The Dark Days Club (A Lady Helen Novel) Read online

  Satisfied with her plan, she replaced her father’s portrait and sent up her customary prayer for the two missing members of her family—Keep their souls safe—although, in truth, she still felt the unfairness of her parents’ demise. Why had the raging sea taken them, yet spared their small crew? There was, of course, no answer to that question, just as there was no answer to why Lady Catherine had gone against crown and country. If she had not done so, maybe she and Helen’s father would still be alive today. Maybe she would be sitting here, in this room, reassuring her daughter that she’d be at her side throughout the ordeal at the Palace tomorrow. As she should be.

  Helen lifted her shoulders and let them drop, trying to shake off the reemergence of her old, childish anger. No use railing against the dead. Neither resentment nor yearning brought them back.

  She picked up the portrait of Lady Catherine again. It really was very small—no larger than a gentleman’s fob watch and half as thick. Easy to hide. If she truly wanted some essence of her mother at her presentation, she could carry it and no one would be the wiser. Granted, it was a sentimental idea. Maybe even a little superstitious. Yet wasn’t it natural for an orphaned daughter to want some remembrance of her mother at one of the most important moments in her life?

  The strict rules of presentation dress did not allow anything but a fan to be carried, so hiding the portrait within a reticule was out of the question. Nor could she slide it inside her skintight gloves. Could it be slipped into her décolletage? She looked down at her narrow chest. Unlike the day dress she was wearing, her presentation gown required long stays that had to be laced tight across the bosom, and the neckline was cut very low. There would not be enough room. Besides, there was something just a little unseemly about hiding her mother in such a place.

  Perhaps she could conceal the miniature in her hand as she made her curtsy to Queen Charlotte. Helen curled her fingers around it. No, it would not work. She would already have her fan in one hand, and the other had to be free to manage the long train and dreaded hoop. The miniature would be too easily dropped. Unless she attached it to her fan. It was a Vernis Martin—a rare gift from her uncle—with room enough between the painted ivory sticks to thread some cotton. She could hang the miniature from it and keep it nestled in her palm.

  Did she dare?

  Helen sighed. No, she did not. Her aunt had put too much effort into the smooth success of her presentation, and such a breach of propriety, if discovered, would be poor thanks for all that dear lady’s hard work. And if Uncle found out, he would be furious. She did not want to see that triumphant look that said, You see? She is cut from the same black cloth as her mother.

  Yet she could not quite give up the idea of her mother’s presence blessing the day.

  Her hand closed around the portrait again. She would take it to her dressing room and hide it amongst the things on her table. Lady Catherine could, at least, be present for the toilette tomorrow.

  She shut the desk hatch, turned the lock, and pulled the key free. A quick glance over her shoulder at the adjoining door confirmed that Darby was still in the dressing room. Helen ran her fingers along the lower edge of the desk and found the tiny groove in the banded wood. One firm press followed by a flick to the right, and the small spring-loaded compartment swung out. She had found it on one of her many explorations of the secretaire. Helen slid the key into the shallow slot and pushed the holder home, her mother’s portrait clasped in her other hand.

  A soft knock sounded from behind the adjoining door: Darby’s announcement that it was time to dress for dinner. Helen stepped back from her desk.

  “Come.”

  “Good evening, my lady,” Darby said, emerging from the dressing room with an apricot gown draped across her outstretched arms. “Are you ready for your hot water?”

  The girl was surrounded by a pale blue shimmer—like tiny ripples in the air—that followed the generous contours of her body. A soft, glowing outline. Helen squeezed her eyes shut. She had obviously worked far too long at the letter to Delia. Lud, she hoped she did not need spectacles. She opened her eyes and shook her head, but the shimmer was still in place. Perhaps it was the migraine. Her aunt suffered greatly from them, and often spoke of seeing strange lights before the terrible headache arrived.

