Valedictoria Scott and the Unexpected Legacy

By Patricia A. Leslie

Written with tongue-in-cheek whimsy and a fair helping of puns, the setting is Anglia (a slightly alternate-history version of 1870 England). This, the first in a new lighthearted, satirical Steampunk/Gothic Romance novella series, features the adventures of our stubborn, feisty, orphaned scullery-maid heroine Valedictoria, and the charming, devil-may-care gentleman-adventurer and part-time inventor, Sir Anthony S. Harrow, Baronet. It is a time of modernity and scientific progress, offering the public a wide range of exciting new inventions, from the patent-pending "HermesCo Dish-Washing Sink", to "Litchfield’s Night-View Distance Goggles". On her twenty-first birthday, Valedictoria unexpectedly receives a deed: to gloomy, heavily-cobwebbed Ravensdale Manor, and soon finds herself on a steam-powered airship, heading to the rural northern province of Eyorke, where secrets, danger, bad weather, and romance await. Although it is a time when women are expected to know their place, Valedictoria has no patience with such nonsense - not now that she's an heiress!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Patricia A. Leslie
• Release date: Aug 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005929282

Patricia A. Leslie

Patricia A. Leslie is left-handed, and a Virgo. She loves dogs (and cats are her least favorite animal - which is a departure for a writer of speculative paranormal fiction). Her degree from UC Berkeley is in cultural anthropology. An interesting fact is that her admiration for Ursula K. LeGuin is what finally led her to studying anthropology in her forties (since Ms. LeGuin's work is all very deeply informed by anthropological ideas). And when Patricia did get an opportunity to go to college to study anthro, she in fact got her degree in the very anthro department that was founded and developed by Ms. LeGuin's father, Alfred Kroeber.The Arts have always been close to Patricia's heart. Although her life up through high school provided nearly no opportunities to enjoy the Arts or express herself through them, once she got out of school and away from her parents, the Arts did become central to her life. At various times she has studied and/or participated in: Scottish and English Country Dance, Ladies' Solo Scottish Dance, theatrical costuming, crochet, Balkan folk dance, Hawaiian dance ('Auwane and Kahiko), swing dance, folk siniging, classical style voice training, watercolor painting, sumi-e brush painting, drawing in ink or pastels, and ceramic sculpture. She has performed as an improv actor, directed stage plays, written, adapted, and translated for the stage, written poetry, songs, and parody lyrics, been an opera supernumerary, written and doctored screenplays, made a 20 minute documentary film about Neopaganism, and -- last but most gratifying of all -- in 2009, plunged deeply into writing fiction. She has, to date, written 7 novels, 4 novellas, 3 novelettes, a dozen short stories, and a variety of uncategorizable humor pieces.Other oddities include: still married to the same man after 41 years... she is a Second Degree Reiki initiate... she's a very good dog trainer... in addition to the BA in anthro at Cal, she has a certificate in museum studies, a cert in teaching ESL, has attended training in the use of Bach and North American flower remedies (essences), and has a mail-order MS in metaphysics. She started teaching herself French at about age eight, by means of Berlitz records. She spent her elementary school years in upstate New York, where she delighted in playing with toads, turtles, salamanders, frogs, and garter snakes. During two of those years (age 9-10) her family lived in a house with a poltergeist.

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VALEDICTORIA SCOTT and THE UNEXPECTED LEGACY

Patricia A. Leslie

Published by Quailcottage Books at Smashwords

Copyright 2016 by Patricia A. Leslie

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Valedictoria Scott and the Unexpected Legacy

Londinia, Anglia

November, 1870

IN A scullery somewhere in smoky Londinia Town, on a low, three-legged stool, sat a pretty young woman of about twenty-one. She was peeling onions, and wondering why her employers could afford to buy some ingenious new invention for their own entertainment at least once per fortnight, but not find the ready silver for one of the popular new mechanical onion-peelers made of brass gears and steel blades, to replace the inefficient, tear-leaky, flesh-and-blood version. She dabbed once again at her eyes with a cheap cotton handkercher, and sniffed hard, to delay the inevitable nose-blow.

