by May Burnett
Life was hard, yet what would drive a healthy and pretty girl of sixteen, with all her life and the myriad diversions and pleasures of society before her, to end her own existence? Or had it been an accident after all? Had she gone swimming after an unseasonably hot day, lost her footing, hit her head on a stone? Amanda had heard of cases where people drowned in quite shallow water. For an adventurous boy, that might be plausible, but a young lady would not risk the servants surprising her swimming so close to the house, presumably in her shift. Amanda could not imagine sneaking out at night for such a purpose, no matter how hot and sultry.
Yet what did she know? Perhaps young Lady Amaryllis had already absorbed the lesson that normal rules of behaviour did not apply to her. If her parents and her Aunt Louisa told her so from earliest childhood, who knew what she might have considered suitable behaviour? How the aristocracy thought was still beyond Amanda’s ability to fathom.
There were no hidden papers in Lady Amaryllis’s rooms, no diary that might give insight into her state of mind. Should there not at least be some letters?
“Rinner,” she asked the butler, “in what year did the previous countess die?”
“In 1787, ma’am, the same year I was first hired as a footman.”
“So long ago,” Amanda murmured. That would have been before the worst excesses of the French revolution, before the war. “Were she and her daughter close?”
“I was not in a position to observe for myself, but I doubt it. Lady Rackington spent little time in the country and left the care and education of her daughter to the governess, Miss Tarkles.”
“What became of Miss Tarkles after the tragedy?” It would have been hard to find a new position after your pupil died like that.
“She was no longer in residence at the time, my lady. The earl had dismissed her several months earlier, and she had already found another post with a family travelling to Italy. She was not young, and I have no idea if she is still alive. Nobody at Racking ever heard from Miss Tarkles again.”
“Wasn’t another governess employed in her stead?”
“No, the earl deemed that girls did not need that much education, that his daughter was finished with studying.”
“At sixteen? Is it known what she, herself, thought?”
“Not to me, ma’am, but in my experience, young ladies of that age are perfectly ready to consider themselves grown up and as wise or wiser than their elders.”
Amanda slowly took a turn around the rooms. If there had been private papers or letters, they must have been removed, probably by the girl’s father right after her death.
“Has my husband never ordered these rooms to be cleared of his sister’s possessions?” Twenty-four years seemed a very long time to delay such a housecleaning.
“There has not been occasion,” the butler explained. “His lordship spends little time here and never entertains when in the country. I am not aware that he has bothered to enter these rooms since they were last used by Lady Amaryllis.”
Amanda shook her head at such waste. The harp in the corner could have been donated to some other musically inclined lady; it was no doubt hopelessly out of tune but that could be dealt with. Her eyes fell on a small heap of books in a bookcase that otherwise held mostly knick-knacks of various kinds, like a porcelain rider statue and a silver writing set. What had been young Amaryllis’s literary tastes? Amanda opened the first volume, bound in leather, and found a collection of traditional fairy tales in French, perfectly unexceptional. The only book that seemed of marginal interest was an unassuming cloth-bound volume with handwritten recipes for home remedies. “Against Pleurisy,” she read the title on a randomly opened page.
“I haven’t seen a stillroom in this house,” she remarked as she read on, crush two fresh, vigorous ladybugs with a pestle. How revolting. That was unlike any home remedy against pleurisy she had ever come across before; it sounded almost like a witch’s brew. “Was Lady Amaryllis interested in remedies and potions?”
“Not to my knowledge, my lady. It is scarcely an interest her parents or Miss Tarkles would have encouraged.”
But if the former were never home, and the governess had been dismissed, who knew how a bored young girl might have spent her lonely hours? Amanda would have a more thorough look at the strange little book later. She tucked it under her arm.
“Have these rooms cleared of their contents and thoroughly aired. Give the contents of the jewel box to Mr. Tennant when next he arrives; the clothes can be distributed amongst the staff.” Though the garments were wildly out of fashion, the fabric could be reused. “The books go to the library, the harp to the music room, anything else to the attics.”