  She finally focused on her maid’s face. Darby’s eyes were swollen into red-rimmed distress, and the soft contours of her mouth had disappeared into a tight line. She had been crying, and Jen Darby was not one for easy tears. Something must have happened downstairs.

  Helen knew that ever since she had promoted Darby from junior maid to the exalted role of lady’s maid six months ago, some of the more senior housemaids had been waging a campaign of petty meanness against the girl. To make matters worse, neither Murphett nor Mrs. Grant, the housekeeper in charge of the female staff, had done anything to stop it. Neither approved of Jen Darby’s advancement to the exclusive ranks of the upper servants. In their opinion she was far too big—“like a lumbering ox,” Mrs. Grant had commented once, when she thought Helen could not hear—and did not have the proper daintiness or Town polish required for a lady’s maid. Helen had to admit that Darby was not the most delicate of creatures, but she had far more important qualities than mere refinement: a quickness, for instance, that matched Helen’s own, and a bright curiosity. It had only been Helen’s obstinate refusal to accept any other candidate that had swayed Mrs. Grant to allow the promotion. Such a leap in status without due cause, the formidable housekeeper had been heard to mutter, went against the natural order.

  Ignoring the faint blue shimmer, Helen rose from her chair. “Are you quite well, Darby?” she asked as the maid laid the gown on the four-poster bed.

  “I’m very well, my lady. Very well, thank you,” Darby said, but the last of her words rose into the squeaky gasp of a held-back sob.

  “I’m glad you are so well,” Helen said. “If you were any more well, you might break down altogether.” It prompted a tiny smile, as she knew it would. “Please, tell me what is wrong,” she urged.

  Darby bowed her head for a moment, gathering herself, then looked up with the frankness that had been another reason why Helen had raised her so high. “My anxiety is not for me, my lady. It is for Berta. One of the housemaids.”

  Helen recalled the girl: a new Bavarian émigré, long-limbed and darkly handsome, with a habit of holding her hand over her mouth when she spoke. She usually lit the morning fires in Helen’s rooms, but had not done so for the last two days. “What is wrong? Is she ill?”

  “No, my lady,” Darby said. “She has disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?” The word sounded ominous. “When? Why wasn’t I told?”

  “It happened two days ago. Lady Pennworth told us not to say anything to you. Not before your presentation, anyway.” Darby’s earnest gray eyes met Helen’s in a moment of sudden apprehension. “You won’t tell her I said anything, will you, my lady?”

  “Of course not. But do you think Berta has run away?”

  “It is what they are saying—Mrs. Grant and the others downstairs—but her lockbox is still in the room she shares with the kitchen maids.”

  Helen nodded. Even the lowest servant had a lockable box for his or her belongings; the circumstance would have to be dire for it to be left behind. She turned Lady Catherine’s portrait over and over in her hands, trying to find a reasonable—and unalarming—explanation for the abandoned box. None came to mind. She looked up to find Darby’s attention fixed on the gold miniature.

  “It is a likeness of my mother,” Helen said.

  “Yes, my lady. I can see the resemblance.”

  “Not much of one, I think,” Helen said quickly. She closed her hand around it. “It seems unlikely that Berta would leave her belongings.”

  Darby took a steadying breath. “I don’t believe Berta has run away at all, my lady, but Mrs. Grant has told me that I am
to say no more about it. The search is over, and that is that.” She squared her shoulders as if bracing against the sin of opposing the housekeeper. The shimmer followed the movement.

  Helen blinked hard, but the phenomenon still did not shift.

  “I would swear on the Good Book that she would not run away,” Darby added. “Her mother relies upon her wages.”

  “You think she has come to some kind of harm?”

  “I don’t know. She went out of the house on Monday morning—an errand for Mrs. Grant—and no one saw her after that. The others are saying she’s taken her looks to Covent Garden for better money. But she is a good, God-fearing girl, my lady. I am sure she would not do so.”

  Helen knew she should feign ignorance of the notorious grid of streets where hundreds of courtesans plied their trade. Yet such delicacy would be of no use to Berta. “Did the search for her take in the Garden? Does she have a father to make inquiries?”

