Free Tilly by M.C. Beaton Page B

Night for Peer of the Realm.
    It is rumored that the handsome Marquess of Heppleford left the arms of his bride two hours after the wedding to fly to the experienced arms of one of Paris’s most notorious ladies of easy virtue, acertain Mademoiselle Cora Duval, until lately under the protection of the Compt du Chervenix. Visitors to the marquess’s stately home have been turned away with the intelligence that the new marchioness is indisposed. No wonder! We shudder to think of the affect of such behavior on the lower orders. A solid, virtuous family life is the backbone of our nation. It is up to our Ruling Class to set a good example…
    “Well, I never!” said the cook. “And there’s my poor lady shut up in her room and hardly touching any of the food I’ve sent up to her.”
    “What on earth can she
do
?” moaned Mrs. Judd. “How can a decent girl like that compete with a—a—
Scarlet Woman
?”
    “For the moment, she needs to keep herself occupied,” said Mr. Masters, smoothing back the silver wings of his hair. “Young ladies in her situation who don’t keep themselves busy—know what happens to them?”
    “No! What?” chorused his audience.
    “They goes into a decline, that’s what!”
    “Oh, mercy!”
    “So here’s what I suggest we do. Mrs. Judd will go up to my lady’s room in the morningand will tell her that the old marquess’s rooms in the East Wing need to be cleaned out. They do, as a matter of fact. Mrs. Judd will ask her whether she would like to look at the furniture and ornaments and stuff to see if there’s anything she would like for the downstairs’ rooms. My lady was brought up proper, so she’ll have a sense of duty, so mind you tell her it’s expected of her, Mrs. Judd.
    “
And burn all the newspapers
.”
    “But if we get her roused and about and someone comes calling, maybe she’ll learn that way,” protested the cook.
    Mr. Masters raised his bushy eyebrows in surprise. “Mrs. Comfrey, you forget we are dealing with the aristocracy here. None of them would dream of saying anything so spiteful!”
    Masters had guessed Tilly’s sense of duty correctly. She emerged from her seclusion, pale and heavy-eyed. The old marquess’s rooms were chockablock with papers and bric-a-brac, and Tilly picked up things listlessly and put them down again in a helpless kind of way until the housekeeper’s enthusiasm began to infect her. Mrs. Judd exclaimed in delight over the discovery of abeautiful Ming vase that was lying under a rolltop desk. The late marquess had used the vase as an exotic deposit for everything from rubber bands to paper clips and unanswered correspondence.
    After that find, it turned into a sort of treasure hunt and Tilly became quite flushed and animated to find a clutch of valuable Dresden figurines in the coal scuttle. Like most housekeepers of stately homes, Mrs. Judd had a knowledge of art and china that would have rivaled that of a museum curator.
    “At least someone seems to have tidied up the papers on the desk,” remarked Tilly.
    “That would be the lawyer,” said Mrs. Judd. “Ever such a search there was for the will. We knew there
was
a will, of course, because me and Mr. Masters were witnesses. Not that we knew what was in it, for it wouldn’t have been fitting, like, for us to read it. Imagine it turning up in the library! But right glad I was that it did. For you’ll never believe it, but that bold Rosy Jenkins down at the Crown—that’s the landlord of the public house’s girl, down in the village—well, she was going about telling folks as how the old marquess came down one night and asked her and her dad to witness his will. ‘Bite yourtongue, my girl,’ I says to her, I says. As if his lordship ever visited a public house!
    “But Rosy always was a little liar, if you’ll forgive me for speaking so open, my lady. Why, I remember the time when MacTavish—that’s the gardener—caught her thieving apples from the orchard in broad