A Royal Pain (2 page)

All right, so now you know my dreadful secret. I’ve been earning money by cleaning people’s houses. My advertisement in the
Times
lists me as Coronet Domestics, as recommended by Lady Georgiana of Glen Garry and Rannoch. I don’t do any proper heavy cleaning. No scrubbing of floors or, heaven forbid, lavatory bowls. I wouldn’t have a clue where to begin. I undertake to open up the London houses for those who have been away at their country estates and don’t want to go to the added expense and nuisance of sending their servants ahead of them to do this task. It involves whisking off dust sheets, making beds, sweeping and dusting. That much I can do without breaking anything too often—since another thing you should know about me is that I am prone to the occasional episode of clumsiness.

It is a job sometimes fraught with danger. The houses I work in are owned by people of my social set. I’d die of mortification if I bumped into a fellow debutante or, even worse, a dance partner, while on my hands and knees in a little white cap. So far only my best friend, Belinda Warburton-Stoke, and an unreliable rogue called Darcy O’Mara know about my secret. And the least said about him, the better.

Until I started this job, I had never given much thought to how the other half lives. My own recollections of going below stairs to visit the servants all centered around big warm kitchens with the scent of baking and being allowed to help roll out the dough and lick the spoon. I found the cleaning cupboard and helped myself to a bucket and cloths, feather duster, and a carpet sweeper. Thank heavens it was summer and no fires would be required in the bedrooms. Carrying coal up three flights of stairs was not my favorite occupation, nor was venturing into what my grandfather called the coal’ole to fill the scuttles. My grandfather? Oh, sorry. I suppose I hadn’t mentioned him. My father was first cousin to King George, and Queen Victoria’s grandson, but my mother was an actress from Essex. Her father still lives in Essex, in a little house with gnomes in the front garden. He’s a genuine Cockney and a retired policeman. I absolutely adore him. He’s the one person to whom I can say absolutely anything.

At the last second I remembered to retrieve my maid’s cap from my coat pocket and jammed it over my unruly hair. Maids are never seen without their caps. I pushed open the baize door that led to the main part of the house and barreled into a great pile of luggage, which promptly fell over with a crash. Who on earth thought of piling luggage against the door to the servants’ quarters? Before I could pick up the strewn suitcases there was a shout and an elderly woman dressed head to toe in black appeared from the nearest doorway, waving a stick at me. She was still wearing an old-fashioned bonnet tied under her chin and a traveling cloak. An awful thought struck me that I had mistaken the number, or written it down wrongly, and I was in the wrong house.

“What is happening?” she demanded in French. She glanced at my outfit.
“Vous êtes la bonne?”
Asking “Are you the maid?” in French was rather a strange way to greet a servant in London, where most servants have trouble with proper English. Fortunately I was educated in Switzerland and my French is quite good. I replied that I was indeed the maid, sent to open up the house by the domestic service, and I had been told that the occupants would not arrive until the next day.

“We came early,” she said, still in French. “Jean-Claude drove us from Biarritz to Paris in the motorcar and we caught the overnight train.”

“Jean-Claude is the chauffeur?” I asked.

“Jean-Claude is the Marquis de Chambourie,” she said. “He is also a racing driver. We made the trip to Paris in six hours.” Then she realized she was talking to a housemaid. “How is it that you speak passable French for an English person?” she asked.

I was tempted to say that I spoke jolly good French, but instead I mumbled something about traveling abroad with the family on the Côte D’Azur.

“Fraternizing with French sailors, I shouldn’t be surprised,” she muttered.

“And you, you are Madame’s housekeeper?” I asked.

“I, my dear young woman, am the Dowager Countess Sophia of Liechtenstein,” she said, and in case you’re wondering why a countess of a German-speaking country was talking to me in French, I should point out that high-born ladies of her generation usually spoke French, no matter what their native tongue was. “My maid is attempting to make a bedroom ready for me,” she continued with a wave of her hand up the stairs. “My housekeeper and the rest of my staff will arrive tomorrow by train as planned. Jean-Claude drives a two-seater motorcar. My maid had to perch on the luggage. I understand it was most disagreeable for her.” She paused to scowl at me. “And it is most disagreeable for me to have nowhere to sit.”