  “She has only her mother, up north, I believe. My lord did send out Hugo and Philip to look for her when she was missed.” Darby gave a small shrug, an eloquent opinion on the footmen’s diligence. “Philip said that he spoke to a lad—a page—who saw something at the same time that Berta disappeared. . . .” She faltered.

  “What did he see?”

  Darby wrapped her arms around her body. The shimmer curved around the new hunched contour. “I am not saying there is any connection, my lady.”

  Helen caught the wary note in her voice. “You can tell me,” she said. “Whatever it is.”

  “The boy told Philip he saw a coach. A gentleman’s coach.”

  “You think she has been taken by a gentleman?” Helen stared at her maid. Surely that was not possible. Then again, if the tales Andrew told about some of his friends were true, it was more than possible. Helen closed her eyes: if Berta had indeed been taken, she was lost to all decent society.

  “I don’t know what to do, my lady. Do you think the Runners would help?”

  Helen did not. Her uncle said the Bow Street Runners were not much better than the criminals they chased, and the alternatives—the thief-takers for hire—were even worse. In a case with no clear crime, involving only a housemaid, Helen doubted the Runners would bother to investigate. By any measure of decency, it was her uncle’s responsibility to find his servant. And there was no surety that she was actually missing. She might have decided the Garden was more lucrative after all.

  “Is there any possibility that Berta did run away?” Helen asked. “Perhaps she was not happy. Or maybe she did want more money. For her mother.”

  Darby stepped back, her face freezing into the impassive mask of service. “I am sorry, my lady. I should not have bothered you,” she said stiffly. “Please forgive me.” She turned to the dress on the bed, smoothing out the silk.

  Helen closed her fingers even more tightly around the miniature, wretchedly aware that she had not lived up to some expectation. Was it her own or Darby’s? The failure sat like a cold stone in her chest. But what could she do? She could not even visit a friend who was in need. Helen opened her hand and looked down at her mother. Lady Catherine’s clear blue gaze seemed to hold a rebuke.

  “I do not disbelieve you,” Helen said.

  “Everyone else does, my lady.” Darby’s voice was small. “They think she is just another fallen girl. But someone has to keep looking for her, don’t they?”

  “Yes, of course,” Helen said. Yet what could Darby do? If Berta had run away to Covent Garden, she was beyond help. And if a gentleman was involved, a mere lady’s maid could not confront him. No one would listen to a servant above a gentleman or, worse, a nobleman.

  “I will ask my brother,” Helen finally said. “If it is, indeed, a gentleman, maybe the Earl has heard something amongst his acquaintances.”

  Darby pressed her hands to her tear-streaked cheeks. “Thank you, my lady,” she said, dipping into a curtsy. “I was certain you would know what to do. Thank you.”

  “He may know nothing,” Helen warned.

  “Yes, my lady. But something is being done for Berta, and that makes me so much easier. I feared she would just be forgotten.”

  “That will not happen,” Helen said. “I promise we will find her, however long it takes.”

  She smiled reassuringly and headed into the dressing room, the rashness of her words weighing heavier and heavier with every step. Why had she made such a pledge? It was going to be almost impossible to locate one girl amongst all the other forgotten girls in the ravenous maw of the city.

  Helen knew about the dangers outside her door. Every month she read the “Incidents Occurring in and near London” in La Belle Assemblée: a blood-curdling list of all the local murders and cruelties set out on the pages straight after the fashion forecast. At Christmas the papers had been full of the shocking Ratcliffe Highway murders, the brutal slaughter of two innocent families described for weeks in gore-soaked detail. And now, in The Times, there were daily reports of savage attacks by those calling themselves Luddites: desperate working men destroying the new machinery destined to replace them, and setting upon their employers with clubs and guns. All of the gruesome accounts confirmed that a frightening and ever-present savagery lived in the dark shadows beyond Half Moon Street.

