Mary Nichols - A Lady of Consequence

“What cannot go on, my lord? The ride? The Marquis of Risley taking an actress in his carriage?”

“You do not have to be an actress.”

“No, but that is what I am. It is how I earn my living.”

“I could change that.”

“Why do you want to change it? If you are ashamed to be seen with me, why did you ask me out?”

“Because I want to be with you every hour of the day and—”

“I will not become your paramour, Lord Risley. I do not know why it is that everyone thinks all actresses are harlots….”

“Madeleine, how can you accuse me of that?”

“That’s what you have in mind, is it not? That is what the flowers and the presents have all been about, to get into my bed. Deny it if you can.”

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Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

1817

M addy was alone in the kitchen, the last of the domestic staff to finish her day’s work. All the other servants had done their allotted chores and left her to it. The last to go had been Cook who had told her to ‘Look lively or you’ll not be done before it’s time to get up and start all over again,’ which did little to make her feel any less exhausted.

There had been a dinner party upstairs and the amount of washing up a dozen people could create was beyond her comprehension: a mountain of plates, tureens, platters, glasses and cutlery, not to mention all the pans in which the food had been cooked. The guests had all departed—she had heard their carriages going over an hour ago—and the family, Lord and Lady Bulford, the Honourable Henry and the two young ladies, Hortense and Annabel, had all gone to their rooms, uncaring that one of their servants still toiled in the nether regions of their London mansion.

The washing up finished, Maddy set out the breakfast trays ready for the ladies in the morning, filled the kettles with water and went to bank down the fire, her last task before retiring. She would never have been slaving here at all, if her mother had not been killed so tragically, she told herself a dozen times a day. Mama had been run down by a horse and carriage in Oxford Street when she was shopping for ribbon for a gown she was making. She had been a seamstress and a very good one and Maddy herself might have followed in her footsteps if it had not been for the accident.

That’s what everyone called it, a tragic accident for which no one was to blame. But the day of the funeral she had overheard two of their neighbours talking and they said the young dandy who had been driving the curricle had been racing it and he ought to have been horsewhipped for driving so dangerously along a busy thoroughfare; but then he was an aristocrat and drunk into the bargain, which seemed to be excuse enough for leaving a nine-year-old child without a mother.

The trouble was she had had no father either, at least not one she knew of, and so she had been sent to an orphanage in Monmouth Street that took in the children of soldiers orphaned by war. She supposed someone had told them her father had been a soldier, which was something she had not known for her mother never spoke of him. She had been sent from the orphanage to Lady Bulford when she was twelve and considered old enough to work.

The kitchen of Number Seven Bedford Row had been her world ever since; two long years with each day merging into the next, nothing to vary the routine, no one to talk to but the other servants who all treated her with contempt because of where she came from, though that wasn’t her fault, was it? She rarely left the house, except for two hours on a Sunday afternoon, which she spent walking in the parks, pretending she was a lady and had nothing at all to do but look decorative and catch the eye of some young beau who would whisk her away to a life of luxury, such as the Bulfords enjoyed.

She was too fond of dreaming, Cook was always telling her, but what else was there to do to enliven her day but dream? She was doing it now, she realised, squatting in front of the fire, gazing into the last of the embers and wishing for a miracle…

Startled by a sudden noise, she looked round, to see the Honourable Henry standing in the doorway with a quilted robe de chambre covering his nightshirt. Scrambling to her feet, she dropped him a curtsy.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘Maddy, sir.’

‘That’s an unusual name.’ He smiled suddenly and his dark eyes lit with humour. He was, she decided, a very handsome young man. ‘Are you mad?’

‘No, sir,’ she said emphatically. ‘It is short for Madeleine.’ She had been Maddy ever since she arrived. ‘That’s a high-stepping handle for a nobody,’ the other servants had said when she told them her name. ‘Can’t have you putting on airs and graces here.’ And so Maddy she had become. She was too bewildered by a second upheaval in her life to care what they called her.

‘How long have you been working here?’

‘All day, sir.’

‘No, I meant how long have you been working for the family?’

‘Two years, sir.’ She paused. ‘Is there something I can do for you?’

‘Oh, yes,’ he murmured, looking her up and down. ‘Oh, yes, indeed.’

‘What is it?’ she asked.

He seemed to come out of a trance and laughed suddenly. ‘I came down for a glass of milk. I don’t seem able to sleep.’

She walked past him into the pantry where the milk was kept in a jug on the cool floor. ‘Could you heat it up?’ he asked. ‘It would be better warm.’

She put some milk in a pan and stirred up the fire again to heat it, while he stood and watched her.

‘You are a very pretty girl, do you know that?’ he said.

‘No.’ Standing over the fire had made her face red, but now she felt an extra warmth flood her cheeks. ‘You shouldn’t say things like that, sir.’

‘Why ever not? It’s the truth. I’ll wager there’s many a young blade dangling after you.’

‘No, sir. I’m not old enough for young men to dangle after, even if they were allowed, which they are not.’ Lady Bulford had made that quite clear when she first arrived and though she hadn’t known what her ladyship meant at the time, she had found out since and a great deal more about the ways of the world and young men in particular, which would have shocked her mother if she had been alive to hear it.

‘How old are you?’

‘Fourteen.’

‘My goodness, you are well grown for your age. My mother must feed you well.’

She did not feel disposed to tell him that she lived on leftovers, not only from the family table but from the servants’ table. She was a drudge and only one step up from the dogs and cats who lived in the yard and were the last to be fed. She poured the milk from the pan into a glass and handed it to him. ‘There you are, sir. I hope you sleep better for it.’

‘Oh, I am sure I shall. Will you be going to bed soon?’

‘As soon as I have washed up this pan and banked down the fire, sir.’

‘Goodnight, Maddy.’

‘Goodnight, sir.’

He disappeared, carrying his glass of milk, and she turned back to the fire. Fancy the master’s son noticing her and calling her pretty! Was she pretty? Her mama had always said she was and made her beautiful dresses and brushed her dark hair until it shone like velvet, but that had been a long time ago and now her clothes were a skivvy’s uniform and she was too tired to do more than rake a comb through her hair to get the knots out. If only…