Mrs. Budley Falls from Grace Read online

  He executed a bow. “Your servant, Sir Philip. What is the reason for your call?”

  “Mrs. Budley,” replied Sir Philip.

  The marquess sat down suddenly, his heart lurching. “What has happened? What is wrong?”

  “Only that one of your garrulous friends has seen fit to insult her. She does not have parents or family to protect her. Mr. Manderley called on her and told her you were all set to marry a Miss Arnold and that Mrs. Budley by pursuing you was ruining your reputation.”

  The marquess’s face went quite stiff with distaste. He damned Charles in his heart. But he said, “I can only apologize for the behaviour of my friend. Such a thing will not happen again.”

  “Mr. Manderley, it appears, did have certain grounds for gossip, although it strikes me that Mrs. Budley is the pursued and you the pursuer, my lord.”

  “Mrs. Budley and I are friends. Now, if you will excuse me—”

  “I don’t go around giving females passionate kisses and then calling ’em friends,” said Sir Philip with a horrible leer—second-best teeth, wooden ones, exposed in all their glory. “What about the Hitchcocks’s ball?”

  “As I said, I am busy, and—”

  “No, you don’t, my lord.” Sir Philip pointed at the marquess with his cane. “Just what are your intentions regarding our Mrs. Budley?”

  “Damn your impertinence!”

  “Your intentions, my lord!”

  “Friendship.”

  “Then may I suggest that you behave like a friend and have a mind to her reputation.” Sir Philip’s old eyes flashed with contempt. “You fancy her but you haven’t the guts to court her. So you’ll wed some milk-and-water miss and be heartily bored for the rest of your life and it will serve you right. Don’t come calling again, my lord. And don’t glare at me. You and your unfortunate choice of friends brought this down on your head. Good day to you!”

  And with stiff dignity, Sir Philip walked from the library.

  His face grim, the marquess shortly followed him out, but no longer to go to the City to see his agent. He was searching for Charles Manderley and wondering angrily why friends of the battlefield, who had seemed such sterling chaps amidst fear and danger, should appear like overgrown schoolboys in civilian life.

  He found Charles Manderley at his lodgings and started without preamble. “How dare you interfere in my private life? How dare you subject a friend of mine to such crass insult?”

  Charles had the grace to blush. But he said defiantly, “I was worried when I heard the gossip about you.”

  “From whom?”

  “From Lady Stanton.” Charles did not think it politic to mention Mr. Pym.

  “From that trollop? I have now learned of her reputation. Mrs. Budley is a lady of sterling and unblemished character. I have no intention of proposing marriage to Miss Arnold, as you had the infernal cheek to inform her.”

  “But think of your family name! You can’t go marrying someone in trade!”

  “I am not marrying Mrs. Budley. I am not, at the moment, marrying anyone. What do I have to do to make you mind your own business? Never go near Mrs. Budley again. If you do, Charles, I shall be forced to call you out. I will now call on her myself and try to repair some of the damage.”

  But when he entered the Poor Relation, he was met by Lady Fortescue, who had been primed by Sir Philip—a Sir Philip now questioning the staff in the kitchen over the disappearing cook, Despard.

  She was very grande dame, very stiffly on her stiffs. She made the marquess feel like a grubby schoolboy.

  “Mrs. Budley cannot receive you now or at any time in the future,” she said when she had heard his request. “Ah, Colonel Sandhurst, your arrival is most timely; please escort his lordship to the door.”

  So that was that, thought the marquess, rather sadly. Perhaps it was just as well Manderley had brought things to a head. He had no right to put her reputation at risk. He turned in at the doors of Fribourg and Treyer and bought the most expensive flask of perfume in the shop and instructed them to send it to Mrs. Budley.

  Sir Philip emerged from the kitchen in time to receive it from the perfumier’s messenger. He was about to refuse it on Mrs. Budley’s behalf, but he loved perfume, so he accepted it and took it off to hide it in his own room.

  A week later, Despard was sitting in an inn at Dover waiting for a favourable wind. He had papers to say that he was an American, Louis Rossingnole. A bribe to the captain had ensured that although registered as sailing all the way to America, he would in fact leave the ship at Boulogne when it crossed the Channel on the first leg of its journey.