  Three paces took Helen past the green chaise longue to the mahogany dressing table. She rubbed her eyes, glad to be free of the unsettling shimmer. Whatever the problem with her sight, it seemed only to occur around Darby. Perhaps the phenomenon was confined to living things. Although, of course, Hugo had not shimmered. Nor, come to think of it, did her own body. If she was of her aunt’s turn of mind, she would believe the source to be supernatural, but she was more inclined to invoke Mr. Mesmer’s magnetism or Mr. Galvani’s animal electricity. Helen shrugged away such whimsical theories—it was most likely fatigue.

  A survey of the neatly arranged pots and brushes and bowls on the dressing table found only one suitable hiding place for the miniature: the space between the edge of the mirror and the white potpourri bowl set before it. She propped the portrait in place and stepped back, a crescent of gold frame and her mother’s challenging eyes just visible.

  By all rights, she should tell Darby that Berta’s disappearance was Viscount Pennworth’s concern. That it was not appropriate for young ladies or servants to become involved in such grave matters.

  “Darby?” she called. “There is something I must say.”

  Her maid reappeared in the doorway, no longer surrounded by blue. It must have been fatigue after all. “Yes, my lady?”

  “I think—” Helen stopped, fancying that she felt a painted gaze upon her back: a tiny press of disappointment. “I think I will wear the cream gloves, not the apricot,” she said.

  Appropriate or not, she had made a promise to find Berta, and she would keep her word. And, in the end, Darby was right: no one else was going to look for a maid who might have strayed from the path of virtue. Especially not Uncle Pennworth.

  Three

  WITH HER EVENING toilette finally complete, Helen opened her bedchamber door and checked the third-floor corridor. Empty. She’d have to hurry if she was to catch Andrew alone before they sat down to dinner. There would be no opportunity to speak privately otherwise: Berta’s disappearance and the possibility of setting up their own house could hardly be discussed at the table, and Andrew would be obliged to linger over port with Uncle long after she and Aunt withdrew. This was her one chance, at least for a week or so. She lifted the hem of her satin underdress and ran toward the staircase, only the portraits of her uncle’s ancestors witnessing the breach of propriety.

  At the top of the stairs, she peered down into the depths of the central foyer. Luck was still with her; no one was about. Out of habit, she counted the steps on her rapid downward journey, coming to a breathless stop on number forty-two, the first-floor landing. A strong smell of roast beef had ri
sen on the warm air from the basement kitchen, mixing with the waxy smoke of the evening candles. Dinner must be very near service.

  Opposite, the drawing room doors were closed. Was Andrew already caught inside with Aunt and Uncle, or had he taken refuge in the billiard room, as usual? Helen leaned over the banister and listened. From below came the muted clash of kitchen pots, the throbbing night song of her aunt’s canary, and, just faintly, the click-clack of billiard balls. Aha. Helen smiled and, hitching the hem of her dress even higher above her ankles, ran down the last twenty steps.

  At the bottom, she rounded the banister straight into the path of Philip, the second footman, struggling to straighten his powdered wig. His hands snapped to his sides.

  “My lady!” He dipped his head, the wig a little askew atop his copper hair, and stepped smartly back against the wall.

  “Philip!” She looked up through the balustrade at the closed drawing room doors on the floor above. “Are my aunt and uncle down yet?”

  “Yes, my lady. They have sent me to request Lord Hayden’s company.”

  Lud, it was later than she thought: Aunt and Uncle would be looking for her next. Helen edged sideways, behind the rise of the staircase. “Lord Hayden is in the billiard room, is he not?” she whispered, waving vigorously for Philip to join her concealment.

  It was no easy task for either of them, since Helen was close on five-foot-nine and Philip was over six-two, having recently been hired to match Hugo in both stature and—as her aunt often remarked—shapely calves. An important requirement, Helen had observed blandly to Millicent, as the footmen’s red and gold livery was quite tightly fitted.