The Butler Did It (3 page)

“Possibly, Claramae, but if those cutpurses and cutthroats encountered the same problems we had in seeing even two feet in front of us, I imagine they're all still out there, bumping into each other, cutting each other's noses off, and no worry to us.”

“Yes, miss. I'll take your things, miss? Everything will need a good brushing, as it's so dusty out there.”

Emma handed over her bonnet, gloves and pelisse, and Claramae scuttled off toward the baize door under the stairs, leaving Emma to follow in her mother's wake.

She could hear Daphne Clifford still nattering nineteen to the dozen to Thornley.

Emma sighed, shook her head and mentally attempted to compose a small homily that would convince her mother that, while Thornley was admittedly a well-setup gentleman, he was their butler, not their host.

Not that this would matter a whit to Daphne, Emma realized on yet another sigh. She had never before noticed her mother's proclivity to gush, to eyelash bat, to
simper and giggle. At home, Daphne concentrated on her embroidery. At home, Daphne still spoke well of her husband, dead these three years. At home, Daphne
behaved
herself.

Here, from absolutely the first moment her mother had set eyes on Thornley five short days ago, the woman had been afflicted with some strange mental aberration that had her believing she was a young girl on the flirt.

It was embarrassing, that's what it was, and that Daphne's old chum, Lady Jersey, seemed to encourage her was only to be considered criminal. Emma knew that Sally Jersey was laughing behind her hand at Daphne, but Sally Jersey had also issued them all vouchers to Almack's, so Emma had steeled herself to overlook the woman's rather perverse humor. But only until she had snagged herself a suitable husband. After that, she would cut Sally Jersey dead, and hang the consequences, no matter how much her mother seemed to admire the woman.

Emma entered the large main drawing room just as her mother was asking Thornley to please “play Mother” for them and pour the tea. She'd stopped short of asking the man to sit down, spread a serviette over his knee and join them in their refreshments, and Emma could only be grateful for that small favor.

The butler, his ears rather red, cited his inability to linger, as he had pressing duties, and avoided Emma's gaze as he walked, stiff-backed, from the room.

“Mama, you really mustn't do that,” Emma said, sit
ting down on the facing couch, the silver tea service between them.

“Really mustn't do what, dear?” Daphne asked vaguely, making a great business out of attempting to lift the teapot before sitting back, sighing. “Much, much too heavy. You know, Emma, this is a very pretty place, by and large, but I don't understand opulence if it's too heavy to use.”

Emma bit her bottom lip, reached forward to place a cup beneath the spout of the teapot, then tipped the pot on its cradle to pour the tea…as the pot was designed to do. “Here you are, Mama. You must be chilled. Drink up.”

“Oh, my,” Daphne said, giving the teapot a little push with her spoon. “Would you just look at that, Emma? What will they think of next?”

“I have no idea, Mama,” Emma said, straight-faced, then looked up as her grandmother entered the room.

She resisted sniffing the air for the scent of mischief, because she didn't want to know, and because she was a well-bred young lady. Which didn't mean she could overlook the rather shrewd look in her grandmother's lively eyes. Living with Fanny Clifford was rather like being in charge of maintaining the night fire in a forest, so that it didn't go out and wolves were able to approach. One could not rest easy, ever.

“Fresh from your nap, Grandmama?” Emma asked, her voice deliberately vague, only mildly and politely in
terested in whatever answer her grandmother might offer.

Because Fanny Clifford never napped, and Emma knew this. What she didn't want to know was where her grandmother had been the past hour, or what she'd been doing. No sane person would. It was better to pretend to believe a lie, and much easier than trying to explain any of her grandmother's activities to Daphne Clifford.

“A lovely rest for these weary old bones, yes, dear,” Fanny lied smoothly as she lowered her small, paper-thin self onto the couch beside Daphne. “And you two were out mucking about in the fog again, I suppose? You've a smut of coal dust on your nose, Daphne.”

Daphne quickly raised her serviette to her face, exclaiming, “Oh, no, no! No wonder he looked at me so oddly. I could just Expire. I'm So Ashamed.”

