India Black by Carr Carol K

Author:Carr, Carol K.
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group, Inc.
Published: 2011-01-03T16:00:00+00:00

And that is how I came to be outfitted in a tidy black merino dress, starched white apron and a hideous mobcap that did nothing for my appearance. The dress was a bit too tight for comfort’s sake, but apparently all the housemaids at Claridge’s were woefully underpaid and underfed, for the largest dress Netherly could find fit my buxom frame like a sausage casing. For the sake of authenticity, Netherly had armed me with an ostrich duster, a dustpan and a broom. The only item I lacked was information: which room was Gladstone’s and had he tired of bending the ears of prominent swells about the Bulgarian atrocities and returned to it already? In which event, I was too late.

But faint heart never stole a case full of War Office documents, and so I gathered my skirts and my wits and set off to ferret out the location of the old turnip-head’s chamber. Getting into the hotel had been a challenge, but it hadn’t half prepared me for the trial of prowling the halls of the place, trying to avoid the other maids and the porters carrying luggage to and fro, any one of which would have recognized me as an imposter and blown the whistle on my escapade. Not to mention trying to simultaneously keep a sharp eye out for Calthorp (to be avoided at all costs), French (likewise) and Gladstone (what to say to that bugger?), and to look modestly down at the carpet whenever I met a guest in the hall. Normally, that wouldn’t be a concern, as most of London’s upper class wouldn’t acknowledge a servant if she was thrashing about on the floor and turning blue under their feet, but you never know when you might encounter a former (or current) customer, and that could prove embarrassing.

So I spent the better part of an aimless hour wandering the halls, flicking my duster over the odd table and growing increasingly desperate at the time I was wasting, calculating my chances of sneaking a look at the register in order to find Gladstone’s room, and hoping that Netherly wouldn’t grow impatient waiting for his money and come searching for me. I could have given up and gone home at any time, slipping out the back door and leaving the field open to French, but by now this little game was exerting a strong attraction for me, something I hadn’t felt since the last time I’d matched wits with Abbess Dorothy Claridge (an interesting story, that; remind me to tell you about it later). Perhaps life at Lotus House had become a matter of routine—riding herd over a bevy of hard-drinking, opium-smoking judies, listening with half an ear to the nattering of bewhiskered civil servants and army officers, fretting over bills. It was good to be on the game again, playing the crooked cross on the likes of Frank Netherly, matching wits with Russian spies, English clerics (if indeed Calthorp was the genuine article, but his pious moping had seemed honest enough) and crafty bastards with malacca swordsticks.

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