Mrs. Budley Falls from Grace Read online

  “If Despard were to walk in here, I would kill him,” he said.

  And at that moment, Despard walked in, followed by Duvalier, now Rossignole.

  Sir Philip picked up the knife again and his eyes blazed with hatred. “You cur!”

  Miss Tonks opened her eyes. “God heard me,” she exclaimed.

  Despard turned to the kitchen staff. “Get to the servants’ hall and stay there until I call you,” he said.

  The staff shuffled out. Despard waited until they had gone and then produced Lady Stanton’s letter and held it out. “This will explain all,” he said.

  The poor relations crowded around and read the letter. “You cannot blame me,” said Despard. “I wanted to go home and would have gone home had not Rossignole here met me at Dover and persuaded me of the folly of it. He, too, is a master chef.”

  “Get yourself off,” said Lady Fortescue.

  The door to the kitchen opened and Jack walked in with a bag in his hand. Gone was the fashionable sneer. He looked like a large, shuffling country boy.

  “I am … I was …” he said, “Lady Stanton’s footman.”

  “The one that tried to ruin my soup!” exclaimed Despard.

  “The same,” said Jack wearily. “But I am come to warn you.”

  “Warn us of what?” demanded the colonel.

  “I heard my mistress planning to ruin you. She thinks that Despard here is missing. But now I see he is not.”

  “What did she plan to do?” asked Sir Philip.

  “She plans to wait until the end of the banquet and then suggest Despard be brought upstairs. That way the guests will finally know he had gone. Lord Ager would demand his money back. If Sir Philip produces an actor in Despard’s place, she plans to lead the guests to the kitchen to show them that Mrs. Budley is the chef.”

  “Wait a bit!” Sir Philip’s eyes scanned Despard’s letter again. “This letter means we have her.” He rounded on Despard. “Could you do it, the banquet, I mean?”

  Despard shrugged. “With my friend Rossignole, we will make you the talk of London.”

  “Wait a minute,” protested the colonel. A dream had been rising up in his mind’s eye of some pretty manor house and marriage to Lady Fortescue. “This traitor, this villain cannot just walk back into his employ.”

  But Lady Fortescue’s black eyes had begun to sparkle. “Then set about it Despard,” she said with all the gaiety of a young girl. “Mrs. Budley, you will stay here this evening, out of sight. You will dress your best and wait outside the door of the supper-room. When you hear Lady Stanton make her announcement, you walk in, dressed in your finest. We shall survive.” She laughed. “And I thought we were finished.”

  Miss Tonks hugged Mrs. Budley. “My prayers have been answered.”

  Despard grinned and took off his coat and hung it on a nail on the wall.

  Jack made for the door.

  “Wait!” said Lady Fortescue. “You have done us a good service. You are a fine upstanding man and we need an ornamental footman to hold open carriage doors. Would you like to be employed by us?”

  “Yes,” said Jack simply.

  “We will get you a fine livery, but for now you will help Despard. Get to it.”

  Only the colonel stood silent. Sometimes he felt ashamed of his longing to be a gentleman again. He fancied a country life with good books in the library and dogs at his heels when he walked round his estate. But to see his beloved Amelia sparkling and happy again gradually raised his spirits and he tucked his dreams away for the moment and followed the others upstairs to supervise the decorating and setting up of the supper-room.

  Jack was never to forget that long day. He felt he had been plunged into a hell of chaos as the fire roared and the spit turned and the menservants gradually stripped to the waist, labouring like demons in the suffocating heat.

