The Adventuress: HFTS5 by Marion Chesney, M.C. Beaton Read Free Book Online Page A

gilt cards with the legend “At Home”—for one spoke about inviting people to a rout, but the invitation always simply said that so-and-so would be at home on a certain evening. The earl had made her feel uncomfortable. She cursed her own slip of the tongue.
    In the hope that her niece would rise in service to the level of lady’s maid, Emily’s aunt, Miss Cummings, had schooled Emily’s voice to eradicate her soft Cumbrian burr, but had failed to correct the content of her speech. Miss Cummings had a nasty habit of becoming broad and coarse-mouthed when she had taken too much gin, and Emily had grown up innocently trotting out some of her aunt’s choice phrases. Although Mr. Goodenough had done much to correct her, Emily still felt all those horrible coarse phrases were lurking around in the back of her mind, ready to leap out at the wrong moment.
    Then there was surely more to learn that she had ever dreamt of in Bath. She had listened eagerly to the speech of the young London débutantes as they shopped in Oxford Street and was amazed to find that the fashionable method of speech was a babylike lisp. You became “oo,” walk became “walkies,” an drives “tiddle-poms in the Park.” It was all very baffling. She could not hope to master this strange lingo in such a short time, but provided she kept her voice free of cant and coarse expressions, she would survive.
    She thought of the earl and thought of his social position and reluctantly penned his name on the invitation. Emily did not aspire to wed an earl. A younger son of a peer, Sir Somebody, or a plain esquire would do very well.
    As the day on which the rout was to be held approached, Emily plunged into a frenzy of shopping until Joseph, who accompanied her everywhere, wailed that his feet were being “destroyed.” She bought jewels, she bought feathers, gloves, fans, and silk flowers. She ordered banks of hothouse flowers to decorate the rooms and, unaware that a rout was not usually blessed with either refreshments or entertainment, hired a small orchestra.
    She was rather puzzled that no one had called or replied in any way to any of her invitations, but assumed that was the way of the ton. If all these grand people were
not
coming, then they would have surely written to say so. Mr. Goodenough had tried to reassure her by saying that many things were conducted differently in the country.
    The day of the rout was depressing. A soaking drizzle wept from the grey skies. Emily fought down the feeling that the weather was a bad omen. But
she
was ready for the whole of fashionable London, and the servants were behaving in a calm and unflurried manner.
    It was as well Emily could not hear the frantic discussion in the servants’ hall.
    “I really do not think poor Miss Goodenough knows what she is doing,” said Mrs. Middleton. “She says she is expecting at least a hundred people. How can we fit one hundred into this tiny house?”
    “Crushes are fashionable,” said Rainbird. “Society thinks a rout is a success if they have been crushed and beaten and trampled on.”
    “But what troubles me,” said Mrs. Middleton, her nose twitching in distress, “is that I do not believe our Miss Emily
knows
anyone. No one has been to call, except that Fleetwood, and
he
only came because he thought he might take the house after all.”
    “That’s right,” said Joseph, coming in at the end of Mrs. Middleton’s worries. “I’ve been round to The Running Footman, and Luke says—”
    “Luke says. Luke
says
,” jeered Jenny.
    “He knows what’s he’s talking about,” said Joseph huffily. “He has been talking to Lord Fleetwood’s butler, Giles, what is just come up from the country, his lordship having taken a house in Park Lane. Giles says his master got this invitation from Miss Goodenough and he overheard Lord Fleetwood say to his friend, Mr. Fitzgerald, ‘I think it wiser not to go.’
And
then Luke says as how Lord and Lady Charteris thought