Free Susie by M.C. Beaton

the one. Don’t lose it.”
    Susie took the huge key, which weighed a ton, and wondered how anyone could be supposed to lose a monster like that.
    She then went back through the hall and along a stone passage leading off the far corner until she came to the cellar door. It took all her strength to turn the huge key in the lock, but at last the door swung silently open on well-oiled hinges.
    Susie went silently down the stairs and paused in amazement halfway down. The cellar was ablaze with candles burning in various empty bottles. On the far wall a wine rack had been pushed aside to reveal an open door with steps leading downward. The cellar was full of the thud and boom of the sea. It was also full of every servant of Blackhall Castle and five rough-looking seamen who were rolling barrels into the center of the floor while Thomson, the butler, ticked off various items in a notebook.
    Now, to a more sophisticated young lady, Thomson would simply have been checking a consignment of brandy from the wine merchants, which was being delivered by a hitherto-unsuspected door.
    But to Susie, who lived more between the pages of romances and in her own fantasies these days than she did in the real world, the explanation was simple.
    “Smugglers!” she cried, clapping her hands in childish delight.
    The servants stood frozen with shock. Thomson’s face was ashen.
    “I’m sorry to interrupt you, Thomson,” said Susie, “but perhaps you could find me a good bottle of vintage claret. I’m supposed to pick it myself, but perhaps, this once, you could do it for me and not tell Lady Felicity.”
    “No, indeed, my lady,” said Thomson, galvanized into action. He seized a bottle of Chateau Lafite less tenderly than he should and presented it to Susie.
    “My lady,” he said desperately. “My lady,
please
…that is…I mean to say…we should be
most
grateful if you did not mention this to Lady Felicity.”
    “Oh, no,” said Susie innocently. “Smuggling is so very secret, is it not? I shall say nothing to anyone.”
    She tripped lightly up the stairs, swinging the bottle by the neck as if it were lemon squash.
    The servants and smugglers waited in silence until she had gone.
    “Well, I never,” said Mrs. Wight, the housekeeper, collapsing onto a barrel.
    “That was a close one,” said Thomson, mopping his brow.
    “Think she’ll keep mum?” grated one of the smugglers.
    “Yes, God bless ’er,” said Thomson fervently. “She won’t tell. She’s no more than a babe who thinks we’re playing games.
    “We’ve been a bit rough on her,” he added slowly. “Reckon as how us ought to be extra polite to her. For she’s not always going to think smuggling’s a game like Hunt the Slipper or Forfeits.”
    And so it was that a very gratified Susie and a much-surprised Lady Felicity noticed the servants’ change of demeanor. Lady Felicity’s grim lady’s maid, Carter, knocked at Susie’s door before dinner and begged most humbly to be allowed to arrange Susie’s hair and help her with her dress. Susie duly presented herself in the dining room, looking as elegant as a fashion plate and as beautiful as a spring day. Lady Felicity felt quite ill just looking at her. But it was the behavior of the servants that really made Lady Felicity jealous—a jealousy that was indirectly to lead to her death.
    The servants were simply fawning on Susie, she thought sourly, so Felicity tried to think of some new way to make Susie feel inferior.
    At last she hit on it.
    “Do you ride?” she asked casually.
    “No, not really,” said Susie.
    “Every lady should learn to ride,” said Felicity grimly. “I shall teach you myself. We will begin your lessons tomorrow. I shall personally choose a mount for you.”
    “Very good of you, I’m sure,” said Susie meekly.
    “Good God!” said Felicity waspishly. “Have I not yet cured you of speaking like a scullery maid? Don’t say ‘I’m sure’ at the end of a sentence like