Page 36 of The Curious Story of the Missing Lady
“My Lady, what else can I say?”
Lady Elizabeth made a noise like a wounded beast, and Madeline heard the clanging of metal pans upon the floor.
“There’s always clotted cream,” said Mr Garret.
“Clotted cream?”
“Yes, M’Lady. We could cover ’em up with clotted cream.”
“There’s no amount of clotted cream that could hide this atrocity! Look at them, John Garret! You’d need enough clotted cream to pave over Wales three times! Oh ... woe!”
Silence next. A terrible, dreadful silence.
Madeline waited, and soon, it began inside her—a laugh. She put a hand over her mouth as it came on like a team of war horses. Torturously, she stifled it, and it came in short squeaks, her eyes squinting shut, her tears flowing freely. She threw herself face down on her cot, her body trembling all over as she laughed heartily. It was all so horrible, her situation, and yet, this lowering of her captors in such a banal, domestic manner tickled her so much that she thought her stomach would leap out of her body.
For a full five minutes, she laughed like this. And when she was through, panting, the absurdity struck her again, even more so now as she began picturing the gastronomic travesty that must have come from that oven downstairs, and she laughed again.
Clotted cream!
#
The most wonderful sound in the world came to her ears. The distant beating of a horse’s hooves. Her heart quickened. She got up and paced the room softly before hearing the approach of footsteps towards her door. The deadbolt slid, and the door opened.
“The Lady,” Garret said, sounding sheepish, “requires your service in entertaining the Lord at tea.”
“Yes,” said Madeline, wrinkling her nose at the burnt smell that now filled the room. She hurried to the corner and put on her apron. Under the guise of straightening herself out, she placed a hand in her pocket and felt the tiny message she would give to Lord Peter.
She’d spent half the night dreaming up the plan of how she’d do it and the other half dreaming about it going dreadfully wrong. Her anxiety was justified—the move would require the poise of a ballerina.
She followed Garret downstairs. The burning odour was stronger and seemed to permeate every inch of the place.
“There you are, wretch,” said Lady Elizabeth. “Lord Peter is arriving for tea, and I’ll need you to serve him.” She pointed to a tray that looked to be heaped with a dozen or so lumps of coal. “You’ll serve these scones along with the tea and the clotted cream accompanying.”
There was no agony like that which she felt at this moment, crushing the laugh that was quickly rising in her.
“Yes, My Lady,” she said, feeling the tug of a smile on her lips.
“What’s that?” said Lady Elizabeth.
“What’s what, My Lady?”
“Is that a smile?”
“Yes,” she said, quickly covering. “I’m excited to be serving the Lord this afternoon.”
Lady Elizabeth looked askance at her. “I don’t understand you, child. Certainly, you’ve entertained the sons of dukes at Aspendale.”
This was the first she’d ever heard the Lady speak of her house by name. All laughter quickly left her soul. It was profanity of the highest order, this invocation of Aspendale by this horrible woman.
“Yes, My Lady,” Madeline said plaintively.
Her spirit was renewed, however, when she spied Lord Peter through the window. He dismounted in one quick move, hitched the horse to the post, and made his way to the door.
Garret opened it to him. “My Lord,” he said, offering a protracted bow.
“Ah, Lord John, is it?”
“Huh? Oh, yes, sir—uh, that is, yes, Lord Peter, yes.”
