Byron's Child

by Carola Dunn

  “Is Mr. Faringdale in the library?”

  “No, miss, I believe he went riding.”

  “Drat. Thank you, Potter. Come on, Emily, let’s see what she has to say.” Jodie led the way into the drawing room.

  “Who is it from?” Emily was puzzled. “I did not know you were acquainted with anyone else in England. In this time, I mean.”

  Jodie explained about Dr. Brown as she pulled off her gloves. Picking up the letter again, she noticed that it had been franked by Lord Font. Her heart sank.

  “We wrote to her at Font House,” she said. “This is probably just a note from Lord Font saying she’s never been heard of. How do I open this without ripping the whole thing?”

  Emily fetched a paperknife and carefully slit the seal. Unfolding the sheet, Jodie looked at once at the signature.

  “Cassandra Brown! Thank heaven.” She sank into a chair. “She is living in London with a Lady Bestor, and will be happy to receive us there whenever convenient. Her letter’s as cautious as ours was. Oh, she has signed it ‘Mrs.’—but if she had married here she would not still be ‘Brown’.”

  “Perhaps she is passing as a widow. That would make it much easier for a female on her own. I wonder who Lady Bestor is.”

  “Who knows.” Jodie shrugged. “I wish Giles was here. We shall have to go to London.”

  “Let us go and tell Charlotte. I expect she is taking her enforced rest. Roland is so solicitous, it makes her feel horridly guilty.” Emily had been let into the secret of Charlotte’s supposed pregnancy, since Jodie hadn’t the least regard for the impropriety of discussing such matters with an unmarried young lady.

  Charlotte was reclining upon a daybed in her dressing room. She was delighted to see them and set down her book, Mansfield Park, without regret.

  “It is very odd,” she confided. “Why, the hero is a sadly ordinary clergyman, and Fanny is a poor little dab of a girl. All the characters might well be one’s neighbours. There is nothing half so exciting in it as having Jodie and Giles appear from the future.”

  “The author is very much admired in the future,” Jodie assured her.

  “Oh, then I shall try to finish it. Did you enjoy seeing the market?”

  “Very much, but we have come to tell you about this letter.” Once again she explained about Cassandra Brown. “So you see, we must go to London.”

  “Perhaps Giles will want to go on his own.”

  “Let him just try! I need to research the amusements of the city. I suppose I shan’t be able to gatecrash the ton parties, but there are plenty of other things to see.”

  Charlotte sat bolt upright. “I have a simply splendid notion! We shall all go. Then I shall be able to sponsor you to balls and routs and Emily can have a proper Season before she is married.”

  “Roland will never agree to it,” said Emily wistfully.

  “Yes, he will, for I mean to tell him that I want to consult a London doctor, and that only the best furnishings from the best shops are good enough for his heir’s nursery. I am sorry to deceive him further, but sooner or later I shall really have a baby so it will not all be for nothing.”

  Jodie was struck by an unpleasant possibility. Suppose Charlotte never had the child she so confidently expected? Suppose she had died young and Roland remarried, making some unknown woman Giles’s ancestor? Giles was as vague about his family tree as Roland had shown himself to be in accepting his unknown cousins. He was certain only that the direct line from father to son was unbroken. Where inheritance was concerned, mothers counted for nothing.

  It did not bear thinking about. Jodie joined Emily in smothering Charlotte with hugs and kisses and congratulations on her brilliant plan, until she squeaked for mercy.

  Emily’s hopes flourished. “Perhaps I shall meet someone else Roland would consider a suitable husband.”

  “You know, Charlotte,” said Jodie, “it could be a way out of your own problem too. You can tell Roland the doctor says you were mistaken about the pregnancy. But how are we going to explain Cassandra?”

  “That is easy,” Charlotte assured her. “You said she is American. Nothing could be more likely than that you have a letter of introduction to an American lady living in London. In fact, if Roland were suspicious of you, which he is not, that would be enough to abate his mistrust.”

  “Great. All right, you tackle Roland and I’ll tell Giles. Boy, I can’t wait to see the big city.”

