.
Then she turned to Beth, who stood stiffly, with her eyes down. ‘Thank you so much for your note last evening, Beth, it relieved our minds of too much care.’
‘Traitor!’ said Sophy Ludgate, with a dark look at Beth.
Wrexham wondered if on the ride, he had guessed something of this. The carriage was full of the energy of the maid’s repressed fury, and there was something in the superior tilt of her chin as she kept her gaze out of the window, that was not the behaviour of a maid. He had felt from the first that there was a mystery about her, but he had been blind to the mystery of Beth.
Lady Ernestine rounded on her. ‘Enough! I do not wish to hear your voice until I give you leave.’
The harshness of her ladyship’s tone had its effect, Sophy Ludgate stepped back, but still fulminating. Lady Ernestine picked up a folded and sealed missive and gave it into Beth’s hand. She took it, dazed and unheeding, but her eyes fixed on Lady Ernestine’s face as though to an anchor.
‘When Miss Fosdyke told me you had lost your position doing Sophy’s bidding, I was most grieved. Perhaps you should have told her ladyship about that dreadful outing, but —’
Beth interrupted, rather unlike a maid, Wrexham thought — but numbly. ‘I was afraid if I told, she would make an assignation another night and I might not be there to aid her.’
‘But Beth,’ objected Sophy, touching her sleeve, ‘I quite thought you loved our adventure at Vauxhall Gardens. I dressed you up, and you became a lady for the night and danced and everything! Why, I find you most ungrateful.’
‘Enjoy it?’ said Beth, her tongue spurned. ‘Enjoy straining to see you every moment, heading off rakes and worse, worrying every minute if you would be recognised—’
‘She was!’ his sister informed them. Everyone looked at Emmi, shocked. ‘But it’s Vauxhall, you know,’ she continued, waving an airy hand, ‘you can always claim it was a mistaken identity. The whole world is intoxicated, anyway.’
Lady Ernestine looked grim. Then she turned back to Beth. ‘You were right, my girl, that Sophy would have found a way. I never met a more determined person in my life.’ The Ludgate girl looked proud at this and Wrexham looked at the two sisters, one who was regarding this with a cool gaze, the other anxiously. ‘That letter contains a recommendation from me,’ continued Lady Ernestine, still addressing Beth. ‘I have worded it to suggest that you were my lady’s maid, referred to you as Culpepper, you know, and have written on paper with Grandpapa’s crest. I believe you may seek a higher position now than that which you held.’
‘Culpepper!’ hissed Emmi at his side, but he hardly heard.
His emotions, which had frozen since Beth’s announcement, were beginning to come crashing upon him, and he wished to cast the chairs about the room and scream to the heavens in his frustration. He looked at her, that lovely face — and his sense of betrayal overcame him. She had told them — but two seconds before they got here was hardly sufficient. How would he have reacted to her had she told him before? At the inn? When they reached London? Last night? He hardly knew, so much in a tumult was he. She was answering her ladyship.
‘I hardly deserve your kindness,’ he saw a tear fall on her cheek and had the urge to wipe it away. Why was he still—? His hands were already in fists, and he gripped them tighter.
The general had entered the room. His tall frame still moved in a soldier’s walk, but his military-whiskered face was dangerously high in colour. As he glared in Miss Ludgate’s direction, it became higher still. He approached Wrexham.
‘I must apologise, Wrexham, Your Highness, that I was not here to greet you.’ They exchanged bows. ‘But this matter has tried me to the utmost, and my doctor sent me a cursed draught, as I have been overwrought. My ward missing, and with no chaperone. She normally has that at least. But I could not find that any maid was missing from the house where we were.’ In all this time, he did not look again at Sophy Ludgate, and Wrexham felt he could not yet, in case his blood exploded.
‘It is quite true, I am usually very careful, no matter what you think,’ answered the pert little person, who in Wrexham’s opinion had been too often spared the rod in her childhood. He would be willing to make up for that deficit now. ‘But I could not persuade the maid to come.’
Lord Horescombe eventually turned his eye on her, and had to breathe heavily as he did so
. ‘And,’ said the general, ‘you are guilty of theft.’ His tone of admonishment dropped a little as he added, ‘It was dashed awkward at the first stop. Miss Fosdyke had to pay for the refreshments.’
‘As though that could possibly repay you for—‘ twittered one of the ladies behind.
