The Lady and Her Secret Lover

by Jenn LeBlanc

  “Louisa, my friends and I, we’ll watch out for you, but we can only do so much. And Perry, well, he’s doubly challenged because he can’t be seen to be watching you or an entirely new set of rumors may start. He’s sent word to his brother, but who knows if he’ll make it to London for the season, as he’s such a dedicated recluse.”

  “Perry doesn’t seem like much of a rake if he’s willing to help protect my chastity.”

  “Perry…is definitely a paradox,” he said, and she knew he was smiling at his old friend.

  “Please do tell him I appreciate his help and his discretion last night. I’m not sure what I would have done—”

  “Don’t worry, Louisa. I’m certain he’s aware.”

  She sat back but stayed close, the warmth of him a comfort. It struck her as so odd that she felt so comfortable in his companionship, but it was that he wanted nothing more from her than words and smiles. She turned her face into the small bit of sun cutting through the window, and he inhaled sharply, his hand coming up to her chin and tilting her face.

  She covered the bruise, but he wouldn’t allow her to turn away this time.

  “Louisa, do I need to arrange for a doctor? We can find someone discreet. Do you have more injuries?”

  “No,” she said, and he ran a thumb along her chin until she winced, not from pain but from the inspection of it. “No, this is the ugliest of it. I don’t need to be pawed by another man.” He pulled his hands away, horror on his face, and she smiled and took them. “Not you, Hugh. That’s not at all what I meant.”

  “And yet I shouldn’t have handled you without permission, and for that I apologize.”

  He brought tears to her eyes, and she shook her head against the sweetness of it. “You’ll make someone a fine husband someday, and if it isn’t Amelia, it will be her greatest loss.” She took his hands and kissed the backs then held them. “I don’t know what I would do without you in my life, my dearest friend.”

  “Laugh a bit less, I imagine,” he said with a halfhearted grin, and she managed a smile. “I, um…I must get going. I’m meeting Trumbull at the Iron Duke for lunch. Will you be all right?”

  “I’m well enough. I need to catch up on my correspondence.”

  “Perhaps Maitland can come by and help with that?”

  “You may need someone to dictate your letters too, because your handwriting is abhorrent, but sir, I promise you mine is remarkable.”

  “Oh, of that I have no doubt. It’s nice to have someone to talk to when going through the tediums of the everyday, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, I suppose it is.” She snuck a glance at him and knew he was concerned for her being alone, but him staying here was inadvisable. They’d already spent too much time alone. She stood and walked to the window, the clicking of shoes growing louder before the door opened and he stood.

  “Louisa, you shouldn’t be in the company of a man alone,” her father’s wife said.

  “No, I shouldn’t. Perhaps speak with the butler who brought him to me then abandoned him here. Though I imagine it’s possible he didn’t know I was already in the parlor, as I was expecting a visitor today.”

  “Yes, well.”

  Hugh bowed before her. “Lady Mayjoy, my apologies. It’s my error, as I should have immediately left when I realized. But Louisa was quite cordial, while keeping the furniture between us.”

  “And you are…?”

  “Hubert Percival Garrison, Baron Endsleigh.”

  “Endsleigh. Have you spoken with Mayjoy?”

  “Yes, ma’am, when I arrived.”

  Her eyes slid between she and Hugh, and Louisa knew she had no idea what was happening.

  “Well,” Louisa said. “I have correspondence to catch up on. It was lovely to see you, Endsleigh. I hope to see you at the Trentham event next week.”

  “If you would be so good as to save me a dance, it would be much appreciated,” he replied. Then he walked to her, took her hand and bowed over it, but before he released her he gave it a warm squeeze and winked up at her. “At your service, Miss Present.”

  Then he turned, nodded to the viscountess and left.

  “Would he suit?” she asked when he was beyond the range of the parlor.

  “He would do, though I don’t believe father approves. Baron, you know.”

  “Perhaps his standards are slipping. I was actually coming to find you because…well, I see you are attempting to find a match. So it’s irrelevent. Will you need a new dress for Trentham’s?”

  “No, ma’am. I haven’t yet worn the blue that Marjorie made. It will suffice.” She was making awkward small talk, and Louisa wasn’t sure why. “So, my correspondence then,” she said and she curtseyed and went to her room.

  Ellie

  Ellie wanted nothing more than to hold Louisa. She wanted to hold her and never let go. She wished she’d refused to let her leave the night before but she hadn’t known what to do, and so she’d let Louisa do whatever she wanted. She wished, so very much did she wish, that they could go back before the ball and simply choose not to go.

  She’d had such plans for that night, and the bath when Louisa had brought her off had been…something she’d never even thought to want for, but oh how she wanted now. She wanted so much more. She wanted to bring Louisa off in the same way, to see her lose control by her hand. But now…all that had been taken from them, wiped away like chalk words on a chalkboard.

  She wanted to write to her, but what could she possibly say in a note that might be read by someone else? It was impossible. So she waited for word. For two days, she worked on her cross-stitch and played with her needlepoint and twiddled her thumbs as she waited any sort of news.

  “Maitland, you’ve been requested to tea,” her mother said when she entered her room.

