The Lost Garden
Jane Aiken hodge
About the Author
Jane Aiken Hodge was born in Massachusetts but moved with her family to East Sussex in Britain when she was three years old. After reading English in Somerville College, Oxford, she moved to the US to undertake a second degree at Radcliffe College. While she was there, she spent time as a civil servant and worked for Time Magazine before returning to the UK to focus on her career as a novelist. In 1972, she became a British citizen. She is the daughter of the Pulitzer prize-winning poet, Conrad Aiken.
Aiken Hodge is known for her works of historical romance. In a career spanning nearly fifty years, she published over thirty novels, exploring contemporary settings and the detective genre in her later life. She died in 2009, aged ninety-two.
Also By Jane Aiken Hodge
Maulever Hall
The Adventurers
Watch the Wall, My Darling
Here Comes a Candle
The Winding Stair
Marry in Haste
Greek Wedding
Strangers in Company
Shadow of a Lady
Rebel Heiress
Red Sky at Night Lovers’ Delight
Last Act
Polonaise
First Night
Leading Lady
Windover
Escapade
Whispering
Bride of Dreams
Caterina
The Purchas Family Series
All for Love
Judas Flowering
Runaway Bride
Wide is the Water
The Lost Garden
Fiction
One Way to Venice
Secret Island
Unsafe Hands
Susan in America
A Death in Two Parts
Deathline
Non-Fiction
Only a Novel: The Double Life of Jane Austen
The Private World of Georgette Heyer
Passion & Principle: Loves and Live of Regency Women
The Lost Garden
Jane Aiken Hodge
This edition published in 2020 by Agora Books
First published in Great Britain in 1982 by Hodder and Stoughton Ltd
Agora Books is a division of Peters Fraser + Dunlop Ltd
55 New Oxford Street, London WC1A 1BS
Copyright © Jane Aiken Hodge, 1982
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Author’s Note
This book was inspired by the romantic careers of two eighteenth-century Spencers, the famous Duchess of Devonshire and her sister, the Countess of Bessborough. They both married highly eligible, dull husbands, bore their children and made the best they could of their own lives. The Duchess of Devonshire and her husband lived as a remarkable threesome with their friend Lady Elizabeth Foster, whose son and daughter by the Duke grew up with the Duchess’ and Lady Bessborough’s legitimate children. The Duchess had a brief and the Countess a long affair, each with a brilliant younger man, but the children of these liaisons did not appear in the Devonshire House nurseries, where the Countess of Bessborough’s were constant visitors, and Lady Elizabeth’s two were passed off as those of friends. The secret of their birth was an open enough one in adult aristocratic society, but was kept from the children until they were well into their teens.
My Caroline’s situation owes something to the stories of both Spencer sisters, just as Cley and Chevenham House were inspired by Chatsworth, Holkham and Devonshire House, but there the likeness ends. I like to think that though their circumstances are historical fact, my characters are my own. Mrs Winterton is not Lady Elizabeth Foster, Caroline is neither Caroline Lamb nor Caroline St Jules, and the Duke of Cley is most certainly not the Duke of Devonshire.
Prologue
1788
Rain fell like streaks of lead. Thunder crashed across the valley. Lightning, following almost at once, lit the interior of the carriage with its sudden flash, showing two women, livid-faced, each grasping her luxurious armrest.
‘Madame, j’ai peur!’ The French maid let out a fresh exclamation of terror at each new volley of thunder.
‘You’re afraid!’ Frances Winterton had been biting her lips against the sharp onset of pain. ‘You don’t like the thunder! How do you think I feel?’
But the maid, chosen for her lack of English, merely looked at her with dumb incomprehension.
Outside, the storm had brought nightfall two hours early, and the coachman could only just see the torrent of water where a bridge should have been. Reining in his horses, he swore to himself. The Duke had insisted he leave the footman behind for the last stage of this secret journey, and choose the youngest possible post boy. So now, here he was; madam, by the looks of her, starting her pains, the bridge washed out between him and his destination, and no adviser but the idiot-looking boy whom he had chosen for just that stupidity back in Hereford.