But she stopped abruptly, and Wrexham feared she had been nipped by her sister.
Sophy Ludgate gurgled at this, but was quelled by her guardian’s awful eye. ‘But sir,’ she said, putting one pretty hand on his arm consolingly, ‘you must perceive that I needed funds in case of emergency. You always say that the success of any campaign is preparation. You would not want me to be stranded somewhere, with perhaps some ruffians nearby, without the funds to hire a carriage?’
‘Well, no,’ conceded the general, ‘but—’
This was Sophy Ludgate’s particular genius, Wrexham suddenly saw, to make her outrageous behaviour seem reasonable, and to make her listener collude with her, as the general had, so that they end up almost approving it. Beth had no doubt been subjected to a great deal of her affection, then her self-serving logic.
‘And I was to bring the purse back to you directly, for I really meant to return to Horescombe House yesterday. Only it was the drollest thing. I met a servant who mistook me for Sophy Ludgate’s maid! I knew almost at once that it must be Beth, who was pursuing her own masquerade.’
He heard Beth gasp but could not see her face.
‘Did you really take your mistress’s identity?’ said the general, shocked. ‘How came you to live in Wrexham’s home?’
Beth’s head was cast down, and her fingers clasped.
Emmi stepped forward. ‘Beth never did claim to be Miss Ludgate, your lordship, I assure you. Indeed she denied it always. But I believed I recognised her as a girl I saw at Vauxhall Gardens, whom someone told me was Miss Sophy Ludgate.’
‘The whole town will be talking of her!’ The old man grasped at his cravat.
‘Oh, that will pass,’ consoled his sister, ‘But the point is, we would not let Beth go until you returned.’
‘Well, it is very odd,’ said the general, ‘and not at all the thing. You should have spoken truly, Beth, and remembered your position.’
‘I tried, but I feared—’ uttered Beth in a small voice. ‘At first, I did not have many shillings for travel—’
‘Do you mean to tell me that Lady Foster let you go without your wages?’ demanded Lady Ernestine.
‘She said I should have them, perhaps, at the end of the quarter.’
‘That woman!’ said Ernestine disgustedly.
‘So selfishly, I took the offered transport to London, thinking to seek a position at an inn.’
‘That’s why you were there, at that inn,’ Wrexham said, addressing her for the first time. ‘You were seeking a position.’
‘Yes.’ Beth answered, but she did not look at him.
He remembered Tennant’s behaviour with the serving girl. ‘I can imagine why you decided against it.’ She met his eyes fleetingly for a moment and dropped them again. He wanted — but he stopped himself moving to her.
‘But then,’ said Emmi, ‘we wouldn’t let you go.’
Beth said nothing.
‘And by that time, I suppose you needed someone to explain why you found yourself in such a position, someone to explain Sophy to them,’ said Lady Ernestine frankly.
‘I think you are all spending a great deal of time on Beth and none on me at all,’ said the pert little miss.
The general turned to her. ‘Do not worry, miss, I will get to you in a moment.’ Then he reached into his pocket and took out a packet, which he held out to Beth. ‘You deserve this reward, my dear, for the unjust treatment you have received, only for being appointed maid to the most headstrong little termagant that God every created.’ Beth let the packet drop into her hand.
‘Thirty pieces of silver!’ hissed Sophy. ‘You betrayed me today—’
But her words were cut off by a stentorian voice.
‘You will apologise to Beth at once, Sophy!’ The voice fairly cut through the room, stunning them all. Miss Fosdyke, of the dark brows, came forward then — and even in her old gown she looked regal in a way his sister could not quite match. ‘At once!’ Her voice rose again, and Sophy almost jumped. For the first time she was shame-faced and she said, ‘I apologise, Beth.’
‘And you may apologise to my sister, too, who spent the whole of yesterday’s journey crying, worrying herself about you. I did not give myself the trouble, for everything I have learnt about the most selfish individual of my acquaintance told me you would look after yourself, even if no other person concerns you!’
Sophy, still shaken, said, turning to the younger sister, ‘I’m sorry Miss Wilhelmina. But it isn’t true what your sister says. I had laid my plans the night you came to me in my room, and I delayed two whole days more because I knew how much you were enjoying that dreadful party!’
Miss Fosdyke cast her eyes to heaven. ‘I apologise, your lordship,’ she said, turning to the general, ‘it was not my place to speak.’
