Betrayed Countess (Books We Love Historical Romance) Page 6
Bettina looked down at the brimming pot of yellow liquid. The stink of urine was sharp, and her stomach rolled, this being the most gruesome duty of all. “Merde.”
She hoped she’d be paid well, because she couldn’t stand this constant labor much longer. Bettina had never pitied her servants before. Yet how had they done this, with a smile and a curtsy, for days on end? Wrinkling her nose, she picked up the pot, careful not to let the urine slosh onto her fingertips. She almost laughed at her naïve reliance that her degradation after the revolution would end when she arrived in Bath. She must make other plans, if she had the energy to filter any schemes through her exhausted brain.
* * * *
“Does you believe all the terrible events still happenin’ across the Channel? Has you seen the papers?” a customer with a pock-marked face asked Maddie as she filled his tankard.
Bettina kneeled in the taproom fireplace to brush out soot. Grime clung to her hands and face. Her eyes stung. The coarse apron Maddie gave her had turned stiff and black. Almost a fortnight had passed since her arrival in Sidwell. She counted each day, thinking of the wages she must be accumulating. Now she dipped the brush in the bucket, listening.
“Don’t get no newspaper round here. Waste of money.” Maddie handed the man his ale. “Speaking of money, you owe me from last time, your credit’s a mite thin.”
“But I heard the rich is being pulled from their homes and beaten. People beheaded right in the streets of Paris, their hearts ripped out. One of the quality was set afire then stuffed down his own well,” the customer went on. “The poor has gone mad in France, to be sure. But it’s said not just commoners involved in these mobs neither. Some higher ups causin’ the discontent, too.”
“Mon Dieu.” Bettina cringed at the man’s words. It had to be exaggeration. She slopped out the brush and scrubbed harder; the vinegar burned her cut fingers, the clean smell masking the stink around her.
“You can’t trust them French,” Dory, Maddie’s other serving wench, snickered. Plump in her untidy clothes, she fluffed her frizzy yellow hair and glared at Bettina. “They be too full of prissy airs, an’ Popish ways.”
“These happenings any worse than a man, or woman, clamped in the pillory, whipped, then stoned by the crowd till his blood’s drenched the dirt?” Maddie scooped up the coins laid on the tables. “Happens in England more than anyone do own.”
“But it’s the poor here that’s tortured … mostly. Might do England some good for us peasants to revolt, get us our deserved rights. An’ how about some cheaper stout?” At this statement from another regular, the entire taproom burst into laughter.
“The way you pay for yours, Benny, you must already think it’s free,” Maddie said, prompting more snickers before she bustled into the kitchen.
Bettina shifted the bucket and sloshed black water onto the floor.
“Best clean that up.” Dory stuck out her chest, jiggling above her dirty bodice. She pointed her toe and made no attempt to help. “Or Maddie will have your head.”
“My head is fine where it is.” Bettina swiped back a sooty tendril of hair.
“Be nice, Dory.” Kerra threw a rag down over the puddle. “We do has the best wood floor in Cornwall. Most inns only has dirt.” She spoke as if she described a palace and looked just as proud.
“The Welshman paid for the floor, that’s what Old Milt told me.” Dory slouched against a table examining a hangnail.
“Is you just that addlepated? That drog Old Milt best keep his jaw to hisself.” Kerra glowered and smacked Dory’s shoulder. They both moved away into the stench of men. “Maddie don’t want no talk ’bout that, never.”
“How about this Frenchie girl right here?” Stephen Tremayne swaggered over as Bettina wiped up the spill. The young regular’s coppery hair curled above a high forehead. His handsome face, with well-defined jaw and cheekbones, held taunting eyes he seemed to always direct at her. “Maybe it be her relatives that roam the streets, ripping out people’s hearts.”
Bettina noticed Maddie hadn’t returned to the taproom. She stiffened when Stephen moved to stand behind her. She backed out onto the hearth to slip away, but he reached down and grasped her by the hips, jerking her toward him. When she cried out, several laughed.
“Do not ever do that again, monsieur.” Bettina whirled around, pushed past him and stalked from the room.