Mr. Hiram Goode, solicitor, entered the room through a doorway which threatened to knock off his un-ornamented but stylish maroon silk topper. He cleared his throat. The maid started; the onion popped from her fingers, hit the floor rolling, and disappeared beneath the massive black iron Saga KitchenKing cook-stove. Damn! she exclaimed.

Goodness me! Pardon this intrusion, Miss–

The pretty young woman, whose name was Valedictoria Scott, twisted at her slender waist, to glance over her shoulder. What? Oh. You’ll find the water closet is back out that door, turn right, second on your left. Everyone makes the same mistake the first time they come here. Never mind.

Ah, um, I beg your pardon. I am not in quest of the WC.

Well, sir, what was it you wished? A headache powder or a tisane? I’m astonished the parlour maid was not sent with your request. The folk here do set a great lot of store by doing everything stylishly.

No, no. It is yourself, I believe, whom I have come here to see. Miss Valedictoria Scott, I presume?

Valedictoria was so startled by this, that three more unpeeled onions escaped from a wide apron stretched across her knees, and followed their fellow to a gloomy fate in the low cave formed by the Saga’s thick, squat bow-legs (so very like those of the Ladyship of the house).

Damn it all to hell! she muttered. She squinted at him. How is it you should know my name? Personal introductions to the scullery-maid are not considered obligatory.

Well, well, my dear, I am quite dismayed, you know, to find you in such unhappy circumstances. I had no idea that–

Oh, I am not at all unhappy, sir. It’s the onions, is all, that are making my eyes water this way.

Then, of course, your tears can have nothing to do with the fact that not a soul cares to know, that today is in fact, your twenty-first birthday? Nor, to give you felicitations upon the occurrence?

Why, sir! You astonish me! How–?

Do I know so much about you? Ah, but then it is my business to know, you know. Permit me to introduce myself: Hiram Goode, solicitor.

Ah, and did they?

Beg pardon, Miss Scott?

Hire ‘em a good one?

What?

Oh, never mind. She sighed. No-one ever got her puns. What was it you wanted, again?

I have the satisfaction, Miss Scott, of seeking you out, expressly to convey to you this very particular document. I believe perusal of which, will be more than self-explanatory. He handed her a large, rolled-up object tied securely in the middle with a long, wide length of red tape.

Valedictoria gazed at it with mingled suspicion and hope. It isn’t a summons, is it? I’d much rather it be a bit of an unexpected legacy; even the smallest of independences would do, just now; then I could certainly quit working in this damned hole, and begin to make my own way in the world. Perhaps be able to get myself the training of which I’ve long dreamt, in the skilful use of mechanical print-writing devices.

Hm! Perhaps you’d best go and clean the onion-juice off your pretty fingers, Miss Scott, before undoing the tape off that document; onion is hardly the favoured cologne this season, among young women of property, heh-heh!

Wha-? Women of property? Sir, you wouldn’t tease a poor scullery-maid? Without bothering to wash her hands, she fumbled loose the complicated double-tied bow knot, and unrolled the parchment-like sheet of heavy paper. "This – this does appear to be – it is, is it not? The deed to something?"

Indeed it is, Miss Scott!

She laughed, delighted at the pun. Mr. Goode stared at her quizzically.

Your pun – very well done, she said pleasantly.

Pun?

Oh, never mind. Please, Mr. Goode, do tell me more about this deed.

You have, today, upon accession to your majority of twenty-one years, become the legal owner of Ravensdale Manor, in the Shire of Eyorke, to which you have, from birth, been destined the heiress! concluded Goode, triumphantly. Delivering unexpected inheritances to long-lost heirs did not come along all that often in his line of work; but when on occasion it did, it was the part of his job he loved best.

"Heiress!"

It is even so, Miss Scott; and I am engaged, not only to deliver this deed into your hands, but furthermore, to see you safely thither, to your new holding! I have a horseless car waiting without this house, even now, which is to convey us to the Airship-Port of Heatherrow, whence we shall take flight to that distant shire.

But – it’s too sudden!

I can well understand your sense of shock and hesitancy, Miss Scott; however, I must tell you that the one condition upon which you may retain Ravensdale and its lands, is that you remain in residence at the Manor, for three hundred and sixty-two days out of every twelvemonth.

