Damsel in Distress Page 15

  When Caro undertook a job, she did it wholeheartedly. She knew the only hope of pulling this rig off was to forget she was Lady Winbourne and become a seller of fish. As she worked, her ladylike expression changed to a pert, insouciant grin.

  “How’s that then, mum?” she asked, peeking at Mrs. Lorimer when she had finished the transformation.

  “I would never recognize you, milady. Wherever did you learn to speak like that?”

  Caro’s impish grin softened to nostalgia. “My husband and I were footmen to Lord and Lady Carlisle for a whole weekend,” she said, remembering a bet Julian had made with a friend that he and Caro would never spend another night under Lord Carlisle’s roof after defeating the man’s bill in Parliament. They had masqueraded as servants and spent the hardest weekend of their lives fetching and carrying. But Julian had won the bet, and she had learned to speak like a servant.

  “Some joke, I wager,” Mrs. Lorimer said. “But your hands, milady,” she said, looking at Caroline’s dainty white hands with the manicured fingernails. “Wear an old pair of gloves. My gardening gloves are in wretched shape, with the thumb out.”

  “Excellent!”

  “And your teeth—a girl of the lower orders would not have teeth in such good repair.”

  “I refuse to have a tooth drawn! I shan’t smile. You must tell me what price fish fetches hereabouts. I want to offer a bargain, to entice the cook to let me into the kitchen.”

  It was half an hour later that a fishmonger dressed in a form-concealing gray dress left the back door of Dolmain’s house on Marine Parade with her basket of fish holding turbot, mullet, winkles, and mussels hung over her neck, and scampered westward to Bartholomew Avenue. No one gave her more than a passing glance. When Newton, watching from a north window of the Town Hall, saw a fishmonger enter the watched cottage, he peered closely at her. It was not until the mobcab turned and stared up at the window that he was certain it was Caro.

  By Jove, she should be on the stage. How naturally she swung her little rump, like a regular hoyden. He checked his watch when she went down the lane to the back door. If she was not out in fifteen minutes or so, he would go after her.

  Caro was surprised to see the little flint cottage was in such poor repair. The roof sagged, the paint was chipped, and the garden all overgrown. When the back door opened, she was taken aback to find not a cook or housekeeper staring at her, but a woman who matched Newt’s description of Renée.

  She was pretty, but of a certain age, and wearing a good deal of paint on her face. Her gown, featuring an excess of bows and lace, was too smartly vulgar for real fashion. A tea towel tucked in around her waist was her only concession to the kitchen.

  “Fresh fish, mum?” Caro asked, taking care not to reveal her teeth. “Come in my pa’s boat this mornin’. Lovely bit of turbot, that,” she said, holding the rounded, flat-bodied fish up by the gills. She was glad she was wearing gloves. The fish were slimy.

  The woman looked at it with distaste. “Disgusting! But then, one must eat something, hein? How does one prepare it?” she asked, revealing a trace of French accent.

  “Oh, poached, mum, with white sauce. A crying shame to bake a turbot. I could let you have this beauty for eight shillings. A rare price for a middling-sized fish. They’re the tenderest. You could feed eight people off’n this lad.”

  “It is too large. I only have to feed three.” Caroline schooled her features to indifference, lowering her head lest her eyes betray her interest. Three! Herself, deVere, and Helen.

  “Serve it up with a cream sauce tomorrow, then,” she suggested. “It’ll keep overnight in the larder.”

  “I don’t plan to be here tomorrow.” Again Caro had to school her face to vacuity.

  “Pity. How about some nice mussels then, mum?”

  The woman studied the turbot. It would save a trip out to shop for food. There were potatoes in the larder. “Just poach it, you say?”

  “Yes, mum.” With some memory of her childhood days in cook’s kitchen, she added, “You wash it in salt water first to get rid of the slime, and then rub it in lemon before you boil it.”

  “How long do you boil it?”

  “For this one, half an hour,” Caro said at random.

  “I dislike to touch it, yet if it only has to be poached ...” She disliked to contemplate dealing with an oven.