“Twit,” Fanny Clifford muttered, winking at her granddaughter. “There's no smut, Daphne. I was merely checking to see if you're still so arsy-varsy over Thornley. And you are. And still making a cake out of yourself, I have no doubt. My wastrel son must be spinning in his grave, that you'd think to replace him with a servant. Of course, Thornley is butler to a marquis, could even be called a majordomo, so that might have Samuel not rotating quite so fast. The boy always was hot for titles.”

“I am not making a push for Thornley, Mother Clifford,” Daphne protested, but she did not look the older
woman in the eyes. “Doesn't he have the loveliest posture? Samuel always
slouched
so.”

Emma added two sugars to her tea. “Grandmama, remember, we are not to specifically mention the marquis in public unless forced to do so, and then just to say that he is our unfortunately absent host. Thornley was adamant about that. I think the poor man must be strapped for cash, which is the only explanation I can find as to why he leases rooms to perfect strangers for the Season. We were even quite vague with Lady Jersey on her single visit here, as you might remember, although she is much too interested in herself to notice where she is when she's telling all and sundry how very wonderful she is. But we must protect the man's reputation.”

“Humph. If it's his reputation he's worried about, you'd think he'd at least vet whom he leases to better before allowing them to run tame in his household.”

Emma put down her spoon very carefully, trying to hang on to her composure. She had two choices: ignore what her grandmother just said—hinted at—or ask the woman what she meant. She must be feeling daring, or else the fog had muddled her mind, because she then took a deep breath and asked, “What have you done this time, Grandmama? Waited until either Mrs. Norbert or Sir Edgar went out and about, and then pored through their belongings?”

“Oh, don't be silly, Emma. Your grandmother would
never do any such thing. It would be unladylike, and too shabby by half,” Daphne scolded, brushing pastry crumbs from her skirt. “Would you, Mother Clifford? Sneak about, that is, and poke into drawers and such?”

“Here's a lesson for you, Daphne. You, too, Emma. Never ask questions you wouldn't want to hear answered.” Fanny shook off Emma's silent offer of tea (a move meant to shut the woman up, at least for a few moments), stood, and headed for the drinks table. She picked up the decanter of sherry, made a face at it, then poured herself two fingers of port.

Daphne looked to her daughter, her eyes wide. “She wouldn't…she couldn't go poking about in…she—oh, Lord, she did, didn't she? No, don't tell me. I don't want to know.
Tell
me!”

“She did,” Emma admitted to her mother. Why hadn't she waited until she and Fanny were alone, before opening this particular jar of worms? “But,” she added quietly, “I believe that was yesterday.”

Emma looked at her grandmother as that tiny, always energetic woman sat herself down once more, and decided she had to know everything, now. “What was on today's agenda, Grandmama? Waiting until one of them fell asleep, and then prying open his or her mouth, to count teeth?”

“A good hiding, Emma, I've always said you should have had at least one during your formative years. Don't badger an old lady, all right? If you behave, I may make
you happy and tell you that I have been badly served for my inquisitive nature.”

“You got no reward for your nosiness, you mean,” Emma interrupted. “Good.”

“A dozen hidings wouldn't have been enough,” Fanny said, sipping at her port. “But I tell you, I'm extremely disappointed. Mrs. Norbert, after a careful investigation of her belongings—oh, Daphne, close your mouth before a fly lands in it—is a seamstress.”

Emma blinked. “Well, yes, she said as much, Grandmama, that first night at dinner. A seamstress who came into some inheritance or another. She doesn't wish to enter Society, but only to be treated like a lady for a few months, being waited on, eating well. She hasn't tried to hide her past. What of it?”

Fanny rolled her still bright-blue eyes. “A
seamstress,
Emma. You know what that means. Or, what it usually means, not that old hatchet face would have been more than a penny-a-poke gel, up against some slimy warehouse wall.”

Daphne dropped her teacup—it shattered against the edge of the table—before slapping her hands over Emma's ears. “Mother Clifford! I'll not have you saying such things with my innocent daughter here. Or with me here, come to think of it. Samuel always said you had a mouth that needed a good scrubbing with strong soap.”

Emma calmly reached up and removed her mother's hands, unfortunately just in time to hear Fanny go off on
one of her favorite jaunts—that of riding up and down her daughter-in-law's tender sensibilities.

