Page 59 of Hot Duke Summer

T he lady said, “Thank you.” It was an unexpected courtesy, and it changed the course of Jennifer Ward’s life. Without it, Jen would never have left Bristol. She would never have discovered the value of the stones she had been playing with for the past several years. And she would never have discovered the worth of an earl.

Jen didn’t want to help the lady at all. But Uncle Edgar had threatened Mammi if Jen didn’t come to perform maid services for a lady who was staying in his house, no questions asked and all hush-hush. “You won’t even speak to her, Jennifer,” he ordered.

A mistress, Jen had assumed. Several times, Uncle Edgar had promised a house, a maidservant, and an allowance to a lady of negotiable affection. The house was a tenement block he had neither the wherewithal nor the persistence to restore. Jen was the maidservant. All the mistresses decamped as soon as they realized the allowance was as mythical as Uncle Edgar’s good nature.

Jen had second thoughts about her assumption as soon as she arrived. For a start, the lady was old. Not decrepit old. Still as spry as a woman half her age, but well beyond the age that appealed to Uncle Edgar. She had a crown of flyaway white hair and laugh wrinkles enough to make it clear that smiling was her favorite thing.

She was also fashionably dressed in real silk, though she lacked the jewels that went with such attire. Perhaps the lady had had the sense to leave them at home before coming to a neighborhood like this? For the lady did not belong here. Jen recognized quality. She had seen it, albeit at a distance. What was a lady like this doing with a villain like Uncle Edgar?

It wasn’t her business, of course. Jen did not want to be involved. Jen intended to leave the tray, carry off the chamber pot, and think nothing more about it. But then the lady spoke to her. “Thank you. That looks very tasty.”

“It is just a simple cottage pie,” Jen said. She had picked it up from the ordinary. That, and a jug of light ale. Peasant food, and she had expected Uncle Edgar’s fancy woman to turn up her nose at it.

“It is very welcome,” replied the lady, proving the point by pouring herself a glass of the ale and draining it before she added, “I have had nothing to eat or drink since supper last night. The kidnappers took me before I could eat breakfast.”

Oh, horse feathers! What had Uncle Edgar got her into now?

Suddenly, his insistence that the lady could only eat with spoons made more sense. The vile old carbuncle. A kidnapper? Really? He would get them all hanged, and then what would become of Mammi?

“Then you had better eat the pie before we escape,” Jen found herself saying.

The lady’s look of surprise matched how Jen was feeling. Sweet pigeons of paradise! Never mind the constables! Uncle Edgar would kill her himself if he found her helping his captive to escape.

Jen would need to get the lady to a safe place, and then go back for Mammi, and all before Uncle Edgar had any idea that she had betrayed him. And then Jen would have to hide herself and her mother somewhere Uncle Edgar would never think to look for them.

“You are really going to help me?” the lady asked.

“Yes, of course,” Jen replied. “I didn’t know about the kidnapping, and I do not want any part of it. We shall have to be careful, though. My uncle has one of his men downstairs—he said to keep you safe, but I guess he meant to keep you in. Eat up, my lady, while I figure out how to draw him away from the stairs so we can get out.”

“Eloise,” said the lady.

“I beg your pardon?”

“My name is Eloise,” the lady told her. “If we are going to be friends, you should know my name.”

Friends. That was a laugh. A girl like Jen and a lady like this? The word was temptation itself, though. Jen had plenty of friendly acquaintances, but her last friend was Chris, an imaginary boy she used to talk to when she’d been a child—until Mammi began to believe in him, and Jen had to put him away with other childish things.

“I’m called Jen,” she found herself saying. She slipped out of the door and down two floors to where Biff waited, overflowing a spindly chair that looked as if it would collapse under his weight at any minute.

“Biff, have you eaten?” she asked. “Would you like me to fetch you some of that pie I got for the lady?”

“That ’us be roight kind of ’ee, Jen,” Biff replied in his usual deep growl.

“I won’t be a minute. It’s no trouble to get another helping, and then I can wait until you and the lady have both finished and take the bowls back to the shop.”

Biff unlocked the door for Jen, and she legged it to the cook shop, casting an experienced eye at the sky to estimate the time. They still had a couple of hours before dark, which meant Biff would probably stay on duty at least that long, and Uncle Edgar was probably still sleeping off his night’s work.

She had to use her own money to pay to fill a bowl for Biff, but she made sure it was a big bowl, and full to the top. Some sort of recompense for what Uncle Edgar was likely to do to the poor man when he discovered that Lady Eloise and Jen had escaped.

Biff was pleased. The poor man was usually hungry. He buried his nose in the bowl and Jen hurried upstairs. Now for the next part of her plan.

When she explained what she had in mind, Lady Eloise agreed immediately. She was less certain about descending all the way to the cellars, but Jen explained about the tunnels, which went right under the street and several buildings.

Jen had found the hidden entrance when Uncle Edgar had locked her in the cellar for several days. She’d explored and discovered where they came out. She figured the knowledge might come in handy someday, and today was the day.

