“Papa, Felicity told you backward and forwards that you are not to call her father-in-law Sir Pineapple anymore,” Patience said.
“And I don’t, to his face,” the duke said jovially. “In any case, she and Stratton come to Town to assist Grace. Or assist me, more like it, in getting her out of the house. Then I’ll be down to just five feminine setbacks—my dream is within reach!”
The duke was roundly jeered at over the notion and everybody found it very amusing.
“Who was the second letter from, Papa?” Grace asked.
“The second letter,” the duke said, taking a long draught of port. “That’s where things take a rather grim turn. As much as I tell my diabolical sister I do not want to hear from her, it does not put her off. That polecat has been sticking her nose into henhouses that are not her own again.”
Valor laughed hysterically over the idea and whispered to her constant companion, a stuffed rabbit named Mrs. Wendover, to inform her that Lady Marchfield was a polecat.
“What has she done?” Winsome asked. “Can we stop her?”
“Lady Misery continues her quest to get a butler into my house,” the duke said.
This struck everyone rather hard. Grace noticed the footmen had both gone rather wide-eyed. Mrs. Right, their housekeeper, ruled the roost. The staff looked to her as their leader and they were all very comfortable. Nobody wished to have a butler, least of all Mrs. Right.
And then when they thought of the butler Lady Marchfield had installed last season! Nobody would soon forget Mr. Sykes-Wycliff, running from the house, hysterically shouting at the duke. Why would Lady Marchfield even try it again?
“Mrs. Right shall be very put out,” Grace said.
“I trust Mrs. Right will eject the newest specimen with all haste,” the duke said, “just like the last one.”
“Perhaps she could even stop him from getting in at all,” Winsome said. “Our Mrs. Right is ever so clever at running rings round our aunt.”
“He’s already in,” the duke said, downing his port. “Apparently, my sister has had the nerve to openmyhouse and install a butler in it before I have even arrived. Who let her in? That is what I’d like to know.”
This, Grace thought, was a check in the endless game of chess between the duke and Lady Marchfield. Her aunt had decided the easiest way to gain her point was to get it before the duke had a chance to make his own move.
“His name, according to Lady Misery, is Harold Button,” the duke said. “Mr. Button, if you can believe anybody goes round publicly advertising such a name, has been until now the butler for some dowager or other in Somerset. Mr. Button spent years in a deadly quiet house, that dowager has since kicked off, and now he looks forward to the vivacity of working for a family with so many young people.”
“Vivacity?” Winsome asked as if that were the most bizarre quality a person could look for.
“Yes, so she says. God only knows what she’s told this poor fellow about us.” The duke snorted. “If I know my sister, Mr. Button will be expecting a parade of staid and purse-lipped individuals. The jest is on him!”
“I bet she hasn’t told him anything about Mrs. Right,” Valor said, collapsing in giggles.
Grace agreed. Mr. Button would never have taken the position if he’d known that Mrs. Right would shortly drive him out of it. Mr. Sykes-Wycliff had found that out.
That fellow had been led to understand that the duke liked to softly knock on a person’s door in the middle of the night and then clobber them when they opened it.
He’d also believed the story of the duke’s annual servants’ hunt where the staff ran round the moors and he chased them on foot and shot at them. Supposedly, the year before, a young footman had been hit, still walked with a limp, and currently lived with his mother. Mr. Sykes-Wycliff had believed all of it, though it was nonsense.
Anybody who knew the duke was aware that he was a very sound sleeper but for his snoring and shouts, and he did no creeping round the house in the night whatsoever. As for the servants’ hunt, if such a thing were ever tried out, the duke would be on horseback, as he was not a very great walker.
Mr. Sykes-Wycliff did not know the duke well enough to perceive these facts. He’d believed everything Mrs. Right told him and had experienced a complete breakdown of the mind, just like Mr. Herring had, all those years ago.
Grace could not imagine what the new butler would be told, but she was certain Mrs. Right would think of something. They were all very comfortable living without a butler, especially the duke, as he trusted Mrs. Right implicitly. She understood his ways and was not forever fanning herself over them.
Further, they’d all agreed that it was a kindness to any incoming butler to be driven mad and driven out, so he might land himself in a house where he was truly needed.
“Now my girls,” the duke said, “this time we make the trip to Town without the uncomfortable company of your miserable aunt. I suspect things will go a deal more smoothly than they did last time.”
All of the duke’s daughters nodded in agreement, though they all secretly wondered if that could be true. The nearest town of moderate size from their estate was only an hour away, and yet none of their tripstherehad ever gone smoothly.
“Valor,” the duke said to his youngest daughter, “this time round, no more hiding away in linen closets at the inns. It was very inconvenient last time to notice you were missing and have to backtrack an hour. Several times, if I recall rightly.”
Valor shrugged. “It was Mrs. Wendover’s idea. Isaid, Mrs. Wendover, we shouldn’t do it.Shesaid, we have to do it because traveling is scary.”