“Oh, stubble it, Daphne. You knew what I meant, which shows you to not be as pure and ladylike as you wish you were. You couldn't have been, living with Samuel and his constant peccadilloes with various bits of the muslin company. That, dear girl,” she ended, looking to Emma, “would be whores, lightskirts and, once, when he was particularly flushed from a win at the tables, a kept woman he lost in the next run of his usual bad luck.”

“You never liked him. Your own son.” Daphne sighed deeply. “And to that, Mother Clifford, I can only say For Shame.”

Emma had enough of her mother in her to be at least marginally horrified, and enough of her grandmother in her to have to remind herself not to laugh out loud. Suddenly, Mrs. Norbert seemed a safer topic of conversation. “How…” she asked at last, “…how do you know Mrs. Norbert is a seamstress, Grandmama, rather than a…a
seamstress?
”

Fanny sniffed. “Her sewing basket, for one. Packets of pins and needles, a well-worn darning knob, a full set of workmanlike scissors. That basket isn't for show, I tell you. It has been
used.
That,” she said, “and the fact that her underclothes and nightwear are of sturdy, oft-mended spinster quality. Meaning,” she ended, looking to her daughter-in-law, “they were never meant to see a man, just a long, cold winter.”

“So you
did
sneak into her room and look in her drawers,” Daphne said, slowly catching up.

“Looked at 'em, picked 'em up and inspected 'em,” Fanny said (as Emma gave in and began laughing), then downed the remainder of her port. “I had so hoped she'd been a streetwalker, even a kept woman. But she's a demned seamstress, which makes her about as interesting as the mud fence she so greatly resembles. But I have hopes yet for Sir Edgar. There's something about that man that screams out to be investigated.”

Emma sobered. “Grandmama, you will
not
be looking at his drawers, understand? I won't have it.”

“And I'm not interested in his drawers. He's older than dirt,” Fanny shot back. “I've got bigger fish to fry, gel. I just want to know our fellow tenants. Or are you looking to get murdered in your bed?”

Emma sighed in the midst of picking up shards of very fine china cup and looked to her mother, who was going rather pale. “She doesn't really mean that, Mama.”

“Yes, she does,” Fanny said, winking at her granddaughter. “There we'd be, dreaming sweet dreams, and
bam,
eternal rest, with sewing scissors sticking out from between our ribs. Or maybe a pillow over our heads, pressed there by Sir Edgar, who is really a bloody murderer who, even as we lay there, cold and dead as stones, spends the rest of the night going through
our
drawers.”

“She doesn't really mean that, either, Mama,” Emma
said as Daphne clutched an embroidered silk pillow to her ample bosom. “Grandmama, you're impossible.”

“And I pride myself on it,” Fanny said, standing up to go refill her glass. “Except, of course, you're so
easy,
Daphne. I really wish you'd give me more incentive to tease you. But, then, I've got other fish to fry here in London, don't I? And them I'll tease to much better effect.”

Emma laid the pieces of broken china on the tea tray and sat back once more, to stare in her grandmother's direction. “What are you planning, Grandmama? We've got some funds left, but probably not enough to bribe your way out of the local guardhouse. And, come to think of it, we'd first need to take a family vote as to whether or not we'd wish to spend our last penny saving you. I'd consider that, Grandmama, as I know where my vote would go, and Cliff still hasn't quite forgiven you for making him ride all the way here inside the coach with us.”

“You should both thank me for that. You know what would have happened if he rode up with the coachman. He'd have found some way to take the ribbons, and we'd all be dead in a ditch right now.”

“Dead, dead, dead,” Daphne lamented, still clutching the pillow. “Have you no other conversation today, Mother Clifford?”

“I do, Daphne, but you don't want to hear it. Now, Thornley told me that all social events have been postponed again because of this fog, which leaves us at loose
ends this evening, again. I'm bored to flinders, frankly, so what I thought was that we could corner Sir Edgar, all three of us, and press him for a bit of his history. You know. Where he was born, who his father was, why he keeps several extremely large, heavy trunks hidden behind the locked door of his dressing room. I saw them go up the stairs when he arrived, but they're sitting nowhere they can be seen. He has to have locked them up for a terrible reason.”