Dangerous Diana (Brambridge Novel 3) (16 page)

“The War Office has asked me to look into something for them.” Tentatively he risked reaching for the cake again. “I have been examining ways in which to deal with the problem.”

His mother gave a ‘humph’ with so much force that she spilled her tea. “Gracious, is that what they call it nowadays?” she asked, raising one eyebrow and pushing her teacup onto the low table next to her. “Lady Colchester was quite sure you had fallen in love.”

Hades swallowed. If only he’d had the foresight to miss this appointment with his mother after all. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Lady Colchester told me over tea that you had met someone and you were being very secretive about it.”

“How interesting.”

“When I heard, I ran through a list of all the debutantes and widows that I knew were around this season and I have talked to them one by one this week. None of them know anything about your activities.”

Hades stood and swallowed twice as he rang for me tea. His throat had turned to sandpaper and he was sure his mother’s unwavering stare was about to set his ears on fire. She would have made a good addition to the War Office. Oh God! Interrogating every single debutante and widow as to his activities—that was the
end
.

“Hades? Hades!” Lady Dowager Stanton prodded him in the back with her fan. “Are you sure it is love? After Elsa…”

“Don’t talk to me about Elsa.” Hades turned slowly and sat down again. “She was a woman who was out for all she could get.”

His mother sighed and her expression cleared. “Thank goodness for that. I thought you were going to pine after her thinking that she was an angel for years and years.”

“No, but what it has taught me now is to never surrender to another woman every again.”

She gasped. “Hades! Have you still not understood what I have tried to tell you all along? In a good woman you will find happiness. I provided that for your father, why can’t you allow yourself to receive that from a woman?
This
woman, if she will grant it to you.”

“It might be a little late for that now.” Hades shivered; the frosty silence and distrust on Melissa’s face as he had left through the front door of the house would have been enough to bring winter early. She had seen right through his machinations, and very probably, right through him.

“So she does exist,” his mother crowed, flipping open the fan to waft herself in excitement. “I knew it. What is her name?”

“Mother.” Hades ducked as the fan that had already hit him twice, threatened to do so again. “Please would you stop waving that fan around? You are making me nervous.”

Lady Dowager Harding stopped wriggling in her seat and snapped the fan shut. “No matter,” she murmured. “I will find out by other means.” She stood and strode to the door leaving Hades open-mouthed by the fire.

Carter opened the door with a tea tray piled high with a new teapot and some more scones.

“I’m just leaving, Carter.” Lady Dowager Harding dropped her fan onto the heavy tea tray. “Kindly show me out.”

In a slow jig, Carter danced round Hades’ mother and dropped the tea tray onto a low table with a crash. Hades winced as Carter rushed back to the hallway to open the front door.

Lady Dowager Stanton stopped in the hallway and, with little regard for propriety, shouted back into the front room. “Are you sure you love her?”

Hades buried his head in his hands as Carter gasped loudly in the hallway. He had no words with which to respond. As she sailed by outside the front room window, Hades shrank back down in his seat. A large unladylike grin was plastered all over his mother’s elegant face.

CHAPTER 18

“Melissa! Miss Sumner!” The shout across the park was unmistakable, and uncharacteristic for the normally demure Victoria.

Little does the ton know.
Melissa turned and gave the carriage that bore down on her a large smile. She had come to Hyde Park to clear her head, and to get away from the confines of the dark Bayswater house. Even the garden was beginning to wear her down. Everywhere she looked, she saw more tasks that needed to be undertaken.

The white, showy, open carriage drew up to Melissa with a flourish, the two white mares that led it nodding their heads vigorously. She took a step back as the horses sidestepped towards her.

Victoria peered over the side. “Don’t just stand there like a goose. Get in!”

The tiger that was balanced on the back of the elegant barouche nimbly jumped down and opened the door to the carriage to unfold a small set of steps.

With only a small pause, Melissa ascended the steps; after all, what had she to lose? Victoria’s maid moved over slightly to allow her room to sit and gave her a shy smile.