  “Your cook run off on you, did she?” Caro asked pertly.

  “Exactly. I don’t suppose you—

  Caro’s heart leapt at this unexpected piece of luck. The woman wanted her to prepare the fish— but how could she do it without removing her gloves? She felt a note of reluctance was called for and said, “I’ve got my living to earn, mum.”

  “I shall pay you. Wash the thing off with salt and put it in the pot. I shan’t be able to eat a bite, I know. Much he cares for me, so long as she likes it. How much altogether?”

  “A guinea.”

  “A pound. Prepare the fish and sauce and leave them on the table. I shall pay you after you have finished.”

  It was too good an opportunity to lose. “Very well.”

  The woman removed the tea towel from her waist and walked quickly from the room. Afraid that she might return to check on her progress, Caroline used a tea towel to rub the fish down with salt and rinsed it off. Finding no lemon, she put the turbot on the rack in a poaching pot and added water. White sauce was a mystery to her. Before attempting it, she ran halfway up the back stairs to see what she could learn.

  “She is sleeping?” the woman asked in French.

  A man’s voice replied, also in French. “I put laudanum in her tea. That should hold her until dinner at nine.”

  “How long will it take him to collect the money?”

  “We should have it by midnight. Which means another of your wretched dinners, Renée.”

  “I don’t see why you and I cannot go out to dine.”

  “And leave our little gold mine all alone? No, we shall all dine here tonight, feeding her plenty of wine, then send her back upstairs to rest. We have to keep her convinced we are her true friends. I doubt her own papa could lure her away, after the job I have done convincing her.”

  “It seems cruel to get her hopes up.” Caroline’s ears perked up at this. What ruse had they used to convince Helen to go with them?

  “I owe milord a lesson,” deVere/Bellefeuille said in a sneering voice. “And it will cost him more than pounds and pence this time.” Caro felt the hair on the back of her neck rise at that frightening speech.

  Instead of following up this line, Renée said, “I must prepare the sauce for the turbot.”

  Caroline scampered back down to the kitchen. White sauce! Presumably it was made from milk or cream. She remembered seeing cook make blancmange with cornstarch. When the woman returned to the kitchen, Caro was filling a pan with milk.

  “Your fish is ready to go,” she said. “I’m just getting on with the sauce.”

  The woman watched as she rattled about the cupboards. She found a tin of cornstarch and plunged her hands into it to conceal their natural whiteness. She used half of the powder to make a paste, which she added to thicken the milk. The brew soon thickened to an alarming degree over the stove.

  The woman came to look at it. “It’s time to thin it now,” Caro said, and added water until it was of more or less the proper consistency,

  “You’ve only to set it aside and heat it up at dinnertime,” she said, with a sigh of relief. Now she could leave.

  She was about to go when she heard a voice from the bottom of the stairs. “So this is how you are preparing the sauce, Renée,” deVere said. She hadn’t heard his approach.

  They both spoke French as before. Renée replied, “I never claimed to be a cook, mon cheri.”

  “Soon we shall have all the servants your greedy little heart desires—if you have a heart, c’est à dire.”

  Caro turned her back to them, pulled on her gloves, and picked up her basket.

&nb
sp; “You pay her, Michel,” the woman said. “A pound.”

  DeVere rattled some coins in his pocket, drew out his hand, and came toward Caro. Her heart floated up to her throat. He could not recognize her! He had never seen her. Oh, but if he recognized she was a lady ...

  “You’re a pretty little thing,” he said, pulling her chin up between his fingers. She twitched her head away. “A temper, eh? I like that in a girl.” His sharp eyes traveled in a leisurely way down to her bosoms. “Or should I say, woman? With a bath and a decent gown ...”

  “Let her go, lecher,” Renée said angrily.

  DeVere dropped the coin in her gloved fingers. “Thankee, sir,” she said, swallowing a prayer of thanks for Madame’s jealousy. She hung the fish basket around her neck and fled out the back door. As she left, she heard Renée light into him for his lechery. “You never can keep your vile hands off a woman!”