The house he was seeking was only miles beyond the River Teme, but what use was that with the bridge washed out?
‘Is there anywhere else we can cross?’ he shouted between the next two peals of thunder, and got a frightened headshake, the boy’s eyes gleaming with terror in the now almost continuous lightning. The coachman swore again and began slowly and carefully to turn the coach in the narrow road. A mismanaged business from the start, he thought angrily, and no fault of his. Madam should have gone abroad as the Duchess had that time.
And here was madam, leaning out of the window into the drenching rain, to ask, ‘What’s happened? Why are we turning?’
‘Bridge washed out, ma’am. I’m sorry.’ He was. A man could not help being sorry for her, such an engaging little bit of a thing, and in so much trouble.
‘James, what are we going to do? I’m…I’m afraid…’ She clenched her teeth as a new pain washed over her.
‘Find help,’ he told her. ‘I saw a house, a good-sized one, not far back. We’ll have to go there. There were lights, plenty of them.’
‘Gentry?’ she asked faintly. ‘A party? James, I can’t…’ And again the pain silenced her. Close together, they were. He remembered his wife and thought they had better hurry.
‘Don’t fret yourself, ma’am,’ he told her. ‘You’re Mrs Brown, remember, on her way to her sister, and not a bit of livery or a sign on the coach to give you away. A chance in a million if you’re recognised down here.’
‘Please God you’re right. Oh!’ She bit back a cry. ‘James, hurry.’
The house was set well back from the road and as he approached it from this angle, lightning showed the squat tower of a church behind it. Probably the vicarage. Well, bit of luck, there should be help there.
As he turned the carriage into the short drive, the front door of the house flew open and a tall man came hurrying out into the rain, then stopped, as a flash of lightning showed him the strange carriage. ‘Not the doctor!’ he exclaimed, ignoring the rain that was soaking his white hair. ‘It’s full three hours now. Which way did you come?’
‘From Hereford, sir. Going on to Wales, we was. But we had to turn back, a mile or two down the road; the bridge is washed out.’
‘The bridge! Gone? And you’ve seen
no other carriage?’
‘No, sir. Not a sign of life on the road. I was hoping you could help us. It’s the mistress, she’s on her way to her sister the other side of the river. She’s very near her time, sir.’
‘Oh, dear God.’ The white-haired man actually appeared to be addressing his divinity. ‘Another one. My poor wife’s been in labour these twenty-four hours and more. And the midwife gone to Hereford and Dr Mancroft at a death bed on the other side of the river. I don’t like the look of her.’ He spoke man to man, difference of rank forgotten in his deep crisis.
‘I’m truly sorry…’ The coachman was interrupted by the sudden opening of the carriage window.
‘What is it?’ asked his mistress. ‘Why are we stopping? Oh, thank God.’ She saw the house and the white-haired man staring up at her. ‘Sir, I must beg your hospitality and your wife’s. I’m…I’m not well.’
‘Neither is she,’ said the white-haired man bleakly. ‘She’s been in labour twenty-four hours, and no help to be had this side the river. I’m more than sorry, madam.’ He paused courteously, expecting a name.
‘Mrs Brown.’ A spasm of pain flickered across her face. ‘And…at least we can help you. My maid is an experienced midwife. If you will only give us shelter, she will tend to your wife.’
‘Oh, thank God!’ He looked up momentarily, then turned to shout a volley of orders to the servants who could be seen lurking as close as they dared to shelter.
Half an hour later, the woman who called herself Mrs Brown was sitting by the fire of a comfortable bedroom drinking hot soup and listening to her maid’s voluble French.
‘It’s bad, madame.’ The girl summed up. ‘It’s gone on too long; she needs a doctor; more help than I can give. I fear for the life of the little one. But, how are you?’
