Slipper

by Hester Velmans

  He was whistling tunelessly through his teeth and looking around with his aloof stare. His eyes came to rest on a pile of soiled female linens. It was not the sort of thing gentlemen were supposed to see. He turned his gaze slowly back to Lucinda. Who herself was turning crimson.

  “Well,” he said, knowingly, with raised eyebrows.

  All sorts of thoughts raced through her brain. She could not imagine what he wanted with her. Yet his continued presence implied that he wished to speak with her. She thought guiltily of the fateful morning when he had surprised her sitting on a bench with the captain.

  “Well, well,” he repeated, relishing her unease.

  Lucinda’s knees began to quiver. She sat back down on the stool, with her back to the dressing table.

  “How old are you now, gel?” he asked.

  “Fourteen,” she said, swallowing, quickly adding, “almost fifteen.”

  “Fifteen,” he echoed. “Aha.”

  He continued to look her over.

  “You are not a wicked gel, are you?” he finally asked. Even though his voice was not unkind, to Lucinda this sounded menacing. “I mean,” he said, scooting over toward the foot of the bed, causing the featherbed to billow incongruously around his hefty thighs, “the kind who would commit a sin, with a stranger?”

  The blood pounded in her ears.

  “I don’t understand…” she began.

  “Of course not. It’s just as well,” he continued, “because you do know what happens to wicked gels, don’t you?”

  She nodded guiltily. The gallows…the executioner and his bloody axe. Being a wicked girl meant losing your maidenhead; everyone knew that. Lucinda always assumed that losing your maidenhead meant having your head chopped off.

  His tone turned fatherly, concerned. “Wicked gels are used goods. No one wants them. They are disgraced. And they die old maids.”

  “Oh,” she said. It was almost a disappointment. That particular fate held no new dread; it had been pounded into her head by Mrs. Limpid often enough. But she did see an opportunity, and seized it.

  “I understand,” she said, “that penniless maids also die old maids.”

  Edmund’s head jerked up. He had not expected her to talk back. “Eh?”

  “I mean…no one wants a maiden without a portion either.”

  Edmund was on his feet. He towered over her menacingly. “What’s this about a portion? What in damnation are you talking about, gel?”

  “Robert told me—he told me there was no settlement for me, sir,” she whispered, regretting too late her impulse to stand up to him. Now she had really done it.

  “You hussy! How dare you speak of matters that are not of your concern! A settlement! A settlement, eh? The impudence!” he hissed. “I…I…I’ll settle you, baggage, I’ll give you a portion right here and now, I’ll give you a portion you’ll not soon forget!”

  He lunged, grabbing her by the wrist and throwing her onto the bed, expertly tossing her skirts over her head so that everything below the waist was exposed while all above was gagged and muffled under the weight of her clothes. A heavy knee pressed down on hers, prying her legs apart. She gasped, struggling for air.

  Suddenly he let go. The unexpected chill on her thighs gave her goose bumps. The coarse cloth chafing her skin was abruptly gone, leaving her legs exposed to the cold air.

  It took her a few seconds to fight her way out of the tangle of her petticoats. Dazed, she bounced off the bed and ran to the door. Uncle Edmund had already disappeared down the back stairs as her cousins came bearing down upon her from the opposite direction. Their father had heard their approach; she had not. She smiled at them foolishly.

  “Lucinda! Your hair!” Mrs. Limpid railed. “How many times must I tell you that a young lady does not slouch about like Drowsy Dot late risen from her bed! Stay there, Mistress Slovenly, and do not leave this room. I will send down to the kitchen for that nurse of yours. Perhaps she can do something with that rat’s nest. It’s a disgrace!”

  Bessie was not in the kitchen. She was in Lady Clarissa’s dressing room, earnestly conferring with her employer.

