Wicked Godmother Read Online Free

merciless democracy on the slums of Seven Dials and the quiet streets of Mayfair.
    A government lottery sledge scraped its way’ along Clarges Street, and the resultant wave from its progress sent a miniature Niagara Falls tumbling down the area steps of Number 67 Clarges Street and sent a tide of muddy water dashing over the white silk stockings of the footman, Joseph, who opened the door just in time to receive the full benefit of the flood. He let out a squawk like an outraged parrot and retreated back through the kitchen and into the servants’ hall.
    ‘Look at meh stockings,’ he screeched. ‘Bleck as pitch.’
    ‘Go and change,’ said the butler, Rainbird, testily. ‘It’s not the end of the world.’
    But Joseph – tall, fair, effeminate, and vain – would not be comforted. ‘It is the end of the world,’ he said mournfully, sitting down at the table next to Rainbird, removing one buckled shoe and emptying the water from it out onto the kitchen floor, then taking off one stocking, and then studying his own naked foot with surprise as if he had never really noticed it before. ‘Eh hehve never known such rain,’ went on Joseph in accents of strangulated gentility. ‘Rain, rain, rain, and no tenant for the Season.’
    ‘As to that,’ said Rainbird cautiously, ‘I received a note from Jonas Palmer saying he would call on us today. Mayhap he has some good news for us.’
    Several pairs of hopeful eyes turned in his direction. The staff of Number 67 had just finished breakfast. Apart from Joseph and Rainbird, seated round the table were the Highland cook, Angus MacGregor; Mrs Middleton, the housekeeper; Jenny, the chambermaid; Alice, the housemaid; little Lizzie, the scullery maid; and Dave, the pot boy. They were an oddly assorted group of people, welded into a closely knit clan, or family, by peculiar circumstances.
    Number 67 Clarges Street was still damned as unlucky. It was owned by the tenth Duke of Pelham, the ninth duke having hanged himself there. Although Number 67 had managed to find tenants for the past two Seasons, the dramatic happenings which had occurred to them while living there had made the polite world wary of choosing it as a town residence. Palmer, the agent, paid the servants rock-bottom wages, while charging his young master higher ones. He had collected unsavoury facts about Rainbird and Joseph and threatened to ruin them should they try to leave. The hold he had had on the others was simply that he would not give them references. Jobs in London were impossible to find without a reference, and scarce enough even if one had one. The previous tenant, the new Lady Tregarthan, had supplied the staff with glowing references, but they knew that no household would take them en masse. They had become so close, they were reluctant to part and dreamed instead of saving enough money so that they could buy a pub and run it as a joint effort.
    Rainbird was the ‘father’ of the family. He was a well-set up man in his forties, with a wiry acrobat’s body and a comedian’s face. Mrs Middleton – the ‘Mrs’ was a courtesy title – was the daughter of a curate who had fallen on hard times. She was, as the French so delicately put it, a lady of certain years, with a face like a frightened rabbit, which was mostly overshadowed by the huge starched frills of the caps she liked to wear. The cook, MacGregor, was Highland, emotional, and had a temper to match his shock of fiery red hair. Jenny was quick and dark, with brisk, nervous movements. In contrast to the chambermaid, Alice, the housemaid, was blond and Junoesque, with slow, languid movements and a voice like rich Cornish cream. Little Lizzie, less waiflike than she had first been when she had entered service, had a pale face, thick nut-brown hair, and the large trusting eyes of a puppy. She was seated next to Joseph, instead of down at the end of the table where she belonged – but the servants rarely observed their caste system when the