CHAPTER SIX
Having sent a note to Nancy to say that she had reconsidered the offer and would like to accept if it still stood, Louisa was quickly summoned back to Rutland Gate. As she had been asked to arrive at eleven o’clock in the morning, she had given up the idea of attending her training that day and sent in a note warning them of her absence. She didn’t need to lie and say she was ill, as after all she was a paying client, not a schoolgirl. But she felt the weight of guilt lie heavy on her chest nonetheless. Unless it was weight for a different reason: apprehension at immersing herself back in the Mitford world when she had – foolishly – congratulated herself on leaving them for a life of marriage and a career, a life she had thought would put them if not quite on an equal footing, then no longer that of master and servant. Yet here she was, metaphorical mob-cap on her head. Resolutely, as if not to undo the good work of her previous exit, Louisa knocked this time on the front door. The maid who opened it betrayed no judgement but took her into the morning room, where Louisa was greeted by a formidable line-up: Lady Redesdale, Nancy, Unity and Tom.
Louisa was no longer the trembling nineteen-year-old in a scrappy dress and hastily polished boots that she had been when she first met the matriarch of the Mitford family, but in the presence of her former employer she sometimes found that hard to remember. Lady Redesdale was not an unkind woman, but she kept her distance in all senses of the phrase, and her Victorian manner was deliberately designed to keep the likes of Louisa in the dark as to what made her blue blood pump through her veins. Whether Lady Redesdale liked Louisa was, at best, not any of Louisa’s business, at worst, irrelevant. What Louisa did know, which her daughters often did not affect to know, was that Lady Redesdale cared for them a great deal. She had never demonstrated this through anything so common as kisses and cuddles when they were babies (they got these, in spades, from Nanny Blor) but through her attentiveness to their development. Lord Redesdale had objected to his daughters going to school, but the governesses his wife hired were engaged to teach a progressive system, and this only after Lady Redesdale had herself taught the girls how to read, as well as the basics of English history. As her children had grown older, Lady Redesdale held dances for them and managed house parties, sometimes in the teeth of her husband’s short-tempered objections, and even sat up until the small hours waiting for them to climb back in through the ballroom windows when they eventually returned from whichever nightclub they had escaped to earlier on. (Not that she knew that last part.)
‘Lady Redesdale, Miss Nancy, Miss Unity,’ said Louisa, acknowledging each in turn with a nod.
None of them stood when she entered the room and she waited now for one of them to beckon her to a chair. It didn’t happen. Tom was already standing, leaning on a mantelpiece, the other hand in his pocket. He nodded when Louisa looked towards him. Nancy had told Louisa that Tom had half the princesses of Europe trailing after him. Even given the exaggeration, it was believable.
Nancy broke the icy smiles. ‘Lou-Lou, it’s divinely kind of you to help us in this way.’
Lady Redesdale sat up a fraction straighter. ‘Cannon—’ she began, but Nancy immediately interrupted.
‘It’s Sullivan now, if we’re to use surnames at all. Don’t you remember? Lou-Lou is married.’
‘I can’t call her Sullivan,’ said Lady Redesdale. ‘I’ll never remember it.’
Louisa wondered if she should wave helpfully, remind them that she was in the room.
The matriarch turned to Louisa. ‘It’s quite wrong, but I shall have to call you either Louisa, which makes you sound like a kitchen maid, or Cannon, which is more correct but makes you sound unmarried. Which do you prefer?’
‘Louisa is fine, m’lady.’ Some might think she was an acquaintance if it was overheard on the ship, even though she knew she was kidding herself if she was already looking for ways not to be seen as a maid.
‘Louisa,’ Lady Redesdale began again. ‘Nancy is convinced that I cannot cope alone. I am not of the same opinion. Nevertheless, the fact remains that Mrs Guinness is now without a lady’s maid, having moved into her house in Eaton Square…’ She broke off and Louisa saw the faintest flicker of pain as she took in another breath. ‘There is an idea that with all three of us needing jewellery fetched from the safes in the evening, help with our luggage and tickets—’
Unity interrupted this time. ‘Don’t go on. Louisa knows perfectly well what to do. And besides, the lady doth protest too much.’ She turned to Louisa. ‘The real reason Lady Redesdale objects to you accompanying us is because she thinks every time you come near us, another murder happens.’
Lady Redesdale pinched her mouth, but her daughter ignored this and carried on. ‘It’s not true, is it, Louisa? There were years when you were with us when no one got murdered at all.’
Nancy and Tom burst into a fit of laughter at this, but Louisa was appalled. She opened her mouth to say something, though she wasn’t sure what she could say.
Nancy flapped her hand and, through her snorts, managed to get out a protest. ‘Honestly, Unity. You must learn some social graces.’
Unity looked perplexed. ‘What’s wrong with what I said? It’s true, and anyway, Louisa knows us well enough by now.’
‘Quite,’ said Lady Redesdale, doing her motherly best to restore order while managing to neither agree nor disagree with her children. It was a diplomatic skill necessary in a family of nine. Lord Redesdale’s tactic was simple: absolute authority. (Until ‘the thin end of the wedge’ was reintroduced and soon the situation would revert to whatever had prompted his fury in the first place.)
Louisa shifted on her feet and this brought Nancy’s attention back into focus. ‘I’ve told you the plan, the train to Venice and so forth—’
‘Are you not doing the river cruise through Germany?’ interrupted Tom.
Nancy held out a hand to silence him. ‘You’re not in court now. Don’t ask difficult questions.’ She explained to Louisa: ‘Tom’s been called to the bar. His chambers is Four Paper Buildings at Temple. Lord Redesdale can’t quite believe he’s got a son that works.’
Tom snorted at this and his mother gave him a sharp look.
Louisa tried to ignore the excitement she felt at the thought of this trip. She was going as a secret agent. She had to keep that uppermost in her mind. It was not a holiday; she did not want to be apart from Guy.
‘Yes, you did tell me,’ said Louisa, not involving herself in the argument with Tom. ‘The trip sounds wonderful.’
‘Oh, it will be,’ Unity started to say, her face, usually unreadable, now animated.
‘Have you got a passport?’ demanded Lady Redesdale.
‘Yes, m’lady. It was arranged when we went to Dieppe some time ago.’
‘That’s settled then. We’ll pay you six pounds a week and you may bring a suitcase and a vanity case for your own things. If you could come here on Sunday afternoon at half-past two, we will travel together to Victoria to catch the train for Paris. We’ll need two cars, and I’d like you to be in the taxi with Miss Unity and Miss Jessica.’
‘Will that be all, Lady Redesdale?’