A Banbury Tale Read Online Free Page A

passing countryside. “I do wish we would soon arrive!” The perfect lips pouted. “Travel is a most tedious affair.”
    Motley bit back the remark that such comments, from a girl who had hitherto not ventured five miles from her home, verged on the ludicrous. She gazed blindly at the scenes of undoubted interest that they passed, and wondered how she was to manage so volatile a miss, particularly in her ineffectual capacity of lady’s maid.
    As they neared London, Motley’s misgivings deepened, and Maddy grew increasingly gay. Motley listened to the girl’s meaningless chatter and hoped her young charge would retain sufficient presence of mind to behave decorously when in society. There was little Motley could do now but lecture and warn; their fate was in the lap of the gods. Maddy had learned all manner of usual things at the select school she’d attended; if she could only be brought to utilize the social graces, her success would be ensured.
    Motley clearly remembered her own eighteenth year. She, too, had known the balls and routs, the al fresco parties and select dinners, that Maddy would be privileged to attend; but an entailed estate, and a father whose belief in his own longevity was so sublime that he had failed to provide for his luckless offspring, had led her to seek employment. Motley knew of others who had taken advantage of their opportunities, one in particular who had married the son of the household where she was employed as companion to its garrulous and ill-tempered matriarch; but Motley remained a spinster, too proud to go undowered to any man. She ruthlessly pushed aside all thoughts of the dashing nobleman whose suit she had so firmly, and so sorrowfully, rejected, and concentrated fiercely on her mission. It was unthinkable that Maddy should suffer a similar fate. At the moment, the ancient coach gave a sickening lurch.
    * * * *
     The Duchess gazed appreciatively upon her striking escort, who had deigned to share her luxurious traveling coach. “You grow increasingly fine, Micah,” she said, and rapped his knuckles sharply. Agatha was in high spirits; long experience had taught her that a brief country idyll was sufficient to reanimate her appetite for town life, which had of late grown flat, and she was anxious to see Mathilda again.
    The Duchess differed from her aristocratic peers in more than that she frequently tired of their sophisticated company. Not for her were mornings filled with such elevating activities as letter writing and needlework; nor was she fond of spending an early evening parading in Hyde Park’s Rotten Row. Deemed an “original” by her vast acquaintance, Agatha had been known to bypass a new edition of La Belle Assemblée or the Lady’s Magazine, which combined the latest fashion plates, sentimental fiction, and such edifying articles as “Set of Rules and Maxims for Sweetening Matrimony” and “Examination of a Mummy Lately Brought from Europe,” to read instead a dissertation upon the sanitary conditions of Great Britain’s laboring classes. Agatha’s intimates politely applauded her social conscience, yet could happily have avoided her efforts to enlighten them. The Haut Ton had no thought to spare for houses that sat upon their own cesspools, linked to neither sewers nor drains; or for those individuals known as “night men” who periodically appeared to remove the residue; yet they dared not try to silence the Duchess, lest she further enliven a dull dinner party with such tales, as she had more than once been known to do.
    Lord Wilmington observed his godmother’s sparkling countenance, and prudently withdrew from range of her wicked fan. Despite her professed boredom with Society, Agatha was one of the more illustrious members of the Ton, and would be desolate to be excluded from the intrigues and machinations that were the breath of life to her. The Duchess knew her London well, from Covent Gardens’ stinking alleys and narrow streets, where