Dukes to Fall in Love With: A Historical Regency Romance Collection

by Bridget Barton

  “Let us make our way into the asylum, my dear, and hope we find a more sensible conversation there,” he said and returned her smile.

  Georgina was relieved to find that the inside of the asylum was far less austere and sinister than the outside. It looked clean and bright, with white painted walls and a good deal of light coming in through the large windows.

  The only things that would easily remind one that they were in an asylum were the occasional cries and wails of the inmates, the ones who could not be soothed.

  They were shown into the office of Dr Martin Ellis in no time at all, and he greeted them with such alacrity that Georgina found herself surprised.

  She had quite imagined that he would be suspicious of their intentions and perhaps even refuse to see them. When she found him most open to their visit, she was greatly relieved.

  “And you are acquainted with Esme Montgomery’s mother, Lady Wighton?” Dr Ellis said with interest.

  “Yes, Beatrice Montgomery and my grandmother, Baroness Elizabeth Jeffries, were childhood friends. They maintained their friendship throughout their lives, although I am bound to say that it was latterly by correspondence. My grandmother moved to Hertfordshire, you see.”

  “I see,” Dr Ellis said with a smile. “Well, tell me how it is that I may help you, Miss Jeffries.”

  “I had really wanted to know a little something of Esme Montgomery. I am greatly interested in the history of our two families and to find out a little something of Esme would help me to fill in a few gaps. It is all very sad, I understand, and dear Beatrice was still too upset to say much of it. And she is advancing in years now and forgets a great deal.” Georgina felt terrible telling such an outright lie to a man who seemed to be so very open to helping her.

  However, she did not want to risk leaving that place without as much information as possible. Ever since Branton Montgomery and then David Ellington had described the young Lady Esme Montgomery, Georgina had been convinced that she must surely have been the young lady she had seen so distressed upon the lawn of Ashdown Manor that day so many years ago. She knew that she was important somehow, a pivotal part of the whole story.

  And she knew that if she did not get to the bottom of the whole thing sooner or later, there was a great chance that she and Emerson would never progress beyond the point of being friends.

  “Well, I can tell you that Esme Montgomery was committed to this asylum shortly before I arrived here. I was a local physician with a great interest in mental infirmity, and when the position arose to take charge of this place, I seized it with both hands.” He paused for a moment and smiled, clearly still content with the decision he had made. “So, Esme Montgomery was admitted some thirteen years ago by my predecessor, a few short months before I arrived. My first and abiding impression of her was a woman trapped in the deepest melancholy. She was never particularly agitated, although my predecessor’s notes would suggest that she was when she first arrived. I have often wondered if her melancholy and sense of resignation had more to do with her admittance to Ainsley than her condition. Although I must say that her mother was most determined that the young woman could not be managed in the world any longer and that her continued stay at Ainsley was absolutely necessary.”

  “But you did not think it so?”

  “She was clearly in need of some assistance, that much was true. She struck me as a young woman who was simply waiting to die, a woman who no longer had any enthusiasm whatsoever for life. But I could not help wondering if that could not have been remedied to some extent if she had been kept at home where she had access to friends and family.”

  “Did anybody ever visit her here?”

  “If they did, then it would have been in the very early stages when my predecessor was still incumbent. But it is true to say that I have never known anybody to visit Esme Montgomery since I have been in my current position.”

  “Goodness me, how very sad,” Georgina said and once again had the greatest sense of abandonment and wondered what on earth had happened for poor Esme Montgomery to deserve such a fate.

  “As sad as it is, I am bound to say that it is extremely common. People pay for their relatives to be kept out of their lives, and they do not want to be reminded of their existence. I am sure you realize that society views mental infirmity as a failing, and the families of such people are usually subject to the greatest weight of shame imaginable. They do not see such illnesses with the same compassion as they might look at a physical injury of some sort. And it is especially true of the upper classes and most particularly the aristocracy. Once they have placed their relative in just such a place, they do not visit them in the hopes that everybody around them will either not know or will quickly forget. It is a great shame, but there it is.”

  “And it was Lady Beatrice who paid for her daughter to remain here?”

  “Yes, Lady Beatrice and, I believe we received an extraordinarily large donation from another source. Baroness Elizabeth Jeffries, as a matter-of-fact,” he said wide-eyed. “Goodness, that is how the name was so familiar to me. Your grandmother had been the lady who made a very great donation at the time of Esme Montgomery’s admittance.”

  “That is very interesting, Dr Ellis. I had no idea that my grandmother had been so charitable.” Georgina tried to smile, but she knew that her grandmother was anything but charitable.

  No doubt there was some cold calculation in her donation to the previous warden. Perhaps it had convinced the man that Esme Montgomery really did belong in an asylum instead of just at home where the smallest amount of loving kindness might have gone a long way to curing her maladies.

