Naughty In Nice (A Royal Spyness Mystery)

try . . . me lady . . . but it just sort of slips out. I mean, you look like a miss, don’t you? You don’t have a crown on your head or a snooty expression or nothing. Not like her downstairs, who looks at me like I was something the cat brought in.”
    “Queenie, that’s enough. Go and make sure my bath isn’t overflowing, then come back and lay out something suitable for dinner—a dinner dress, Queenie. Not a tweed skirt. Not my ski sweater. The green velvet will do.”
    “Uh—sorry, miss, but I didn’t quite manage to get the little stain out of the skirt. Remember you dropped a bit of gravy on it and you asked me to get it out?”
    “That’s all right. I don’t suppose it matters if there’s a speck or two left.”
    Queenie wrinkled her little button of a nose. “It’s a little bit more than a speck, I think you’ll find.”
    With great foreboding I opened the wardrobe. On one side of the green velvet skirt there was a circle about six inches in diameter where the velvet had been rubbed completely clean of its nap. It looked like a Labrador we’d had once who developed a skin complaint and had to be shaved in places.
    “Queenie!” I let out a sigh of exasperation. “What have you done this time?”
    “I just gave it a bit of a scrub, with your nailbrush, you know. That gravy was stuck on like cement.”
    “The gravy was a speck, Queenie. You have managed to turn one speck into a major disaster. If you didn’t know how to clean velvet you should have asked one of the servants.”
    “They don’t like me, miss. They think I’m dead common.”
    “Go and attend to my bath,” I snapped. “And I’ll have to see if I have any dresses that you haven’t managed to ruin yet.”
    She had never heard me speak to her as severely. Her eyes opened wide and to my horror brimmed over with tears. “I’m sorry, me lady, I really am. I know I’m clumsy. I know I’m hopeless, but I do try.”
    I felt rotten as she slunk away, head down like a defeated dog. I knew I should get rid of her, but I’d grown strangely fond of her. She had come with me to the far corners of Europe. She’d been jolly brave in the face of danger and she hadn’t cried or begged to be taken home from the most disagreeable of circumstances. And there was the other fact that she wasn’t costing me much—apart from dressmaker bills for alterations of ruined skirts.

 
    Chapter 3
     
    Rannoch House
Still January 15, 1933
     
    I felt a lot more cheerful after a hot bath and went downstairs, looking forward to tea and toast—and maybe even a slice of cake if Fig had developed a sudden craving for Victoria sponge. I was about to enter the morning room when I heard Fig’s voice.
    “It’s like a miracle, isn’t it, Binky? An answer to our prayers.”
    I paused outside the door wondering what this miracle could be. That Fig was expecting twins? That she’d received an unexpected inheritance?
    “I suppose we can afford the fares somehow,” came Binky’s hesitant reply.
    “Nonsense. We’ll actually be saving money. We’ll be eating their food, won’t we, and we won’t have to heat this house. We can send the servants back to Scotland and close up the place.” I was about to enter the room when she added, “Oh, Lord, what are we going to do with Georgiana? I hope she won’t be difficult about being turned out.”
    “We can’t turn her out,” Binky replied. “I do have an obligation to my sister. We’ll take her with us.”
    “Take her with us?” Fig’s voice rose so that I would have heard it even if I hadn’t been standing with my ear pressed to the door.
    “It will do her good. Great opportunity to meet some suitable chaps and find herself a husband.”
    I stood there with my hand on the doorknob, frozen in an agony of suspense. Where were they going and would I want to be taken with them, even if Fig agreed?
    “We’ve given her plenty of opportunity to find herself a husband already,” Fig said icily. “We paid for her season, didn’t we? And she’s just come back from hobnobbing with most of the eligible young aristocrats of Europe. She turned down poor Prince Siegfried. She’s a hopeless case, Binky. She’ll wind up an old maid or a kept woman, like her mother.”
    “Oh, I say, that’s a bit thick, old bean.”
    “Well, why isn’t she married yet? She’s twenty-two. The bloom is already starting to fade. It’s all the fault of that O’Mara person.”
    “He’s not a person, Fig. He is