  “But milady,” she was saying, “I don’t know, I simply…”

  “You do not have to know anything,” Clarissa interrupted. “I am commanding you to prepare it. It is your duty to obey me.” She looked rather put out. Bessie was usually more enthusiastic when it came to her potions. “It really is too bad of you to deny me. I thought we always had a good understanding…”

  “I know, madam, I am always more than happy to oblige, but this…I just don’t know enough…”

  “That will do,” Clarissa said with finality. “I expect you to have it ready for me. This night.” She turned back to her dressing table, and that meant there was no more to be said.

  Bessie curtsied to Clarissa’s broad back and quietly let herself out of the room.

  Clarissa had offered Bessie a place in her kitchen ten years earlier not because she felt sorry for her, but because she was eager to avail herself of Bessie’s salves and potions.

  From the start of her service at Belweather Manor, Bessie had been frequently called upstairs for secret conferences. She was charged with supplying remedies for Lady Clarissa’s many complaints: willow-bark and violet for the headache, fennel for dyspepsia, and groundsel for constipation. She had also discreetly supplied her lady with abortifacients—hellebore and pennyroyal—to “bring down the flowers,” for Clarissa considered her childbearing duties to be over now that she had produced a sufficient number of male heirs. Moreover, a variety of aphrodisiacs—Bessie’s avowed specialty—had been pressed on Sir Edmund, which he swallowed obediently in the belief they were preventatives for the gout. These seemed to be doing the job most effectively; the problem was that her ladyship was never, alas, the first or indeed the last beneficiary of Edmund’s appetites.

  Of late, however, Clarissa had changed her tactics. Having to face the fact that pumping her husband full of love-potions had done little to make him more devoted to her, she had now decided to tackle matters from the opposite end, namely, her own person.

  She had thus begun asking Bessie for salves to soften the skin, scents distilled from the glands of animals that would bring out the animal in a man, and poultices to melt some of the excess flesh off her frame. This area was not one in which Bessie was particularly expert, and since the whole operation was based on trial and error, it made her a little nervous.

  Clarissa’s latest idea had been to dose herself with the extract of the deadly nightshade, which was supposed to improve the complexion and make the eyes brighter and more beautiful. Bessie had been careful to dispense the belladonna in exceedingly small doses, since she assumed it wasn’t called “deadly” for nothing. But Clarissa, pleased with the results, and finding considerable pleasure in the herb’s narcotic side effects (she claimed it “eased the humors”), was now insisting on stronger, more frequent dosages.

  Troubled, Bessie shuffled back down to the kitchen, where she found Mrs. Limpid’s message. She immediately put her other worries from her mind. How gratifying to be needed by her dear lamb, who was too, too independent these days and rarely requested Bessie’s help anymore! She scurried up the back stairs as fast as her legs would carry her.

  She found the disgracefully coiffed Lucinda in the nursery, staring into the fire in the hearth, impervious to the noisy jostle of the younger children around her.

  “Come, pet, let’s do something about that mop-head of yours,” clucked Bessie. She sensed immediately that something was very wrong.

  “Bessie,” said Lucinda blankly. “Bess, will you stay with me a while?”

  “Of course, my lamb,” Bessie crooned. “Now, now, sit still and let old Bessie untangle your hair.”

  Lucinda grabbed her arm.

  “Stay with me, Bessie. Don’t leave me here alone.”

  10

  THE WOLF

  If a young maiden on her way to her grandmother’s house comes ac
ross a wolf in the forest, and the wolf devours her for his breakfast, one expects there to be a great hue and cry.

  And yet one can’t help wondering what sort of girl prances about dressed in red from head to toe. Or indeed what she was doing alone in the forest in the first place.

  In the weeks that followed, Lucinda acted uncharacteristically silent and demure. If Mrs. Limpid or one of the tutors gave her an order, she promptly obeyed; there was no sign of the contrariness she had exhibited since the start of adolescence. When her cousins teased her, she smiled and did not protest; they soon found a more rewarding target in Monsieur Padutou, the shy new French instructor. Instead of wandering off by herself, Lucinda stayed close to the others, dogging their footsteps even when she was not wanted. She paid determined attention to the communal lessons and clenched her hands and eyes tightly in prayer when prayers were required.