  The day wore on and sauces bubbled and Despard swore and cursed as he and Rossignole filled the air with spun sugar. The centre-piece for dessert was to be the Battle of Arroyo Dos Molinos, a little town among the clouds of the Sierra de Montaches in Spain where Rowland Hill, at the head of three thousand British, four thousand Portuguese infantry and four hundred cavalry, had driven out the French. One by one the kitchen staff stopped their work as the miracle arose under Despard’s and Rossignole’s fingers. The high sugar mountains rose up, the little Spanish town complete with houses and streets began to appear. Upset miniature baggage carts, abandoned by the fleeing French, lay in the streets as the sugar Highlanders of the 71st and 92nd sprang to life in Despard’s sculpture. Finally it was finished. Despard and Rossignole, seemingly unaware of the irony that their dessert was celebrating a defeat of the French, hugged and kissed each other when it was finished and then solemnly toasted France in Lord Ager’s best burgundy.

  The marquess dressed with great care for the ball. He lived next door to Lord Ager. He felt he could sense Mrs. Budley’s very presence through the walls. She seemed to be stamped on his mind. He could conjure up her hair, her eyes, her voice, her walk. He was beginning to feel like a man obsessed. He had found his heart’s desire and he could not do anything about it because of the great wall of his pride.

  And yet he had found himself of late avoiding Charles Manderley, and no hopeful miss could any longer claim to have caught his attention, for he entertained a different one every week.

  But, he thought, as he selected a diamond pin and carefully placed it among the snowy folds of his cravat, if he married her—just suppose that he married her—then he could remove her from London, from the stigma of trade, and forbid her to see any of that hotel lot again. But she wouldn’t promise such a thing, and the trouble was, if she did, then he would be disappointed in her.

  What was so shocking about being in trade anyway? ran his angry, troubled thoughts. All these mysterious taboos of society surely were better fitted to some South Sea island tribe. He remembered a fellow officer who had fought alongside his men in the filth and the dirt and the carnage, who had tended wounds, tearing up his shirt to make bandages for some foot-soldier, carrying wounded on his back, seemingly unconscious of the blood staining his once fine uniform. And yet that same officer had flown into a passion at the next camp when no scrubbing woman could be found to do his laundry. The marquess had suggested they do their own and the officer had raged that a gentleman never did his own laundry. The marquess could see him now in his mind’s eye, covered in blood and lice and yet with his face rigid with hauteur.

  Mrs. Eliza Budley was like a poison seeping through his blood for which there was no cure. It was one thing to learn to live with a painful wound—he had done that many times—but another to live with this hurting, nagging ache inside.

  Behind him stood his valet holding his coat. What did Pomfrey think? Was he in love? Had he ever been in love?

  “Have you ever been in love, Pomfrey?” he asked, voicing the thought aloud.

  “Yes, my lord, but I managed to get over it.”

  “You make is sound like smallpox. Why did you not marry her?”

  “The lady in question was a mere housemaid, my lord. I could not stoop so low. Furthermore, I would need to have found other employ.”

  Even the servants are mad, thought the marquess. We throw happiness away and settle for misery out of fear of losing face. Ridiculous!

  Mr. Hamlet, the famous jeweller, refused twice to see Sir Philip but eventually caved in, as he could hear that old man’s voice raised outside in more vociferous protest.

  “I know why you are here, Sir Philip,” said the jeweller, “and no, I am not lending you any more. It did not promote sales last time.”

  “It’s your business,” said Sir Philip with startling mildness in one who had been shouting and complaining so recently, “but I thought your business could only be helped by gaining the custom of the future Marchioness of Peterhouse.”

  “And who is this lady?”

  “Our Mrs. Budley.”

  “Go on with you! He ain’t g
oing to marry one of your partners.”

  “Nutty about her, spoony about her, and what is more, going to drop the handkerchief tonight.”

  “Never! You know this for a fact?”

  Sir Philip nodded solemnly. He had, two nights ago, sat up late writing out what he knew about the odd relationship between Mrs. Budley and the marquess. The marquess had been kept apart from her. He would see her again at the ball, and Sir Philip wanted to make sure that Mrs. Budley looked like a princess.

  “What had you in mind?” asked Mr. Hamlet.

  “I want to see her in one of your new tiaras, the pretty ones, not those great heavy things, diamonds and gold; and a diamond necklace and bracelets.”

  “You will guarantee that we get her custom when she is wed?”

