My Lady Below Stairs (2 page)

Jane suspected concern over her hand-me-down slippers wasn't the only thing making Agnes's brows nearly meet over her pert nose. “What's got your pantaloons in a bunch?”

Agnes glanced over her shoulder as if she feared some
one might overhear their conversation. She grasped Jane's arm and hurried on in a whisper, “I can't say here, but you've got to come and quickly. And we can't let anyone see you.”

“What on earth—”

“No more questions. Can't you see I'm freezing my bum off?” Since Agnes rarely strayed outside, she didn't have a cloak. The cold wind had her teeth chattering. “And for heaven's sake, do what they ask or I'm in for it.”

They slipped into the scullery, where Jane hung her thin wrap on its peg. The girls dodged through the kitchen when Cook's back was turned. Then Agnes, a finger pressed to her lips for silence, led Jane up the back staircase to the family's floor.

“Agnes, I can't be caught here.”

“Then you'd best keep quiet, hadn't you?”

Except for midnight raids on his lordship's library, Jane never set foot in the public or family portions of the great house.

When she was very young, she had served at table, carefully handling the fine porcelain and ladling out lavish portions. Then one fateful evening Lady Sybil had asked her mother and father why the soup girl had a face that looked just like hers.

Jane could have explained it to Sybil. Jane's mother was a pretty laundress who died in her birthing. The help at Somerville Manor undertook to raise Jane with benevolent negligence. But the folk who served below stairs made certain she learned young exactly what a bastard was.

The countess forbade Jane to be seen above stairs after that and even though several years had passed since her ladyship died of a lingering ague, the order was never rescinded.

Jane followed Agnes down the polished hall. The elegantly striped wallpaper made the corridor seem to stretch out far longer than it was. She forced herself not to run a fingertip along the gleaming oak wainscoting.

“Cook's going to be furious if I don't come back with the eggs soon,” she murmured.

“Oh, Jane, forget the eggs. Hang the eggs. This is far more important than eggs!” Agnes's face squinched tight, as if she were trying to keep from bursting into tears.

“What—”

“I can't say more.” She stopped before Lady Sybil's chamber. “Don't speak unless spoken to,” Agnes ordered. “And for pity's sake, stand up straight. Oh, how I wish I had a comb about me.”

Jane put a hand to her windblown hair. An unfashionable chestnut in a time when blonde was the color of choice, at least her hair was thick. Ian certainly never complained.

Except when she used too many pins.

Agnes opened the door and waved her in. Mr. Bottlesby, the stiff head butler, and Mr. Humphrey Roskin, Esq., his lordship's solicitor, were positioned at opposite ends of the room. The cold air in the chamber fairly shimmered with tension. A copper hip bath, the water crusted with a thin layer of ice, stood in the center of the room. One of the window sashes had been left halfway up, and a stiff wind had overpowered the shallow fireplace.

There was no sign of Lady Sybil.

Mr. Roskin raked his gaze over Jane like a wolf searching out the weakling of the flock.

“Bollocks, man! You can't mean to fool people with this!” Mr. Roskin punctuated his words with a flailing gesture.

“Sir, I humbly beg to disagree,” Mr. Bottlesby said with downcast eyes.

Jane flinched in surprise. Below stairs, the butler was lord in all but name. Bottlesby wielded absolute power over the rest of the staff, swaggering with pride in the
servants' quarters. Jane was taken aback by the change in
his demeanor now that he was out of his element.

“If you look beyond this girl's disreputable clothing,” Mr. Bottlesby said, “you'll see that they are as like as two
peas. In fact, I've been assured that our Jane has pre
sented herself as Lady Sybil many times in the past, with
none the wiser.”

Jane's gaze cut to Agnes, who was studying the tips of her beaded shoes with guilty absorption. Jane had sworn
her to secrecy.

“Are you aware that not so long ago the penalty for impersonating a member of the aristocracy was brand
ing?” Mr. Roskin's left eye twitched as he glared at her.

“Sir, there's no need to frighten the girl,” Mr. Bottlesby said. “We are a civilized nation. Surely no one's been branded since—”

“No, you're right. Nowadays, they'll just pack her to off to Newgate, like as not.”

Newgate!
Jane's
vision tunneled, and she forced herself
to take a deep breath. If they sent her to prison, away from Ian Michael, it would be worse than branding.

Even though Agnes had warned her not to speak, she
couldn't stop the words.

“Sir, my offense took place years ago. Lady Sybil sim
ply asked me to sit for a few lessons in her stead. Her tutor never even knew the difference. Truly, no one was harmed by our childish prank.”

She refrained from mentioning that she had learned
enough to pick the lock of literacy. Some members of the upper class took exception to reading and writing among
their inferiors.