  Mrs. Limpid was, on the whole, pleased with her. “Now this is the way we expect you to comport yourself, Lucinda,” she told her one morning. “You are showing the proper behavior for a maiden of your station. I shall inform your uncle of this improvement in your demeanor.”

  Her comment alarmed Lucinda. “Oh please, Mrs. Limpid, don’t say anything to him about me—please don’t,” she pleaded.

  “We’ll see,” said the governess, marveling at her pupil’s new humility.

  But it was too late for Lucinda to save herself. On the day after this exchange, a footman knocked on the door of the schoolroom, where the older boys were at their Latin and the girls at their needlework. Lucinda’s aunt wished to see her.

  Lucinda started for the central staircase.

  “Not in her chamber,” the footman called. “Come with me.”

  He led her by the back stairs down to one of the smaller sitting rooms. “In here,” he said, opening the door.

  She sensed even before the footman had shut the door behind her that she had been tricked. The room smelled not of rosewater and powder, but of damp wool, wine, horses, sweat. She stood rooted to the spot.

  Sir Edmund turned to face her. “Well, baggage! Never did finish our little business, did we?”

  Somehow she found her voice—a whisper. “Sir, I regret what I said—about my settlement.”

  “Ah?” he growled. It was disappointing. One would rather see the wench defiant.

  She bowed her head. “That decision is yours. I should not have questioned it.”

  “Decision?” he snorted. “I have not made any decision. Yet.”

  “Oh?” She ventured a hopeful glance at him.

  He cleared his throat.

  “What I mean is, if you did your best to please me, I might look upon you more favorably…”

  She nodded demurely.

  Edmund frowned. The girl was a little too compliant. He preferred a little spunk. Although if she was as untried as he hoped, she might not have understood the subtext of his speech.

  “A man and a woman—do you know about that?”

  She stood perfectly still. She did. She had been kissed, and knew all about it—the probing tongue, everything. She blushed. She hoped he could not read her mind. She shook her head no, her eyes cast down.

  “I see.” He decided to be a little more brutal. “And this?”

  She knew he wanted her to look at something. Reluctantly, she lifted her eyes from the rug.

  Oh horror! In that one split second she had seen something blue, something lurid, which should not have been there! She sprang back, and lunged for the door. But with one hand he grabbed her by the shoulder and twisted her around, pushing her down onto a settee. The other hand was a pinion around her wrist, wrenching, forcing her hand to where it came into contact with the fleshy thing…

  “There! Feel it. Do you want to know what it’s used for?”

  “No, no,” she begged, “please, please…”

  Edmund was enjoying himself now. This was how he liked them: unripe, innocent. And terrified. He put a hand inside her bodice and pulled hard, snapping some of the ties.

  “Edmund!”

  Neither had heard Clarissa enter. Her face was puce, blown up like a frog’s.

  “How dare you! Let go of her this instant!”

  Edmund hastily tucked the offending appendage inside his breeches, like a little boy hiding a filched apple from his angry mother.

  11

  RUIN

  Lucinda was being sent back to Wriggin Hall, the home of her widowed grandfather. “Until,” said Clarissa sternly, “we can decide just what to do with you.”

  Lucinda thought of her unforgiving grandfather and the malevolent Aunt Arabella. Terrifying as the last fortnight had been, it was not a happy prospect.

  “But I didn’t do anything…?” she attempted.

  A blast of anger snapped Clarissa’s carefully composed compassion into bits. “Young lady. I know what you have been up to. We all know what you have been up to.”

  “I haven’t, I haven’t, please, please believe me!” sobbed Lucinda. “I didn’t know what he wanted—I thought it was you who sent for me…”

  Actually, Clarissa knew this to be the truth, for Bessie had come running to alert her. Bessie had overheard Bert, the footman, snigger to his mate about the sneaky task he had been given by his master. But that fact only served to fuel her anger.

