The Disdainful Marquis by Edith Layton

drink her out of house and home before she knows it unless I miss my guess.”
    “This is all quite sordid.” The duchess sighed, ringing for Griddon. “And I don’t think I care to hear about any more of it. I’ll take you on again, Violet, although I was most displeased about the way you were so ready to leave me in the lurch. But I do have a reputation to uphold, and traveling with two companions is what my set is used to see me doing. But I won’t hear of you changing your mind again. Do your duties, keep the new girl in line, and you will find I will be pleased.”
    When Griddon appeared, the duchess asked him to call Miss Robins down again.
    “Catherine,” the duchess said as Catherine, white-faced and subdued, came to the door, “this is Violet Peterson. I have spoken about her. She finds herself suddenly able to join me again and will be going to Paris with us.”
    “I understand, ma’am,” Catherine said in a small voice. “And when do you wish me to leave?”
    “Why, next week,” the duchess said, “when I do, of course—don’t be such a gudgeon.”
    “I shall have to see to the stage schedules,” Catherine said quietly. “Would you be so kind as to write me a recommendation so that I can secure future employment?”
    Violet stiffened and gave Catherine a look of offended shock.
    “Your new little miss don’t think I’m a fit companion to travel with,” she shrilled.
    “Violet don’t fit your nice notions of propriety?” the duchess growled, in her iciest dignity.
    “Oh no, that is not it,” Catherine foundered, “but I thought, when you said that she was coming with you, I thought you no longer required my services. That is to say, now that you have your original companion back, I did not see what need you would have of me.”
    Catherine had researched the duties of a companion as best she could before even coming to London. But some things were basic, even back in Kendal. An elderly female, or an incapacitated one, or even a healthy able young woman of means could not live in society without proper female companionship. If there were no female relations in the home, and no indigent women in some branch of the family who would be glad of a home to be pressed into service, a companion was hired. A companion served as aide, or as company, sometimes as nurse, and most often just as figurehead for propriety’s sake. But she had never heard of any woman requiring two paid companions. And that seemed to be just what the duchess was now implying. Perhaps, Catherine thought, with an amazed sense of guilt, she had not looked into the social habits that prevailed in the higher echelons of society as well as she should have. And now she had unwittingly offended Violet.
    “I have often told you about Violet and Rose. I frequently travel with two companions. I have a position to uphold,” the duchess said, at her iciest, feeling obliquely accused by the mock innocence of this young upstart of a girl.
    “ I am sorry for the misunderstanding,” Catherine said gladly. “I should be delighted to travel with Miss Peterson, really I shall,” she said, looking beseechingly at the rigid Violet, and feeling a surge of delight at the thought of having someone to talk to at last nearer to her own age. “And I am relieved to find that you still want me.”
    “Go, then,” the duchess said with unexpected relief. “Go and get acquainted. You’ll be seeing a lot of each other, and I like my staff to be in harmony.”
    “So you’ve got the green room,” Violet commented as she and Catherine made their way upstairs to Violet’s room. “Rose, she used to have that one. What did you do before the old lady hired you on?” she asked disinterestedly as she walked unerringly into the room adjoining Catherine’s.
    Catherine, a little shocked at the familiarity with which Violet spoke of her employer, but not wanting to appear to be a prig and start the relationship off on the wrong foot, let the remark