“I never normally come over this side of the park,” Victoria said with a flash of her perfect teeth. “But I am tired of being on show to the ton. They chatter so.” A dark look crossed Victoria’s normally unlined complexion. Her maid shifted uncomfortably on the cream leather seats. “Oh drive on, Oswald,” Victoria tapped her coachman irritably on the shoulder with a small hand.

“This is lovely,” Melissa shouted as the wind streamed through her hair. Oswald had set the mares off at a blistering clip.

“Isn’t it just!” The dark look on Victoria’s face cleared. She sat back, clinging on to the armrest as the seat bounced slightly on the well-sprung carriage suspension. “How are you, Melissa? Have you recovered from the events of last summer? I didn’t have time to ask you when you appeared so suddenly last week. You seemed so well,
pressed
.”

“Things have been a little fraught recently.” Melissa looked forward and grimaced slightly. That was an understatement.

“Is it your mother? Sorry—the woman who was not your mother! Has she found some way of coming back?”

Melissa turned back to Victoria in surprise. “No. Not that I’ve heard. Hopefully she is rotting in a hot hell somewhere on the other side of the world.”

“Hmm, that would be too good for her.” Victoria gripped on to the side of the carriage. “Oswald, slow down if you please. I can’t hear my friend speak over the clopping of the hooves!”

Friend.
Melissa hugged that to herself. It was good to have a friend.

“I was meaning to invite you down to Brambridge.” Victoria gave a sigh of obvious relief as the horses slowed. “My brother is holding a house party and it would be lovely if you could come. None of us have seen you since last summer when Edgar died and we all know that business with Lord Stanton wasn’t your fault. You acted heroically, if you ask me.”

“You don’t think Lady Anglethorpe will be a little put out? After all, I did make things quite difficult for her niece, for Harriet I mean?”

“Aggie? No. She feels the same way as me.”

“I… I will have to think about it. Times are difficult at the moment.”

Victoria nodded. “I quite understand. I have had troubles of my own.” She smiled. “Do you remember Earl Harding? He and I used to, how can I put it delicately,
comfort each other
, back when he was still hurting over the marriage of his true love to another man, and I had just emerged from my marriage to old Lord Colchester.” Victoria made a moue with her mouth. “It wasn’t exactly comfort. The earl is as hard as ice, and allows himself to express very little emotion.”

A roaring escalated in her Melissa’s ears. Glancing over her shoulder, she looked for a galloping horse, for anything. But there was nothing. Facing forwards, she folded her hands in her lap. “Really?” she managed weakly.

Victoria gave her a quick glance. “It was a long time ago. But that is not the funny thing.”

“Gracious.”

“No! He came to my house a couple of weeks ago, walked in and kissed me, without so much as a by your leave.”

A shudder ran through Melissa’s body.

“It wasn’t just a chaste kiss on the lips I tell you!” Victoria picked at her skirt. “He really went for it. It was unlike any kiss he had given me previously.”

Melissa gripped at the door of the carriage and pushed it open, gazing at the ground as it rushed by beneath her. “I must go.” The maid next to her bounced slightly on the seat in surprise. “Oswald, stop here, please.”

The coachman brought the carriage to a stop. Without waiting for the tiger, Melissa jumped through the open door.

Victoria stood unsteadily and looked down at her in surprise.

Melissa put up a hand and waved. “I’ve just remembered I’ve left the kettle on the stove. I need to get back quickly to make sure it doesn’t explode.”

Victoria frowned and gripped the edge of the carriage with two hands. “But we can take you back.”

“No, no, I needed the exercise, that was why I was in the park in the first place.”

Victoria nodded and glanced at her maid, before looking back again. A small smile played around the edges of her lips. “Do remember my invitation to Brambridge. We’ll keep a room available for you, just in case you decide to come.”

Melissa nodded and waved again as the carriage pulled away.

The walk home was short, through the western exit of the park and then only a few turns before she reached the small road with the identical houses that ran in straight terraces either side of it. She could see the chaos outside her house before she got there; the front door was open, and all the newly cut and dried flowers and herbs that she and Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs had painstakingly prepared had been thrown in and around a large sack. The glassware that she had amassed so painstakingly, for distilling and preserving, lay in a shattered heap in a bucket outside a large black carriage. Mrs. Hobbs’ weeping rang for yards down the street from her position on the front doorstep.

