India Black and the Widow of Windsor (14 page)

I didn’t know whether I should admit to being au fait with the misdeeds of the Prince of Wales, as I was liable to get a lecture on gossiping with the other servants, so I merely nodded ambiguously and let the marchioness carry on.

She gave me a sharp glance from those rheumy eyes. “Ye keep to yerself, Iris. I don’t want ye leavin’ here with a bairn for a souvenir. Is that clear?”

“Yes, ma’am. Abundantly. And may I say that you need have no worries about that.”

Truth to tell, I could probably have made the old lady’s eyes bug out with the wealth of information I knew about this particular subject, but I didn’t see the point of flustering her with knowledge that your average virginal maid should never acquire.

“You said that you needed me, Your Ladyship. Are you ready to dress for luncheon?”

“I’m havin’ it on a tray in here. Then I’m havin’ a nap. But ye should come back this afternoon. I’m havin’ tea with Lady Dalfad, and I want ye to accompany me.”

I nodded and took my leave, my spirits momentarily uplifted at the thought of seeing the marchioness partaking of snuff in Lady Dalfad’s presence. Bound to be a show worth the price of admittance.

As I had anticipated, tea with Lady Dalfad was a chilly affair. The marchioness toddled in on my arm, and the countess gave her a stiff nod in greeting. I wondered why, if the countess so disapproved of the old girl, she had bothered to invite her to tea, but the Upper Ten does things differently than we do. I wouldn’t give the time of day, let alone tea, to someone I disliked, but the aristocracy has to nod and smile and pretend they’re deuced happy to see all sorts of simpletons, wastrels and dullards, just because they have money, a title, or an eligible son or daughter with one or the other.

Effie, the countess’s maid, gave me an equally stiff nod. The gracious ladies seated themselves in chairs covered in that godawful Royal Stewart tartan, and the countess’s maid and I were relegated to rigid wooden chairs along the wall, where we could keep an eye on our charges but they wouldn’t have to spoil their tea by actually seeing us.

A footman waltzed in with a tray of sandwiches and cakes and a silver teapot. I was delighted to see that it was Robbie Munro. I could at least idle away some time in admiring his muscular calves (even the thick woolen socks couldn’t hide those) and that handsome head of red gold curls. He looked as nervous as a schoolboy, treading carefully over the carpet (Royal Stewart, what else?) and placing the tray on the table before the countess with trembling hands. The china rattled and the teapot slid alarmingly to one side. Robbie recovered it quickly and replaced it on its lacy mat. Under the golden tumble of curls, his face was pink.

Lady Dalfad impaled him with a glance but said nothing.

The marchioness leaned forward, examining the food. “Smoked salmon. And those lovely fairy cakes. My favorites.” She grunted in satisfaction, which made the countess wince.

Robbie served them, sloshing the tea and earning another glare from Lady Dalfad, but he finally succeeded in getting tea in the cups and sandwiches on the plates without a major disaster. He went to stand in the corner, ready to spring into action.

Lady Dalfad took a sip of tea. “You may go, Munro. If we require anything, I’ll send Effie to fetch you.”

Robbie inclined his head and retreated quickly. He caught my eye as he went and grimaced. I gave him an encouraging smile.

“What a clumsy oaf that man is,” said Lady Dalfad.

The marchioness crammed a bit of toast and salmon into her mouth. “Is he?” she mumbled. “I hadna noticed. Good lookin’ chap, though.” She laughed boisterously, and the countess’s lips tightened.

“You would think he’d never been a footman before,” she said. “The Queen usually hires only experienced servants.”

“She’s a stickler for protocol,” said the marchioness, slurping tea.

“Her Majesty has high expectations of her servants, which is entirely appropriate,” Lady Dalfad said primly.

“Well, the footman may not be up to snuff, but the cook is first-rate.” The marchioness helped herself to more salmon.

