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'Good evening. I am Miss Maylin's dresser, Daisy Lawrence.' It was enough to break the ice. She discovered that she was speaking to the dressers of Miss Lincoln, the Honourable Miss Trent and Miss Harrington. Rowan knew none of the ladies concerned, guessing they must have come out after her departure to Vienna.
'I have not been with Miss Maylin long,' she confided. 'This is the most impressive house party she has been invited to since I have been with her.'
'Or ever, I imagine,' Miss Browne, attendant upon Miss Lavenham, remarked rather cattily. 'We have never met your predecessor, at any rate. My mistress says she's been invited for Lord Danescroft to have a look at. Is that true?'
'I believe he may be interested. It would be a very eligible connection for her, would it not?'
'Eligible?' Miss Trent's dresser enquired sharply. 'With that scandal so recent? I should shudder to think my young lady so much as spoke to such a man.'
'Really?' Rowan produced a look of wide-eyed surprise. 'But surely it is only some wild rumour about an accident? Leaving that aside, surely there is no cause to object to the Earl?'
Miss Browne raised an eyebrow at her colleagues. 'One does wonder,' she murmured, 'what kind of establishment his lordship presides over. They do say-' she drew in a deep breath '-that his wife was having an affaire with his valet.'
'Well, either he condoned such a thing, in which case there cannot be any truth in the rumour that he murdered her, or he did not. I do not see,' Rowan observed tartly, 'that you can have it both ways. Either the man is utterly dissipated or he is a murderer.'
As she spoke she glanced across the room and found she was being watched by the cynical blue eyes of the Earl's current valet. He could not possibly have heard her, but some twinge of conscience had her adding, 'Or he could be completely innocent, of course.' She held Lucas's gaze as she spoke, then realised that her own eyebrows were raised haughtily, as though to depress presumption. Only that expression would be completely out of character for Daisy Lawrence.
Hastily she lowered her eyes, feeling quite as flustered as Miss Lawrence would be. She was still trying to work out why-guilty conscience, annoyance at her lapse from her part, or the effect of that cobalt stare?-when a cool voice behind her enquired, 'Gossiping, Miss Lawrence?'
How the devil did he move so silently? Or so fast? She had hardly dropped her gaze from his. Rowan turned slightly, finding him all too close for comfort. 'Conversing, Mr Lucas. We were discussing reputation and how fragile it is.'
The other dressers regarded the two of them nervously, obviously in expectation of a comprehensive set-down from such a senior upper servant.
'Indeed it is.' His smile was not amiable. 'And rumour is such a dangerous thing. Sometimes, of course, it may be truth.'
He sauntered off to exchange words with an older man, leaving the four women exchanging speechless looks. Eventually Miss Gregg, dresser to Miss Trent, ventured, 'One might almost think he was trying to scare us.'
'I am quite certain he was.' Rowan narrowed her eyes at the unresponsive back clad in black superfine at least as good as that worn by most of the male guests. 'Or me, at any rate. It seems Mr Lucas does not approve of Miss Maylin as a future mistress.'
A tentative voice asked, 'Miss Lawrence?'
It was abashful, slightly spotty youth, his Adam's apple protruding above his painstakingly tied neckcloth as he swallowed violently with nerves. He was such a contrast to Mr Lucas that Rowan was taken aback. 'Er-yes?'
'I am Mr Philpott, the Reverend Mr Makepeace's man, and I am to take you in to dinner, Miss Lawrence.' He was almost speechless with shyness, made worse by the barely suppressed sniggers of the other three dressers. His master must be as far down the scale as Penny, if not further, and Rowan's heart went out to him.
'Thank you, Mr Philpott, I am much obliged.' Rowan had encountered her share of gauche young gentlemen and had learned how to put them at their ease. She felt considerably more sympathy for this very junior valet than she had for some bumptious sprig of the nobility. She put her hand on his arm and smiled, reducing him to blushing incoherence. 'I suspect we are right at the end of the line, are we not? Never mind, you can give me some hints about how to go on.' She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. 'This is my first big house party: I am quite at sea.'
Her dresser had warned her that protocol could vary widely from house to house. In some the upper servants would dine by themselves in the Steward's Room. In others, as was apparently the case here, they would join the other servants. In that case, Alice had explained, they would probab
ly only stay for the first half of the meal.
Then there was the vexed question of the seating plan. Once they entered the servants' hall they might split up, and the female staff occupy the table below the housekeeper with the men below the Steward.
'Me, too,' Mr Philpott whispered, dashing her hopes that he, at least, knew what was what when it came to table plans.
'Never mind,' Rowan murmured, more to reassure herself than him. 'At least we're at the back and can see what the others are doing.'
They trooped in to a scraping of chairs and a rustling of cloth as the lower servants got to their feet. There was a second table, empty and waiting for the Steward's Room party. Hanging back, Rowan watched, then nudged Mr Philpott towards the centre. 'I think that's where we go.'
She found she had another valet, a cheerful, round faced man, on her other side and opposite, Miss Browne and a man who, from his military bearing, seemed to be an ex-officer's batman.
'Do you know anyone else?' she asked, reaching for her napkin.
'No.' Philpott sent a hunted look round the table. 'Mr Makepeace has only just been appointed chaplain to Lady Hartley. Before then he was just the vicar, and never went anywhere, but her old chaplain died so she took him on. Do you know any of them?'
'Just the dressers you saw me speaking to earlier, and Mr Lucas, right up at the other end next to the housekeeper. He's Lord Danescroft's man.'
'I have heard of him.' Mr Philpott sounded as censorious as she could imagine the Reverend Makepeace might. 'My master does not approve of his presence here, you know,' he added in a whisper.