“Very well, my lady. Thank you.”
As she left the suite, Amanda decided to let Mattie redecorate it in some different colour scheme and more modern furniture. She wanted no shrines to long-dead in-laws in her home.
Chapter 15
Soon after Amanda had returned to her own rooms, an especially vigorous kick against her stomach reminded her that she carried a small passenger, one who seemed impatient to arrive in the world. No more impatient, however, than she was to recover her normal proportions and slim waist.
Once that ordeal was past, she would be expected to leave her pleasant but quiet retreat and face society as Lucian’s countess. Was she ready? She could try to remain in the countryside permanently, like a rabbit clinging to its burrow, but that would be dull and cowardly. Even there, unless she refused to meet anyone at all, she would not be able to escape gossip about Lucian’s latest chère-amies. Everyone would assume that he had quickly tired of Amanda and abandoned her in the country, unworthy to be presented to his fashionable friends. It would be intolerable.
Even in town, of course, Amanda would not be able to overlook his indiscretions; she might even have to chat and share meals with his past and current mistresses. The prospect chafed Amanda’s pride. Even if the match had not been her choice and Lucian had already done so much for her, did she have to put up with that? No matter how normal everyone around her might consider it, Amanda did not care to see her husband squiring other women around, whispering sweet nothings into some jaded matron’s ears. Was there any chance of reforming him, turning him into a loyal husband like her father? Such paragons were rare even among the gentry and middle classes. How likely was it that a man might tire of his freedom and remain content with just one woman? For a while, aye, but in the long run?
She sat down, her shoulders slumping tiredly. She was only teasing herself with such futile hopes and illusions. A tiger did not change his stripes. A libertine of thirty-eight—thirty-nine next month—would hardly change his whole life for the sake of her, Amanda Prendergast.
Amanda Rackington, she corrected her thought. She was married, a countess, and not plain, though no great beauty either. The only advantage she had over Lucian was her relative youth, and he was hardly likely to prize that above such qualities as sophistication, elegance, and wit. Her husband knew all about international affairs, spoke several languages, was known to the Czar of Russia and probably half a dozen other monarchs . . . what was a man like that doing with an utterly commonplace country-bred girl? She was merely a charity project, one he would eventually come to regret if she was too demanding.
There was another obstacle: if, by some miracle, she could reform Lucian and establish something approaching a normal marriage, Amanda would be expected to cater to all his manly needs, needs honed by decades of reckless indulgence. Impossible. She did not even know if she could bring herself to try lying together once, let alone on a regular basis.
Sooner or later it would become inevitable, so perhaps she should just get past that unpleasant duty at the earliest opportunity. It might not be that bad with an acclaimed master of the amatory techniques. Really, there was no choice. She needed to find out what that bliss Mattie had mentioned was all about, so as not to sound like an ignorant fool whenever somebody made a risqué remark or allusion once
she returned to London and took her place in society. To blush or pretend exaggerated priggishness might have fooled Mattie, barely, but among Lucian’s friends, it would not fly.
Bliss, though? Really? As unlikely as it sounded, Mattie was not prone to exaggeration or fancy. Amanda could certainly use some bliss in her life after those last horrid months, not to speak of what still lay ahead. When she considered it logically, the ladies with whom Lucian sported immorally must get some pleasure out of it, or they would not bother. Except for the courtesans and other whores, of course, who suffered it for money’s sake.
She pictured what that must be like, and shivered. They probably got used to it by and by, but the humiliation of the first few times . . . Had her mother had her way and thrown Amanda out, alone and penniless and with child, most likely she would have ended as one of their number. It did not bear thinking about. Amanda would try to look upon fallen women more charitably than she had done in the past when she’d unthinkingly copied her mother’s disdain and disgust.