  Without waiting to hear his reply, Caro darted down the lane and back onto the street just as Newton came around the corner. She scuttled along the street and they both turned the corner beyond view of the house on Bartholomew Avenue.

  “Is that you, underneath all the dirt?” Newt asked, peering owlishly at her.

  “Of course it is! Helen is there!” she exclaimed.

  “Let us go fetch her.”

  “She is drugged, but I have a plan.”

  “Good, dump that load of fish and let us hear it.”

  “We can safely leave her for the moment. Let us go to Marine Parade. I want a long bath to kill the stench.”

  “Damme, I don’t want an open basket of fish in my carriage.”

  “I shall leave it on the street. It won’t remain there long.” She removed the basket and put it in the shade. A young tousle-haired boy looked at it hopefully. “Take it,” she said.

  “For free?”

  “No, for a pound.” She handed him the coin deVere had given her. She didn’t want to keep anything he had touched.

  “Gorblimey,” the urchin said, and snapping up the coin and fish basket, he lit out down the street at a gallop.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “We shall need a ladder and a blond wig and some stout ropes,” Caroline said, as they drove to Marine Parade. “It would help if we had a portrait of her. I wonder if Helen has not got a copy of one at Marine Parade.”

  “The stench of fish has disordered your brain, my girl,” Newt said severely. “Here, let me get some air into the rig.” So saying, he opened both windows.

  “If there is no picture, then Lady Milchamp must give me a description of her,” Caro continued, thinking out loud.

  “Deuce take it, Caro, you know what Helen looks like. And if you are thinking of wearing a wig and breaking into the house on Bartholomew Avenue—”

  “Not breaking in!” she said. “I promised Dolmain I would not do anything rash. I am merely planning to lure Helen out.”

  “You figure she is that fond of ropes and ladders?”

  “No, goose. The ladder is to reach her window, and the rope is in case we have to force her to come with us.”

  “A good thing you ain’t planning anything dangerous!” he said, with heavy irony.

  “It is not in the least dangerous. I plan to dress up like her mama. I am convinced that is the lady Helen thinks she will be meeting in Brighton. Meg heard her mention her mama and papa. She adores her mama. Dolmain told her her mother died in France. How easy for deVere to pretend he has found her and brought her back alive. It must have been Miss Blanchard who told him of Helen’s devotion to her mother. In fact, it was after Blanchard came to them that Helen set up the shrine. I daresay Blanchard encouraged her.”

  “Silly thing to do. The woman ain’t a saint. But why did Helen not tell Dolmain they had found his wife?”

  “Because if Helen had told her papa that Marie had turned up, Dolmain would reveal it for a lie. DeVere has given Helen some excuse for not telling Dolmain, and convinced her to steal a valuable necklace to secure her mama’s safety.”

  “Just what is it again that the wig has to do with it?”

  “I am going to rig myself up to look like Lady Dolmain to fool Helen. In the dark, just a glimpse through a window. As Helen will be in her bedchamber, we shall require a ladder to reach it. If I could copy the hairdo and gown Marie is wearing in the portrait, it would work. Helen can have no real memory of her mama. What she remembers is a portrait. I wish I had seen it. If she saw a similar-looking woman, she would at least open the window, and if we cannot convince her to come with us, we shall just have to snatch her and steal her away.”

  Newt considered this. “Might work,” he allowed, “but we will need some excuse for going to the window instead of to the door. The mama is supposed to be friendly with deVere. No need for her to go scrambling up ladders to see her daughter.”

  “Surely we can invent a convincing lie as well as he! They plan to feed Helen a good deal of wine. She will be groggy, which is all to the good. I shall say some spies are lurking outside the door to kill Lady Dolmain when she arrives, and that deVere wants them—us—to leave by the window.”

  “As I said, might work; on t’other hand, she might recognize you and holler, bringing deVere down on our heads. Or deVere might hear us going up the ladder, or—well, any number of things, every one of them dangerous for you.”