  “We are very grateful to all our benefactors, Miss Jeffries, for a place such as Ainsley is not cheap to run.”

  “Quite so, Sir,” she said and then suddenly another question occurred to her. “Tell me, did Lady Beatrice attend her daughter’s funeral? I am assuming that it took place here in Devonshire given that this is where she died.”

  “Funeral?” Dr Ellis placed both of his palms on the desk in front of him and leaned back, pushing down hard on them. “What funeral, my dear?”

  “Esme Montgomery’s funeral, Dr Ellis.”

  “Miss Jeffries, Esme Montgomery never had a funeral.”

  “She never had a funeral? But why?” Georgina said reeling.

  “Because she did not die, Miss Jeffries.”

  “Are you absolutely sure, Dr Ellis?”

  “Given that I have only seen the lady this morning, Miss Jeffries, I can tell you with certainty that Esme Montgomery is still very much alive.”

  Chapter 31

  Dr Ellis was so quick to allow her to visit Esme Montgomery that she realized he was actually relieved that the poor woman finally had somebody from the outside world to see her.

  When Georgina had immediately said that she would wish to see her if he would allow it, she had thought for a moment that the doctor might allow his emotions to be seen. At least, if nothing else, Esme Montgomery had Dr Ellis on her side.

  “Introduce yourself to her very gently, Miss Jeffries,” Dr Ellis said as the two of them made their way through an extraordinarily long corridor. “She is not given to bouts of wild emotion, so you need not have any concerns there. My only worry is a deepening of the melancholy so you will be careful, will you not?”

  “Dr Ellis, I shall be most sensitive, I assure you.”

  There had been no question of Jeremy joining her, and he had been left enjoying some light refreshments in the doctor’s office.

  “Well, here we are. I shall come in with you for a moment so that Esme realizes it is quite safe, and then I shall leave you, but I shall not be far away.”

  “Thank you, Dr Ellis, you have been most kind.”

  Georgina was surprised to be walked into a pretty and private bedchamber. It was a room on the far side of the west wing of the building, and it looked out over a beautiful woodland and the lake.

  A woman with fair hair sat with her back to them
in a chair, staring out of the window. She hardly moved as they entered and did not turn her head to see them.

  “Esme, it is Dr Ellis.”

  “Good afternoon, Dr Ellis.” Her measured, cultured voice was a far cry from the moans and groans Georgina had heard at the other end of the asylum.

  The west of the asylum was a very quiet place, and she wondered if the more manageable inmates were housed there, people just like Esme Montgomery whose conditions did not lead them to behave in a distressing manner.

  “I have a visitor for you, Esme.”

  “I do not get visitors, Dr Ellis.”

  “But Miss Jeffries has come a long way.” At the sound of that name, Esme jumped out of her seat as if she had been fired from a cannon.

  She spun around and looked all around the room, her eyes searching for somebody she did not see. Immediately, Georgina realized that she was looking for Elizabeth Jeffries, the old Baroness.

  “Esme, my name is Georgina Jeffries. You need have no fear that my grandmother, Elizabeth Jeffries, is here, for she passed away many years ago. You are quite safe, and if you will give me a few minutes of your time, you will find that I am by no means the same woman that my grandmother was.”

  “You do not really look like her,” Esme said, immediately calming down on hearing that the old Baroness was dead. She walked slowly towards Georgina, closely studying her face the whole time. “Perhaps there is a little resemblance, but there is none of the hardness. What did you say your name was again, young lady?”

  “My name is Georgina,” she said, and as she regarded Esme closely, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that she was the young woman who had paced the lawns of Ashdown Manor fourteen years before.

  “Georgina,” Esme said and smiled. “So, you have come all the way from Hertfordshire to visit me?”

  “You know where I am from then?”

  “If you are the granddaughter of Elizabeth Jeffries, then you have undoubtedly hailed from Ashdown Manor in Hertfordshire.” Georgina had not expected Esme Montgomery to be particularly lucid, and she had certainly not expected her to be as quick-witted as she seemed to be.

  “Yes, that is right. But I am visiting you today from Devonshire, for I have been staying in Rowley with relatives.”

  “Rowley?” she said and her eyes, pale and blue, widened with emotion. Rowley,” she said again.

  “Yes, my relatives live at Winton House.”

  “Yes, of course. Elizabeth Jeffries was an Allencourt.” Esme spoke almost as if to herself and nodded gently. “Yes, of course.”

  “I am so very glad to finally meet you, Esme,” Georgina said and then turned to look at Dr Ellis in the hope that he would leave them alone for a few minutes so that they might talk in private.

  That wonderful and kindly physician immediately perceived her meaning and nodded gently at both women before making his way out of the room and gently closing the door behind him.