What an odd, mysterious-

So, you see, any delay might put in jeopardy, your–

Valedictoria stood with the energy of sudden conviction; two surviving onions now fell and travelled, slowly and morosely, to join their fellows’ doom. Certainly, Mr. Goode! I shall go with you this instant. There are no ties of loyalty or affection for me here! Quite the contrary, she added silently, between the verbal abuse I’ve endured from her Ladyship these five years, and having had to be constantly on my guard against other kinds of abuse, from his Lordship.

Excellent! I shall go and inform your mistress that she must look out for another scullery-maid; do you go and pack your things, Miss Scott. I hope you own some thermals? Eyorke is rather far north of here. I shall attend you beside of the horseless car, just in front here.

Oh, is he in town again? she said, feeling chuffed and irrepressible at the dramatic turn in her fortunes.

I do beg your pardon, Miss?

Justin Front, was he not a very successful race-jockey?

Goode looked puzzled and shook his head. Ah, well, I wouldn’t know, since I don’t follow the horses.

Oh, never mind, it was only a pun; a rather poor one.

Still slightly mystified at a young lady’s interest in races and jockeys, Goode persisted in his mission of conducting her safely to her new abode. Do allow me to take charge of that valuable deed, for the duration; it would be unfortunate were it to be lost now. With it in hand, he withdrew, remembering almost too late, to put a solicitous hand to his topper as it was again threatened by the door-lintel.

Damn! It’s like a dream come true! Valedictoria gazed one last time, all around the scullery. She bestowed a withering glare upon the stool, the paring-knife … the pot-full of denuded onions already sensing their imminent abandonment … the gas-powered Saga KitchenKing where their unpeeled fellows had just consigned themselves to a tragic entombment in its subterranean catacomb … the patent-pending HermesCo Dish-Washing Sink … the electric ColdkeeperSupreme box. The whole lot of them, singly and collectively, had been long guilty of oppressing the Working Class, as represented locally by one Valedictoria Scott. She had the apron already untied from about her neat waist, and cast it aside with a sense of joyous abandon, as she dashed for the narrow stairs which led to her garret room, her travelling-case, and unexpected freedom.

*

HEATHERROW AIRSHIP Port was pretty much as Valedictoria had imagined it, thanks to the frequent publishing of lightgraven images in the supplementary Sunday Magazine portion of the Londinia Quotidian Gazette, her former employers’ favourite source of both gossip, and information regarding their international investments. The Quote, as many Londinians nicknamed it, was fond of publishing blurry images of Very Important Personages em- and debarking on Very Important Journeys.

So, the framework-inflated super-liner zeppelins and dirigibles, tethered to their great mooring and boarding towers, did not particularly stun her with a sense of awe. She was much more interested in the variety of charming little private runabouts at different stages of inflation ranged along a semicircle of the great airfield’s perimeter: some with family-sized gondolas, and even some sleek, open-basketed one-man sports models.

In a diffident, considerate manner, Mr. Goode ushered her into the Grand Terminus building. She was vaguely aware of occasional glances in their direction, since they were rather more distinctive than the average pair of travellers, who tended to be quite homogeneous in one way or another. But people, she supposed, did not often see a pretty young woman of slightly more than middle height, dressed in the shabby second-hand clothing of a typical maid, going anywhere in company with a portly, top-hatted, great-coated, brown-skinned gentleman whose wardrobe proclaimed him well-to-do and successful, if only in the way of those who had to earn their wealth instead of inheriting it.

She supposed that most of the passersby in the great echoing iron-and-glass structure, were at one glance, setting her down as Mr. Goode’s paid-by-the-hour companion (or if his income were enough, his personal demimondaine). The fact that he was toting his own carpet-bag, and had a hand free, but was leaving her to lug her wicker travelling-case, probably reinforced the impression that he did not see any need to court her good opinion.

With an outward and inward shrug, she let them think what they chose. People could never be got to be reasonable or rational, anyway. They made up their minds about the world around them, and then looked for examples of facts to support what they liked to believe. She rather enjoyed boldly eyeing all these folk who were wealthy enough to dress well and go travelling, whilst knowing a secret to