I wasn’t quite sure of the protocol of the court of Liechtenstein and how one addressed a dowager countess of that land, but I’ve discovered that when in doubt, guess upward. “I’m sorry, Your Highness, but I was told to come today. Had I known that you had a relative who was a racing driver, I would have prepared the house yesterday.” I tried not to grin as I said this.

She frowned at me, trying to ascertain whether I was being cheeky or not, I suspect. “Hmmph,” was all she could manage.

“I will remove the covers from a comfortable chair for Your Highness,” I said, going through into a large dark drawing room and whisking the cover off an armchair, sending a cloud of dust into the air. “Then I will make ready your bedroom first. I am sure the crossing was tiring and you need a rest.”

“What I want is a good hot bath,” she said.

Ah, that might be a slight problem, I thought. I had seen my grandfather lighting the boiler at Rannoch House but I had no personal experience of doing anything connected to boilers. Maybe the countess’s maid was more familiar with such things.

Someone would have to be. I wondered how to say “boilers are not in my contract” in French.

“I will see what can be done,” I said, bowed and backed out of the room. Then I grabbed my cleaning supplies and climbed the stairs. The maid looked about as old and bad-tempered as the countess, which was understandable if she’d had to ride all the way from Biarritz perched on top of the luggage. She had chosen the best bedroom, at the front of the house overlooking Hyde Park, and had already opened the windows and taken the dust covers off the furniture. I tried speaking to her in French, then English, but it seemed that she only spoke German. My German was not up to more than “I’d like a glass of mulled wine,” and “Where is the ski lift?” So I pantomimed that I would make the bed. She looked dubious. We found sheets and made it between us. This was fortunate as she was most particular about folding the corners just so. She also rounded up about a dozen more blankets and eiderdowns from bedrooms on the same floor, as apparently the countess felt the cold in England. That much I could understand.

When finished the bed looked suitable for the Princess and the Pea.

After I had dusted and swept the floor under the maid’s critical eye, I took her to the bathroom and turned on the taps.
“Heiss Bad für
. . . Countess,” I said, stretching my German to its limit. Miraculously there was a loud whooomph and hot water came forth from one of those little geyser contraptions above the bath. I felt like a magician and marched downstairs triumphantly to tell the countess that her room was ready for her and she could have a bath anytime she wished.

As I came down the final flight of stairs, I could hear voices coming from the drawing room. I hadn’t realized that yet another person was in the house. I hesitated at the top of the flight of stairs. At that moment I heard a man’s voice saying, in heavily accented English, “Don’t worry, Aunt. Allow me to assist you. I shall personally aid in the transportation of your luggage to your room if you feel it is too much for your maid. Although why you bring a maid who is not capable of the most basic chores, I simply cannot understand. If you choose to make life uncomfortable for yourself, it is your own fault.” And a young man came out of the room. He was slim, pale, with ultra-upright carriage. His hair was almost white blond and slicked straight back, giving him a ghostly, skull-like appearance—Hamlet come to life. The expression on his face was utterly supercilious—as if he had detected a nasty smell under his nose, and he pursed his large codlike lips as he talked. I had recognized him instantly, of course. It was none other than Prince Siegfried, better known as Fishface—the man everyone expected me to marry.

Chapter 2

It took me a moment to react. I was rooted to the spot with horror and couldn’t seem to make my body obey me when my brain was commanding me to run. Siegfried bent and picked up a hatbox and a ridiculously small train case and started up the stairs with them. I suppose if I had been capable of rational thought I could merely have dropped to my hands and knees and pretended to be sweeping. Aristocrats pay no attention to working domestics. But the sight of him had completely unnerved me, so I did what my mother had done so successfully, so many times and with so many men—I turned and bolted.