“I daresay I shall have to have a word with Vicker about that young man. He ought not to wait on the Queen until he’s gained some polish.”

“Who’s Vicker?”

“The deputy master of the household. Wilkins, the master, is ill and had to stay at Windsor. This is Vicker’s first time to perform the master’s duties, and I fear that things are not as they should be. If Wilkins were here, that young footman would not have served anyone until he’d proved his competence.”

The countess went on prattling away about the difficulty of finding good servants, unlike her Effie, of course, who was a paragon of virtuous servitude, while Effie preened herself in the corner and darted little glances in my direction, to be sure I was listening. I wasn’t, of course, having latched onto something Lady Dalfad had said about Munro: “You would think he’d never been a footman before.” I distinctly remembered Flora telling me that Robbie had been a footman at a great house somewhere in the Borders. I daresay the countess had lots of experience with footmen, being one of the Queen’s ladies of the bedchamber and consequently used to consorting with those chaps on a regular basis. If Lady Dalfad suspected Robbie had never acted as a footman before, then perhaps the handsome lad was here at Balmoral under false pretenses.

The marchioness had moved on to the cucumber sandwiches and was shoveling them into her mouth at a rate that guaranteed the countess wouldn’t be having any. Lady Dalfad carried on at such length about the dearth of well-trained staff and the consequent hardships suffered by their employers that I soon lost interest and began looking about for distractions. Where were Robbie Munro’s knees when you needed them? I had resorted to a minute examination of the pattern on my teacup when Lady Dalfad ignited my curiosity with a remark.

“Eh? What’s that ye said?” asked the marchioness, who’d obviously been paying as little attention to the countess as I had been.

Mistaking the marchioness’s inattention for deafness, Lady Dalfad raised her voice. “I said, I was quite surprised when Vicker applied for the position as deputy master. I’ve known him for years, and his mother before him. She was an Erskine, you’ll recall.”

The marchioness spooned jam onto a scone. “An Erskine, ye say?”

“Yes. You see the difficulty?”

“Aye,” said the marchioness, through a mouthful of jam and scone. “The Clearanthes.”

I didn’t see the difficulty, but then I was not acquainted with the family Clearanth.

“Indeed,” sniffed the countess. “The Erskines lost everything.”

Thank God for the countess. The marchioness must have been referring to the Highland Clearances, when Scottish and English landlords had driven many of the Highland clans from their lands to create room for more sheep. The English Crown had stood idly by, not daring to interfere as most of the landlords were supporters of the monarchy. A good many families had been ruined in this way and carried a longstanding grudge against the English government as a result.

“Vicker’s mother was infuriated at the loss of the family home and their farms. I can’t imagine that she’d countenance a son of hers working for the Queen.”

“She had a son?” asked the marchioness, squinting at the assortment of cakes on the tea tray.

“Vicker,” Lady Dalfad said irritably. “Vicker’s mother was an Erskine. That’s why I think it odd that he applied to work for the Queen; no self-respecting member of the family would do so.”

The marchioness’s hand scrabbled through the folds of her skirt. “Where’s my snuff, Idina?”

I fished the box from the bag at my feet and sprang up, but before I could reach the old lady’s side, her eyes had alighted on the sugar bowl on the tray. Before I could stop her, she’d removed the lid and raised a heaping spoon to her nose.

“Oh, dear God,” said the Countess in horror.

Now, I have never inhaled sugar in my life, and I can assure that I never will, after witnessing that scene. When the sugar crystals hit her sinus cavities, the marchioness blinked. Her head jerked back, and her eyes rolled upward until all I could see were the whites, yellow with age and threaded with thin red veins. She looked like a horse that had just had a pistol go off in its ear. Then her face twisted, and I knew the moment of reckoning was at hand. I seized the antimacassar from the back of the marchioness’s chair and clapped it over her nose and mouth. I must admit the explosion was quieter than I had expected. Unlike the sneeze that followed the ingestion of the face powder, this one was almost subdued, sounding more like the crack of thunder than a blast of dynamite on a building site. Still, it was loud enough to render the countess mute with shock.