‘Easier, thank you. The pains have slowed. I think I could sleep a little.’ Her French was very nearly as good as the maid’s.
‘The very thing.’ She helped her mistress into bed, saw that there was a bell ready to her hand and urged her to get all the sleep she could, but ring at once if the pains increased again. ‘The kind Monsieur Trentham downstairs says he and his housekeeper will be watching all night. We will not lack for help if we need it. But, mon dieu, for a house with two children in it already they are strangely ignorant of what to do.’
‘Two children?’
‘Yes, in as many years. Monsieur speaks almost as good French as you do, madame.’
‘A man of the world?’ She pulled herself up on her pillows. ‘Oh, dear God, he’ll betray me.’
‘Not he, madame. He’s not of the world. He’s a man of God. Dévot, I think. He is praying for his wife, down in his study. Shall I ask him to pray for you too?’
‘I certainly need it. Oh, Denise, what will become of me?’
‘Courage, madame. You’ll have no trouble, you’ll see. You’re built for it. Tomorrow we will have a fine little boy, and then what a happy man the Duke will be.’
‘And the Duchess?’
‘That’s between you and her. But she’s such a saint, that one, I really believe she will rejoice for you if it’s a boy. Now, I must go back to my other patient. Rest well, madame, and trust in me.’
‘I don’t know how I’d manage without you, Denise.’
‘No more do I,’ said her maid.
Three days later, ‘Mrs Brown’ received her host for the first time. Denise had propped her up among her pillows and wrapped her up in the swansdown negligée the Duke had bought her. ‘How do I look, Denise?’ She studied her reflection in the hand mirror.
‘Ravissante as always, madame. But I doubt that monsieur will notice.’ Was there a note of warning in her tone?
Mr Trentham looked exhausted. ‘I owe you my wife’s life,’ he said, when the first greetings were over. ‘It was the hand of God sent you here, Mrs Brown.’
‘A rough hand!’ She smiled up at him, her huge dark eyes brilliant in the ivory face, glossy curls falling in controlled disorder among the swansdown, a most extraordinary contrast to the drained, sallow face of the wife he had just left. ‘But I must not jest about sacred things,’ she went on, always quick to sense an adverse reaction. ‘I am so very sorry about your poor little girl.’
‘The Lord gave,’ he said. ‘The Lord has taken away. And at least I still have my wife, thanks to your maid. And to God.’
She bit back another of the dry remarks the Duke so much enjoyed and widened her eyes at him. ‘And I have to thank your wife for feeding my poor little scrap,’ she said. ‘I am sure you see the hand of God there, as I do.’ No need to tell him that she had never meant to feed this inconvenient child herself.
‘Yes, indeed.’ He agreed with her earnestly. ‘But you must not be blaming yourself. You were worn out, ma’am. Your family should not have let you undertake such a journey at such a time. As to your little charmer, I think her needs have saved my wife’s reason. She took our loss hard; I was afraid for her. And then, your Caroline, so beautiful, so hungry, so good. She loves her already.’
A little silence fell between them, as he wondered what to ask and she what to tell. He pulled a chair close to the bed and sat on it, looking at her at once keenly and kindly. ‘Mrs Brown.’ He made it almost a question. ‘Will you let me talk to you like a father, my dear?’
‘A father!’ she exclaimed. ‘I never had one. And not much of a mother either.’
‘Then you have all the more need for friends. Tell me your trouble, my child. I am a man of God. It is my duty to help those in need, and He has sent you to me most directly. Tell me how I can help you?’
‘I hardly need to tell you, do I?’ She was crying, but quietly, slow tears that made the large eyes larger still. ‘You understand it all, do you not?’
‘Well, most of it, I am afraid. Your servants have been discretion itself, but that very discretion… And the timing of your journey. Were they mad, your friends, to send you off so late — and alone?’