In her closet, she trembled at the man’s actions and the horrific images from France. She didn’t want to believe them. She prayed for her mother’s preservation, not to mention her uncles, aunts and cousins. Had they fared better or worse than she? How much longer would she be safe here?
* * * *
Maddie scribbled down figures, clicked the coins from the till and plopped two silver crowns into Bettina’s hand. She curled her fingers around them, smooth and cool, her first month’s pay. “I cannot wait to buy new clothes,” she said to Kerra.
“You won’t be buyin’ much with that.” Kerra pocketed her coins and winked as they walked toward the back of the inn. “Best save up two month’s pay. Even that might not be enough.”
“This is enough, is it not?” Bettina fingered the coins again. She’d planned to save a few months’ pay, buy a new gown and coach fare to London. In a large city, she’d find a better position—and be closer to France. Now her cheeks burned and she felt a fool.
Back in her room, she jerked off the mobcap and thought of the numerous exquisite frocks she once owned and changed into for different occasions. She glared down at her dress. Scrubbing it with Maddie’s spirits of turpentine and lemon essence mixture had mottled the silk worse. The polonaise no longer resembled the gown her mother gave her. The skirt, when held up in front and sides by drawstrings, once displayed a crimped pink petticoat; it was now gray and tattered, both items as ugly as any garb seen around the inn. She ran her fingers over the material and thought of her mother. This dress had been their last link.
“You wash that thing too much.” Kerra hovered in the doorway. “Next month, I’ll take you to the draper’s shop in Port Isaac. You might need something better for the Michaelmas dance. Someone’s bound to ask you.”
Bettina inspected her scuffed slippers, from which her big toe would soon poke out. “Ma foi, I do not plan to go to any dance. For Michael or anyone else.”
When Kerra left, Bettina sat for a moment, thinking. She returned to the taproom where Maddie was polishing candle sconces. The tallow candles smelled of sizzling fat, beeswax being too expensive.
“Madame … Maddie, where may I earn extra money? I could work on Sundays.” Bettina was willing to give up her one day of rest.
The woman glanced over her shoulder and gave her an indulgent smile. “I’m afraid our vicar would object to that. I only open the taproom after services, just to please him. You never looked strong enough for what you do now.”
“I can read and write, in English. There must be some way of earning more wages.”
Maddie stopped and scrutinized her. “Child, don’t kill yourself. Most people round here has small use for reading. I read a bit, to get by. Some smart people get hired to write letters, but wouldn’t want you around most of them who be doing the hiring. What fancy school was you educated at?”
Since Maddie never questioned her origins, she assumed Kerra had told her of the new girl’s reluctance to divulge her background. “I … I thought it would help my English, too, to practice this.” The Cornish dialect confused Bettina at times; her English lessons hadn’t prepared her for such a guttural sound.
“Your English ain’t so bad.” Maddie patted her shoulder with the hand not slick with oil, her smile tired. “Just keep talking, it’ll come about. You’ll make more, no doubt, when you begin servin’ in the taproom. Enjoy your day o’ freedom.”
Bettina turned from Maddie, hiding her frown. She walked through the kitchen and out the back door. It was a clear Sunday afternoon. She missed attending church, but refused to endure a service not of her fa
ith, although she had to admit that her faith had diminished after her father’s death and the anarchy that followed. She stopped by the stables to check on the horse, then started up an overgrown path in the hillside. The early autumn wind stirred the tall grass around her ankles. Beyond the jagged cliffs, the ocean rippled like a cerulean satin scarf, but her thoughts remained agitated.
Desperate to get word to her mother, Bettina didn’t know if Maman had traveled to Boulogne or stayed in Poissy. What if she sent a letter to Poissy, would that be safe for either of them? The revolutionaries might have stopped all mail meant for the aristocrats. She didn’t believe in Armand’s promise to tell her mother she went to England, after his trickery with the package. She resented his mandate to be secretive, yet the hostility and cruel gossip she’d experienced seemed to prove him right. With her sheltered upbringing, could she distinguish the good intentioned people from the bad? Hadn’t she trusted her old guardian?
