Free Refining Felicity by MC Beaton

mischief.
    It was then that the butler broke the sisters’ temporary peace by announcing Mr Desmond Callaghan.
    ‘Tell that rat we are not at home,’ said Amy. ‘The cheek of the man. To steal Auntie’s inheritance from us and then come calling as bold as brass.’
    Mr Callaghan was just turning angrily away in the hall when Lady Felicity arrived. He swept her a low bow.
    ‘I am sorry to find the Misses Tribble not at home,’ he said crossly.
    Felicity surveyed him with an imp of mischief dancing in her eyes. She thought Mr Callaghan the most dandified fribble she had ever seen, from his enormously high beaver hat to his nipped-in waist and high-heeled boots with fixed spurs. His face was highly painted and his petulant mouth rouged.
    ‘I am sure there must be some mistake,’ said Felicity sweetly. ‘The Misses Tribble are most definitely at home. Come and I shall introduce you myself.’ And ignoring the butler’s outraged stare, she led the way upstairs.
    She opened the door of the morning room and ushered him inside. ‘This delightful gentleman was wrongly told that you weren’t at home,’ said Felicity blithely. She shut the door on Mr Callaghan and on the Tribbles’ outraged faces and went on up to her room, whistling merrily.
    ‘You shouldn’t ought to have done that,’ growled Wanstead, following her. ‘You did that out of spite and I hopes Miss Amy makes you pay for it.’
    Felicity remembered the cobra and felt a momentary stab of fear. She was sure the thing had been stuffed and had correctly assumed that it had been a present from that elderly nabob, Mr Haddon. But her fright on that terrible evening had been so great, she still had nightmares about it. Then she shrugged. She would get the better of Amy yet and, in fact, was almost ready to make her escape.
    Felicity, for all her odd upbringing, was very much a young lady of this second decade of the nineteenth century. Amy was, on the contrary, very much of the eighteenth, where ladies had been as broad-spoken as men, and even the highest aristocratic dames in society were as tough as old boots. Felicity was used to despising her own sex as being weak and feeble-minded and had not yet realized quite how tough the Tribble sisters could be. Nor did she realize that it was perhaps Effy she had more to fear, and that delicate and fragile Effy could make a nastier enemy than her mannish sister any day.
    Felicity had been working on a susceptible chambermaid, having got the idea from the romance she had been reading. The chambermaid, Charlotte, was a young Cockney girl, easily flattered by Lady Felicity’s confidences. She listened wide-eyed as Felicity fed her stories of persecution at the hands of the Tribbles and how they meant to force her to marry the wicked Lord Ravenswood. Finding that Charlotte could read, Felicity lent her the romance, which was all that was needed to make sure that the gullible girl believed every word. Since the apple-pie-bed episode, Felicity was never allowed to leave the house unchaperoned.
    Downstairs in the morning room, the atmosphere was arctic.
    ‘Sit down, Mr Callaghan, and state your business,’ said Amy.
    ‘You have stolen my inheritance,’ said Mr Callaghan.
    ‘Good heavens,’ exclaimed Effy. ‘The man is quite mad. It was
you
who stole
our
inheritance, Mr Callaghan.’
    ‘Mrs Cutworth left nothing but debts and more debts,’ said Mr Callaghan. ‘By the time I sold the house and contents, there was nothing left for me. I know now why the poor dear lady died penniless. You wicked pair had been cajoling vast sums out of her.’
    ‘Fiddle,’ said Effy. ‘We believed her to be rich as well.’
    ‘Mrs Cutworth told me you had not a penny,’ said Mr Callaghan. ‘She used to laugh about it. I once came and studied your house. Not a servant in sight. I asked in society. It was well known neither of you had a feather to fly with. But now you live in magnificence and there can only be one answer. I saw