  “Or they might fool Dolmain into handing over the ransom money and not give Helen back at all,” she shot back. “DeVere said this affair would cost Dolmain more than pounds and pence. You should have heard the way he said it, Newt, so gloating. God only knows what he meant, but I fear it does not bode well for Helen. We must save her, and Georgie has made clear there is no point calling in Bow Street. I know Dolmain will fly both ways, but I do not see how he can be here much before midnight.

  “It might be best to let him handle it, though. His daughter, after all. If anything goes wrong ...”

  “He was in such a state when he left. I fear he will do something rash and get himself killed. I would like to have it all over before he gets here.”

  “I hope it ain’t all over for you, my girl. Biting off more than you can chew, but between the two of us, we might manage to chew it up and spit it out. You can count on me. Anything for Helen.” He lifted his fat chin and added nobly, “King Arthur, I daresay, would do no less.”

  She tweaked his ear. “What an excellent cousin you are. I shall buy you a round table if we succeed.” And I shall talk Dolmain down out of the boughs for countermanding his orders, she added to herself.

  When they reached Marine Parade, the first item of business was to assure Lady Milchamp that Helen was alive, but in danger. The second was to outline the plan, and discover whether there was a likeness of Lady Dolmain in the house.

  “In Lady Helen’s room,” Lady Milchamp said. “A smaller copy taken from the original. Helen had it done so that she would always have a picture of her mama. It is not so good as the Lawrence portrait, of course, but quite like.”

  “May I see it, ma’am?” Caro asked.

  Mrs. Lorimer was sent to fetch it. Caroline was accustomed to hearing herself called beautiful, but the lady in the portrait took her breath away. Her hair was a cloud of golden curls encircling a heart-shaped face. A band of laurel leaves sat on her head like a crown. Long-lashed emerald green eyes gazed serenely out at the world. The full lips were drawn up in a small, seductive smile.

  “No wonder Dolmain fell in love with her,” Caroline said.

  “The original flattered her; this copy gilds the lily. Her eyes were not that large and much lighter, though it is true the whole city was running mad for her,” Lady Milchamp said, which did little to restore Caro’s confidence.

  But she had a job to do, and settled down to study the portrait with a view to imitating the hairstyle and gown. There was, alas, no hope of her face suddenly turning into a heart shape, or her eyes doubling in size. The hair was the most distinguishing feature, however, and it was capable of being copied in a
wig. The gown would be even easier to duplicate. A simple band of white rolled gauze encircled her shoulders and nestled between an enviable pair of breasts, like two satin melons. A few inches of green material had been sketched in below the white collar. She wore no jewelry save a pair of pearl drops at her ears.

  “You can wear my pearl eardrops,” Georgie offered.

  “And my gauze shawl around your shoulders,” Lady Milchamp added. “There is a laurel bush in the backyard.”

  “Good. Now all we require is a wig,” Caroline said.

  “A wig? Oh, my dear, I doubt there is such a thing for sale in the whole town,” Lady Milchamp said. “Monsieur Dubé sells hairpieces, just a lock or two to fill out a thinning head, but a whole wig—no one wears them nowadays.”

  “Whoever supplies the theaters would have them,” Georgie said. Her cheeks were rosy with excitement again.

  “Leave it to me,” Newt announced, and left to tour the town until he found either a theater or a shop selling wigs.

  Georgie cleared her throat and said, “This might be a good time for you to ... er, clean yourself up a little, Caro.”

  Glancing down, Caroline was surprised to see the dusty old gray gown. She had forgotten she was still in disguise. She had cast off the gloves in the carriage. Her white hands stood out in sharp contrast to her soiled arms.

  “Yes,” she said distractedly. She rose and looked in the mirror at her bedraggled and dusty hair sticking out around the mobcap. “I certainly do not look much like Lady Dolmain in this outfit, do I?” she asked in a wistful voice.

  Lady Milchamp made a statement that went a long way to overcoming the aversion she had caused thus far. “Dolmain would not have singled you out for his attentions if you did.”

  It would have been too farouche to thank the lady, but Caro honored her with a warm smile.

  She went to seek Mrs. Lorimer and order hot water for a bath. The housekeeper showed her to a guest room and said she would have Lorimer take up the water right away.