She remembered that sense of underlying tension between Madame Hilaire and Armand back in Boulogne. It was something that had pertained to her in the sly looks, the whispers, but her frantic mind had flung it aside. Armand had served her family without a blemish starting years before her birth. What could have compelled him to deceive her the way he did?
Bettina kicked a stone before her down the path. Her thin shawl gave her little protection in the cooling wind, and she hurried along to warm herself. A startled rabbit hopped out of the gorse in front of her and scurried across the slope. Bettina noticed a man on a striking black horse, two-thirds of the way up the hill. He appeared to be watching her, and that gave her a dizzy, strange sensation—as if she could be any more out of her element. He turned his horse and galloped up the hillside toward the mansion perched at the top, vanishing into a clump of trees.
* * * *
“When you take orders, know what they’re asking for,” Maddie said on Bettina’s first night serving in the taproom. “We have ale, beer, two-penny, and the Porter’s a combination of all three. Stout is extra-strong Porter. Canary, Port, Sherry and Rhenish be the popular wines. Of the spirits, brandy’s a favorite. Not the English type, but the one smuggled from France—a taste of danger for these Cornish rapscallions.” Maddie winked at her.
Bettina took a tray stacked with drinks and jiggled it awkwardly around the tables populated with miners, farmers and fishermen. Their body odor wafted around her. Bettina coughed in the smoke coming from clay pipes, her actions quick and unsteady as she hurried through her serving.
“Where you been hiding this one, Maddie? Here, sweetheart, sit on me lap,” one fat, fishy-smelling oaf urged; he patted his greasy breeches. She lurched to sidestep him and almost dropped her tray.
“She wants to sit with me … don’t you, dear?” another said, his haggard face creased with dirt, his fingers groping. He spat on the floor as his other hand scratched his crotch. A louse wriggled through his oily hair. “You be a comely little wench.”
“Leave her alone,” Maddie broke in, swiping at their hands. “If one of you so much as touches her, you be out on your arse. Friendly conversation and drinks served here, nothing else! You want a whore, go down to Port Isaac.”
Bettina sighed in relief at her intervention, impressed when the customers obeyed. The majority of people respected Maddie’s formidable presence. Her regulars enjoyed her spirit.
“Bunch of rutting pigs,” Dory snickered and tapped one miner on his head. “Wouldn’t know what to do with a woman, if lucky to get one alone.” She elbowed Bettina. “But if you was a mite more friendly, would get better vails.”
“There must be a limit to friendliness.” Disturbed as to what ‘rutting’ meant, Bettina, her tray now empty, backed out of the fray and crunched on someone’s toes. “Pardon!” She spun about to see who stood behind her, then jumped.
An elderly man stared at her from a bulbous face, the flesh scarred and mottled on one side. His gray hair stuck out in wisps from uneven patches on his scalp. He held up his right hand, revealing three finger stumps.
“Scared ’ee now, didn’t I?” he declared with a sly smirk. Several of his teeth were missing. Many in the taproom turned to gawk.
“I apologize, monsieur.” Bettina still found it difficult to meet his rheumy eyes.
“I ain’t so pretty, it be true. But don’t keep me waitin’, fetch me an ale, girl!” His cackle came out as a hideous grinding sound. Bettina rushed toward the casks, as much to get away from him as to fill his order.
“That’s Old Milt,” Kerra told her out of earshot. “He got drunk one night and set his house afire. But he be plenty ugsome afore the fire got him. He loves to harass, so don’t pay him no mind.”
Dory winked at Bettina, brushed past her with a glass of Canary wine, and sank into the louse-riddled miner’s lap. “The Frenchie don’t want you. But I’m available.”
“My life has become insane.” Bettina thought a smile good enough, and had to force that. She realized that she’d have to suffer some harassment for the vails the customers left for good service. This extra money could be saved toward the purchase of another dress.
“How’d you get way out here?” a traveler asked after snatching his two-penny. “I heard them French refugees is comin’ into London in droves.”
“They are, is this true?” Bettina held her breath and gave him a genuine smile. But he shrugged off more questions and ambled off.
“Say, Dory, bring me a pot,” a man playing cards at a front table called out.
Dory left her miner, pulled a chamber pot from the back corner and handed it to him. She hung over him, her breasts bulging over her bodice. “Do it quick, Will, you know Maddie don’t like it.”
