A Lady of Consequence. Mary Nichols

down the fire, sir.’

      ‘Goodnight, Maddy.’

      ‘Goodnight, sir.’

      He disappeared, carrying his glass of milk, and she turned back to the fire. Fancy the master’s son noticing her and calling her pretty! Was she pretty? Her mama had always said she was and made her beautiful dresses and brushed her dark hair until it shone like velvet, but that had been a long time ago and now her clothes were a skivvy’s uniform and she was too tired to do more than rake a comb through her hair to get the knots out. If only…

      If only Mama had been alive, she would be living with her in the small apartment over the dressmaking establishment that she had set up and which provided a decent living for them both; she would be learning how to create gowns and pelisses and pretty underwear and hats. Mama said they would make a name for themselves as the foremost modistes in London and that the upper crust would all flock to be dressed by Madame Charron and her charming daughter. Their name wasn’t Charron, of course, it was Cartwright, but Mama said the French name sounded grander.

      She pulled herself out of what was becoming another of her fantasies and dragged her exhausted feet up the back stairs to her tiny room in the attic, one of a row that housed all the female servants in varying degrees of comfort according to their status.

      She was climbing into bed five minutes later, when she heard footsteps on the stair. She paid little attention at first, assuming it was one of the maids coming back from fetching a glass of water, but when they stopped outside her door, she sat upright, her heart in her mouth.

      The door opened and the master’s son, wearing nothing but a night-shirt, stood facing her. He was smiling. ‘Don’t be alarmed, my dear,’ he said, shutting the door behind him and quickly crossing the room to the bed where she was so startled she could do nothing but sit and stare at him. ‘I still can’t sleep.’

      ‘You want me to go down and fetch you some more milk?’ she asked, her only thought that she would never get to sleep at this rate.

      ‘No, my dear Madeleine,’ he said, sitting on the bed beside her and taking her hand; it was red raw from the all the washing up she did, but he did not seem to notice. ‘I think I could go to sleep if I could cuddle up to you.’

      ‘Sir!’ She was astonished and confused and, in some way, strangely excited. Her heart was beating in her throat and that one strangled cry was all she could utter.

      He smiled. ‘You are so warm and so beautiful. You have the body of a goddess, don’t you know, and I cannot sleep for thinking of it. I want to touch you, touch your warm, pink flesh, feel you, kiss you.’ He leaned forward and, taking her head in his hands, bent his mouth to hers. His lips were soft and moist and his breath smelt of the wine and brandy he had consumed. His hands began to roam over her body, pulling up her nightgown and forcing her legs apart.

      She realised suddenly that what he was trying to do was wrong. Hadn’t the women at the orphanage told her all about men’s carnal desires, hadn’t she been warned time and time again, against allowing her maidenhood to be taken before she had a wedding ring on her finger? It was, she had been told, the worst of sins, and they cited examples of children whose mothers had never been married. Bastards they were called. It was what happened if you lay with a man before the wedding night.

      Some of them had called her a bastard, saying her mother had never been to church with her father, whoever he was, but she had furiously told them of her hero father, who had died fighting for his country, simply to shut them up. Now, in a sudden flash of insight, the servants’ talk began to make sense. This was no fantasy, no wished-for miracle, but a nightmare.

      ‘No!’ she cried, trying to wriggle out of his grasp. ‘You mustn’t.’

      ‘Mustn’t?’ he queried, throwing himself on top of her so that she was effectively imprisoned under the weight of his body. ‘But, my dear Madeleine, it is not up to you to say what I mustn’t do. I do as I please. You are a servant and must do as you are told. You would not want to be turned off without a character, would you?’

      ‘You wouldn’t do that?’ she asked fearfully.

      ‘I could, but I won’t, if you are a good girl.’ He buried his head in the valley between her breasts.

      ‘I am a good girl,’ she said, struggling to free herself. ‘Please let me go.’

      He looked up. ‘When I’m done with you.’ He was not smiling now, but grimly determined and in a way that stiffened her will to resist. Had he continued to ply her with compliments, to whisper endearing words and been gentle, who knows if she might have succumbed? Such was her longing to be loved by someone, to be seen as a human being with feelings, to be treated with tenderness, she might have given up struggling. But, unused to being denied anything, he was angry. And that made her angry too.

      She used the last of her strength to push her knee sharply into his groin and heard him yelp with pain as he leapt off her. She rushed for the door and, pulling it open, fled along the corridor and down the stairs in her nightgown, making for the safety of the kitchen. But she never reached it. She ran slap into Lord Bulford, who had left his bed and was coming along the landing, tying the cord of his undress gown, to see what all the commotion was about.

      ‘Where’s the fire?’ he roared.

      ‘Fire? I don’t know anything about a fire,’ she said.

      ‘Then what’s to do?’

      ‘Your son is in my room,’ she said, without stopping to think of the consequences such an accusation might have. ‘He tried…he shouldn’t have…’

      ‘My son? Don’t be ridiculous, you impertinent baggage. What would my son want in your room?’

      ‘George, what’s going on?’ Lady Bulford, having hastily donned a peignoir, joined her husband.

      ‘This ill-bred chit has accused Henry of going to her room.’

      Her ladyship looked Maddy up and down, her lip curled in distaste. ‘She is clearly demented. Been having a dream, I shouldn’t wonder. Or mistook one of the footmen. If she has been entertaining them in her room, there is only one thing for it…’

      ‘I have not been entertaining anyone in my room,’ she retorted, forgetting that it was simply not done to answer back. ‘Your son came uninvited. Do you think I don’t know the Honourable Henry when I see him? He came down to the kitchen for milk and I gave him some, then he waited for me to go to bed and came to my room…’

      ‘Good Lord! The effrontery of it,’ Lady Bulford said to her husband. ‘As if Henry would look twice at a misbegotten nobody like her.’ She turned back to Maddy. ‘What were you hoping to gain by this Banbury tale, money?’

      ‘No, my lady, all I want is to be allowed to go back to bed and not have people coming to my room uninvited.’ She spoke very clearly, enunciating her words as her mother had taught her. ‘Will you please tell your son his attentions are not welcome.’

      ‘By God! I’ve heard it all now,’ his lordship said, his face growing purple with indignation. ‘Go back to bed, is it? And who with, may I ask?’

      ‘No one. I am tired, I have been working all day…’

      ‘Oh, well, if it’s overwork you are complaining of, that is easily remedied,’ Lady Bulford said. ‘You may pack your bags and leave this instant. Your services are no longer required.’

      ‘But I’ve done nothing wrong.’

      ‘Making false accusations against my son is wrong and impudence to your betters is wrong and complaining about your work is wrong, when everyone knows I am the most benign of employers.’

      ‘And so is rushing about the house in your nightwear in the middle of the night,’ his lordship put in, eyeing her appreciatively from top to toe.

      ‘I only did it to escape.’

      ‘Then you may escape. Permanently.