‘Nonsense! You are family after all, and I could not have expressed it better myself.’ He suddenly looked at Beth. ‘You may go,’ he dismissed her, ‘and fare thee well.’
Wrexham saw Beth headed for the door and he leapt forward in his imagination to her going into the street, strong and upright in her blue pelisse, and disappearing from his life forever. ‘No!’ he ordered, ‘She will stay!’ He turned to the general whose eyebrows had risen, ‘With your permission, sir.’ But his voice was not pleading, and the general held his gaze for a moment. Wrexham met his squarely. The general nodded finally, and Beth took up that rigid position she had adopted, off to one side. He did not know what he was thinking, what his complex and turbulent feelings were. But he needed her in his sight.
‘You, young lady, will stay in this house under our eye, for the foreseeable future. I have asked the kind ladies to stay and they have obliged me by saying yes, even though you have caused them so much distress. One of us shall be beside you at all times — and at night I shall have you tied to your bed if need be.’ Wrexham saw Sophy look at a work table beside the fireplace, where a piece of linen was stitched with colourful silks. She looked contrite however, and the general continued. ‘I cannot conceive of why you behave this way Sophy. It is beyond me. You disobey us every turn — is it to meet some swains, to flirt with men to bolster your self-esteem? Or to choose your own husband without our help? This is dangerous indeed!’
Sophy flushed brightly, but it was Beth’s voice who said, ‘No, your lordship. Excuse me, but you are much mistaken.’
‘Well, Beth,’ said Lady Ernestine practically, after a moment of shock that Beth would put herself forward so. ‘Explain her to us. You have been most often in her company this last year.’
Beth came forward a little, still with a maid’s demeanour, and said. ‘It is not the gentlemen Miss Sophy likes, but the adventure. I was worried a little by the male attention she received, indeed invited sometimes, with her winning ways. But she was never interested in them, only how they could further her plans. She is really very innocent in her dealing with gentlemen, I think, and cannot conceive why her friends are sometimes cast into transports at a smile, or cast down by a gentleman failing to dance with them. Miss Sophy cares for none of that.’ The general looked somewhat reassured by that, Wrexham could not help noticing. ‘Our trip to Vauxhall was not to flirt or be flirted with, although because Miss Sophy is so pretty it is inevitable that she was pursued. It was for the spectacle, the experience, and also because she was forbidden.’
‘Contrary eh? Just wants to flout us. When I had such soldiers in the ranks, I had them birched!’
‘But Miss Sophy was not made to be a soldier, but a general, like you sir,’ said Beth.
Here she was, in the quiet little voice of a maid, defending the creature who had almost destroyed her. How like her, Wrexham thought. She had not finished.
‘You are most observant for a maid,’ said the general a little gruffly.
Wrexham could see her think it then: How do you know what a servant observes, you never ask?
‘I do not think you will ever best her in the way you wish. She has a determined spirit and a creative mind, and a desire to experience everything that she may.’
There was a pause, everyone but Emmeline and he amazed that Beth had spoken so.
Lady Ernestine said reasonably, ‘All you say rings true to me. But if she is not to make some husband’s life a misery, her wilfulness must be curbed.’
‘But I do not want a husband!’ broke in Sophy. ‘They seem to me the most useless thing imaginable.’ She seemed to consider, ‘Unless I married someone weak enough to do my bidding. I suppose that might work.’
Miss Wilhelmina gave a horrified gasp. ‘To be wed when there is no affection …’
Her sister sniffed. ‘Do not fear, my dear sister, Sophy has enough affection for herself to last a lifetime.’
Even Lady Ernestine seemed shocked at Sophy’s marriage plans, and Wrexham could not blame her. Of all the heartless little jades …! Lady Ernestine turned to Beth and said, ‘Well, since you have given us her character so wisely, Beth, how would you tame Sophy?’
General Lord Horescombe expostulated, but indecipherably, perhaps at her ladyship’s asking help of a junior servant.
Beth seemed, for once, at a loss. ‘I do not know, your ladyship, I only know your current plan is not to the purpose.’
Wrexham moved forward a little. ‘If I might venture a suggestion, your ladyship?’ He was nearer to Beth now, and though there was an arm’s length between them, he felt the frisson that went through her, and the heat in him. They did not look at each other.