A Dangerous Undertaking. Mary Nichols
for her to do? She had no money to return to London. Suddenly she found herself thinking again of Charles Mellison, who had suggested she should marry, and his long-legged, handsome companion, who was looking for a wife. She did not want either of them to be given the opportunity of crowing over her. She smiled and turned from the window; she would just have to make the best of the situation. Straightening her shoulders, she returned downstairs and made her way to the kitchen, intending to ask for mops and buckets to clean her room.
MISTRESS CLARK was thin and dark, reminding Margaret of a scavenging crow as she darted about the kitchen picking up utensils and bowls. She was muttering to herself, but stopped suddenly when she saw Margaret. ‘Miss Felicity!’ The bowl she had in her hand dropped to the floor and shattered. Margaret bent to pick up the pieces.
‘It’s a judgement, that’s what it is,’ the woman went on, crossing herself. ‘I knew it would all end in tears; I told you so.’
‘I’m not Felicity, Mistress Clark. I’m her daughter, Margaret.’
The cook let out her breath in a long sigh. ‘My, you gave me a fright, mistress. The image of your poor mother, you are.’
‘My mother is dead.’
‘And you thought you would come back home, did you?’
‘It was Mama’s last wish. I’m sure she didn’t know it would be like…’ She paused, lifting her arm to indicate the house. ‘Like this.’
‘No, she wouldn’t. She was only a young girl when she left home. I told her; I told her it would end in misery…’
‘Mama wasn’t unhappy, Mistress Clark. She and my father were very happy until he died and then we managed very well, she and I.’
‘Well, I’m glad to hear it. But you aren’t thinking of staying here, are you? This is an evil place and that one…’ She pointed with a wooden spoon at the wall dividing the kitchen from the rest of the house. ‘That one is the devil. Get out. Get out before he drags you under his wicked spell. He’ll——’
She was interrupted by a bellow from the corridor outside, and the door was thrown open to reveal Henry Capitain, more tousled than ever. ‘Are you going to stand there gossiping all day? I want my dinner.’
‘It’s coming,’ the cook said, but there was no servility in her tone. ‘Do you think I’ve got ten pairs of hands?’
‘And you mind your manners, or you’ll be out on your ear.’
Her answer was a laugh of derision.
He ignored it and turned to Margaret. ‘Get back where you belong. Seeing’s you’re here, you can be my hostess. You can’t be any worse at it than Nellie. Come on, now, we’ve company.’
Margaret followed him back to the drawing-room, where she found three men and three women who had arrived while she had been talking to the cook. They were all so grotesquely painted that it was impossible to tell what their features were like, and they wore huge wigs which disguised the colour of their hair. The men’s clothes were as vivid as the women’s, in pinks and purples, greens and mauves. They reminded Margaret of a flock of parrots.
‘Margaret, I want you to meet our guests,’ he said, waving a hand at them. ‘Entertain them while I go and dress.’
He disappeared, leaving Margaret unable to utter a word. They stared at her; one of them even lifted a quizzing-glass and moved it up and down inches from her face. ‘Ain’t seen you before,’ he said. ‘Where’d old Henry find you?’
‘He didn’t,’ she said coldly. ‘I am his great-niece.’
This was followed by another long silence, until Nellie came in and diverted them with cries of welcome. ‘It’s been dull,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing to do…’
‘Nothing to do, Nellie?’ one of the women laughed. ‘Don’t Henry satisfy you any more? Well, now we’re all here, things will liven up, don’t you think? Is the niece part of the entertainment?’
‘My, I could be entertained by that one,’ drawled one of the men, looking lecherously at Margaret. ‘It might be amusing, don’t you think? The quiet ones often turn out to have hidden fire. I had a mistress once, young she was, hardly out of the schoolroom and carefully brought up, but my, was she a demon in bed!’
He laughed heartily as Margaret turned and fled.
She ran up to her room, grabbed her bag and hurried down the back stairs to the kitchen. Mistress Clark was just taking a roast fowl from the oven. Margaret dashed past her and out of the door. They would surely catch her if she tried to go back along the only road. She turned and ran over the grass to the landing-stage. They could not follow her if she took the only boat. She threw her bag in the bottom, climbed in and cast off.
She had never rowed a boat before, but she had seen it done on the Thames and she bent to the oars with a will. At first she went round and round and kept bumping into the bank, but at last she found a kind of rhythm and discovered how to steer. Her direction was clear enough because Ely Cathedral stood out clear against the skyline. She had no idea how far away it was, because distances were deceptive where there were no landmarks except a few windmills, and the light was so strange. She rowed out of the wide water of the fen into the cut. She kept going until her back felt like breaking and her hands were covered in blisters, but still the great tower of the cathedral seemed no nearer. She knew that if she stopped the current would take her back the way she had come. She forced herself to continue, and inch by inch drove the boat forward towards a group of buildings surrounding a church, which she guessed was Winterford. There was a small landing-stage and sloping lawns to a large house. Thankfully, she pulled in and, throwing her bag before her, climbed on to dry land. And then, to her great consternation, she found her legs had become so numb with cold that she could not stand.
The house was two hundred yards away and much bigger than she had at first supposed. Built of grey stone, it seemed to have been put together haphazardly, with a tall main building and two wings, one with a lower roof-level which jutted out along the frontage and the other set at right angles. The central frontage had half a dozen evenly spaced mullioned windows and a massive wooden door, heavily studded. She began crawling over the grass towards it, dragging her bag with her, but, before she could reach it, she found herself looking at a kid-booted foot and a dark blue woollen skirt and heard the voice of a young woman. ‘Goodness, you poor thing, whatever happened to you? Charles, come here and help me.’
‘Mistress Donnington!’ Margaret recognised the voice of Charles Mellison, though she was all but fainting and could not see him clearly. ‘How did you get here?’
‘Never mind how she got here,’ the young lady said, before Margaret could find her tongue. ‘Help me get her indoors.’
He lifted her easily and carried her into the house and into a small sitting-room. Margaret saw nothing but the glowing embers of the fire, felt nothing but the warmth enveloping her, and then she fainted.
When she came to herself, she was lying in a beautifully furnished bedroom, covered with clean sheets and warm blankets, and the young lady was sitting in a chair beside the bed watching her. She smiled when she saw Margaret was awake.
‘I’m Kate Pargeter,’ she said, picking at the lace edging of the tiny apron she wore over a flower-patterned silk day-gown. It was almost a nervous gesture, as if she was unsure of herself, but then she laughed and revealed the mischievous look of a young girl. ‘Charles told me you were coming to visit us, but I never dreamed you would arrive in so spectacular a fashion. My brother is out on the land but he’ll be back soon. Wait till I tell him you could not wait for him to send for you and made your own way here.’
‘I wasn’t…’ Margaret stopped, wondering what Charles Mellison had said about her. Why should Lord