“There, Mr. Roskin, you see,” Mr. Bottlesby said. “Well-spoken, for all that she's a scullery maid. Even their voices and inflections are similar. I tell you, she can do it.”

“Do what?” Jane asked with a sinking feeling in her gut.

“Perpetrate fraud on the
ton
of London,” Mr. Roskin said stonily, his already pasty complexion fading to the color of day-old suet. “And if you are discovered, I assure you, no one will dismiss it as a childish prank.”

“I'll not be party to fraud,” the infuriating maid said with the primness of a bluestocking.

“It's rather too late for such scruples, don't you think?
You've already committed the offense more than once,” Humphrey Roskin said. If he could put a bit of fear into
her before she agreed to do his bidding, so much the bet
ter. Terrified people were always so much easier to ma
nipulate. “If I choose to report your activity, the fact that
you were younger when you impersonated Lady Sybil will not matter to the magistrate.”

Roskin had learned intimidation from a master—
Lord Somerville himself. .

The earl had threatened Roskin before he left for a season of leisurely hunting at his country estate.

“I want my daughter safely betrothed by Christmas to
a gentleman of no small means,” Somerville had de
manded. “Do not fail me in this enterprise, sir, or I'll see
you transported to New South Wales on the next packet
on the charge of embezzlement!”

The earl suspected Roskin had helped himself to the Somerville coffers, but could prove nothing. Still, if a
peer of the realm accused him, Roskin would stand con
demned.

Justly, too,
he admitted to himself. So far all Lord Somerville had was doubt and conjecture. Roskin was
satisfied he'd covered his trail well enough that the miss
ing funds would never be found. But he was in no hurry to be shuffled off to a wretched penal colony. So he had convinced Lord Somerville that a wealthy son-in-law
was the answer to all his problems.

Then Lord Somerville had made finding that wealthy
son-in-law
Roskin's
problem.

“Sir, I've no wish to be difficult,” Jane said, calling
Roskin back to his present predicament. “But what does
Lady Sybil say to this?”

“We have no idea where she is,” Mr. Bottlesby admit
ted softly.

“Or how much of a head start she has this time,”
Roskin added.
What does one wear in New South Wales this
time of year?

“Last one to see her was Agnes, very early this morning,” Mr. Bottlesby said. “Lady Sybil rang you around
six, didn't you say, girl?”

Agnes nodded mutely.

Roskin consulted his pocket watch. Half past ten. The
little vixen had several hours on them.

“Milady called for a bath, then demanded privacy.” Bottlesby mopped his brow with an impeccably white handkerchief. “Agnes said she wanted to take her time
with her ablutions.”

Roskin glared at the upstairs maid. Giving Agnes another tongue-lashing might ease his frustration, but it
would accomplish nothing.

“A proposal of marriage is a special occasion, she said.”
Bottlesby popped his knuckles nervously. “Lady Sybil told Agnes she wished to make the most of it.”

“Which she has obviously done.” Roskin leaned out the open window and peered down again. A gnarly oak with sturdy limbs near the casements had provided an admirable ladder. Fresh footprints marred the snow at the base of the tree's trunk, then dotted the white lawn in a beeline
to the busy St. James Street. Lady Sybil could have hailed a hansom and might be anywhere by now.

Boil the wallaby stew!
That passage to Australia was
looking more certain by the minute.

“She left the betrothal portrait,” Bottlesby said, wav
ing a hand toward the shrouded canvas on an easel in the corner. “We may be getting ahead of ourselves here. Per
haps this is just a bit of high spirits, what? Lady Sybil must mean to return in time for the ball. Perhaps Jane
won't actually be needed.”

Roskin eyed the covered canvas. No one had seen the portrait on which Giovanni Brunello had labored in se
cret for the past six months.

“Art,” the Italian master had declared with much
r-
rolling, “must bloom in seclusion before it is thrust into the cold light of the oh-so-critical world's eyes.”

Six months. Personally, Mr. Roskin was impressed
that the smooth-talking foreigner had managed to make
Lady Sybil sit still that long.

He strode to the canvas and pulled off the sheeting.

Bottlesby and the two maids gasped.

The rendering was a perfect likeness of Lord Somer
ville's daughter, and if Roskin weren't so upset he'd have
to admit it was also a dead ringer for the scullery maid.
Chestnut hair framed her oval face in soft curls. Brunello
had captured Sybil's laughing hazel eyes, and a sly grin tugged at her too-thin-for-fashion lips. There was no hint of artistic flattery in the representation of her fea
tures. Which meant Lady Sybil must also possess carna
tion-sized breasts with pert pink nipples, a slightly
rounded belly and a tuft of curling dark hair at the junc
ture of her long legs.

“Oh, dear. Oh, dear,” Bottlesby chanted.

That was not the first sentiment that sprang to Roskin's mind, but he bit his lip to keep the expletive from
spewing out.