Free Refining Felicity by MC Beaton Page A

that maid of Mrs Cutworth enter here earlier. Ho! Yes! I have been watching your comings and goings. With her help, you stole Mrs Cutworth’s jewels and tormented the poor woman on her deathbed into giving you her money.’
    ‘Have you finished?’ said Amy, getting to her feet.
    Mr Callaghan rose as well.
    ‘I shall prove you are thieves and liars if it takes me to my dying day,’ he said passionately.
    Felicity was descending the stairs when the door of the morning room opened. Amy came out holding Mr Callaghan by the seat of his pants and the scruff of his neck. As Felicity watched, Amy frog-marched him down the steps, the butler leaped to open the street door, and Amy threw the beau down the steps, where he rolled over the pavement and into the road.
    Amy dusted her hands and then turned to the butler. The butler was explaining something. Amy turned and looked up to where Felicity was standing. Felicity backed up the stairs to her room. How would Amy retaliate?
    Felicity woke with a start that night, immediately aware there was someone in her bedroom. Amy, was her first thought. ‘Who is there?’ she cried sharply.
    A scared whisper answered her. ‘Charlotte.’
    Felicity lit the bed candle from the rushlight. Charlotte, the chambermaid, was standing there, holding something behind her back.
    ‘What are you doing?’ demanded Felicity. ‘And what are you hiding?’
    Charlotte began to sob. She brought her hand out from behind her back and held it out. She was clutching several pairs of garters.
    ‘What are you doing with my garters?’ asked Felicity.
    ‘I was taking them away,’ said Charlotte. ‘Oh, my lady, I was feared you would do yourself a mischief.’
    Felicity felt a sharp pang of conscience. A maid in one of the neighbouring houses had, only the other day, hanged herself in her garters, a very common form of suicide. Felicity felt she should not have played on the innocent chambermaid’s sympathies with her lies of persecution.
    Then she hardened her heart. The Tribbles must be punished and she had a simply marvellous plan and Charlotte was important to that plan.
    ‘Do not cry, Charlotte,’ she said softly. ‘I am going to escape and you are to help me.’
    ‘How, my lady?’ asked Charlotte, mopping her eyes with a corner of her apron.
    ‘I used to wear men’s clothes in the country,’ said Felicity, ‘but I was not allowed to bring such apparel to Town. I shall furnish you with money and bit by bit you must buy me an outfit suitable for a young man about Town. You must go to the very best of the second-hand clothes shops, for I do not want to wear dirty and soiled things.’
    ‘Oh, my lady, what if I am caught? Jobs are hard to find.’
    ‘I shall look after you. It is your duty to help me, Charlotte. I cannot trust any of the other servants, as they have probably been with the Tribbles for a long time.’
    Charlotte hesitated. She knew very well that she and the other servants belonged to the Marquess of Ravenswood. But Mr Humphrey, the butler, had made her swear on the Bible along with the others never to reveal this secret.
    ‘I shall help you in any way I can, my lady,’ said Charlotte.
    ‘Good,’ said Felicity, lying back. ‘Leave my garters and go.’
    Felicity lay awake for some time after the maid had gone, thinking with pleasure of the Tribbles’ shame and consternation when they found her gone. ‘Mother will never send me back,’ said Felicity to the candlestick. ‘Never. I shall make sure of that. She will never trust me to the Tribbles again. But they seem to be coming to their senses. I was so sure Amy would think up some punishment to revenge herself on me.’
    She did not know she was being discussed at that very moment. Amy was lying in bed, crying, while Effy held her hand.
    ‘I feel I cannot go on any longer,’ said Amy, taking out a handkerchief the size of a bed sheet and blowing her nose with a great trumpeting sound.
    Effy felt a hardening inside her as