Page 72 of Scandal’s Daughter

Chapter 29

“Wherein farce and violence are the order of the day.”

Georgiana flung her needlework aside as howls and barks came from below stairs. Alex and Céleste had gone to lunch with his Aunt Seymour, but the old lady had been taken ill while they were there, and they had sent a message to let her know they wouldn’t be returning until the next day. It was nothing serious, but Alex wanted to wait to see the doctor and reassure himself his aunt was in good hands.

They had been due to attend a masked ball tonight, but Alex had arranged that Lord Nibley and his sister should take her, a fact that made her smile.

She wondered if Alex believed he was matchmaking, though it did give her an opportunity to tell poor Percy that she had reached her decision. But her hosts' absence meant she’d been left alone, which suited her well. She’d barely managed to set a stitch that wasn’t crooked but, she didn’t care a jot.

Sebastian had asked her to marry him.

The delicious words of his proposal, the passionate way he had kissed her, all of it was examined and replayed in detail in her mind’s eye, to the detriment of her stitching. She had hoped to hear from him today, if not see him in person, but she knew he must be spending time with his mother, trying to help her come to terms with his impending nuptials to a woman she couldn’t help but despise.

She would see him tonight though, at the ball, and the idea made anticipation burn with pleasant warmth through her veins.

The barking and yapping became ever more raucous, and her curiosity now piqued, Georgiana decided to investigate.

Opening the door, she looked out into the hallway to see the butler hurrying downstairs and the barking getting ever more intense. Wondering what manner of devilry her dreadful canine had embarked upon now she decided she’d best follow, and then picked up her skirts and ran down the stairs to the kitchens as a scream of horror trembled the walls.

The scene that awaited her as she entered the hallowed territory that belonged solely to the dictatorship of the chef, Alphonse, was one that only Bruegel could have done justice to.

In fact, it put her forcibly in mind of The Fight Between Carnival and Lent, a painting that had struck her with amusement when she was very young.

Standing on the kitchen table in all his stately majesty was Alphonse. In one hand he wielded a ladle and in the other a shockingly expensive Westphalian ham, around one end of which were clamped the jaws of a determined looking spaniel.

“Oh, thank heavens,” Georgiana muttered, relieved beyond measure Céleste’s wicked Bandit was to blame and not Conrad. Her reprieve was short lived, however, as a squirrel ran across a shelf of the dresser, sending china crashing to the floor in its wake as Conrad barked with wild abandon and chased it towards the larder.

“Good gracious,” she exclaimed as the housekeeper shrieked when the squirrel suddenly diverted and leapt across the room, tail whisking, a bare inch from her face. In her shock the beleaguered woman dropped a full jar of cornichons.

The glass shattered sending the pickling liquid over the hem of Georgiana’s skirts and filling the kitchen with the pungent aroma of vinegar.

The squirrel leapt again and swung from the oil lamp over their heads, chattering with fury as Conrad leapt up on the table beside Alphonse to get closer.

This was too much for Alphonse who took a swipe at Conrad with the ladle, missed and lost his footing. To give the elderly butler his due, he moved pretty fast to intercept the rather weighty chef before he hit the ground, but only succeeded in breaking his fall.

With a sinking heart as the scene descended further into chaos, Georgiana decided enough was enough.

She helped the winded butler to his feet as Alphonse rolled off him, and then ran down the passage that led to the scullery. Here she found two trembling housemaids lurking. Scolding them soundly for being so chicken-hearted, she sent them out into the fray armed with brooms and baskets.

After a fair amount of squealing, shrieking and running about, the squirrel - who was sadly Conrad’s responsibility after having brought the wretched thing in and letting it go - was safely confined in a picnic basket. This was given into the care of the second footman to remove to Hyde Park without delay.

Georgiana was hard pressed to decide which of the haughty creatures was more disgusted by this arrangement. The furious squirrel had taken to growling with unsettling ferocity from the confines of its prison, while the second footman gave a revolted sniff of disdain and picked up the basket as though it contained a bloody head rather than a small, disgruntled rodent.

With one problem less, Georgiana removed the ham from Alphonse’s hands with a stern demand to know who exactly he thought would want to eat the wretched thing now?

Alphonse, who had been sitting in a heap on the kitchen floor and keeping a continually yapping Bandit at bay with the ladle, finally saw the sense in this.

He relinquished the ham, if not the ladle, and Georgiana threw it into the garden. It was an easy matter then to remove the two reprobates who had caused all the trouble when they followed the ham as an unjust reward for their roguery.

With a sigh Georgiana returned her attention to the kitchen. The housekeeper sat in the corner sobbing into her apron, Alphonse was helping himself to the earl’s best brandy and threatening to hand in his notice in passionate if broken English, and a scene of devastation lay before her whichever way she turned.

An hour later she had sent the butler, Alphonse and the housekeeper to have tea and cake in the back kitchen whilst the housemaids returned the kitchen to rights.

She had promised Alphonse two Westphalian hams to be delivered from Fortnum and Masons’ the very next day at her own expense, and a bottle of that fine establishment’s best brandy for each of them to settle their nerves.

Thus leaving them suitably mollified, she returned to the kitchen to find the maids putting everything in its place and climbed the stairs with a sigh, wondering if she would ever get the stench of vinegar out of her favourite sprigged muslin.

The sight that next greeted her was not, therefore, one she could meet with any equanimity. Baron Dalton, clearly finding the door unlocked and no footman or butler to deny him, had entered the house and was awaiting her.