“What is it? What has happened?” Melissa cried, breaking into a run for the last few yards. Oh gracious, surely her mother hadn’t returned had she, really?

“It’s men from the gov’nment,” Mrs. Hobbs sobbed. “They’ve got some kind of paper but I don’t understand it.”

Loud shouts from inside the house drew Melissa inward. She patted Mrs. Hobbs wanly on the shoulder as she pushed open the door.
When would the upset ever end?

In the kitchen at the end of the hall, two men were wrestling a newly made flower press from Mr. Hobbs’ arms.

“Stop it,” she cried. “Just stop it!”
Not another press
;
not more of my meagre belongings
. She ran forwards, pulling at the arm of the smaller man. Without noticing her, he stepped back and slipped on the tiles of the floor, clipping Melissa on the head with his elbow. With a scream, she sank to the floor, as the three men toppled onto the tiles, following the heavy press.

Rubbing her left temple, Melissa stood and clung to the sideboard. Her glasses had been knocked askew in the fray. Feeling carefully for the lenses, she was relieved to feel that they were still intact and not cracked. She pulled the legs of the spectacles behind her ears and resettled the rims on her nose.

“What do you want?” she asked the groaning men on the floor. Her voice came out cracked and piercing.

“They want to take our livelihood,” Mr. Hobbs shouted, rubbing his leg. “They’ve taken everything. They’ve smashed up the glassware and taken all the herbs we’ve grown. I’d just made this new press for you and they wanted to take that too.”

“It’s all in the name of the crown,” the taller of the two men muttered. “We’ve got a right to do it.”

“Yeah, now just tell us where you keep your mercury and arsenic.” Even though the shorter gentleman was fat and unappealing, he still managed to leer from his undignified position on the floor. Melissa stumbled backwards as memories of the coal merchant washed over her. After she had… helped him to the floor in his unconscious state he had lain in that very position.

“I don’t keep any mercury or arsenic. I only deal in herbs and flowers.”

“So you admit it?”

“Admit what?”

“That you are running an apothecary.”

“I… Yes.” Melissa nodded slowly. There were no other words for what she had been doing.

“Then we have a right to seize your goods and test them for wholesomeness,” the tall man said tiredly, getting to his feet. He pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket and gave it to Melissa. “Apothecaries Act of 1815’.

Melissa opened the piece of paper.

The fat man rose from the floor, smiling slyly. “What training did you have to become an apothecary?”

“My father was a botanist,” Melissa said distractedly, reading aloud the long title from the paper. “Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom. An Act for Better Regulating the Practices of Apothecaries throughout England and Wales.” She looked up. “I didn’t know anything about this—”

The fat man laughed. “She’s a prime candidate,” he said to the tall man who nodded slowly.

There were thirty one points to the act. Melissa skimmed them as fast as she could. …
“master and warden will be allowed…to enter any shops of those exercising the art of apothecary…to examine and try their substances… and to prohibit those practicing the art of apothecary whom they shall find unskillful…”

“But she is skillful,” Mr. Hobbs protested. “Her remedies actually work!”

“That’s not what we’ve been told,” the short man said with a sneer. “And she’s admitted it herself that she has no training.”

Melissa looked up from the paper. “What training was I supposed to have had?”

“Six months’ hospital experience, instruction in anatomy, botany, chemistry and physic, not to mention formal qualification under license from the Society of Apothecaries.”

“But this act has only just been put in place!” Melissa stabbed a finger at the date clearly laid out on the paper. “How on earth can one comply with the act if it has only just been passed?”

The taller man looked uncomfortable. “You are the first person on our list to be investigated.”

Melissa’s eyes flashed with indignation. “Who put you up to this? Earl Harding? The butcher?”

“We don’t know,” the fat man said with irritation. “It was someone high up in the Society of Apothecaries. They put you forward as a candidate for our first attempt at regulation.”