  Giles was equally enthusiastic, though his reasons were quite different. Apart from his desire to return home and his concern over the dangers of their lengthening stay, he was eager to discuss the theory of time travel with someone who must know more about it than he did.

  Used to more scintillating company, Lord Thorncrest also welcomed the suggestion that they should all go up to town. Vastly outnumbered, Roland conceded and sent a groom up to London with instructions to the staff of his town house to prepare for their arrival.

  ~ ~ ~

  Three days later they were off. After the first few miles, Jodie found the journey excruciatingly tedious. She envied Giles, riding alongside. He looked splendid on horseback, sitting tall and straight yet relaxed, in contrast to Roland who somehow managed to appear pompous even in the saddle. Lord Thorncrest had driven ahead in his curricle, promising to call on them the next day as he had his own house in London. Jodie wished she could have gone with him, covering the fifty miles in four hours instead of the six or more Roland’s travelling carriage would take.

  “Oh no,” said Charlotte when she mentioned this wish, “not on the post road. It is unexceptionable to drive with a gentleman in an open carriage about the country lanes, or in town, of course. Indeed, it is every young lady’s desire to be driven in the park by an eligible gentleman.”

  “Then I shall have to coax Roland or Thorncrest to take me, as Giles does not drive. All in the way of research, you understand.”

  They stopped to take luncheon at the Saracen’s Head in Beaconsfield. Jodie found the coaching inn fascinating. She tried to take notes when they set out again but the carriage, though comfortable and well-sprung, rocked too much. She had to acknowledge that it was almost equally impossible to write in a car on a freeway. Nonetheless, when at last they stiffly emerged from the vehicle onto the Mayfair sidewalk, she murmured, “Three cheers for Henry Ford.”

  The Faringdale townhouse was on Grosvenor Street, one of a row of Georgian brick façades joined in a terrace. Pilasters framed the front door, and the ground floor windows had curved pediments that reminded Jodie of Lord Thorncrest’s raised eyebrows. On either side of the steps up to the entrance, ornamental ironwork separated the sidewalk—no, the pavement—from the sunken “area”. The kitchen and “domestic offices” would be down there in the basement. Jodie glanced down the steep stairway and was glad to see that at least the servants had plenty of light and air from large windows.

  Whatever his faults, Roland treated his servants well. To her relief, she soon discovered that the family was equally well taken care of; like Waterstock Manor, the house had Burmah water closets.

  A half hour later the travellers were comfortably ensconced in the back parlour, with a fire blazing against the chill of early March and a tea tray on the way. Roland fussed over Charlotte, placed a footstool for her, asked anxiously was she quite comfortable. Giles was restless. Walking slightly stiffly after a day in the saddle, he went over to the window and looked out into the dusk.

  “I suppose it’s too late to go and see Mrs. Brown today,” he said regretfully.

  Roland looked round. “You are excessively eager to meet the lady. A beautiful young widow, is she?” He chuckled to show he was roasting Giles.

  “Quite attractive as I remember. I’ve only met her once.”

  So Cassandra Brown was young and attractive, was she? Jodie thought. Somehow she had pictured the physicist as middle-aged, dumpy, and most certainly bespectacled. Of course Giles was only keen to see her again because of her knowledge—but keen h
e undoubtedly was.

  “How do I go about sending her a message that we would like to call tomorrow morning?” he was asking.

  “Write a note and send one of the footmen with it,” Charlotte advised. “Tell him to wait for an answer.”

  “Is nine o’clock all right, Jodie?” Giles asked.

  Charlotte shook her head. “It is not proper to pay morning calls before eleven. Mrs. Brown may be dancing half the night away tonight, for all we know.”

  Giles looked startled at the idea. Jodie found his incredulity consoling. At least his image of Cassandra was not of a beautiful young woman enjoying the amusements of London.

  A sudden thought struck Jodie. “Dancing! Charlotte, if you are to chaperone me to balls, I must learn your dances. I refuse to be a wallflower.”

  “Unthinkable,” said Roland gallantly.

  “I shall teach you,” Emily promised, her brown eyes sparkling. “We shall start tomorrow. Roland, will you help me demonstrate the steps? And then partner Jodie while she practises? Oh, it will be such fun going to balls with Jodie, will it not, Charlotte?”