She managed a tremulous smile, the tears still silently flowing. ‘He…he could not make up his mind,’ she said. It was so like the Duke to have made and discarded one plan after another until at last, characteristically, it was her dear friend the Duchess who had stepped in, made the arrangements, sent her down to the pensioned-off housekeeper who lived, so disastrously, on the wrong side of the River Teme. But how could one explain the Duke? ‘He’s not used to things being difficult,’ she said.
‘My dear, it is my duty to tell you that you must give him up, whoever he is. Stay here; stay with us.’ As he said it, he felt a flash of fear. What would his wife say? ‘We will help you,’ he went on bravely. ‘Think of a story for you. You’re so young. Stay with us, my dear. God is a kind father. Stay with us.’
‘Oh, but I can’t! They could not go on without me. The poor Duchess…’ She put a hand to her mouth and looked at him with big, scared eyes. Had she meant to let it out?
‘The Duchess? Oh, don’t look so scared, child. Your secret’s safe with me. Call this the confessional, if you like. Let me be your father in God. Tell me all about it. It will go no farther, not even to my dear wife. And it will help you, I am sure, to clear your mind. Talking always helps.’
‘Oh, yes! And yet — we’ve talked so much, the three of us. Well.’ She was delighted to feel herself actually blushing. ‘Not all together, of course. I love them both, you see. It is very wicked of me?’
‘Love is never wicked, but it can be selfish. I think you should ask yourself whether yours is not that. Surely, if you really loved both the Duke and the Duchess you would see it as your duty to leave them. Especially now that you have a new duty, to your little girl.’
‘But I can’t,’ she said. ‘I’ve promised them I’ll go back.’
‘Both of them?’
‘Yes. They need me, you see. When I’m not there they don’t know how to go on together. They quarrel. And then there are her debts. He gets so angry. I can always talk him round. Dear sir, try to understand. They
saved me. From my husband. He…he was not kind to me.’ A nervous hand pushed dark ringlets away from the side of her face and revealed an old scar. ‘I ran away from him. In Bath. Nowhere to go. My aunt and uncle Purchas hadn’t liked my marriage. My mother was abroad. Well, she always is. It was dark. I…I…there was a man in the street, following me; then the Duke came. Oh, sir, he was splendid! He took me home to the Duchess. I’ve lived with them ever since. I love them. Both.’ It came with a note of defiance.
‘How old are you, child?’
‘Twenty-five.’ She had decided to let her age stand still there.
‘And all your life before you. You could go abroad, to your mother. You’d be a married lady, separated from her husband, with a child.’
‘Mother would not have me. Nor would I go to her. You wouldn’t wish me to if you knew the kind of life she leads.’
‘Oh dear!’ He sighed. ‘Your aunt and uncle then? Purchas, did you say?’
‘Ah. They’re good. They’d have me. And forgive me, too. I couldn’t bear it. A Sussex squire and his pious wife. Church twice on Sundays. Jams and jellies and soup for the villagers. You can see my Aunt Purchas trying to like me, but she can’t do it.’ She smiled, her face transformed, alive, amused. ‘Well, you can’t blame her. I’m the family skeleton. I’m a disgrace in myself, you see. My mother never did manage to marry, though she tried hard enough. Poor Uncle Dick, as if that wasn’t bad enough, I remind him of the old days, of his first wife, my Aunt-Ruth. Oh, I loved her. If she had only lived, I’d have been quite different. Everything would. But my new Aunt Purchas was always ashamed of me. She was a Quaker, one of the Gurnings. No wonder she was glad to marry me off to the first man who came along.’ And then, aware suddenly of how much she was shocking him, ‘So, you must understand, it doesn’t much matter what happens to me. And I can make the Duke and Duchess happy. I really can. They need me. It’s a place for me; a life for me. I’m going back there. Don’t ask me not to. Please…’
The Lost Garden (The Purchas Family Series Book 5) Page 1