The Bellerose Bargain (4 page)

"And your master? He’s poor?"

"In a manner. He’s rich in name and achievements for the crown, but all that his family held claim to was lost in the wars. He was the lucky man to win the hand of the lady."

Alicia sighed and sipped from her cup. Oh, to be she! Sought after by one and all. No matter that it was her money they all wanted: she was part of the bargain too.

"Could she be in love with another?"

"That’s possible, but not likely," he laughed. "Those I spoke with while I was looking for her said she was quite round, mean as a wild boar, and cruel to everyone who crossed her path. I think Charles heard the same tales and was grateful that her dowager aunt would not allow her to take up residence in Whitehall while the king chose her husband for her."

"The palace. Gor, I’d love to see it."

"You’d have to go to London for that," Rodney teased, remembering her displeasure with that idea from the night before.

"Maybe I shall, sir. When it suits me."

"Who allows you such freedom, lass?"

"Nary a soul, milord. But for chores I have to do, I’m let clean alone." She shrugged, feigning lack of concern for something she actually worried over a great deal. "I’m to be given my own life shortly. I will either marry some poor begging farmer or be cast off to make my own way."

"How is that?"

"I’ve no dowry and no family. No one will ask for me, and Osmond, the miller who’s given me a place to sleep for the last few years, won’t support a grown woman much longer."

"Grown woman," Rodney sighed. "You’re barely weaned."

Alicia straightened her back indignantly. "I’ve reached seventeen since this summer, I’ll have you know."

"Aye, I would’ve guessed. Still a child. What would you do on your own?"

"A hundred things, if I can find honest work. I’m good with money, sir, and it don’t cost me much to keep alive."

Rodney scooped up the last of his porridge and downed the cup of milk.

"I’ll be looking for honest labor if I don’t hasten to my task and find the bride."

"Why doesn’t he fetch his own bride, your young lord? Could be she thinks he can’t care much and is hiding till he comes after her himself."

Rodney chuckled at her idea. "First, lass, there’s another love that needs his time. His most recent acquisition, a ship, bought on a borrowed dowry, is being completed. Second, it wouldn’t do for the groom to fetch the bride. It’s not proper. And last, I feel sure that young Geoffrey is more frightened of what he might have doomed himself to than Charlotte Bellamy is."

Alicia rose and shook her apron. "Well, I wish you luck, sir, but if she’s mean and ugly as you say, your master may be pleased you couldn’t find her."

"He won’t be pleased if he has to sell his ship."

Alicia turned suddenly back. A thought struck her. "First I thought how grand to have all the men want to marry her. Now I think how sad for her. She’s got a problem black as mine. No one will choose her, only use her."

Rodney nodded his head in silent agreement. "The court’s a lonely place, lass. There’s not an honest drop of love to be found there."

"Then that makes me the lucky one, eh, sir? No chance that should happen to me."

Rodney dug into the purse that hung at his belt. He pulled out a gold coin and tossed it to her. "There," he said, as she caught it. "For listening to my troubles."

She smiled brightly and clutched at the coin. "But sir, I don’t deserve..."

"It’s not for your poor farmer, should you choose that course. Buy something special for yourself, Alicia." He walked past her toward the door. "I wager you deserved it long ago."

Holding fast to her gold piece, she watched Rodney leave from the door of the inn. He turned once to wave in her direction. It lifted her heart considerably to hold the coin. She had sacrificed nothing and was generously rewarded for being herself. A simple treasure turned rich.

It was Monday morning, Alicia’s favorite time of the week, when the maids could take their baths after the laundry was done. This was the only time the girls could spend selfishly without repercussions. If one of them stole away for an afternoon walk, to be alone away from the others or to be with some lover just passing through, Armand would scream until he was blue. The innkeeper, it seemed, needed to know their whereabouts every minute of every day—except for that short time when they bathed.

Alicia was the last to bathe. This was decided by a conspiracy of the other girls to remind her of her place as a person unattached to any other by family or any other bond. She was detached from the other maids because she was reluctant to share secrets. And her manner of behaving as though she were unaffected by the way they ostracized her led them to accuse her of being haughty and conceited.

