Free Royal Blood by Rhys Bowen

had changed my mind when there was a timid tap at my tradesman’s entrance. Luckily I was in the kitchen at the time or I would never have heard it. I opened the door and standing outside in the dim and damp November twilight was an apparition that looked like a giant Beatrix Potter hedgehog, but not as adorable. It then revealed itself to be wearing an old, moth-eaten and rather spiky fur coat, topped with a bright red pudding basin hat. Underneath was a round, red face with cheeks almost matching the color of the hat. When she saw me a big smile spread ear to ear.
    “Whatcher, love. I’m ’ere to see the toff what lives here about the maid’s position, so ’ere I am. So nip off and tell her, all right?”
    I tried not to let her know that I found this amusing. I said in my most superior voice, “I happen to be the toff that lives here. I am Lady Georgiana Rannoch.”
    “Blimey, strike me down with a feather,” she said. “Begging your pardon, then, but you don’t expect to find a lady like you opening the back door, do you?”
    “No, you don’t,” I agreed. “You’d better come in.”
    “Awful sorry, miss,” she said. “No hard feelings, I hope? I don’t want to start off on the wrong foot. My mum’s aunt ’ettie knows your granddad and she told me you was looking for a personal maid and she said why didn’t I give it a try.”
    “I am looking for a personal maid, that’s correct,” I said. “Why don’t you take off your coat and I’ll interview you here. It’s the warmest place in the house at the moment.”
    “Right you are, miss,” she said and took off the fur coat, which was now steaming and smelling rather like wet sheep. Underneath the coat she was wearing a rather too tight mustard yellow home-knitted jumper and a purple skirt. Color coordination was not her strong point, clearly. I indicated a chair at the kitchen table and she sat. She was a large, big-boned cart horse of a girl with a perpetually surprised and vacant expression. The thought passed through my mind that she’d be expensive to feed.
    “Now, I’ve told you my name. What is yours?”
    “It’s Queenie, miss,” she said. “Queenie ’epplewhite.”
    Why did the lower classes seem to have all these surnames starting with H when it was a letter they simply ignored or couldn’t pronounce? And as for her Christian name . . .
    “Queenie?” I said cautiously. “That’s your Christian name? Not a nickname?”
    “No, miss. It’s the only name I got.”
    I could see that a maid called Queenie might present problems for one about to attend a royal wedding, where there would be several real queens, but I told myself that most of them wouldn’t speak English and would probably never run into my maid.
    “So tell me, Queenie,” I said, taking a seat opposite her, “you have been in domestic service, I understand?”
    “Oh, yes, miss. I’ve already been employed in three households so far, but nothing like as grand as this one, of course.”
    “And did you serve in the capacity of a lady’s maid?”
    “Not exactly, miss. Sort of general dogsbody, more like it.”
    “So how long were you with your former employers?”
    “About three weeks,” she said.
    “Three weeks? Which employer were you only with for three weeks?”
    “All of ’em, miss,” she said.
    “Why such a short time, may I ask?”
    “Well, the last one was her at the butcher’s, and she only wanted help during her confinement, so as soon as the baby came she told me to push off.”
    “And the other two?”
    She chewed on her lip before saying, “Well, the first one got pretty upset when I knocked over her bottle of perfume when I was dusting. It went all over the mahogany dressing table and took the surface off, but that wasn’t what really upset her. It was a really expensive bottle of perfume, apparently. She’d brought it back from Paris. Oh, miss, you should have heard the words she used. You don’t hear words like that from a