Bettina thought she’d faint—if the fainting type—when Will began to unbutton his breeches. She closed her eyes but still heard the stream of spray hitting the bottom of the pot.
“C’est odieux,” Bettina muttered under her breath. She rushed toward the kitchen. Old Milt caught her arm, his puckered face in a grin.
“We English just ain’t up to your lofty standards, I s’pose?” He cackled his grating laugh as her cheeks flamed. “Maybe ’ee be better than you seem. Any of your family with heads on bloody pikes yet?”
“That is none of your business.” Bettina pushed his hand away and entered the kitchen. Refugees in London? Perhaps her mother might be one of them. That reaffirmed her need to travel there. She wiped sticky fingers on her apron and heaved a sigh.
In her naive youth, she’d assumed that everyone lived a decent existence, with enough to eat and clothes to wear. The servant who ironed her gowns, the laundress who scrubbed her clothes … had she once worried about what kind of life these women went home to? Or if they lived in her home, did she ever speculate on the condition of their quarters? She splayed out her red, rough hands, the nails broken and creased with dirt. Now that she toiled as the laundress and the servant, the reasons behind the revolution began to make sense.
Ann stirred a pot of stew over the kitchen fire. When she looked away, Bettina swiped a slice of cheese from a tray and stuffed it in her mouth. Part of her didn’t want the revolution to make sense. It crumbled away everything she’d been raised to believe in.
Bettina savored and swallowed the cheese, resigned to smile, to cajole, no matter how distasteful, if it was the only way to earn the money for a coach ticket out of here.
Chapter Six
The town of Port Isaac, three miles south of Sidwell, charmed Bettina with its quaint pastel cottages gathered in clefts along the jagged shoreline and in the folded slopes. Kerra clung on behind her, and Bettina directed Shevall down the steep lane, that first veered inland, and then switched back to the harbor. The horse clopped and slid on the slick cobbles, dampened by sea spray.
“See them cottages there. Beneath they has the fish cellars.” Kerra pointed to a clump of slate hovels near the harbor. “There women prepare the catch from the fishing boats, for saltin’ or selling.” Several boats were moored i
n the narrow bay, bobbing on slate-blue water.
At the draper’s tiny shop, Bettina settled for the cheapest plum-colored wool. Her money, even after another month’s wages, wouldn’t stretch any further. She gazed wistfully at the array of lace and ribbons, items now too extravagant for her to purchase. With hesitant fingers, she stroked a piece of satin, so smooth, and recalled shopping at the modistes on the rue Saint-Honoré in Paris. She’d asked for whatever she wished—robe à la Turque; robe à la française—never caring about the cost. She clenched her fingers. If she wasn’t desperate for clothing, she wouldn’t waste the money she intended to finance her way to London.
Riding back up the coast road, they passed a young man on foot wearing a canvas hat and smock. He removed his hat to reveal bright, copper hair over a sallow face. Head lowered, he mumbled a greeting and proceeded on his way.
“Did you see how he smiled at you?” Kerra asked with an amused snort, poking her from behind. “I think he’s taken a fancy to you.”
“I saw no smile. If true, he smiled for us both,” Bettina said, embarrassed by her remark. The last thing she needed was anyone taking a fancy to her. “Who is he?”
“Newlyn Tremayne. His father’s a tenant farmer on Squire Trethewy’s estate, a far pace out of town. He’s Stephen’s brother. ’Course, he ain’t nothing like him.”
“You Cornish have so many names that begin with ‘Tre’. Why is that?” Bettina changed the subject, loath to discuss Stephen.
“Means ‘farm’, or something like that. We must’ve been all farmers once round here. But I’ve seen Newlyn giving you the eye in the taproom afore. Oh, fie, here comes the other squire.” Kerra fidgeted and grew silent.
The man riding in the opposite direction on a brilliant black horse drew Bettina’s attention. He sat very tall, wearing a dark flowing cape and a round hat, his face obscured in shadow. His horse held its noble head erect as it moved down the road with a fluid grace. Both rider and mount looked majestic and out of place in this rural setting.