Finally her turn came in the tub, and though the water was cooled and soiled from the clothes and other bodies, she lowered herself into it gratefully. At least at Osmond’s mill she was allowed to bathe more often than here at the inn.

Now Alicia rested the back of her head on the rim of the tub and closed her eyes. Behind her eyes there was much to behold, as visions of suitors, gowns, and riches danced around in her head. It was not noise, but rather silence that caused her eyes to open.

All three maids stood a fair distance from the tub with their hands behind their backs, smiling devilishly. She frowned and looked around the stable further. Though she had done her part to hold a linen towel and fresh clothing for each previous bather, her towel and clothes were draped over a stall a great distance from the tub.

"Gert!" she snapped. "I’ll freeze to ice getting my clothes."

Gert simply smiled and walked out the stable door with an air of superiority. Mary and Sarah, less nonchalant, quickly dashed out, covering their mouths as they giggled.

"Mary! Sarah!" Alicia shouted. "My clothes!" But the stable door banged shut and only a horse turned to look in her direction. "Ooooo you sneaky sluts," Alicia hissed, picking up the soap and sponge and scrubbing her arms and shoulders almost violently.

Outside, the threesome stood with their ears to the door, gaining much amusement from Alicia’s muffled curses and the sound of splashing water. "She’ll ‘ave ‘erself a proper stroll to ‘er shift," Gert said, hands on hips and backside swinging to imitate a sashay.

"Beg pardon, ladies," a man’s voice said from behind.

All three turned as one to behold a hulking man who held his hat in his hand over his chest.

"I’m looking about for a serving maid named Alicia. Have any of you seen her?"

Gert’s eyes twinkled. "As luck’d ‘ave it, gov’na, she’s just inside." She indicated the stable with her hand and then, picking up her skirt, dashed toward the inn, two giggling maids close on her heels.

Rodney watched them flee and then, with a shrug, turned and opened the stable door. He stared for a moment at the shimmering nakedness of Alicia as she stood in the tub, just preparing to step out. Her scream was loud and piercing and her arms flailed as she attempted to cover herself.

Rodney slammed the door the moment he realized his error. He glared in the direction of the inn where the silly maids peeked out around the comer of the building. He turned back to the door and spoke to the furious girl within.

"Alicia, forgive me. I had no idea..." He stopped and tried to stifle a chuckle. Girls’ games were things he could barely remember from his youth. "Beg pardon, Alicia. I was cruelly misled."

He thought briefly of confiding to the lass behind the door that he’d seen a naked woman or two in his time and she was certainly the most beautiful, but he discarded that idea immediately. He scratched his chin at the thought, though, and knew that it was true. Ah, Alicia had a most alluring form. Geoffrey’s anger with him would likely be short-lived.

"Alicia, dear child, I’ve come to see you and I am indeed chagrined that I have so rudely..."

The door snapped open and in the doorway stood Alicia, her hair dripping and her feet bare. She had hastily donned her blouse and skirt over a wet body and the fire in her eyes caused Rodney to step back a pace and give her a moment to cool her ire. Alicia looked past him to see if she could spot the culprits who had caused her embarrassment. Rodney caught the action.

"Aye, they are responsible," he confirmed.

"I’ll find a way to reckon with them," Alicia muttered savagely.

Rodney bowed elaborately before her. "I can offer you a chance. If you’ll hear my story."

Alicia folded her arms over her chest and leaned back on the stable door to listen. Her lips were formed into a pout and her eyes were narrow. She did not seem open to his proposition, so intense was her anger and mortification.

"Do you recall my chore of finding and delivering Lord Seavers’s bride?" Alicia nodded. "Upon my return to her aunt’s humble manor I found that the old woman had died. ‘Twas no surprise to me, for I found her quite near her final breath the last time I saw her. But she is in fact gone, and Charlotte, blast the wench, is certainly gone too. No one could say whom she fled with or how she left. I’ve done my work, lass. I searched every small village near her home in the last month and not a soul saw her pass."