Men who hired such women, shared their body with them, presumably felt something very different from disgust. Or did they? Could a man lie with a person he despised? Her own experience supplied the answer. If her uncle had felt the smallest respect or affection for her, he could never have acted as he had. And she had hated and despised him, but to no avail.
In taking a less black-and-white view of promiscuity and lechery, was Amanda allowing her values to sink towards those of the licentious class into which she had married? Would she look back on her current self as naïve and judgemental in later years? Anything was possible if a ruined gentleman’s daughter could become a wealthy, respected countess merely by a short ceremony and a few lines on paper.
But no, she still felt angry and sad that such things existed at all. To accept that not all persons involved in immoral actions were irretrievably damned and intrinsically bad was merely a small adjustment. She’d try to be more tolerant of others, but she still was not going to indulge in anything wrong herself. Ever. No matter how often Lady Evencourt told her that she was a naïve little bourgeoise. If Amanda gave up her ideas of right and wrong, she would no longer be the same person, a person she could like and respect. But she would be careful before voicing condemnation of others without knowing all the circumstances.
Her eye fell on the little cloth-bound book she’d brought from Lady Amaryllis’s rooms. If only it really were a witch’s book, it might suggest a love potion that would solve her matrimonial problems. If one believed in that sort of superstition, which Amanda most emphatically did not.
Half an hour later she had not discovered any love potions. The remedies, written down with neat, careful letters in faded blue ink, were mostly for common ailments, fever, quinsy, spasms, boils, and the like. Some were marked as useful for animals rather than humans. Only the ingredients stood out, as the unknown author had a strange penchant for using live animals in her concoctions. Who would want to use the intestines of a freshly caught mouse in a complicated remedy against bladder infections, even if those disgusting additions were to be removed with a fine sieve before the tincture was administered orally? Amanda would vomit merely from knowing how the medicine was made.
And really, adding dust from a freshly dug grave to an oil to be rubbed into the scalp against hair loss? The author must have been insane, or maybe she’d written the thing as a laborious joke. If the book was not much older, from the style and fading of the lines, Amanda would have suspected Amaryllis of inventing the whole thing. What would Mattie make of it? She would be coming back from her visit to the tenants any moment.
Someone had annotated a remedy against the cold with the words, Highly effective! That ink was fresher and the letters larger and bolder.
Could those two words have come from Lady Amaryllis’s pen? Had the girl tried out the cold remedy? It was one of the less offensive mixtures, containing only a thimbleful of ants’ bodies. Amanda leafed through the remaining pages more quickly, checking for more annotations.
The next one she found gave her a jolt. ‘To Empty the Womb,’ the title of the page said. Next to an elaborate recipe containing tail hairs from a male dog and the head of a frog, amongst more conventional ingredients, she found the note, Utterly useless!
She put the book down and pushed it away from her own body as she stared at the two words in horrified conjecture. Most likely the annotations were not from young Lady Amaryllis. Because if they were . . . at sixteen, a sheltered young lady should not know about such things as emptying the womb, a deadly sin. Yet if she did, on whom would she have tried it? An animal? A person? Good God . . . on herself?
Amanda shook her head at such outlandish suspicions and continued to scan the book. There was only one more annotation in the second person’s writing, towards the end of the book, next to a recipe against a bilious liver that ended with Warning: do not administer more than five drops at one time, and allow no alcohol within three hours; otherwise, the patient’s manhood or female parts will permanently shrivel. In the larger script, there were three ominous words: Works as advertised.
Amanda stared at the page. What had worked? The remedy for a bilious liver or its horribly dramatic side effect? Who on earth would willingly take even one single drop of the disgusting concoction, with such danger looming? An old woman, beyond childbearing years and suffering advanced liver disease, might possibly risk it.
Unless the person administering the potion omitted to warn the patient. Learned physicians or wise women never wanted laypeople to question their authority. Probably because half their effectiveness, such as it was, depended on faith. If someone put such drops into a man’s wine glass without his
knowledge . . .
