Damsel in Distress (19 page)

She had a mobcap and sacrificed a gray muslin gown she had been saving to make into dustrags. Caro took them into the yard and gave them a thrashing in the dust. Mrs. Lorimer watched in consternation as Lady Winbourne gathered up a bowl of dust and shook it over her lovely raven hair until it lost its sheen, then applied it to her face as if it were powder.

When Caro undertook a job, she did it wholeheartedly. She knew the only hope of pulling this rig off was to forget she was Lady Winbourne and become a seller of fish. As she worked, her ladylike expression changed to a pert, insouciant grin.

“How’s that then, mum?” she asked, peeking at Mrs. Lorimer when she had finished the transformation.

“I would never recognize you, milady. Wherever did you learn to speak like that?”

Caro’s impish grin softened to nostalgia. “My husband and I were footmen to Lord and Lady Carlisle for a whole weekend,” she said, remembering a bet Julian had made with a friend that he and Caro would never spend another night under Lord Carlisle’s roof after defeating the man’s bill in Parliament. They had masqueraded as servants and spent the hardest weekend of their lives fetching and carrying. But Julian had won the bet, and she had learned to speak like a servant.

“Some joke, I wager,” Mrs. Lorimer said. “But your hands, milady,” she said, looking at Caroline’s dainty white hands with the manicured fingernails. “Wear an old pair of gloves. My gardening gloves are in wretched shape, with the thumb out.”

“Excellent!”

“And your teeth
—
a girl of the lower orders would not have teeth in such good repair.”

“I refuse to have a tooth drawn! I shan’t smile. You must tell me what price fish fetches hereabouts. I want to offer a bargain, to entice the cook to let me into the kitchen.”

It was half an hour later that a fishmonger dressed in a form-concealing gray dress left the back door of Dolmain’s house on Marine Parade with her basket of fish holding turbot, mullet, winkles, and mussels hung over her neck, and scampered westward to Bartholomew Avenue. No one gave her more than a passing glance. When Newton, watching from a north window of the Town Hall, saw a fishmonger enter the watched cottage, he peered closely at her. It was not until the mobcab turned and stared up at the window that he was certain it was Caro.

By Jove, she should be on the stage. How naturally she swung her little rump, like a regular hoyden. He checked his watch when she went down the lane to the back door. If she was not out in fifteen minutes or so, he would go after her.

Caro was surprised to see the little flint cottage was in such poor repair. The roof sagged, the paint was chipped, and the garden all overgrown. When the back door opened, she was taken aback to find not a cook or housekeeper staring at her, but a woman who matched Newt’s description of Renée
.

She was pretty, but of a certain age, and wearing a good deal of paint on her face. Her gown, featuring an excess of bows and lace, was too smartly vulgar for real fashion. A tea towel tucked in around her waist was her only concession to the kitchen.

“Fresh fish, mum?” Caro asked, taking care not to reveal her teeth. “Come in my pa’s boat this mornin’. Lovely bit of turbot, that,” she said, holding the rounded, flat-bodied fish up by the gills. She was glad she was wearing gloves. The fish were slimy.

The woman looked at it with distaste. “Disgusting! But then, one must eat something,
hein?
How does one prepare it?” she asked, revealing a trace of French accent.

“Oh, poached, mum, with white sauce. A crying shame to bake a turbot. I could let you have this beauty for eight shillings. A rare price for a middling-sized fish. They’re the tenderest. You could feed eight people off’n this lad.”

“It is too large. I only have to feed three.” Caroline schooled her features to indifference, lowering her head lest her eyes betray her interest. Three! Herself, deVere, and Helen.

“Serve it up with a cream sauce tomorrow, then,” she suggested. “It’ll keep overnight in the larder.”

“I don’t plan to be here tomorrow.” Again Caro had to school her face to vacuity.

“Pity. How about some nice mussels then, mum?”

The woman studied the turbot. It would save a trip out to shop for food. There were potatoes in the larder. “Just poach it, you say?”

“Yes, mum.” With some memory of her childhood days in cook’s kitchen, she added, “You wash it in salt water first to get rid of the slime, and then rub it in lemon before you boil it.”

“How long do you boil it?”

“For this one, half an hour,” Caro said at random.

