The Audacious Adventuress

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1802-2

“You think I should protect myself from the Marquis?” Druscilla asked, a note of mischief in her voice that the listener in the bedroom could detect quite clearly.

“Well, you never knows, do you,” Miss Deane answered. “But ’tis not the Marquis that I’d be wary of tonight, not with His Grace away! There’s others in the party who’ll not be so preoccupied. Nevertheless the Marquis has a reputation for being a high-stepper when it comes to the female sex.”

“Has he indeed,” Druscilla murmured curiously.

“One of the valets has been makin’ us laugh fit to split our sides downstairs durin’ supper,” Miss Deane explained. “He was tellin’ us how his Lordship, to escape from a jealous husband, once shinned down a drainpipe only to fall into a water butt.”

“That must have cooled his ardour,” Druscilla smiled.

“And another time,” Miss Deane went on with relish, “he only avoided discovery by a-creepin’ out of the back door with a chef’s hat on his head. Oh, he’s a real dasher and no mistake! Of course his Lordship’s own man sat there with pursed lips sayin’ nothin’, but I knew by the twinkle in his eyes that the stories were not all that exaggerated.”

“You really think I am safe from this rapacious Lothario?” Druscilla asked.

“Well, I don’t know what you means by that,” Miss Deane said, “but they says he’s absolutely infatuated with Her Grace and she with him. From what the pantry was a-sayin’, she was holdin’ his hand under the table at dinner and castin’ him such languishin’ glances that it was quite difficult to serve the dishes, their heads were so close together.”

“Well, it’s certainly a good thing that His Grace is away,” Drucilla said.

“It is indeed,” Miss Deane agreed. “We all knows what His Grace’s temper is like when it’s aroused. One of the coachmen was sayin’ only the other day that His Grace can be a nasty customer when he’s in one of his rages like someone he wouldn’t want to encounter on a dark night.”

Druscilla gave a little gurgle of laughter.

“Oh, Miss Deane, you are funny.”

“But there I mustn’t stand talkin’ to you,” Miss Deane said. “There’s a dozen jobs awaitin’ and me short-handed with Ellen going off to bed. Goodnight, Miss Morley, and keep the door looked.”

“I will indeed,” Druscilla answered, “and thank you again for bringing my supper.”

She turned the key in the lock after the housemaid had left the room.

As the Marquis emerged from the bedroom, she greeted him with a mischievous smile.

“Druscilla, you little Devil!” he accused her in a low voice. “You led her on deliberately to discomfort me! Do they always talk like that below stairs?”

“Of course they do,” Druscilla answered. “There is nothing that escapes their eyes not even when people hold hands under the table.”

“Damn it!” the Marquis exclaimed. “It makes me feel such a fool.”

“Remember that they are only servants and beneath your condescension,” Druscilla advised him. “And now for Heaven’s sake go away in case someone finds you here. You heard what happened to Miss Lovelace.”

“I gather she was the last Governess.”

“I look her place,” Druscilla said, her voice suddenly serious. “Poor thing, I wonder what will happen to her. Without references it’s almost impossible to find any employment.”

The Marquis reached the door and turned the key cautiously.

“Goodnight, Druscilla, you have given me a great deal to think about. And this is not the last you will see of me.”

“Then I shall be disappointed,” she replied sharply. “You can do nothing for me, my dear cousin, except leave me alone.”

He smiled at her and she was forced to admit to herself that he was a beguiling young man and it was no wonder that so many foolish women risked their reputations for him.

She listened to his feet going down the passage and then relocking the door she settled herself once again at the table with her embroidery.

She glanced at the tray that Miss Meadows had brought her and saw that it contained a rather unappetising leg of chicken, a piece of cheese and a hastily cut crust of bread.

The food was not usually so scanty or so badly served, but, when there was a large party in the house, the staff were strained to their uttermost to cope with the extra amount of work there was to do.

It was not only the number of guests, she had heard Miss Deane earlier in the day say that about twenty-five people would be staying.

But, as each of the visitors brought their lady’s maid, their valet, their coachman, their footmen and sometimes even other members of their staff, it meant that the housemaids were working from dusk until late into the night without extra help.

But it was not of the difficulties of the house nor of her unappetising meal that Druscilla was thinking about as she put down her embroidery once again and stared across the room.

She was thinking of the Marquis and how different he looked today from the overgrown youth he had been when she last saw him.

It was now 1802 so he must have been seventeen that last summer at Lynche Hall, she thought, while she had just passed her tenth birthday.

He had been bored because his mother was ill and there were no parties in the Big House. And so he had been quite amused to have as a companion a small girl who had followed him about adoringly, ready to fetch and carry or, as he had called it, fag for him.

He teased her incessantly, she remembered, because she had red hair.

“Come on, Carrots! Where are you, Ginger?” was the usual way he had addressed her.