  All his elation at the thought of going home had slowly died. He was bored. He missed the excitement of the hotel, where each meal had been for him like a theatrical production. Lord Ager’s ball would soon take place, and there would be no Despard to bring glory to the hotel.

  Wind drove gusts of rain against the glass of the inn windows and soughed along the narrow streets of Dover with a mournful sound. He decided to go out for a walk down to the harbour, as if by looking out to sea he could calm the waves and bring a wind to bear him home.

  Soon he stood gloomily on the glistening rain-washed cobbles and looked at the masts of the shipping, heeling and dancing wildly at anchor like some Birnam Wood about to advance on Dunsinane.

  “It’s you, Despard, isn’t it?” said a voice at his ear.

  Because of the tumult of the wind and waves, and the creaking of ships’ timbers, he had not heard anyone approach and let out a gasp of fright and reached in his pocket for his gun.

  “It’s me, Duvalier,” said the man.

  Despard peered in the gloom at the man confronting him. “Duvalier!” he said in a wondering voice. Duvalier, who had been his childhood friend and neighbour in Paris. Duvalier, here, in England.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Despard.

  “I come here sometimes,” said Duvalier, “to look out to sea. I am working here, at the Pelican, as a scullion.”

  “Why? Why are you not fighting for Napoleon?”

  “I am saving my neck, my friend. I heard news I was next for the guillotine, and so I fled.”

  “But you are not an aristocrat. Why should they cut off your head?”

  Duvalier gave a bitter laugh. “How long have you been away? Someone has only to inform against you. Some man owed me money. He could not pay. So he went to the authorities and said I was a spy for the English. My days were numbered.”

  “Let us go somewhere out of this cruel wind,” said Despard urgently.

  They found a quiet tavern in a back street and a shadowy corner. They lowered their voices so that the few other people in the tap would not hear that they spoke in French.

  Despard outlined briefly what had happened to him. “But my luck has turned,” he said. “I will set up my own restaurant in France with my old friend, Rougement.”

  “Rougement’s dead.”

  “How? When? Why?”

  “Two years ago. Guillotined. He had been taken prisoner by the English. He escaped and made his way back to France, to Paris. He was tried as a deserter and found guilty and guillotined. Do not go back, my friend, or it will be the worse for you.”

  “But what are we fighting for? For liberty and equality.”

  “Doesn’t exist,” said Duvalier with a shrug.

  “But you were a good chef. What are these barbarians doing employing you as a scullion?”

  “All they want here is their roast beef. I am here on sufferance. I report regularly to the authorities. I live quietly but I stay alive.”

  Despard sat in silence, his dreams falling about him. At the Poor Relation, he had been a name. He now realized his predicament if he went home. Why had he not made his escape before instead of working for the sale Anglais? But he had money and papers. He could go to America. But all at once he wanted to go home, and home was the hotel in Bond Street.

  A furious Sir Philip might call the authorities. But how could
he do that, thought Despard, for the first time, without implicating himself, without confessing that he had been knowingly harbouring an escaped prisoner? But he could, came the next dismal thought. Sir Philip was an expert liar. Despard could hear him now. “You would take the word of a Frenchman and not mine.”

  He shifted in his seat and the letter implicating herself that Lady Stanton had given him crackled in his pocket.

  A slow smile crossed his twisted features. Sir Philip would forgive all to get his hands on such a letter.

  He looked at Duvalier. “How would you like to return to London and work for me in a grand hotel in the West End, frequented by all the nobility?”

  “But I would need to explain to the authorities here where I was going and they would wish to see you.”

  “I have false papers. You can use them. You are now Louis Rossignole, an American. Think on it, my friend. We combine our cooking talents and London will never have tasted anything like it!”

  Chapter Eight

  The cook was a good cook, as cooks go;

  and as cooks go she went.

  —SAKI

  AS SIR Philip was to say long afterwards, Mrs. Budley might have achieved some of Despard’s greatness, given another year, but with Lord Ager’s ball hard upon them, it seemed as if their reputation for top cuisine was gone forever.

