if I can read the thing. Shockin’ bad hand and the spelling is atrocious. Can’t think who’d be sending me such rubbish. Toss it in the fire, girl!”
The young woman picked the letter up and smoothed it out. “Would you like me to try?”
Taking the snort she received from her grandmother to be assent, Amelia read it out, hesitating occasionally over misspellings and illegible words, of which there were many.
Milady I be right sorry to be addressing you like this it being above my station to be writing to Countesses but I cannot think of who else to turn to…
“A begging letter!” the Dowager Countess snapped in outrage. “On to the fire with it at once!”
“I think not, Grandmama,” said Amelia, scanning ahead. “Let me finish.”
…for my poor girl is now left all alone in the world with no kin to care what become of her but it do seem a right shame that the daughter of gentlefolk should have to skivvy to stay alive…
Lady Cahill’s eyes kindled with anger. “By God, she’s trying to palm one of your father’s by-blows off on to us!”
“Grandmama!” Amelia blushed, horrified.
“Oh, don’t be so mealy-mouthed, girl. You must know your father had any number of bits o’ fluff after your dear mother died, and they didn’t mean a thing, so don’t pretend. But it’s nothing to do with us. Your father would have left any base-born child well provided for. He was a gentleman, after all, even if he was a fool! Now toss that piece of impertinence in the fire at once, I say!”
But her granddaughter had forgotten her blushes and was avidly reading on. “No, wait, Grandmama, listen to this.”
And being as I was her old nurse even if some as did say I wasn’t good enough to be nurse to Vicar’s daughter it falls to me to let you know what my girl has come to being as you was godmother to Miss Maria her poor sainted mother…
Lady Cahill sat up at this and leant forward, her eyes sharp with interest.
…and her only remaining child so now there be nothing left for her but to Take Service her not willing to be took in by myself and truth to tell there be little enough for me alone so I beg ye Milady please help Miss Kate for as the Lord is my witness there be no other who can yours truly Martha Betts.
“Do you know any of these people, Grandmama?” said Amelia curiously.
“I believe I do,” said her grandmother slowly, picking up the letter and scanning it again. “I think the girl must be the daughter of my godchild Maria Farleigh—Maria Delacombe as she used to be. She married a parson and died giving birth to a daughter…must be nigh on twenty years ago. She had two boys before that, can’t recall their names now, and I lost touch with the family after she died, but it could be the same family.”
She peered at the address. “Is that Bedfordshire I see? Yes. Hmm. No kin? What can have happened to the gel’s father and brothers?” Lady Cahill frowned over the letter for a short time, then tossed it decisively down on a side table.
“What do you mean to do, Grandmama?”
Lady Cahill rang for sherry and biscuits.
Amelia’s husband arrived and they all went in to dinner. Over cream of watercress soup, Lady Cahill announced her decision.
“But, Grandmama, are you sure about this?” Amelia looked distressed. “It’s a very long journey. What if Jack won’t receive you, either?”
Lady Cahill gave her granddaughter a look of magnificent scorn. “Don’t be ridiculous, Amelia!” she snorted. “I have never in my life been denied entrée to any establishment in the kingdom. I go where I choose. I was a Montford, gel, before my marriage to your grandfather, and no one, not even my favourite grandson, tells me what I may or may not do!”
She dabbed her mouth delicately on a damask napkin and poured her sherry into the soup. “Tasteless rubbish!”
Later, as she pushed cailles à la Turque around her plate, she said, “I’ll call upon Maria’s gel on my way to visit Jack. I cannot let her starve and I’ll not allow Maria Farleigh’s child to enter into service! Faugh! The very idea of it. Maria’s mother would turn in her grave. She was a fool to let her daughter marry a penniless parson.” Lady Cahill’s eyes narrowed as she considered the shocking mésalliance.
“The Farleighs were a fine old family,” she admitted grudgingly, “but he was the last of his line and poor as a church mouse to boot. Church mouse. Parson! Ha!” She cackled, noticing her unintended pun, then fell silent.
She heaved a sigh and straightened her thin old shoulders wearily. She pushed her plate away and called for more sherry.
“Yes, I’ll roust the boy out of his megrims and keep him busy.” Lady Cahill ignored the Scotch collops, the lumber pie, the buttered parsnips and the chine of salmon boiled with smelts. She helped herself to some lemon torte. “Can’t leave him brooding himself into a decline up there in the wilds of Leicestershire with no one but servants to talk to.” She shook her head in disgust. “Never did believe in servants anyhow!”
Amelia tried valiantly to repress a gasp of astonishment and met her husband’s amused twinkle across the table. For a woman who considered a butler, dresser, cook, undercook, housekeeper, several housemaids and footmen, a scullery-maid, coachman and two grooms the bare minimum of service needed to keep one elderly woman in comfort, it was a remarkable statement.
“No, indeed, Grandmama,” Amelia managed, bending her head low over her plate.
“Don’t hunch over your dinner like that, girl,” snapped the old woman. “Lord, I don’t know how this generation got to be so rag-mannered. It wouldn’t have been tolerated in my day.”
The knocker sounded peremptorily, echoing through the small empty cottage. This was it, then, the moment she had been waiting for and dreading equally. The moment when she stopped being Kate Farleigh, Vicar Farleigh’s hoydenish daughter, and became Farleigh, maidservant, invisible person.
Now that the moment had come, Kate was filled with the deepest trepidation. It was a point of no return. Her heart was pounding. It felt like she was about to jump off a cliff…The analogy was ridiculous, she told herself sternly. She wasn’t jumping, she had been pushed long ago, and there was no other choice…
Squaring her shoulders, Kate took a deep breath and opened the door. Before her stood an imperious little old lady clad in sumptuous furs, staring at her with unnervingly bright blue eyes. Behind her was a stylish travelling coach.
“Can I help you?” Kate said, politely hiding her surprise. Nothing in Mrs Midgely’s letter had led her to expect that her new employer would be so wealthy and aristocratic, or that she would collect Kate herself.
The old lady ignored her. With complete disregard for any of the usual social niceties, she surveyed Kate intently.
The girl was too thin to have any claim to beauty, Lady Cahill decided, but there was definitely something about the child that recalled her beautiful mother. Perhaps it was the bone structure and the almost translucent complexion. Certainly she had her mother’s eyes. As for the rest…Lady Cahill frowned disparagingly. Her hair was medium brown, with
