“Well, the last one was her at the butcher’s, and she only wanted help during her confinement, so as soon as the baby came she told me to push off.”

“And the other two?”

She chewed on her lip before saying, “Well, the first one got pretty upset when I knocked over her bottle of perfume when I was dusting. It went all over the mahogany dressing table and took the surface off, but that wasn’t what really upset her. It was a really expensive bottle of perfume, apparently. She’d brought it back from Paris. Oh, miss, you should have heard the words she used. You don’t hear words like that from a fishmonger down the Old Kent Road.”

“And the third employer?” I hardly dared to ask.

“Well, I couldn’t very well stay there,” she said. “Not after I set her evening dress on fire.”

“How did you do that?”

“I dropped a match on the skirt by accident when I was lighting the candles,” she said. “It wouldn’t have been too bad, but she was wearing it at the time. She made a terrible fuss too, although she was hardly burned at all.”

I swallowed hard and wondered what to say next. “Queenie, it appears that you are an absolute disaster,” I said. “But it so happens that I’m desperate at the moment. I expect your aunt told you that I am due to go abroad to a very important wedding and I leave next Tuesday. It is essential that I take a maid with me to look after my clothes, help me dress and do my hair. Do you think you could do that?”

“I could give it a bloody good try, miss,” she said.

“Then let us get a couple of things straight—one, there will be no swearing or any kind of bad language, and two, I am Lady Georgiana so you are expected to call me ‘my lady’ and not ‘miss.’ Do you understand?”

“Right you are, miss. I mean, my lady.”

“And you do understand that this job means going abroad with me, to a foreign country?”

“Oh, yes, miss. I mean, my lady. I’m game for anything. It will be a bit of a lark, and wait till I see Nellie ’uxtable down the Three Bells, her what’s always boasting that she took a day trip to Boulogne.”

At least one had to admire her pluck, or maybe she was just completely clueless.