  Such dishes as appeared in the dining-room of the hotel were good, and some of the sauces were excellent, but Mrs. Budley was not capable of creating dishes that would be talked about for long afterwards and had little knowledge of confectionery, and so there would be no stunning centre-piece such as the Battle of Trafalgar, which had so amazed the guests at the Hitchcocks’s ball.

  And Mrs. Budley was tired. She could never remember being quite so tired before. Not only was the heat of the kitchen exhausting, but she had to battle perpetually for ascendency over the kitchen staff, who had begun to relax now that Despard’s ferocious temper and iron rule were no longer around to plague them.

  At first she had been buoyed up by the fact that the marquess would not see her at the ball. She would be hidden away in Lord Ager’s kitchens. She nursed a little hope that he might miss her, might ask for her. How she wished she had never told the others she could cope. Surely then Sir Philip would have been spurred on to find another French chef and she could appear in her brand-new gown of finest sprigged muslin, made by one of the leading dressmakers. The sensible side of her mind told her that after such a humiliation as had been dealt out to her by Charles Manderley, it was folly to think of the marquess at all, but he had been living inside her head, inside her dreams, for so long that it was hard to banish him.

  Gossip had reached Lord Ager that the Poor Relation’s famous chef had deserted the hotel, gossip busily relayed to his ears by Lady Stanton through her friends. Alarmed, he had demanded to see Despard, but the enterprising Sir Philip had produced an actor.

  Lady Stanton, the day before the ball, finally heard that Despard was still at the Poor Relation and she rounded on Jack, the second footman, and demanded that he find out what exactly had happened.

  Jack at first planned to simply walk down the area steps to the kitchen door and ask for Despard, but fear and dislike of his mistress sharpened his wits enough to realize that it was in the interests of the hotel to maintain the fiction that Despard was still cook. He changed out of his livery, put on ordinary clothes, and decided to pretend to be delivering potatoes. He went to Covent Garden early in the morning and purchased a sack of potatoes and made his way to Bond Street. He could only hope that the wretched page who might recognize him was nowhere near the hotel kitchen.

  He met with a set-back when the door was opened by a scullery maid who stared at him indifferently and said, “Leave ’em there.”

  “Mr. Despard always pays me when I deliver,” said Jack quickly. He smiled flirtatiously down at the scullery maid. “What about a glass of beer for a tired man, bright eyes?”

  “Oh, go on with you,” she giggled. “They don’t like strangers in the kitchen. Step into the scullery an’ I’ll see what I can do.”

  Jack stood in the scullery with the sack of potatoes at his feet and listened to the clamour coming from the kitchen. One voice was raised above all the rest, rapping out orders, a female voice, an upper-class voice. Still, that was not so strange in a hotel run by aristocrats.

  The little maid came back with a tankard of beer. “Drink that quickly,” she said.

  She was an unprepossessing creature, little more than a dwarf, with a tired grey face and greasy hair, but Jack stopped and kissed her on the cheek and then straightened up and looked down at her with well-feigned admiration. “Work you hard, does he?” he asked.

  “Mrs. Budley’s a right tyrant,” said the maid.

  “Where’s that French cook?”

  The maid hesitated. They had all been sworn to secrecy. But there could be no harm in a bit of a gossip with this handsome fellow. It was not as if he were some noble’s servant or one of the servants from another hotel, only a deliverer of potatoes and equal to her on the social scale.

  She giggled and whispered, “He ran away. Ever such a fuss. We’re to pretend he’s still here. Silly, if you ask me.”

  Jack drained his tankard in one gulp. Time to make his escape.

  The scullery door opened and Mrs. Budley stood on the threshold.

  “Betty, what is this?”

  Mrs. Budley had gained an air of command. Jack automatically bowed and her eyes narrowed with suspicion.

  “Fellow delivering potatoes, mum.”

  “We ordered none.” Mrs. Budley did not think Jack looked at all like the sort of man who delivered vegetables from Covent Garden.

  “He says Mr. Despard ordered ’em.”

  “When?” demanded Mrs. Budley.

  “I obey orders for my master,” said Jack. “That’s all.”

  “Your master being?”

  “Mr. Bloggs of Covent Garden,” said Jack.