“I dislike to touch it, yet if it only has to be poached ...” She disliked to contemplate dealing with an oven.

“
Your cook run off on you, did she?” Caro asked pertly.

“Exactly. I don’t suppose you
—

Caro’s heart leapt at this unexpected piece of luck. The woman wanted her to prepare the fish
—
but how could she do it without removing her gloves? She felt a note of reluctance was called for and said, “I’ve got my living to earn, mum.”

“I shall pay you. Wash the thing off with salt and put it in the pot. I shan’t be able to eat a bite, I know. Much he cares for me, so long as
she
likes it. How much altogether?”

“A guinea.”

“A pound. Prepare the fish and sauce and leave them on the table. I shall pay you after you have finished.”

It was too good an opportunity to lose. “Very well.”

The woman removed the tea towel from her waist and walked quickly from the room. Afraid that she might return to check on her progress, Caroline used a tea towel to rub the fish down with salt and rinsed it off. Finding no lemon, she put the turbot on the rack in a poaching pot and added water. White sauce was a mystery to her. Before attempting it, she ran halfway up the back stairs to see what she could learn.

“She is sleeping?” the woman asked in French.

A man’s voice replied, also in French. “I put laudanum in her tea. That should hold her until dinner at nine.”

“How long will it take him to collect the money?”

“We should have it by midnight. Which means another of your wretched dinners, Renée
.
”

“I don’t see why you and I cannot go out to dine.”

“And leave our little gold mine all alone? No, we shall all dine here tonight, feeding her plenty of wine, then send her back upstairs to rest. We have to keep her convinced we are her true friends. I doubt her own papa could lure her away, after the job I have done convincing her.”

“It seems cruel to get her hopes up.” Caroline’s ears perked up at this. What ruse had they used to convince Helen to go with them?

“I owe milord a lesson,” deVere/Bellefeuille said in a sneering voice. “And it will cost him more than pounds and pence this time.” Caro felt the hair on the back of her neck rise at that frightening speech.

Instead of following up this line, Renée said, “I must prepare the sauce for the turbot.”

Caroline scampered back down to the kitchen. White sauce! Presumably it was made from milk or cream. She remembered seeing cook make blancmange with cornstarch. When the woman returned to the kitchen, Caro was filling a pan with milk.

“Your fish is ready to go,” she said. “I’m just getting on with the sauce.”

The woman watched as she rattled about the cupboards. She found a tin of cornstarch and plunged her hands into it to conceal their natural whiteness. She used half of the powder to make a paste, which she
added to
thicken the milk. The brew soon thickened to an alarming degree over the stove.

The woman came to look at it. “It’s time to thin it now,” Caro said, and added water until it was of more or less the proper consistency,

“You’ve only to set it aside and heat it up at dinnertime,” she said, with a sigh of relief. Now she could leave.

She was about to go when she heard a voice from the bottom of the stairs. “So this is how you
are preparing the sauce, Renée
,
” deVere said. She hadn’t heard his approach.

They both spoke French as before. Renée replied, “I never claimed to be a cook,
mon cheri.”

“Soon we shall have all the servants your greedy little heart desires
—
if you have a heart,
c’est à dire.”

Caro turned her back to them, pulled on her gloves, and picked up her basket.

“You pay her, Michel,” the woman said. “A pound.”

DeVere rattled some coins in his pocket, drew out his hand, and came toward Caro. Her heart floated up to her throat. He could not recognize her! He had never seen her. Oh, but if he recognized she was a lady ...

“You’re a pretty little thing,” he said, pulling her chin up between his fingers. She twitched her head away. “A temper, eh? I like that in a girl.” His sharp eyes traveled in a leisurely way down to her bosoms. “Or should I say, woman? With a bath and a decent gown ...”

“Let her go, lecher,” Renée said angrily.

DeVere dropped the coin in her gloved fingers. “Thankee, sir,” she said, swallowing a prayer of thanks for Madame’s jealousy. She hung the fish basket around her neck and fled out the back door. As she left, she heard Renée light into him for his lechery. “You never can keep your vile hands off a woman!”

Without waiting to hear his reply, Caro darted down the lane and back onto the street just as Newton came around the corner. She scuttled along the street and they both turned the corner beyond view of the house on Bartholomew Avenue.

