Story: A Lady?

L.E. shared the beginning of a very promising lady-to-maid story with an enticing and original premise. I am hoping there'll be more to it, love where it's headed!

A Lady?

by L.E.


Sir Ambrose Ruddenmore mounted the steps of Ackleigh House with some trepidation. A past president of the Royal College of Surgeons, he had had plenty of experience explaining matters of medical delicacy, but today was going to be quite unusual.

At the front door of the imposing London mansion, the butler greeted Sir Ambrose and efficiently led him to the salon where the Earl and Countess of Ackleigh awaited him. They were a handsome pair, both blue-eyed with blonde hair barely flecked with grey, narrow noses, slender hands. All four eyes were trained on him.

"Out with it, Sir Ambrose", the Earl said earnestly. "We can't be left on tenterhooks, your office said you had to call on us with news. Have you found a liver donor for Caroline?"

Lady Caroline Grandwood was to the extent they could make her so, the pride and joy of the Earl and Countess, for she was their only child; but she was also the bane of their existence. Most of the prestigious girls' schools in Britain had either expelled her or declined to admit her given her reputation, and she had lasted barely half a term at university before attempts to educate her had at last been abandoned.

Her preferred vocation, her primary talent, was voracious consumption of the most expensive top-shelf tipples, which was why she now needed a liver transplant.


The family's inherited landholdings remained substantial despite the repeated ravages of estate taxes, but it was the cunning business investments of recent generations that kept the family among the wealthiest in Britain, the Earl now chairing Ackleigh Holdings which in turn had substantial stakes in large public companies. His shareholdings were to some extent unencumbered, and could be left to Lady Caroline, but a substantial portion, along with the prize properties such as Ackleigh Hall in the provinces and the streets of London of which Ackleigh House was the crown jewel, were in trusts established by the Earl's father and grandfather, designated to pass with the title when the trusts were established, not knowing the present tenth Earl  would have no son.

Time and again the Earl had resolved to take legal action to break the trusts so that his daughter could inherit, whether in the courts or by a Private Member's Bill in the House of Lords to be sponsored by a friend who had retained his seat there, but then some antics of Lady Caroline's had made him abandon the initiative. As the Earl had no brothers, his father's brothers had had no sons, and his grandfather's only brother had had no children at all, a third cousin was in line to become the next Earl of Ackleigh --Mr. Norman Grandwood.

As Mr. Grandwood was only a few years older than Lady Caroline, the Earl and Countess had given some thought to the "Downton Abbey solution", getting the pair of them to marry that the whole estate could pass to their children, but despite years of encouragement the effort had been a complete failure. After a recent meeting of the Ackleigh Holdings board, on which both Norman and Lady Caroline served, the cousin had privately affirmed to the Earl that there was no way he would marry a mean drunk regardless of her lineage, and the Earl knew only too well that there was no man who Lady Caroline cherished even slightly, she only liked to tease and rebuff and laugh. At least she was almost certainly a virgin.

Perhaps the fortune would be in better hands with Norman, the Earl admitted to himself. Certainly, he was a more productive board member. But he did want to keep his only child alive.

"My Lord", Sir Ambrose began carefully, "it is fortunate indeed that the human liver can regenerate and a living donor transplant is possible. We have examined the blood tests, DNA tests, and biopsies of a wide number of potential matches...including yourselves...and we do indeed have an excellent match for Lady Caroline. But the analysis of the DNA of that potential donor led clearly to the conclusion that he is...a full sibling."

The Earl and Countess gasped.

"This is impossible", the Earl said. "Arabella has only been pregnant the one time, we know she was not carrying twins, and if I had had a son my entire life would have been different!"

"Not a twin, a bit older", Sir Ambrose said, knowing they might be suspecting him of thinking that they had given up a child before marrying, though he knew better...

"Oi!"...they were interrupted by the prospective patient herself, swaying into the room with a mostly drained whiskey glass in hand. Lady Caroline's brown hair and round nose were in stark contrast to her parents, as was her far from regal demeanor. "I hope you've got this liver donor thing squared away, no bloody care for me if it's alive or dead...I'll be wantin' another in a few years and if you keep me waiting again, you'll get the sack!" She tossed back the rest of her liquor into her throat, then hurled her glass straight for a fireplace, never mind that it brushed Sir Ambrose's cheek, and watched it shatter on the ground. A glass from a crystal set especially commissioned by the Earl's great-grandfather, preserved intact until Caroline started to drink, and now there was about half of it left.

Without a care, Caroline turned to her father. "You tell those sods at Ackleigh Holdings who whine about my drinking that when I'm chairman I shall sack everyone!" She flounced, turned, and tottered out of the room before the Earl and Countess could recover their composure.

"I'm so terribly sorry, Sir Ambrose", the Earl said. "I swear, if she were not my daughter..."

Sir Ambrose swallowed. "About that, my lord." Now he had come to the nub of the reason for his visit. "Our DNA analyses establish conclusively that neither you nor the Countess are related to Lady Caroline at all."

At that statement the Earl and Countess were truly thunderstruck, and it was the latter who spoke first. Tears welling in her eyes, dredging up a memory she had long discounted, never wanting to dull her love for her child. "Darling", she said to the Earl," you remember that between the first time I held her, and when we took her home, I thought...she looked different?"

                        *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Isabell Rawdon mounted the steps toward the apartment she shared with her brother. Her very high heels were not easy to walk in, but she had managed to make it look easy...they were about the only part of her working clothes not covered by her expansive (but not expensive) overcoat.

Opening the door with her key, she shut it behind her before shedding her coat onto the rack, revealing her costume. Isabell had managed to make a success of her sexy-maid business, wearing her clingy frilly outfit no real maid would be caught dead in and many an actress would have thought too overdone for a bedroom farce. And she got better hourly rates for her cleaning services than a regular maid ever would, thanks not only to her genuine skill at that but her willingness to let employers leer at her as she worked. She'd never had to go all the way to being a topless maid, as some did, but her blonde, blue-eyed beauty was greater than that of the topless maids she knew.

She was also good at knowing how to keep gentlemen from getting too handsy while still appearing accessible enough to get the best tips. Sometimes she was hired by groups of Indian women in voluminous saris who ignored her as they spoke in their language while the scantily clad white girl performed menial duties, but most of her business was based on sex appeal. And she was so good at it she could book another maid to meet her demand.

"Bellie!", came her brother's voice. Michael emerged from his bedroom, his round-nosed face framed by his shaggy brown hair. "You haven't been hiding any medical problems from me, have you?"

"Surely not", Isabell answered, greeting him with a sisterly peck on the cheek. "Why ever would you think so?"

"Well, I signed up for this living-donor registry at the hospital, and they let me know there's a patient who's a match for my liver. They'd take out hers and put in a lobe of mine, then let me regenerate."

"And why would you connect that with me, Mikey?" Isabell laughed.

"Well, they don't give you identifying data...but I did see some paperwork when I went to the office to get consent forms...and this patient was born on the same day as you...and they said she was my sister!"

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