I raced up the second flight of stairs as Siegfried came up the first with remarkable agility. Not the countess’s bedroom. At least I managed that degree of coherence. I opened a door at the rear of the landing and ran inside, shutting the door after me as quietly as possible. It was a back bedroom, one from which we had taken the extra quilts.

I heard Siegfried’s footfalls on the landing. “This is the bedroom she has chosen?” I heard him saying. “No, no. This will not do at all. Too noisy. The traffic will keep her awake all night.”

And to my horror I heard the footsteps coming in my direction. I looked around the room. It contained no real wardrobe, just a high gentleman’s chest. We had taken the dust sheets off the chest and the bed. There was literally nowhere to hide.

I heard a door open close by. “No, no. Too impossibly ugly,” I heard him say.

I rushed to the window and opened it. It was a long drop to the small garden below, but there was a drainpipe beside the window and a small tree that could be reached about ten feet down. I didn’t wait a second longer. I hoisted myself out of the window and grabbed onto the drainpipe. It felt sturdy enough and I started to climb down. Thank heavens for my education at finishing school in Switzerland. The one thing I had learned to do, apart from speaking French and knowing where to seat a bishop at a dinner table, was to climb down drainpipes in order to meet ski instructors at the local tavern.

The maid’s uniform was tight and cumbersome. The heavy skirts wrapped around my legs as I tried to shin down the drainpipe. I thought I heard something rip as I felt for a foothold. I heard Siegfried’s voice, loud and clear in the room above. “
Mein Gott,
no, no, no. This place is a disaster. An utter disaster. Aunt! You have rented a disaster—and not even a garden to speak of.”

I heard the voice come across to the window. I think I have mentioned that I am also inclined to be clumsy in moments of stress. My hands somehow slipped from the drainpipe and I fell. I felt branches scratching my face as I tumbled into the tree, uttering a loud squeak. I clutched the nearest branch and held on for dear life. The whole thing swayed alarmingly but I was safely among the leaves. I waited until the voice died away then lowered myself down to the ground, sprinted through the side gate, grabbed my coat from the servants’ hallway and fled. I would have to telephone the countess and tell her that unfortunately the young maid I sent to the house had suddenly been taken ill. It seemed she had developed a violent reaction to dust.

I had only gone a few yards down Park Lane when somebody called my name. For an awful moment I thought Siegfried might have been looking out of a window and recognized me, but then I realized that he wouldn’t be calling me Georgie. Only my friends called me that.

I turned around and there was my best friend, Belinda Warburton-Stoke, rushing toward me, arms open wide. She was an absolute vision in turquoise silk, trimmed with shocking pink and topped with cape sleeves that fluttered out in the breeze as she ran, making her seem to be flying. The whole ensemble was completed with a little pink feathered hat, perched wickedly over one eye.

“Darling, it
is
you,” she said, embracing me in a cloud of expensive French perfume. “It’s been simply ages. I’ve missed you terribly.”

Belinda is completely different from me in every way. I’m tall, reddish-blondish with freckles. She’s petite, dark haired with big brown eyes, sophisticated, elegant and very naughty. I shouldn’t have been glad to see her, but I was.

“I wasn’t the one who went jaunting off to the Med.”

“My dear, if you were invited for two weeks on a yacht and the yacht was owned by a divine Frenchman, would you have refused?”

“Probably not,” I said. “Was it as divine as you expected?”

“Divine but strange,” she said. “I thought he had invited me because, you know, he fancied me. And since he’s fabulously rich and a duke to boot, I thought I might be on to something. And you have to admit that Frenchmen do make divine lovers—so naughty and yet so romantic. Well, it turned out that he’d also invited not only his wife but his mistress and he dutifully visited alternate cabins on alternate nights. I was left to play gin rummy with his twelve-year-old daughter.”