Lady Eloise, wrapped in Jen’s shawl and carrying the chamber pot as a weapon, went first. Jen watched, and Biff didn’t even look up from his bowl as she passed on down the stairs. Jen followed with a second chamber pot. Biff was intent on scraping the last of the pie from the bowl and didn’t see her, either.

Excellent. But sooner or later he would realize she had not come for the bowl, and then he might search the house. Or he might not. Biff had not been hired for his brains. Better, however, to assume they would soon be discovered if they did not move on.

She lit a couple of candles and handed one of them to Lady Eloise.

The entrance to the tunnel was a hole in the smallest room of the cellar, hidden behind a huddle of broken furniture and other detritus. Only someone as small as Jen or Lady Eloise could slip through the hole, and Jen had long since leaned a board up against a wall to hide it. It was the work of a moment to move the board—just far enough to allow entrance, but not so far Jen could not pull it back into place.

When she stood again, Lady Eloise was leaning back against the side of the tunnel with her eyes closed.

“Are you unwell?” Jen asked.

“I am old, Jen,” Lady Eloise replied, “and unused to this kind of excitement. But I shall keep up. You need have no fear about that.”

“Lean on me, Lady Eloise,” Jen commanded, offering her arm. “We go this way.” Some tunnels were dead ends. This one would take them nearly beyond the mean streets to the safer neighborhood where the hackneys could be found.

All went smoothly. The tunnel was narrow in a few places, but that was all to the good. Even if Biff found the hole in the cellar and was able to break the sides to get into the tunnels, he would never fit through the spaces that were but a squeeze for her and Lady Eloise.

“One moment,” she said to the lady, as they passed the little room she had found the second time she had explored this hidden way. A shelf near the door held what she thought of as her “treasures”: A tumble of dull stones that caught the candlelight in interesting ways. A pretty bracelet she had hidden here because Uncle Edgar would have taken it if she kept it where she lived. The locket she had worn as a little girl, was also placed here to keep it from thieves. An old-fashioned lamp she had always intended to find time to polish. Her foster father had called it his “lucky lamp”, and Jen kept it as a memory of him, and because she hoped the luck would rub off on her someday. Maybe today.

She poured the stones into the lamp, added the bracelet and locket, and tucked the lamp into the bodice of her gown. She would not be coming back.

“Lady Eloise, after we exit, I will take you two streets over and find a hack to take you home,” she said.

“You must come with me,” the old lady insisted. “I cannot let you stay to be punished.”

“I can’t,” Jen said, though the lady’s kindness warmed her heart. “I need to fetch my mother before my uncle finds out you are gone. I want to be well on our way out of the city before dark.”

“Where is your mother?” Lady Eloise asked.

“In the next street. I won’t have to come back far. All shall be well, my lady. Eloise, I mean. I have enough put away for Mammi and me to take a stagecoach, and to give us a start somewhere else. I’ve always wanted to go to London.”

“London, is it?” Lady Eloise commented. “I have a better idea. Let us fetch your mother then hire a hack. We shall use my carriage to go to London. I owe you my freedom, Miss Jen, and I would be very happy to repay my debt by helping you and your mother to safety.”

As it turned out, it was just as well Lady Eloise was with her. Mammi became panicked when Jen began throwing their possessions into bags. Lady Eloise took Mammi’s hands. “Mrs. Ward, you and your daughter are invited to join me in London,” she said.

Mammi’s eyes lit up. “London? Am I to go to London again? Will I dance?”

“Would you like to dance?” Lady Eloise asked, and she and Mammi chatted away about all the wonderful entertainments Mammi was certain she had enjoyed just a short time ago, for Mammi was having one of those days in which she believed she was only eighteen.

Perhaps Mammi had been a lady’s maid in those far-off days, for she certainly knew enough about the life of a debutante. Jen had always assumed it was all made up, but as she whizzed around the two rooms in which they lived, Mammi and Lady Eloise exchanged stories from their debutante days. It sounded as if Mammi knew exactly what she was talking about.

Mammi came along happily, arm-in-arm with Lady Eloise, leaving Jen to carry the bags and keep a wary eye on everyone they passed, for fear Uncle Edgar might still prevent their escape.

They reached a street broad enough for carriages and Jen flagged down a hack. Suddenly, there was a shout. A horseman pulled up between Lady Eloise and Jen, and men appeared as if from nowhere, one of them grasping Jen by the arm, and another grabbing hold of Mammi.

“Grandmother,” said the man on the horse, swinging to the ground. He tried to embrace Lady Eloise, but she was busy batting at the hands of the man who held Mammi.

“Please release my friend,” she demanded. “Worth, this is Miss Ward, who rescued me from the kidnappers, and Mrs. Ward, her mother. Ladies, my grandson, the Earl of Frome. Worth, darling, the ladies are in danger from the kidnappers, so I am taking them to London with me.”

The earl was a handsome man, but the frown he turned on Jen was not attractive at all. “I hardly think that is necessary, Grandmother,” he growled.

“Oh, don’t be a bear, Worth,” said Lady Eloise. “Help me into this hack, dear. Come along, Mrs. Ward. Come along, Jen.”

Frome was going to be trouble, but Lady Eloise was more than a match for him. Jen followed Lady Eloise and Mammi into the carriage.