The marchioness sniffled and shook her head. “Lord, I must speak to that Mitchell. This batch of snuff is singularly unnatural.”

“You inhaled sugar from the sugar bowl,” the countess said icily.

“Nonsense. What a remarkable thing to say.” The marchioness looked offended.

“Well, you did.”

Had the countess asked my advice (no chance of that ever happening, of course), I’d have told her to drop the topic, but Lady Dalfad had worked herself up into a rare state of revulsion, and she spent the next quarter hour haranguing the marchioness for her egregious lack of manners, while the old lady grew increasingly sulky and silent. The party broke up shortly after, as you might expect, with the countess and her maid Effie flouncing out, and me petting and teasing the marchioness until I was rewarded with a smile as I dumped her into bed for a short rest before dinner. I closed the door with relief, wondering how many small containers of various materials might be found around a house the size of Balmoral and how I would ever manage to keep the marchioness from inadvertently dipping into the contents of, say, the Queen’s tea caddy. One thing I knew for sure: I’d have to keep the old bag away from the gun room; there was no telling what might happen if she filled her sinuses with a hefty dose of gunpowder. She might even level the castle.

I
returned to my room to find an envelope bearing my name. I ripped it open and found a note from French, with instructions to feign illness and skip services at the kirk on the morrow, which was Sunday. For a moment I puzzled over this, wondering why the bloody man would ever imagine I’d spend the Sabbath sitting through a joyless service with a group of glum Scots, but then I recalled that Miss Boss had mentioned that all Balmoral servants were required to attend kirk. Accordingly, I woke up the next morning with a crippling headache and a bad case of diarrhea (imaginary, of course, but I’ve found that nothing works faster at clearing a room than a case of diarrhea). Flora heard the news, offered to bring me a cup of tea and looked grateful when I declined. After she’d gone, I rose and dressed, pulling on the hideous clothes I’d worn on the train, found a muffler and gloves in Flora’s drawer, and slunk silently out the servants’ entrance.

French had included directions in his letter to our rendezvous, and just beyond the dairy barn I found the path he’d instructed me to take. It wound steadily upward along a steepish incline, the landscape littered with boulders and a stand of spruce trees soaring overhead. There was snow on the ground and ice on the path, and I picked my way carefully. It was dead quiet out here in the woods, except for the occasional raucous cawing of a rook (which, the first time I heard it, caused me to look over my shoulder for the marchioness).

After thirty minutes of hard walking, I topped a rise and stood for a moment, catching my breath. I suppose the view was superb, if you cared for scenery: snow-covered crags that towered into the sky, a sweeping vista down the hill I’d climbed, with smoke rising from the castle chimneys and the pale granite of the building gleaming in the sun, acres of windswept moorland, the shimmer of tiny, jewel-like lakes in the distance. The air was fresh and cold, and smelled of pine and wood smoke. I shudder when I think about it. It’s abnormal, living where you can’t see a pub sign from your window.

I tightened my muffler against the wind and scuttled down the path. In the valley below stood a stone hut, thatched with heather. It looked cold and lonely and isolated, the latter state no doubt being the reason French had selected it as our meeting place. I looked in vain for a curl of smoke from the flue, but the place appeared deserted. I hoped French had at least brought along a bottle of whisky to keep us warm.

I circled around to the rear of the hut and whistled softly (not really my idea of proper etiquette when making a house call, but I had been directed to indulge in these antics per French’s instructions). I was answered by a low trill, which meant French was in residence and no one else was about. Well, a knock on the door would have ascertained that just as easily. I sighed as I waded through the snow to the back door.

French ushered me into the kitchen of the hut, after scanning the countryside to ensure I had not been followed. Vincent was at a wobbly table in the corner, wolfing bread and cheese and drinking tea from a flask.