  “On my heart,” said Sir Philip.

  “Very well. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Lady Stanton was escorted to the ball by Mr. Jasper Brackley. He was once more happy with her, for she seemed to have abandoned all interest in Charles Manderley. His happiness, however, was short-lived. She drank a great deal between dances, in fact she could barely seem to keep away from the supper-room. Lady Stanton was being made more cheerful through drink and through the non-appearance of Mrs. Budley. The fact that the marquess had not asked her, Lady Stanton, to dance, did not trouble her. She would trounce the poor relations and then return to her pursuit of him.

  With the exception of Lady Fremley, Lady Stanton’s coterie were gossiping busily so that by the time the guests went in to supper, all knew that the poor relations had been lying about the cook, and the only person unaffected by the gossip was the host, Lord Ager, who had actually met the cook in person, and although startled to find the man bore little resemblance to the actor who had been presented to him before as Despard, had tasted a few of the dishes and pronounced each one a miracle.

  Lady Stanton drank more heavily as the meal progressed and exclamations of delight and wonder rose about her. She did not have a very good palate herself and contented herself with thinking that the poor relations had managed to get their hands on another chef. Either that, or Mrs. Budley had a rare talent as a cook.

  The marquess listened with half an ear to the prattling of the young miss he had escorted to the supper-room; Mrs. Budley was nowhere in sight. She was still in the kitchen, obviously, ruining her looks over the cooking pots, and not thinking of him.

  When the doors to the supper-room were at last thrown open and the splendid dessert wheeled in, the guests rose from their seats and crowded around like children.

  Lady Stanton realized her moment had come.

  “We would all like to congratulate Despard, the French chef,” she said loudly. “Bring him here.”

  Mrs. Branston, Mrs. Tykes-Dunne, and Lady Handon added their voices to hers.

  Lady Stanton stood there with a smile of triumph curving her lips.

  Most of the guests were standing. She heard a burst of applause from the doorway and then the crowd parted. Despard stood there in fresh cap and apron. Beside him stood Rossignole. And behind them, also in cap and apron, stood her former footman, Jack.

  “Look at this,” said a voice at her elbow. Sir Philip spread out her letter, the one she had given to Despard. She looked down at it in horror. “See you in court,” said Sir Philip with an evil grin.

  “What was that?” asked Mr. Brackley.

  “Nothing,” she said through white lips. Despard had disappeared, the guests were sitting down again.

  And then the double doors at the end of the room were thrown open again. Colonel Sandhurst, who had left the room earlier, entered with Mrs. Budley on his arm.

  The fine muslin gown cut by the hand of a genius floated about her body. Diamonds sparkled in her hair, at her neck and on her arms.

  The Marquess of Peterhouse stood up and walked down the length of the room.

  He raised her hand to his lips and said, “Mrs. Budley, will you marry me?”

  Her eyes sparkled brighter than her diamonds as she looked up at him and said simply, “Yes.”

  The colonel felt a lump in his throat as he passed Mrs. Budley to the marquess, and the pair of them walked out of the supper-room together.

  They came to a halt in the deserted ballroom.

  “It is all so easy, really,” said the marquess, smiling down at her. “Oh, kiss me, Eliza, and take the pain away.”

  He strained her against him and kissed her lips, softly at first, and then with great passion.

  They broke apart as the band began to reappear in the gallery above the ballroom. “A waltz,” called the marquess and then took Mrs. Budley in his arms again as the band began to play.

  The guests came out of the supper-room, whispering and watching as the couple circled dreamily in each other’s arms.

  The only one missing was Lady Stanton. She had gone home to pack, to escape England and the vengeance of Sir Philip. Charles Manderley looked bemused. That proposal had been overheard and news of it had spread about the supper-room. He thought the marquess was behaving disgracefully.

  Sir Philip bowed before Lady Fortescue. “Our dance, I think,” he said.

  “We cannot dance here,” protested Lady Fortescue. “We are the servants.”

