A Dangerous Fortune(157)

As she entered the house Hastead tried to detain her, but she had no patience for domestic trivia at this moment, and she silenced him, saying: “Bring me a glass of warm milk.” She had a pain in her stomach.

She went to her room. She sat at her dressing table and opened her jewelry box. There was very little in it. What she had was worth only a few hundred pounds. She pulled out the bottom tray, took out a piece of folded silk and unwrapped it to reveal the serpent-shaped gold ring that Strang had given her. As always, she slipped it on her finger and brushed the jeweled head against her lips. She would never sell this. How different everything would have been if she had been allowed to marry Strang. For a moment she felt like crying.

Then she heard strange voices outside her bedroom door. A man … two men, perhaps … and a woman. They did not sound like servants and anyway her staff would not have the temerity to stand around conversing on the landing. She stepped outside.

The door to her late husband’s room was open and the voices came from in there. When she went in Augusta saw a young man, obviously a clerk, and an older, well-dressed couple of her own class. She had never set eyes on any of them before. She said: “In heaven’s name who are you?”

The clerk said deferentially: “Stoddart, from the agents, my lady. Mr. and Mrs. de Graaf are very interested in buying your beautiful house—”

“Get out!” she said.

The clerk’s voice rose to a squeak. “We have received instructions to put the house on the market—”

“Get out this minute! My house is not for sale!”

“But I personally spoke—”

Mr. de Graaf touched Stoddart’s arm and silenced him. “An embarrassing mistake, quite obviously, Mr. Stoddart,” he said mildly. He turned to his wife. “Shall we leave, my dear?” The two of them walked out with a quiet dignity that made Augusta seethe, and Stoddart scurried after them, spilling apologies everywhere.

Hugh was responsible. Augusta did not have to make inquiries to establish that. The house was the property of the syndicate that had rescued the bank, he said, and they naturally wished to sell it. He had told Augusta to move out, but she had refused. His response was to send prospective buyers to view the place anyway.

She sat down in Joseph’s chair. Her butler came in with her hot milk. She said: “You are not to admit any more such people, Hastead—the house is not for sale.”

“Very good, my lady.” He set down her drink and hovered.

“Is there something else?” she asked him.

“M’lady, the butcher called personally today about his bill.”

“Tell him he will be paid at Lady Whitehaven’s convenience, not his own.”

“Very good, m’lady. And both the footmen left today.”

“You mean they gave notice?”

“No, they just went.”

“Wretched people.”

“My lady, the rest of the staff are asking when they will get their wages.”

“Anything else?”

He looked bewildered. “But what shall I tell them?”

“Tell them I did not answer your question.”

“Very good.” He hesitated, then said: “I beg to give notice that I shall be leaving at the end of the week.”

“Why?”

“All the rest of the Pilasters have dismissed their staff. Mr. Hugh told us we would be paid up to last Friday, but no more, regardless of how long we stay on.”

“Get out of my sight, you traitor.”

“Very good, my lady.”

Augusta told herself she would be glad to see the back of Hastead. She was well rid of the lot of them, rats leaving the sinking ship.

She sipped her milk but the pain in her stomach did not ease.

She looked around the room. Joseph had never let her redecorate it, so it was still done out in the style she had chosen back in 1873, with leather-paper on the walls and heavy brocade curtains, and Joseph’s collection of jeweled snuffboxes in a lacquered display cabinet. The room seemed dead, as he was. She wished she could bring him back. None of this would have happened if he were still alive. She had a momentary vision of him standing by the bay window, holding one of his favorite snuffboxes, turning it this way and that to see the play of light on the precious stones. She felt an unfamiliar choking sensation in her throat; and she shook her head to make the vision go away.

Soon Mr. de Graaf or someone like him would move into this bedroom. No doubt he would tear down the curtains and the wallpaper and redecorate, probably in the currently fashionable arts-and-crafts style, with oak paneling and hard rustic chairs.

She would have to move out. She had accepted this, although she pretended otherwise. But she was not going to move to a cramped modern house in St. John’s Wood or Clapham, as Madeleine and Clementine had. She could not bear to live in reduced circumstances in London, where she could be seen by people she had once looked down upon.

She was going to leave the country.

She was not sure where to go. Calais was cheap but too close to London. Paris was elegant, but she felt too old to begin a new social life in a strange city. She had heard people talk of a place called Nice, on the Mediterranean coast of France, where a big house and servants could be had for next to nothing, and there was a quiet community of foreigners, many her own age, enjoying the mild winters and the sea air.