Since Minta had grown up in the train of the British Army, she should know.
“Which is why you and I will sit down with him right after we get Wellington safely through the battle of Toulouse,” Georgie answered, “so he can know the goodandthe bad.”
Minta didn’t seem enthused. “Won’t help, you pardon me sayin’. Bloodthirsty buggers, men, the lot of them.”
Georgie smiled as she started down the first flight of narrow servants’ stairs toward the kitchen. “Oh, I know. But at least we can say we tried.”
Georgie wondered what time it was. She always lost her sense of it while instructing the children. The light had begun to slant, though, so rather a surprising time for a call. Then again, the call had come to the kitchen door, which meant it was completely unofficial.
“Did the person identify themself?” she asked her maid.
“No’m. Just said she needed a fairy godmother.”
Georgie fought the urge to scowl. It had been four years since she’d earned that annoying nickname. Anyone would think people would have begun to forget. But no. At least once a month one of her ex-classmates showed up at the back door, bouncing from foot to foot, skirts clutched in her hands, eyes flickering around the kitchen, where by now the staff was so inured to these unorthodox visits that they went about their business as if nothing unusual was happening.
It seemed she was to have another.
“Neither Charlie nor Eddie was available?”
“Lendin’ library, what I hear.”
Georgie recognized the girl standing in the kitchen the minute she entered. Georgie smiled to herself. She really should not call her a girl. But any of the students younger than she and her cousins would always be thought of asgirls. And this one looked like it.
Thin, pale, blonde, with her hands predictably tangled in her skirts and her eyes on a swivel, Priscilla Mayhew stood on one small foot and watched the kitchen staff as if expecting them to decamp to peach on her to her parents for being there.
“Hello, Priscilla,” Georgie softly greeted her, stepping out onto the kitchen proper.
Priscilla startled like a wild filly. “Oh, Lady Georgiana...” Even her curtsy looked frantic.
Georgie gave her a sincere smile. “You know perfectly well it is Georgie. After all, we both survived Last ChanceAcademy. Would you care to come with me? Mrs. Barnes, our housekeeper, has a lovely little parlor she is kind enough to lend me on occasion.”
Mrs. Barnes, who looked more like a sergeant major than a housekeeper, gave a stiff nod and then, as if she couldn’t help it, a wink. “Go on wit’ ya now, girl. Minta, let Nanny know them hooligans is up there on their own.”
Priscilla blinked like a baby bunny at Mrs. Barnes’s broad western accent. “She is not from London, is she?” she whispered as she followed Georgie from the wide, green-walled room and down the narrow servants’ corridor.
“No. Mrs. Barnes is from The Castle. She is convinced we would all run mad if she weren’t about to manage us.”
She was also kind and patient enough to allow strange young women to sneak in the back door for help.
“Here we go,” Georgie said, pushing open the door into the housekeeper’s sitting room.
Georgie had always loved it here. Rather than solemn and important like the public rooms of the house, Mrs. Barnes lived amid chintz and overstuffed sofas. Smelling of cinnamon and furniture polish and warmed by a constant fire, it reminded Georgie of a room from a fairy tale.
Priscilla blinked again. “Oh, my. This is...”
Georgie nodded. “Lovely, yes. Please. Sit.”
Priscilla shook her head in some wonder. “Like a nest.”
She sat and looked around, as most visitors did, no matter the room. Her next question was also inevitable.
“You really all live in this one house?”
Georgie smiled. “All thousand or so Packham cousins. With my mother and father so often preoccupied with government affairs, Uncle Samson in default charge of the family, and Aunt Ellen and Uncle William dying so young, it seemed easiest to keep us all in the immediate vicinity to more easily maintainsupervision. It has actually worked out quite well. And I only need run down the corridor to see Charlie and Eddie.”
Georgie spent the time until the tea service arrived asking after Priscilla’s parents and younger sister, who had been a year behind her in school. They chattered until tea had arrived, been poured, and waifish Priscilla had devoured three seed cakes and a slice of bread and butter. One of the great mysteries of life, Priscilla’s frail frame, considering what she put away at a sitting.
“Now then,” was all Georgie had to say.
