Chapter Ten
The next morning, Bridget had just finished coiling her hair and pinning it into a loose bun when Eliza entered her room.
“Have you finished with Aunt Marianne and Madam Bouffant already?”
“Your aunt will take breakfast in her room.”
“Is she ill?”
“She’s tired of the guests and wants the privacy of her room, where she can mourn her poor brother in peace.”
Bridget sighed. Poor Aunt Marianne had had a trying few days.
Lady Darby and Lady Eamont had been exceedingly rude the first day they’d met her.
Despite Nate’s reassurances that he did not consider them a burden, the ladies of the ton kept treating them as such, and she worried that their behavior had left her aunt deflated.
It angered Bridget. Aunt Marianne had been so keen and reenergized upon taking charge of the new household staff, but she, like Bridget, hadn’t imagined that the guests would look down on them and treat them like servants as well.
This new life was going to take some getting used to.
“And what of Madam Bouffant?” Bridget glanced at Eliza in the mirror.
“Why do you call her that? You don’t need to pretend with me. We both know who an’ what she is.”
“As long as she is a guest at Villa De Lacey, she is ‘Madam Bouffant,’ a widow from Paris. And she must look presentable, or the others will get suspicious.”
“You can change her hair all you want, miss, but that will do naught to save her soul.”
“Eliza.” Bridget made eye contact with her lady’s maid in the mirror. “This is important. You haven’t told the other servants the truth, have you?”
“Of course not. I have nothing to say to those cod’s heads you hired.”
“Good, so you’ll see to her hair, then? Make her look like a lady of Paris?”
“If she’ll permit me entrance to her room, I will.”
“What do you mean?”
“She wouldn’t let me into her room this morning. I tried the door, but it were locked. So I knocked, and she shouted for me to leave.” Eliza inspected Bridget’s hair and started to rearrange the pins.
“How strange. Perhaps it was too early for her.”
Eliza pressed her lips together in a disapproving line as she continued to fix Bridget’s hair.
“What is it?” Bridget asked. “Do you know something?”
Eliza shrugged. “Only that there were strange noises about the house last night. Lots of comings and goings during the wee hours, there were.”
“Really? I heard nothing at all. Perhaps you were dreaming.” Bridget had been so tired that she’d fallen asleep the moment her head had touched her pillow.
She had no reason to doubt Eliza. Still, she thought it best to downplay the maid’s comment.
If Madam Bouffant’s lover had snuck into her room last night, it was best for the servants not to be gossiping about it.
“Lots of comings and goings,” Eliza muttered again as she went to the wardrobe to fetch Bridget’s clean mourning dress.
As Eliza helped her into the black dress, Bridget glimpsed herself and her lady’s maid in the mirror.
Eliza’s pale face and grim expression were accentuated by her heavy bombazine gown and oversized black bonnet.
Lady Darby’s words came back to Bridget.
She was a cruel woman, but she had a point.
Their mourning attire did make Villa De Lacey appear rather drab and depressing.
“I was thinking,” Bridget said carefully as the lady’s maid buttoned her dress, “it might be better if you wore a black ribbon to commemorate my papa instead of full mourning dress. It’s only that with Aunt Marianne and I dressed in full mourning as well, the household is starting to look a bit too melancholic. ”
Eliza’s fingers froze on the button she was fastening.
“The master has only been dead mere months, miss. This is still a house in mourning.”
“I know. But we shall have to keep that in our hearts because our very survival depends upon making sure the guests at Villa De Lacey have an enjoyable experience so that they will tell their friends to come and maybe even return themselves.”
Eliza pursed her thin lips and stepped away from Bridget.
Bridget reached for Eliza’s hand. “You mustn’t think I don’t appreciate your loyalty. I don’t know what I’d do without you, honestly. It’s a difficult time for us all.”
Eliza nodded again and pulled her hand out of Bridget’s grasp.
Clearly, Bridget’s suggestion had wounded the maid.
Bridget was about to say something more when an ear-piercing shriek—so loud and bloodcurdling that Bridget’s heart almost stopped beating from fright—sounded in the hallway outside.
Both she and Eliza momentarily froze before Bridget jumped to her feet and the two of them raced out of the room.
Several guests, still dressed in their nightshirts, peeked out of their bedroom doors, and some had filtered into the hallway where they stood clustered around Lady Eamont.
“What has happened?” Bridget asked.
“My ring!” Lady Eamont emerged from the cluster of people wearing a robe as if she were the star of a Greek tragedy. She held out her hand and cried dramatically, “It’s gone! My ring is gone!”