Unbidden, the image of her vile uncle Roderick appeared before Amanda’s eyes. She had been trying to think of a punishment that would not affect his family and fortune. What would more perfectly fit his crime than that?
It was just nonsense, Amanda reassured herself. She was not about to search for a “copper spider,” whatever that might be, an important ingredient of that particular recipe. It was all fantasy, and anyway, she was not going to dabble in occult poisons. Nor would she have a chance to administer it; her uncle would not be so foolish to take any drinks from her hand. His guilt would make him suspicious if she even gave him the time of day.
No, it was something she might dream of, but not realistic, not real.
She hid the book in her travel necessaire. She would not show it to Mattie after all; it would only give her a strange notion of the Rackington family and their pastimes.
She rang for tea, and was placidly munching on a scone when Mattie returned.
“Amanda? Sorry I am late. I had to stay and talk to everyone who received a basket. The women all asked after you and sent their best wishes.”
“Good of them,” Amanda muttered.
Mattie scrutinized her with concern. “You look sad. Is anything the matter?”
“No.” Amanda forced a smile. “Just feeling a little sorry for myself.”
“We’ll soon chase those megrims away. Have you been in here by yourself all this time? You should have come with me. What does it matter if the tenants’ wives see you like that? You are not that far along, and half of them are in the same state.”
“I walked a bit, to the gallery. You remember the picture of my husband?”
“The large canvas of the young man holding a horse? You were communing with him?” Mattie sounded sceptical, and little wonder.
“Why not? He is very handsome,” Amanda said defiantly.
Her cousin frowned. “That portrait must have been fashioned ages ago. I will admit, those tight hose really show off his impressive leg muscles.”
“Pray remember that he is my husband,” Amanda said frostily. “His limbs are none of your concern.”
“Legs are all very well, but he did not impress me as a very pleasant young man. If the artist has rendered him truly, that youth would not give e
ither of us a second glance, and would not stop to apologize if his horse splattered us with mud. The composition and use of light are quite splendid, however.”
Amanda scowled. Mattie’s impression of the painted young lord tallied exactly with her own. “I regret that there was not time for you to meet my husband before his departure. Lucian is still handsome, in a more mature way, but no longer so heedless and arrogant. Unless the artist saw a side of him he has never shown me.”
“I am glad to hear it,” Mattie said drily.
Chapter 16
Mr. Tennant paid them one of his regular visits two weeks later. Since Mattie had joined the household, Amanda could invite him to family meals without risking malicious gossip.
Mattie and the secretary were much of an age, still on the right side of thirty, and immediately struck up an easy relationship, united in their worry for Amanda. Remembering her cousin’s confession that she missed a man’s attentions, Amanda watched them over lunch and wondered if their incipient friendship had the potential to become more. Mattie was definitely interested, judging by the way she ‘accidentally’ touched his hand or shoulder on occasion, but Tennant was harder to read. Unless he was very slow, he must be aware of the young widow’s interest, but he gave no outward sign of his feelings.
“Mary is a perfectly suitable name for a girl,” he was telling Mattie, who was in favour of Olivia or possibly Cleone that week. “More to the point, I know of no reason why Lord Rackington would dislike the name.”
“So there are female names he has reason to dislike?” Amanda murmured. “I wonder why.”
Tennant did not choose to reply directly. “I am glad that all is going so prosperously here. I write to the earl regularly, but it will take several weeks for him to receive any correspondence and even longer for him to respond. The moment I have even a line from him I shall send it down here by messenger.”
“He is not in the Americas, is he?” Mattie asked curiously. “I gather from the papers that we are on the point of war again. If he has gone there, he might be stuck for a long time, perhaps even interned as a spy or prisoner of war.” Her voice did not denote any particular worry at the prospect. Amanda had to remind herself that Mattie had never met Lucian.