The Butler Did It. Kasey Michaels

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СКАЧАТЬ traveling coach and some showy if not quite prime carriage horses.

      So the Cliffords, like Morgan Drummond, are off to London for the Season. In the Cliffords’ case, it is to cut a dash, to shop the marriage mart (already the marquis and the questing young miss have something in common), to trade on Mama’s grasstime friendship with Lady Sally Jersey in order to secure vouchers to Almack’s, and be introduced to the Very Cream of Society.

      Daphne Clifford, Emma’s mother, can barely contain herself. Daphne, never to be spoken of as The Widow Clifford, is a faded beauty, yet still quite attractive. The years have brought a few lines, a few extra pounds…and not a whit more intelligence than when, a quarter century earlier, she’d tossed herself away on the handsome spendthrift, Samuel Clifford.

      She agrees that dearest Emma should find herself a wealthy husband. She sees no reason why such a beautiful girl should have the least trouble in Snatching Up the Catch of the Season. Daphne certainly doesn’t expect any difficulties in her own quest for—ta-da!—True Love.

      Daphne does quite a bit of her thinking in capitals.

      Fanny Clifford scoffs at her daughter-in-law’s hopes, which she considers as likely to be fulfilled as Daphne’s wish to have Mother Clifford retire to Bath with her elderly cousin Maude, and For Goodness’ Sakes Leave Everyone Alone.

      Fanny is a trifle…well, it could be said that she is very much her own woman. She lived a different London life than debutantes coming to town during the namby-pamby and oh, so proper Regency. A product of a freer, bawdier age, Fanny speaks frankly, behaves just as she wishes, and believes missish girls and milksop gentlemen should be locked up somewhere so that the world shouldn’t have to wince as they mince.

      Fanny’s hoping for adventure in London, not a wedding ring. After all, she’d been married, and doesn’t quite see the appeal of being legally bracketed to another man who could very well gnaw at his toenails in bed.

      Definitely unknown to her granddaughter, Fanny has big plans. Or as Daphne might think it: Big Plans. Besides having herself a little fun before she’s too aged to recognize fun even if it toddled up and pinched her on the bottom, she has conjured up a plan to convince at least one of her old lovers to offer up a solvent, handsome, hopefully appealing grandson to wed Emma.

      One thing Fanny knows for certain is that she will not, for any amount of money, for the possibility of any grand title, allow her dear Emma to wed anyone in the least like her grandson.

      Clifford Clifford (Daphne had so little imagination), better known as Cliff, is younger than Emma, still two years shy of reaching his majority, but he is old enough to believe he, too, can go cut himself a dash in London Society.

      To Cliff, this means attendance at mills, bearbaitings, cockfights, and visits to any gaming hell where green-as-grass country bumpkins can be assured that they will leave the establishment with empty pockets.

      In short, in long, Cliff Clifford is the sort of knock-headed young fool Morgan Drummond could never learn to suffer gladly, even if he had remained at his estate until his blood had cooled enough to form ice chips in his veins.

      Also traveling to London this Season is one Edgar Marmon, Adventurer.

      Not to put too fine a point on it, Edgar used to be an Adventurer. Now, at the ripe old age of seventy, he thinks he’s an Adventurer. A man who lives by his wits, and the lack of wits of his victims, the man has run many a rig, usually unsuccessfully, and has more than a few enemies he hopes are older, and slower, and cannot outrun him.

      Edgar is coming to London with a Grand Idea. A Brilliant Scheme. A Grand Plan sure to line his pockets one last time so that he can retire to Brighton or some such comfortable spot, and prey on rich widows at his leisure.

      Oh dear, someone else who thinks in capitals.

      At the moment, Edgar is masquerading as Sir Edgar Marmington, inventor and gentleman…a man who really, really discourages investors from believing they’ll become even more wealthy than they were by lining his pockets with blunt for the privilege of coming in on the ground floor, as it were, of his most ambitious invention to date: converting lead to gold.

      Of course Edgar discourages investors. And pretty pink pigs are frequently observed orbiting around Parliament in the noonday sun.

      Already in London but hoping for a change of address is one Mrs. Olive Norbert, the “Mrs.” being a courtesy title, although no one numbered in Olive’s former acquaintance had found it necessary to live within any such rules of courtesy.

      Olive is a seamstress of two and fifty, now happily retired, who has even more happily come into a moderate fortune by way of an inheritance from her last client, a fairly dotty woman who dearly loved clothing and definitely disliked her relatives.

      With no plans to marry, even if someone should ask, Olive is intent only on looking at London through a different window than the small, dusty one in the single cramped attic room she’d inhabited above her former employer’s shop in one of the less fashionable neighborhoods just outside Mayfair.

      In short, Olive, newly solvent, is intent on having herself a small holiday. Right smack in the center of London Society.

      She knows she’ll have a splendid time. After all, she’s psychic. How else would she have known that Mrs. Hartford would perish in a nasty fall down the stairs and leave her seamstress five thousand pounds?

      As Daphne would have said: Mrs. Norbert Could Be Trouble.

      Perry Shepherd, the Earl of Brentwood, has already been “trouble” to Morgan Drummond. His lordship had been one of the marquis’s chums in school, and during his one Season in London. Right up until the moment, as a matter of fact, that the marquis had challenged him to that infamous duel over the affections of a comely young Covent Garden dancer (What was her name?).

      Yet, the duel to one side, the earl still likes the marquis. Really. After all, the scar on his cheek is actually rather dashing. The ladies seem to fancy it, and the earl certainly fancies the ladies, so he’s rather well pleased with the whole thing, even if the scar gives his valet the very devil when he shaves him.

      Perry also would be happy to take up his friendship with Morgan once more when that man returns to London, sort of help ease the man’s way back into Society. Besides, London has been sadly flat without Morgan there to comment on the foolishness and frailties of the ton and, as Perry well knows, where Morgan goes, it is many things, but it is never, never dull.

      Yes, the earl will call on his friend Morgan as soon as he learns that the man has arrived at his home in London.

      There is a staff in residence year-round at the marquis’s Grosvenor Square mansion in Mayfair.

      Mrs. Hazel Timon, for one, is housekeeper of the marquis’s London domicile. But not for long, as she has a nice little nest egg growing in the trunk at the bottom of her closet.

      Mrs. Timon rides herd on Claramae, the young, comely but vacant-headed maid of all work on the skeleton staff. Claramae also acts as ladies’ maid when needed, and spends as much time as possible flirting with the rascally Riley.

      Footman, under-butler, groom, coachie, Riley does whatever is needed. He’s happy to be of service. This is obvious by the way his hand is always out whenever he is of service.

      The Grosvenor Square staff being quite small in the absence of its owner, that leaves just one more servant: the СКАЧАТЬ