“Gone? What do you mean?” Bridget asked.
“My emerald-and-diamond ring. The one Lord Eamont gave me for our anniversary. It’s been stolen, I tell you! Taken right off my finger.”
The audience of onlookers gasped.
Lady Eamont turned to her husband and clutched his arm as if she would faint. “Oh, my lord, who would be so cruel as to snatch that precious ring from my finger as I slept?”
“Taken off your finger?” Bridget frowned. “That makes no sense. You must have removed it and then forgotten where you put it. I am certain it is still in your room.”
“Yes.” Lord Eamont patted his wife awkwardly on the hand. “I’m certain that’s what happened, my dear.”
“I never remove it from my finger when I am holidaying. It’s too precious, and I don’t want to risk losing it.”
“It’s true,” Adelia and Lydia Eamont said in tandem. “She never takes it off.”
“Well, we should still search your room, if only to make certain.”
“I’ve had my lady’s maid turn my room upside down! It’s nowhere to be seen. Someone has stolen it! I demand you call the magistrate.”
“My goodness!” Lady Darby clutched her chest. “Are you saying that there’s a thief at this house?”
“Or thieves!” Lady Eamont said.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions, now.” Nate stepped calmly into the fray, much to Bridget’s relief. “You don’t know that it has been stolen.”
“I’d say you start by checking the servants’ rooms,” Lady Darby said. “I once caught a maidservant stealing food from my pantry.”
Bridget frowned. “I am confident that the servants at Villa De Lacey are honest. They don’t steal,” she said, despite being unsure that her words were true.
She hardly knew the servants. They were mostly inexperienced young girls, newly hired.
And then there were the guests’ servants.
Lady Darby and Lady Eamont had brought ladies maids to serve the women in their families.
And all of the men had brought their valets.
“I demand that you search every room in this house.” Lady Eamont stamped her slippered foot. “Someone here has my ring!”
“I dare say!” Lady Darby said. “No one is searching my room or my nephew’s. To do so would be to insinuate that we are thieves.”
“Hear, hear!” Frederick bellowed but fell silent at the sight of Nate’s hard glare.
“Miss De Lacey and her aunt will search the servants’ quarters while everyone is breakfasting,” Nate said, “if only to prove their innocence.” He turned to the maids and footman, who had congregated upstairs after being drawn there by Lady Eamont’s screams. “While I am certain that each of you is innocent, I’m afraid all of you will need to gather in the kitchen while we perform a thorough search of your rooms.”
The staff murmured amongst themselves and were slow to move, as if shocked by the implied accusation.
Bridget lowered her gaze. That ghastly woman had probably taken her ring off and forgotten where she’d put it. Yet, she saw fit to humiliate the servants with her accusations.
“You heard Mr. Squires.” Aunt Marianne, who’d been silently watching the events unfold, stepped forward. Sounding much like her old self again, she herded the servants back down the stairs, saying, “Gather in the kitchen, go on.”
Bridget felt almost grateful to Lady Eamont for having caused this commotion. It seemed to have restored Aunt Marianne’s sense of purpose.
“I do hope she misplaced it,” Bridget said to her aunt as they watched the servants retreat. “We’ve only been open a few days. This could ruin us.”
“I’m certain that silly woman did misplace her ring; nonetheless, we’ll do our duty and thoroughly search the rooms. I won’t have people accusing us of being thieves. We have no choice but to conduct a search and prove her wrong.”
“Let’s hope we do.” Bridget exhaled. “Or we may be searching for a new home soon.”
*
Bridget and her aunt spent the next hour opening drawers and wardrobes and searching under beds and mattresses, to no avail. The ring was nowhere to be found.
“That’s all the rooms.” Aunt Marianne wiped her brow with the back of her hand. “If one of the servants did take it, they didn’t hide it in their room.”
Bridget sank onto the bed she’d just remade after pulling it apart.
They had to solve this theft, or it could mean the end of Villa De Lacey.
She envisioned Lady Eamont at a London ball, holding out her shaking hand and telling the horror story of how her precious jewels had been stolen right off her finger as she slept at Villa De Lacey, which was teeming with pilferers and lowlifes.
Bridget shook the awful image from her mind.
“Perhaps we made a mistake rushing to hire so many inexperienced young ladies from the village.”
“Every seasoned housekeeper started as a young, inexperienced maid,” Aunt Marianne said. “Although, you might be right when it comes to Abigail and Sarah. Those two appear to be up to no good sometimes.”