Alicia sighed and kicked a bare foot in the dirt. "How does this have anything to do with me?"

"A moment, maid Alicia. Charlotte Bellamy came from noble stock, that is true. And her inheritance is not rich by some standards, but to those of us who are not accustomed to wealth, it is enough to untangle the heaviest debts. Her upbringing, however, was far different from that of most courtly dames. Her aunt, a pinched and angry spinster living on a modest pension from her father, raised the girl without a thought to what would be acceptable behavior for a noblewoman. I doubt she could read or cipher as well as you."

"And how are you sure I can?" she asked him. "No one else believes I’m able."

Rodney chuckled tolerantly, for it was obvious that Alicia did not assume any connection between herself and this ghostly Charlotte. But the connection came clear to Rodney when he declared, in total frustration at the thought of delivering yet another disappointment to Geoffrey, that he wished he could take a lass as lovely and eager as Alicia to him instead.

And why not?

"What I propose, Alicia, is that you return to London with me under the name of Charlotte Bellamy."

Alicia’s eyes grew round and disbelieving. "Are you mad? I don’t even know the wench."

"Nor does anyone else," Rodney explained. "No one in London has ever seen her. There are those villagers who could describe her, but they would not venture to London—and for that matter would not be taken seriously if they did. There is no way to prove you are not Charlotte Bellamy."

"I should ride from here with you, using a name not even my own, to marry some jackanape young nobleman, who’s spoiled and hungering for more money? On my death, sir, and no sooner. Let the brat find his own bride. I’ll not be tossed about another time."

"The brat is a man of over thirty years and has fought in His Majesty’s service for twelve years. He has good reputation and a name that opens many doors. And Alicia, he is most handsome."

"Then it’ll trouble him little to find a willing wench."

Rodney released the purse at his belt and shook some coins into his hand. He counted them and returned most of them to the pouch. He stretched the purse out to her. "For a hundred pounds?"

"A hundred pounds?" she returned. It was more money than she’d earn in her lifetime. Indeed, it was a lifetime’s worth of working hanging before her eyes. "A hundred pounds to marry the man? He must be a terrible wretch."

"A hundred pounds to come with me to London. I won’t deceive his lordship. We’ll tell him forthrightly that Charlotte is gone and can’t be found, but you can stand in her stead without a soul noticing the exchange." He shrugged. "As I see it, the two of you can come up with a plan for Charlotte to die eventually, thus freeing Geoffrey to play with his fortune and ladies. That leaves you to do as you please, as long as you’re willing to do it out of England—or at least out of London. Once dead, you can’t be seen strolling about the ‘Change."

"And if your young lord will have none of this?" she asked.

"Then take your gold and start afresh anywhere you please."

"I thought you were poor? If the man has a hundred pounds to throw away he can’t be suffering much."

"Poverty is relative to the spender, lass. Geoffrey is too poor to buy a fleet of ships, but not too poor to dress finely and gamble large sums. He’s too poor to buy a country estate that encompasses villages, but rich enough to own a house in town and land in the Colonies. He could keep you well and comfortable if he goes along with my plan. Indeed, with Charlotte’s inheritance, he’ll have his boats, and you’ll have some nice trinkets to wear to the Duke’s Theatre."

Alicia mulled over what he had said. She looked at the bag of gold, shook it a little, and looked up at him with suspicious eyes.

"And this young lord," she started: "is he very mean?"

"He is stubborn, but his lack of fortune indicates that he’s generous to a fault. And the ladies that have wanted him have been many."

She pursed her lips and the petulance was evident again. Rodney liked looking at the play of emotions on her face. He appreciated her natural beauty more every time he saw her, though her clothing and hairstyle did little to enhance her. The freckles of youth were fading and a freshly scrubbed ivory with a light blush was quickly replacing them. With the proper clothing and hairstyle she could easily be the toast of London. "You’ll find that Geoffrey is desirable and honest, and I doubt he would ever hurt a woman. I will be near at hand to make sure he does not harm you in any way."