  “Have I?” She dared not hope, but who else could it be? Please, God, let it be her. “And will you be accompanying—”

  “No, they’ve quite seen to my name being left off. Probably something to do with their daughter sneaking off from our house in the dead of night to return home.”

  She closed her eyes and thanked God in that moment. “I’m certain they didn’t mind. We took every care to be sure she was safe.”

  “Never mind now. At least you’ve been invited.”

  “I am sorry, mama, but really it must be an error.”

  “Maitland, there’s no point. Let’s get you ready. I refuse to keep the Mayjoy girl waiting regardless of their thoughts on me.”

  Louisa

  Louisa took Ellie’s hand and led her away from the parlor and all the chattering women. She drew her down the familiar half set of stairs and back up the other side to the walkway across from the parlor. It took all her will to walk. As they entered the massive gallery, she let out a breath, closed the doors, and locked them then turned.

  She needed her. She’d come home two nights ago and had immediately wished she’d stayed, but then she’d no idea how to fix it. To bring her back. To go back.

  Ellie took her face in her hands and pressed her against the door before she could even get a word out, and how lovely, how lovely it was. Her cool fingers skimmed up her cheeks and into the hair at her nape as she fell into the kiss, allowed the access, parted her lips and held on. She curled her fingers into the thick fabrics against Ellie’s hips, pulling her ever closer.

  She allowed herself to feel for a moment what this was like. “I’m sorry I left,” she whispered against her cheek. “I should have stayed.”

  “I’m sorry you left too. I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know—”

  “You couldn’t. How could you?”

  “It was awful, Louisa, seeing you like that, seeing how he’d ruined your dress and wondering, just wondering—”

  “Oh, Ellie, don’t,” she whispered, and a chill ran her spine. “Don’t think on it please, don’t.”

  “Whatever you need of me, Louisa, I’m here for you.”

  “Just please don’t— Can we go back?
Can we go back to before, back to when that horrid man hadn’t ruined me, before he touched me, back to when you—” She sobbed and her knees buckled, but Ellie caught her up and led her to the small settee.

  “Louisa, we can go anywhere you want.” She wrapped Louisa in her arms, rocking her gently. “The bath was so warm, and you were so beautiful. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in my life as you. I’ve never experienced anything so beautiful in my life as that moment. The scent of roses surrounding us—can you smell them?—the full headiness of rose on steam. The warmth of the bath, the beautiful milky water that hid your body from mine. Allowed you to play, allowed you to tease, allowed you to show me things I never knew possible. Remember that?”

  “Yes,” Louisa replied with a warm sigh. She cuddled into Ellie, allowing the space to feel the words.

  “After, we dressed in soft linen nightrails and built a bed of pillows in front of the fire where it was warm and the light made your skin glow like honey.” Louisa smiled at the change, happy to rewrite their history. “And you allowed me the same exploration that I'd allowed you, and we stayed in that room. Together. The whole night through, just you and I like we are now. Safe, secure—”

  They heard a beat, then another, and Louisa pushed back from her lover, her hands trembling at the steady sound of heavy footsteps coming toward them across the gallery.

  “What…what is the meaning of this?” the deep voice boomed from deep inside the gallery beyond the sculptures—the loudest she’d ever heard. The angriest. She tangled her hands in Ellie's skirts, torn between pulling her close and pushing her away. She listened as his heavy boots continued to stride the length of the gallery toward them. “Louisa, what have you done?”

  Ellie was frozen still and pale white, her hands clenched tight, the fear on her palpable. They should have been more cautious. They had always been so cautious… What hadn’t they—

  “Louisa!”

  Her lungs froze in her chest and spread the chill through her blood to the tips of her fingers. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered to Ellie, releasing her skirt and patting her knee. “I am so sorry. Go, run, don’t look back.”

  But Ellie didn’t move. She stared forward as Louisa’s father approached them from behind.

  Louisa hadn’t turned to him yet. She didn’t need to look to see what she already knew. She could hear those boots like a countdown to her destiny. “Ellie,” she choked. “Ellie.” She shook her hands, pulling at the skirts to get her attention. “Ellie you need to go,” she whispered as salty tears stained the words she spoke.

  She saw Ellie’s head shake and then she was naught but a whoosh of fabric— her skirts violently snapped from her hands as her father took Louisa by the arm, pulling her up from the settee. She didn’t look at him, she couldn’t turn away from Ellie. She wanted to see her go, see her run to safety. “Ellie! Go! Please!” she begged.

  Her father shook her until she lost her breath and was silenced. He turned to Ellie, who was getting to her feet.

  “Leave her be!” Ellie screamed, but he pushed her away, a gnat to his fury.

  “You’ll leave this moment. You will return to your mother. You will never speak of this or my daughter again, or I will ruin you. Do you understand me, chit? I’ll not merely destroy you, but your entire family. Think not that I am unable to do so.”

  Ellie’s beautiful lavender eyes met hers then like a storm, wild, dangerous and terrifying.

  “Ellie,” Louisa managed then. “Ellie, go and don’t look back. Save yourself.”