And she had loved it, happy to follow him through the woods when he went out pigeon shooting and proud to be allowed to carry home his game for him.

He had taken her boating on the lake and upset the boat by mistake so that she had gone home looking like a drowned rat.

They had stolen the best peaches from the greenhouses when the Head Gardener was not looking and sat in the sun to eat them with a delicious feeling of guilt.

He dared her to walk along the top of the high brick walls and while she quaked with the fear of falling and breaking her neck, she had never let him see that she was afraid.

On horseback she followed him over jumps that she would never have dared to attempt if she had not feared that he would laugh at her for being a coward. And when her father had given up the incumbency at Lynche, she remembered thinking despairingly that she would never see Cousin Valdo again.

And now, she thought, he had grown just like all the other men she had met since she had left home, overdressed, foppish, conceited and interested in nothing but chasing after women and making life unbearable for their inferiors.

“I hate him!” she said aloud.

She was all the more incensed because he had disturbed her, taking away the feeling of peace and security that she had found in the schoolroom and bringing back all too vividly the terrors she had endured these last two and a half years since her father’s death.

She supposed that it was because she had been brought up in the quiet and peace of a Vicarage that she had found the world that she had been pitchforked into so horrifying.

Her innocence had made her find the attentions of those who thrust themselves upon her not only distasteful but evil.

She had been panic-stricken not once but half a dozen times to the point when she felt that life was too frightening for her to wish to go on living.

Then gradually her contempt for those who insulted her had given her a new strength and a fresh resilience to fight them with.

Nevertheless it had been a very different kind of fear that had brought her to The Castle to plead with the Duchess for a position in her household.

Without references there was not a Domestic Bureau left that would take her on their books and she had to face the fact that she might soon have to surrender herself to one of the gentlemen who continually importuned her.

‘I would rather die,’ she told herself not once but a hundred times until it became the truth.

Then she thought that she would take a wild gamble and throw herself on the Duchess’s mercy. It meant spending all that remained of her money on a seat in the stagecoach that passed The Castle gates.

It was by sheer chance that she turned up just as Miss Lovelace had been dismissed and the. Duchess had no one else in mind. And she had been frank about the difficulties that she had encountered in her previous positions.

The Duchess had been equally frank.

“I will employ you on the strict understanding, Miss Morley, that there will be no philandering in this house. Neither His Grace nor I would tolerate that sort of behaviour.”

“There will be nothing like that, Your Grace,” Druscilla had asserted firmly.

Even as she spoke, she thought despairingly of what had happened in her other posts and of the men who had crept along to the schoolroom at night.

Men who had removed the key so that she could not lock the door, of the expression in their eyes the moment they had seen her, their hands going out to touch her, to pull her to them, their lips seeking hers and their laughter when she struggled against them.

‘Men, men, I loathe them all,’ she told herself, ‘and Valdo is only another of them!’

With a little sigh she realised that the Duchess’ gown would not be ready by morning if she did not go to work.

It was not the job of a Governess to embroider for her Mistress or indeed to do any of the work that should have been done by a lady’s maid, but, once Her Grace had discovered how skilfully Druscilla sewed, there were always extra tasks waiting on the schoolroom table for her.

And perhaps, Druscilla had thought despairingly more than once, this would be a compelling reason for the Duchess to wish to keep her.

Nevertheless her back ached and her heart was still pounding a little because Valdo had come to the schoolroom and raised the fear of his being discovered there.

Had one of the servants had a sight of him leaving or entering the room, Druscilla was well aware that the Duchess would know the next morning.

They were all frightened of Her Grace’s spy, the Groom of the Chambers. He read the blotting paper in the guest rooms by holding it up to the mirror, he searched the wastepaper baskets and he listened at keyholes. There was little he did not know and nothing happened, however trivial, that he did not transmit to Her Grace.

Druscilla felt herself shiver at the thought and, feeling suddenly cold, she went to the bedroom and, taking off her dress, slipped on her nightgown and her warm flannel dressing gown.

Then she let down her hair, releasing it from its tight bun. It cascaded over her shoulders like a flood of fiery gold, rippling down until it reached far below her waist.

Moving across the bedroom and shading with one hand the candle she carried so as not to disturb the sleeping child, Druscilla found her hairbrush and carried it into the schoolroom.

She usually brushed her hair for a hundred strokes every night, just as her mother had taught her to do, but tonight she was too tired and there was too much to be done.

She brushed it only until it sparkled as if alive and then skilfully plaited it so that it hung down her back like a schoolgirl’s and tied it with a small bow of green ribbon.

Now she was ready to continue her work and yet she still felt disturbed. She looked at her meal and decided that it was not worthwhile even to try the cold chicken.

Instead she cut herself a piece of cheese, buttered a small portion of the crust of bread and tried to eat. But finding this impossible she resolutely put the tray on the other side of the room and settled down at the table.

With about six inches of the embroidery still to do, she wondered how quickly she could finish it.