“Is that you, underneath all the dirt?” Newt asked, peering owlishly at her.

“Of course it is! Helen is there!” she exclaimed.

“Let us go fetch her.”

“She is drugged, but I have a plan.”

“Good, dump that load of fish and let us hear it.”

“We can safely leave her for the moment. Let us go to Marine Parade. I want a long bath to kill the stench.”

“Damme, I don’t want an open basket of fish in my carriage.”

“I shall leave it on the street. It won’t remain there long.” She removed the basket and put it in the shade. A young tousle-haired boy looked at it hopefully. “Take it,” she said.

“For free?”

“No, for a pound.” She handed him the coin deVere had given her. She didn’t want to keep anything he had touched.

“Gorblimey,” the urchin said, and snapping up the coin and fish basket, he lit out down the street at a gallop.

“We shall need a ladder and a blond wig and some stout ropes,” Caroline said, as they drove to Marine Parade. “It would help if we had a portrait of her. I wonder if Helen has not got a copy of one at Marine Parade.”

“The stench of fish has disordered your brain, my girl,” Newt said severely. “Here, let me get some air into the rig.” So saying, he opened both windows.

“If there is no picture, then Lady Milchamp must give me a description of her,” Caro continued, thinking out loud.

“Deuce take it, Caro, you know what Helen looks like. And if you are thinking of wearing a wig and breaking into the house on Bartholomew Avenue
—
”

“Not breaking in!” she said. “I promised Dolmain I would not do anything rash. I am merely planning to lure Helen out.”

“You figure she is that fond of ropes and ladders?”

“No, goose. The ladder is to reach her window, and the rope is in case we have to force her to come with us.”

“A good thing you ain’t planning anything dangerous!” he said, with heavy irony.

“It is not in the least dangerous. I plan to dress up like her mama. I am convinced that is the lady Helen thinks she will be meeting in Brighton. Meg heard her mention her mama and papa. She adores her mama. Dolmain told her her mother died in France. How easy for deVere to pretend he has found her and brought her back alive. It must have been Miss Blanchard who told him of Helen’s devotion to her mother. In fact, it was after Blanchard came to them that Helen set up the shrine. I daresay Blanchard encouraged her.”

“Silly thing to do. The woman ain’t a saint. But why did Helen not tell Dolmain they had found his wife?”

“Because if Helen had told her papa that Marie had turned up, Dolmain would reveal it for a lie. DeVere has given Helen some excuse for not telling Dolmain, and convinced her to steal a valuable necklace to secure her mama’s safety.”

“Just what is it again that the wig has to do with it?”

“I am going to rig myself up to look like Lady Dolmain to fool Helen. In the dark, just a glimpse through a window. As Helen will be in her bedchamber, we shall require a ladder to reach it. If I could copy the hairdo and gown Marie is wearing in the portrait, it would work. Helen can have no real memory of her mama. What she remembers is a portrait. I wish I had seen it. If she saw a similar-looking woman, she would at least open the window, and if we cannot convince her to come with us, we shall just have to snatch her and steal her away.”

Newt considered this. “Might work,” he allowed,
“but
we will need some excuse for going to the window instead of to the door. The mama is supposed to be friendly with deVere. No need for her to go scrambling up ladders to see her daughter.”

“Surely we can invent a convincing lie as well as he! They plan to feed Helen a good deal of wine. She will be groggy, which is all to the good. I shall say some spies are lurking outside the door to kill Lady Dolmain when she arrives, and that deVere wants them
—
us
—
to leave by the window.”

“As I said, might work; on t’other hand, she might recognize you and holler, bringing deVere down on our heads. Or deVere might hear us going up the ladder, or
—
well, any number of things, every one of them dangerous for you.”

“Or they might fool Dolmain into handing over the ransom money and not give Helen back at all,” she shot back. “DeVere said this affair would cost Dolmain more than pounds and pence. You should have heard the way he said it, Newt, so gloating. God only knows what he meant, but I fear it does not bode well for Helen. We must save her, and Georgie has made clear there is no point calling in Bow Street. I know Dolmain will fly both ways, but I do not see how he can be here much before midnight.