  “Then take these potatoes back to Mr. Bloggs and tell him there has been a mistake. Betty, go about your work.”

  Mrs. Budley stood there while Jack hoisted the potatoes onto his back and made his exit.

  She vowed she would go to Covent Garden later and find this Mr. Bloggs and see if he existed, but the pressure of work put it out of her mind.

  Jack returned triumphant to his ungrateful mistress. She did not reward him, merely nodded and dismissed him.

  Now that he no longer adored her, he felt miserable and shabby. All his delight in his livery and his London job faded at last. He found himself longing for the simpler ways of the country.

  Lady Stanton held court that afternoon with her little group of friends—Lady Handon, Mrs. Tykes-Dunne, Mrs. Branston, and Lady Fremley.

  “I happen to know,” she said triumphantly, “that the famous cook, Despard, has quit the Poor Relation and will not be cooking for Lord Ager’s ball. They tricked him by saying Despard was still with them. And that creature, Mrs. Budley, is to do the catering. What would Lord Ager say to that, I wonder?”

  “I would not tell him if I were you,” said Lady Fremley.

  “Why not, pray?”

  “I cannot but admire this Mrs. Budley. There is a certain gallantry in a lady of good birth trying to emulate one of the best chefs London has known.”

  “You forget, Lady Fremley, that Mrs. Budley is the little wanton who kissed Peterhouse at the Hitchcocks’s ball.”

  “You forget, Lady Stanton,” said Lady Handon maliciously, “that it was Peterhouse who kissed Mrs. Budley.”

  “They deserve to be exposed,” said Mrs. Branston hotly. She blamed Mrs. Budley for the fact that the marquess no longer asked her daughter to dance.

  Lady Stanton smiled slowly. “They will be, and in the most public manner possible.”

  Mrs. Budley sat in Lord Ager’s kitchen on the following morning and cried her eyes out. As she looked round at the joints of meat, at the piles of produce, and thought t
hat she was expected to cook for two hundred, and not for the twenty or so at the Poor Relation, she realized she could not cope.

  At last she dried her eyes and sent the page to find Sir Philip. Gunter’s would need to take over the catering, which would cost a fortune, and most of Lord Ager’s money would have to be returned.

  Not only Sir Philip but Lady Fortescue, Colonel Sandhurst and Miss Tonks came into the kitchen.

  “I cannot do it,” wailed Mrs. Budley. “I cannot cope. It is all too much for me. You will need to get Gunter.”

  “I happen to know Gunter is catering for the Markham’s musicale this evening,” said the colonel. “What are we to do?”

  Miss Tonks sank to her knees. “Let us pray,” she said.

  Suddenly beside himself with rage, Sir Philip kicked the praying Miss Tonks on the backside and sent her sprawling. Colonel Sandhurst seized a carving knife and challenged Sir Philip to a duel. Sir Philip said, “Gladly,” and seized another carving knife and the two elderly gentlemen began to circle around each other, while Miss Tonks, her balance recovered, prayed on, with her eyes tightly shut.

  “Stop it this minute,” shouted Lady Fortescue.

  Sir Philip made a savage lunge at the colonel, who dodged it.

  “Stop it, I say, or I will never speak to either of you again.” Lady Fortescue’s voice rang out over the kitchen.

  The colonel promptly put down his knife and Sir Philip began to clean his nails with the point of his, as if that was what he had been planning to do all along.

  Lady Fortescue sat down on a kitchen chair and looked about her, at the shame-faced colonel, at the still angry Sir Philip, at the praying Miss Tonks, at the red-eyed Mrs. Budley.

  “Enough is enough,” she said. “This hotel business is driving us mad. We will explain matters to Lord Ager and salvage what we can. The hotel is a thriving business. We will put it on the market and divide the proceeds and go our separate ways.”

  “Look, O Lord, mercifully upon them …” intoned Miss Tonks.

  Sir Philip sat down suddenly as well. He took off his new black wig and scratched his few remaining hairs. He felt his life was over. Lady Fortescue—Amelia—would no doubt settle in the country with the colonel and there would be no room for him. The colonel would see to that! No more excitement, no more fun. Only a dismal lonely future on his own.