  Charlotte agreed, unoffended by the implication that going to balls without Jodie had been less than fun.

  Later that evening she confided to Jodie that when they were in London in the autumn she had been too unsure of herself to give her sister-in-law the support she needed. “Emily is right,” she said. “We shall go on much better with you to show us the way. You may not be conversant with all our odd customs, but you are so—so intrepid.”

  Jodie’s supply of intrepidity ran low that night. Lying wakeful in her bed, her feet on a hot brick wrapped in flannel, she felt very far from home.

  She listened to the watch calling the hours, the occasional clop of hooves and rumble of wheels as a carriage passed in the street: sounds more alien than any she had heard at night at Waterstock. Besides, she had known Waterstock Manor, however briefly, in her own time. The very house itself had been a link with the future. Here in the great city Giles was more than ever her only lifeline, and Giles cared for nothing but his theories and Cassandra Brown.

  Would she ever see Mom and Dad again?

  Don’t be silly, she told herself sharply. Feeling sorry for herself would get her nowhere. She decided to read for a while to take her mind off her worries. Dinah, who had unpacked for her, had put the biography of Ada Byron beside her bed. Now there was someone with real problems.

  It was not as easy as reaching out to turn on the bedside lamp. She had blown out her candle hours ago. There was a box of lucifers on the dressing table, with the little bottle of oil of vitriol needed to ignite them. And that, according to Giles, was concentrated sulfuric acid. Not something to be messed with in the dark. Nor did she think she could strike a spark with the tinderbox in the dark.

  Emily had said that a lamp was always left burning on the landing. Shivering, Jodie slipped out of bed and felt for her slippers and wrapper. Carrying the unlit candle in its holder, she tiptoed out of her chamber. Yes, there was the lamp, turned down low, with a jar of spills beside it.

  There was also a line of light under the door of Giles’s chamber. Talking to Giles would be even better than reading. Jodie tapped on the door.

  “Come in.” His voice was tired and abstracted.

  She opened the door, stepped in, closed it softly behind her. The room was chilly, the fire of banked sea-coal barely flickering. In a brown velvet dressing gown, Giles was sitting at a small table, his inevitable sheaf of papers before him. He continued to write for a moment before he looked up.

  “What is it, Jodie?”

  “I can’t sleep. I thought we could talk for a while.” She saw that his eyes were red-rimmed with fatigue. “But I won’t disturb you, I’ll just sit quietly. Can I get into your bed? My feet are cold.”

  “No, you cannot.” He spoke quietly but with determination. “You must be mad. What if someone has heard you moving about, seen you come in here? I know we are supposed to be half-brother and -sister, but considering what Charles has told me of the scandal flying about his friend Byron, that would be no protection for you whatsoever.”

  “Charlotte and Emily would not tell tales.”

  “No, but it would distress them. The servants would most certainly gossip, and Roland would throw us out on our ears.”

  “Oh, all right.” Jodie felt disconsolate but knew she sounded petulant. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m trying to get my theories in order for Dr. Brown tomorrow.”

  “Damn Dr. Brown. Can’t you think of anyone else?” Tears pricking her eyelids, she turned and flung out of the room, scarcely remembering to move quietly. All she wanted was a bit of comfort, and all he could think of was his damned physics. And Dr. Brown.

  Determinedly she blinked the tears away and lit her candle from the lamp with a spill. More than ever she needed the distraction of a good book.

  Ada Byron’s life absorbed her: the bright, sickly child, growing up with only her dogs and her horse for affection; the bitter, self-righteous mother, often absent, exacting love as well as obedience from the daughter who feared her; the mysterious, never-revealed portrait of the father behind its velvet curtain, and the volumes of his poetry, proudly displayed but never to be read.

  Lady Byron’s friends had dinned into Ada that she owed an unpayable debt to her suffering mother, that the slightest disobedience might be the cause of Annabella’s death. Instead, it was her famous and infamous father who died, in exile, when Ada was eight, his last words not of the fight he had led for Greek independence but of his little daughter, long lost to him.