  “Nothing can spoil our success,” said Sir Philip.

  Lady Fortescue smiled suddenly and threw the train of her gown over her arm and danced off with Sir Philip, who held her too tightly and whose head only came up to her bust.

  “Miss Tonks,” said the colonel, “will you honour me?”

  And Miss Tonks did, dreaming as she floated around that she was not dancing with the poor old colonel but with some handsome guardsman.

  Then there was a commotion at the doorway and the guests stopped dancing and shuffled into two lines. The Prince Regent had arrived.

  The poor relations, mindful of their position, stood against the wall, except Mrs. Budley. The marquess would not let her escape, holding her hand in a tight clasp as the royal personage moved down the line.

  “Tol rol, Peterhouse,” said the prince. “And who is this dasher?”

  “My affianced bride, Mrs. Eliza Budley, Your Highness.”

  “Vastly pretty. Invite me to the wedding, hey!”

  The prince moved on, declaring at the end of the line that he was hungry.

  Despard and Rossignole, who were having their own supper in the kitchen, shot to their feet when Sir Philip burst into the kitchen with the news that they had to prepare supper for the Prince Regent.

  But Mrs. Budley was not around to see the end of the dramatic evening or how the prince had praised his supper to the skies.

  She had turned her back on yet another convention and had gone next door with the marquess to his home and was lying in his arms on the sofa in front of the library fire, being kissed and caressed to her heart’s content.

  She had removed her tiara and it lay on a side table, sparkling in the candlelight.

  “We will be married in Warwick,” he murmured against her soft hair. “Prinny won’t travel that far, but we shall survive without him.”

  She twisted her head and smiled into his eyes. “When?”

  “As soon as I can arrange a special licence.”

  “But my friends will not be able to leave the hotel to be at my wedding.”

  “They may visit us. Kiss me again. You are not going to postpone the wedding. We have already wasted so much time.”

  She kissed him, but seeming almost flustered and surprised at her own passion, betraying to him that she had never been in love before.

  He slid a hand inside her gown and gently caressed her breasts and she shivered with pleasure, remembering with an irrational stab of disloyalty how she had hated her husband’s fondling her breasts, for he had kneeded them like dough.

  “I am forgetting myself,” he said reluctantly. “I had better return you to that hotel. It won’t be for long. We will soon be married.”

  “Married,” echoed Mrs. Budley
with a happy sigh and turned her lips to his again.

  Chapter Nine

  O fat white woman whom nobody loves.

  —FRANCES CROFTS CORNFORD

  DESPARD HAD carefully hidden the gold Lady Stanton had given him behind the bricks in the kitchen wall. He and Rossignole stayed up late one night to take out the bricks and then, after the gold had been secreted, to put the bricks back and replaster the wall. Which was just as well for them, for on the day after that, Sir Philip, studying that letter of Lady Stanton’s again, realized that the least the fickle cook could do was to give his ill-gotten gains to the hotel coffers.

  The French chef looked at Sir Philip mournfully, spread his hands in a Gallic gesture of resignation and said that, hélas, milady had cheated him and had given him a bag of rocks. Sir Philip, like everyone else, had heard that Lady Stanton had left England and so could not confirm this story. On subsequent mornings, Despard found Sir Philip had been down during the night, searching every corner, every pot, every crock, even upended the flour bin in his rage at not finding that money which he was sure the chef had hidden.

  But he was finally distracted from his search by the news that he was to have the honour of giving Mrs. Budley away at her wedding. His triumph at having scored over the colonel was short-lived, for it transpired that Lady Fortescue had decided that the colonel was of more use to her at the hotel than Sir Philip. He was further soured by the intelligence that he was to travel to Warwickshire with Miss Tonks, who was to be bridesmaid.

  It was with bad grace that the ill-assorted couple set out. Miss Tonks was actually looking very well in a new modish travelling dress and a smart bonnet. Success—and the hotel was a success—had given the spinster a certain sureness of manner and dignity which she had lacked before.