  “And I am glad to meet you, Georgina. I do not get many visitors. No, I do not get any visitors. I have not been visited for more than eleven years.”

  “Not even your mother?”

  “Yes, she was the only one who came. But she only ever came so that she might tell me that I would never get out of here, that I would never be able to cause her trouble again.” Elizabeth’s shoulders sagged. “Is she still living?”

  “She is still living, Esme, but she is old and frail and bound to her bed. She can do you no more harm.” Georgina knew that she spoke out of turn, but it was clear to her from everything that she had learned that Beatrice Montgomery most certainly had done her daughter harm.

  “That is not a thing to be believed, Georgina. She is not a good woman, and I would beseech you to have nothing more to do with her. If you have met her in this lifetime, swear to me that you will never meet her again. She is the foulest person in creation, a poison.”

  “I know. She and my grandmother would seem to have been cut from the same cloth.”

  “They most certainly were, although my mother outstripped your grandmother by many a furlong.”

  “I have seen you before, Esme.”

  “But you seem too young. I cannot imagine that you have seen me.”

  “It was fourteen years ago at Ashdown Manor. I know it was you; I am certain of it. You have not changed a great deal I am bound to say.”

  “When one is in an asylum, my dear, the stresses and strains of ordinary life are non-existent. I have been here in the west wing for many years, and it is so quiet and peaceful. I suppose the peace and solitude stops my hair from turning grey and my skin from turning to powder.”

  “You were so distressed when I saw you. I was but six years old, or thereabouts, and you were pacing the lawn outside the house as if you were looking for somebody.”

  “Yes, I remember it. It was not long after then that I was brought here.”

  “But what happened?”

  “To tell you, it would be to tell you something that I have never spoken of before. With your grandmother gone, and my own mother surely soon to follow, there will soon be nobody left who remembers.”

  “You may tell me. You may tell me anything in the world, and I will keep it safe.”

  “It has long passed the point where there is any benefit to be gained from saying it all aloud,” Esme said and sighed before turning to look out of the window again.

  Georgina had the awful sensation that she might once again be about to hit a dead-end, and she knew she could not let that happen.

  “Were you looking for Samuel that day?” Georgina said, following her instincts.

  And her instincts served her well, for Esme turned around to face her with such a look of pain that Georgina could have cried.

  “He was your son, was he not?”

  “Yes, yes he was my son,” Esme said, and tears rolled down her cheeks.

  Without another word, Georgina walked towards her and pulled her into her arms, holding her tightly and allowing her to cry for all she was worth.

  “My son, my little boy. Destined to be trapped in servitude his whole life to pay for my mistakes.” She extricated herself from Georgina’s embrace and made her way back to her chair, lowering herself down into it and staring out of the window again.

  Georgina continued to stand behind her, speaking gently.

  “They took him from you, did they not? Your mother and my grandmother?”

  “The Devil himself could not have paired two more suitable friends,” Esme said bitterly. “And their friendship seemed to give them greater power somehow.”

  “Esme, what happened?”

  “I was but nineteen years old when I first met the Duke of Calder. It was at a week of sporting events held by an Earl on the border between Devon and Cornwall. He was more than seventeen years my senior, and yet I thought I had never seen a more handsome man in all my life. His hair was such a beautiful shade of brown, in some lights almost silvery,” she said and stared off into space.

  Georgina felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up; the Duke was certainly Emerson’s father, of that she had no doubt. Perhaps his hair had simply been more silver than brown by the time he had become acquainted with his own son.

  “I knew that he was married, of course, and you must not think that he was an evil man, for he was not. He was just so very sad, so very alone. The Duchess had no time for anything in the world but her illness, although I felt nothing but pity for her on its account. She had been an invalid for so long that it seemed she was simply waiting to die. It was silly, I know, but I fell in love with him, and to my amazement, he fell in love with me also. He came across to Cornwall from Devon at every opportunity, and I spent the happiest moments of my life with him. But our affair did not last long. It had been just a few months when I discovered that I was with child, and I truly did not know which way to turn. I knew I could not tell him, for his life was already so very complicated. But I had nobody else in the world, and in the end, I was forced to tell my m
other. In truth, I would have preferred to have told my father, but he had been gone for so long. But had he been alive, I know that he would have understood. He was such a fair and good man, and I would have given anything for him to have been spared; I would even have thrown my mother’s life away in his place.”

  “That is perfectly understandable, Esme.”

  “But I told her, and it was the worst thing that I could have done. I should just have told the Duke and taken some money from him and run away. I would have happily lived in anonymity with my child and a story of my origins. But I was young and afraid, and I had this silly notion that my mother would surely help me.”

  “But she did not.”

  “No, she only helped herself. And that dreadful woman, Elizabeth Jeffries, helped her.