  Then Ada at seventeen, in London for her first Season, met Charles Babbage, mathematician and brilliant inventor. Jodie fell asleep over a description of his Analytical Engine.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Have you ever heard of Charles Babbage?” she asked Giles at breakfast, her pique long forgotten. Only Emily was present; Roland insisted that Charlotte break her fast in bed and this morning had joined her in their chamber.

  “Babbage? Yes, of course. His Difference Engine is—will be in the Science Museum in Kensington, still in working order. If he’d ever completed his Analytical Engine it would have been the first real computer. Good lord, is that the Ada you keep talking about? I didn’t think her name was Byron, though.”

  “She marries Lord Lovelace, but I haven’t reached that part of the book yet.”

  “Ada Lovelace? That’s it. There’s a computer language named after her, an international standard for certain applications. She’s generally regarded as the first computer programmer. She foresaw all sorts of possibilities that Babbage’s mechanical machine probably would never have been able to carry out, even if he’d had the support to finish building it.”

  “She really was—will be brilliant then? She certainly intended to make her mark, though she wasn’t sure if it would be in math or music. She wanted to equal her father’s fame.”

  “You mean Lord Byron?” asked Emily. “He really is famous in the future?”

  “For his poetry, mostly, but he’s also going to inspire half of Europe to throw the Turks out of Greece,” Jodie explained. “I suppose in a way it’s just as well he has to leave England.”

  “I find it difficult to imagine him as a hero when all the world considers him a villain. It is a very odd feeling to hear all this before it happens.”

  Giles apologized. “It’s not fair of us to talk about it in your presence. I’m amazed at how you have adjusted to our peculiar circumstances. We’d have been well and truly stuck without your help.”

  Jodie nodded agreement as Emily blushed. At that moment Charlotte came in, her round, pretty face blooming under a delightful bonnet of blue velvet with an artfully curled ostrich feather dyed to match.

  “What, still at table? I am ready to go out. Emily, I have received a note from my sister. She is in town; do you care to go with me to see her? Jodie, Cousin Giles, we can take you up in the barouche as far as Lady Bes
tor’s house, or Potter shall call a hackney if you prefer. Then, later this afternoon, Roland means to introduce you to his club, Giles, while we ladies make some absolutely essential purchases.”

  Her blue eyes sparkled at the prospect. Nor was Jodie averse to exploring the shops of the greatest city in the world. Not only was shopping fun, she pointed out to Emily as they went up to put on their bonnets, but it must surely be classified as a popular pastime, qualifying as a research topic.

  “If not the most popular,” Emily agreed.

  Hurrying into her borrowed pelisse, Jodie ran downstairs to where Giles was waiting in the hall and whispered, “I’m sorry I was unreasonable last night.”

  “I’m sorry I snapped.” He gave her a quick, entirely brotherly hug. “Tell me, how can I get out of going with Roland to his club this afternoon?”

  Jodie considered. “It is something of an honour to be invited, I collect. Roland may be shockingly offended if you do not go, at least this once.”

  “You’re the historian.” He pulled a face. “My father put me up for the Liberal Club, but I never could stand the fusty old place.”

  She grinned. “If you are expecting a fusty old place, I suspect you may be pleasantly surprised.”

  Charlotte emerged from Roland’s study and Emily pattered down the stairs. They went out to the barouche.

  It was only a few blocks to Lady Bestor’s address in Dover Street. Jodie drank in the sights on the way. She would persuade Giles to walk home, she decided, so as to investigate further. They drove round Berkeley Square and there was Gunter’s, at the sign of the Pineapple, just as she had seen it described in a dozen books. Though the second day of March was a bit chilly for eating an ice, Jodie was determined to pay the famous confectioner a visit. All in the name of research, of course.

  The barouche set them down at the door of Lady Bestor’s little house. Giles knocked. Standing on the step, Jodie wondered if they were on a wild goose chase. Dr. Brown’s letter had been totally noncommittal. She might not want to help—but then she need not have answered at all and they could never have found her. Perhaps she would be unable to help, another victim of an irreversible accident. Who was Lady Bestor? What was Lord Font’s part in all this?