The Adventuress: HFTS5 by Marion Chesney, M.C. Beaton

with a glass of cordial and had withdrawn before she launched into the attack.
    “I have just heard, Miss Goodenough,” she said, “that my brother is intent on proposing marriage to you.”
    “Your brother …?”
    “Fleetwood.”
    “He made some remark at his rout,” said Emily, “but I assure you it was in jest and I have not seen him since.”
    Mrs. Otterley drained her cordial in one noisy gulp, clutched her enormous reticule on her lap, and glared at Emily with a hard, penetrating stare, as if she hoped some of the power of her look would wither a little of the girl’s startling beauty.
    “I hope you are right,” she said. “For your sake, for your life, I hope you are right.”
    Emily had taken a hearty dislike to the lady. “Are you threatening me?” she asked.
    “Good heavens, no!” Mrs. Otterley tried to force out a jolly laugh, but it sounded as happy as the noise of a rusty gate creaking in a high wind on a winter’s night. “My brother is a very jealous man and has a dangerously unstable temper. Alas, poor Clarissa!”
    Emily compressed her soft lips into a firm line and refused to ask who this Clarissa was.
    “Fleetwood’s wife,” said Mrs. Otterley, just as if she
had
asked. “Found beaten to death. Fleetwood was lucky he did not hang.”
    “Are you telling me that Lord Fleetwood, your own brother, is a murderer?”
    “Now, I did not say that,” said Mrs. Otterley. “I am here to tell you what other people are saying.”
    But Emily’s servant background had made her less gullible than the young lady in whom Lord Fleetwood had shown an interest in the previous Season.
    As a chambermaid, and while her master still was well enough to entertain, she had heard much malicious gossip, most of it untrue, concocted by ladies and gentlemen who appeared to think a servant was deaf. She decided she did not like the earl’s sister one little bit.
    Emily cast a dazzling smile on her. “My dear Lady Mary,” she said with a rippling laugh, “I was afraid you were about to tell me your brother’s wife was still
alive!
What a relief. Now I can accept his proposal with an easy heart.”
    “But you said he had no interest in you!”
    Emily took a deep breath. In the space of a few seconds she decided she would never be frightened of any member of society again. She was
weary
of being frightened. They were just
people
, some pleasant, and some, like Mrs. Otterley, nasty.
    “I was joking,” said Emily. She rang the bell. “Good day to you, my lady. I doubt if we shall meet again … unless, of course, Fleetwood wishes you to attend the wedding.”
    Mrs. Otterley opened and shut her mouth like a landed carp.
    This young woman, who had looked so guileless, and, yes, timid when Mrs. Otterley had entered the room, now looked as contemptuously amused as Fleetwood at his worst.
    Rainbird appeared in the doorway. “My lady is leaving,” said Emily. “Show her out.”
    Mrs. Otterley hated to leave a scene without having the last word. She was determined not to leave this one. She huffed and puffed, her figure swelled, her eyes bulged as she summoned up all her energies to deliver a set-down.
    But Mrs. Otterley’s parsimony was her downfall. Like many of the aristocracy, she had her little meannesses. Some would not give a coin to a crossing sweeper and would rather soil their shoes in the mud, others watered the wine, still more kept their lady’s maids working day and night turning last year’s fashions into this year’s creations. Mrs. Otterley was mean about corsets. The whalebone monster, which had encased her girth—unchanged, like the corset, since her wedding day—at first creaked ominously under the strain. Then one whalebone stay sprang from its threadbare moorings and stabbed straight into Mrs. Otter-ley’s left-hand, floppy, saggy bosom.
    Her face turned puce and then white. The only way she could alleviate the dreadful pain was by taking the pierced bosom and pushing it up with both