  Ellie started to shake her head, but Louisa’s father took one step toward her and Louisa could see Ellie’s fear in the way she shook, in the storm in her eyes, in the white tension of her hands. “Louisa, I can’t leave you with—”

  “You can, and you will,” her father said. “She is not now, nor has she ever been, of your concern. “Save yourself, as Louisa said, or I will happily ruin you in her place.”

  “Ellie, I’ll never forgive you if you do so. Go. If you love me—leave.”

  “Love? Love?” her father screamed as he turned to her. “You dare not speak of love in the midst of the unholiness you have cast upon my house!” He turned back to Ellie once more. “Get out now, or you shall both be ruined by my hand.”

  And Ellie turned and ran.

  And Louisa forgave her.

  And her father turned back to her.

  And it was the last conscious thought Louisa had for quite some time.

  Louisa

  When Louisa awoke, she was being bundled unceremoniously into an unmarked coach. Her father spoke with the coachman then gave instructions to one of his outriders, who would be accompanying her. She leaned against the side of the coach but groaned at the pain in her arm and sat upright again. She’d no idea her father could become so angry. So very angry.

  She moved her limbs to take stock of her soreness and noted that the worst of it was her right knee and shoulder, her elbow, her cheek, as though she’d been thrown against a wall or pushed down to the floor.

  She remembered him jerking her around by her left arm and reached up to it was very sore where he’d held on to her.

  She dropped her hands to her lap, and as the carriage lurched forward on its old, worn springs, she noted that the clothes she wore were not her own. They were older, bland, heavy, ill-fitting and somewhat itchy. Her head dropped to her hands, and her chest heaved in a sob that was arrested by a sharp pain in her side. She wouldn’t even be allowed the pity of a cry then. So be it. This was her fault. She hoped her father would do as he’d said he would and leave Ellie alone. She would suffer whatever it was he had deigned for her to keep Ellie safe.

  Louisa watched out the window as the houses went by at a much slower pace than she was accustomed to in any of her father’s well-sprung coaches. They crossed the Thames at Vauxhall but kept going south, farther than she’d ever been in her life. She’d never traveled south in London, always north. The streets were more rutted, the houses drabber, the paint more worn, and the brick heavier until the city seemed to dissipate and expand to country.

  Perhaps she was being sent to the country house? They’d only ever gone there by train and she was certain it lay north of London, but how was she to know the direction? It wasn’t her responsibility to know these things. She’d never paid attention to these things. She was always taken; she never went.

  She watched out the window and vowed she would forever pay attention to direction from here on out. She hated being ignorant and had previously thought herself intelligent, only now realizing that her intelligence had been limited by the immediate world in which she lived.

  She leaned back in the hardened squabs of the carriage and allowed her body to move with the rocking of the rusty springs. After a while, the carriage made a slow turn and she glanced out the window to see it pulling into a courtyard surrounded by large buildings. The front of the central building had a name, carved above the curved entryway. It read Magdalen Hospital and Louisa knew then she’d been written out of her family entirely. She wondered what story her father would tell society about her. Was she now dead? Or had she been married off to some distant peer? What was the story of her life as it would continue without her? She couldn’t disappear from London without a word, could she? She thought of all the young women who’d come out and were then sent off to take the waters at Bath, or to mind to their great aunt in Florence…what had truly happened to them?

  And what about Ellie? Her heart wrenched at the thought. How would she manage? What had she been told, if anything, and what had she heard? She hoped Ellie did as she was asked and kept quiet for her own sake, even as part of her wished Ellie would come and get her. Take her away so they could find their little cottage with the goat and the bell and the…the stupid cottage, from the stupid dream of an ignorant girl. Why hadn’t she checked the gallery as she always had?

  Outside the carriage window the outrider was speaking with a woman, accepting a folder with papers
and a bundle of bank notes. The woman looked at her. She couldn’t move. Not to run, not to breathe, not for anything. Her father had sent her away to be housed with prostitutes and pregnant women nobody wanted.

  The door to the carriage opened, and she sat staring out in disbelief. Sure, he’d beaten her, but this? She watched as the woman at the steps waved toward her, and her father’s outrider reached into the carriage and pulled her out. She thought she heard him apologize, but she wasn’t sure of anything at the moment, her eyes glued as they were to the letter and the money in the woman’s hand.

  “What did he tell you?” she asked.

  “It’s none of your concern,” the woman replied.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “You’re nobody now, like the rest of us.”

  “I’m not. I’m…” she replied; she couldn’t take her eyes from the letter, her father’s signature clear and perfect at the bottom. The woman spoke to the outrider, who still held her arm—luckily, she supposed, her right arm, and not the left arm that was still sore because of her father. Her father. She looked at the outrider. She didn’t even know his name. She recognized him only by the color of his livery, and was suddenly ashamed of that. She’d no idea if he’d known her for a day, or for her entire life, wound up in herself as she’d been. “I’m so sorry,” she said, then realized how ridiculous she must sound. This was all much too overwhelming.

  He released her arm and spoke to her. “This way my la— Miss.” But her legs weren’t working. Exasperated, he picked her up like she was nothing but a sack of potatoes and took her into a parlor and dropped her to a settee that was very old, and quite worn, then he turned and left.