  “Men—you have much to learn about men, hussy. They cannot help themselves sometimes. It is our duty to help them, by our proper behavior, to control their urges.”

  Lucinda rubbed at her tears. Her aunt was confirming something she had suspected all along. She was a wicked, wicked girl, and it was all her fault.

  “Believe me,” sighed Clarissa, “no woman is ever ruined against her will. And you, mistress, are embarked upon a course that will lead you to damnation. Mark my words. We shall do our very best for you, of course. I’ll pray for your soul, and your Aunt Arabella has some other ideas as well…”

  And with that ominous news, she swept out of the room.

  Lucinda, sitting at Bessie’s feet, had her head in her nurse’s lap. She had even let Bessie cover her head with her apron and gently massage her back, as she used to do when Lucinda was a little child.

  That was why her voice sounded muffled.

  “Bess, oh Bess, I can’t…I can’t go without you! What will I do without you?” she keened.

  “I have to stay here, pet. Lady Clarissa needs me, she will not let me go.”

  “I’m so frightened…”

  “I know, I know,” said Bessie, choking on a sob.

  “It was horrible…”

  “I know,” Bessie repeated, rocking back and forth.

  In fact, Bessie did not know exactly what had transpired between Master and her pet, and although she was just as curious to find out as the rest of the tittering household, delicacy forbade her from probing. She just hoped that her Ladyship had interrupted the proceedings in time and that the girl was not with child. What she did know, however, was that Lucinda had been compromised, and that was tantamount to ruin for a young lady. She sighed.

  “You’ll see, this will all blow over in the end. It will come out all right, my lamb.”

  This was too much for Lucinda. She jumped up.

  “That’s what you always say, Bess! And how has it ever come out all right? Things just keep going from bad to worse for me!”

  “Pet, pet,” shushed Bessie. “Surely they won’t hold it against you forever…”

  “It’s not just that! If only it were! Don’t you see? It doesn’t even matter what—what Uncle Edmund did. I’ll never be happy…I’ll be an old maid all my life—”

  “What…?” Bessie said.

  “Because they—Grandfather and Uncle Edmund—won’t provide me with a portion. No portion—no marriage. I know that. Everyone knows that. Because I’m a bastard. You hear? A bastard. See? I’ve said it. It’s what everybody thinks when they see me. They never say it to my face, but it’s what they’re all thinking. Because no one knows who my father is
. Because my father doesn’t care if I’m alive or dead…”

  The last sentence came out as a braying wail, and Bessie had quite a time of it trying to calm Lucinda down. When the wails had quieted to sobs and hiccups, she said,

  “Just because we have never heard from him, pet, doesn’t mean he doesn’t care for you. He probably doesn’t even know you exist.”

  She paused, thinking of her own offspring. Had they lived, they would certainly have been in a similar situation. “Look at me,” she said, cupping her lamb’s chin in her hand, “No, really look at me. I promise you—I swear on the souls of my poor babes—that I will try to find out who your father is. Or was,” she added.

  “But you can’t, I know you can’t,” Lucinda whimpered.

  “How do you know that? I never tried. I should have, but I never did.”

  Bessie paused. Why had she not tried to find out who the poor child’s father was? It wouldn’t have been all that difficult, at the time. Was it because she had been afraid of uncovering a messy tangle of grief? Bessie liked things to be pleasant and tidy.

  What if she had found the baby’s father at the outset? What if he had then claimed her? He might not have been as indifferent as the child’s maternal relatives. He might have wanted to keep the child. And he might have had a wife or a mother who’d likely, yes, who would almost certainly have sent Bessie packing.

  She knew, in her heart of hearts, that she had preferred to keep things as they were, happy in the self-imposed task of raising an aristocratic child who was unwanted and unloved by her own kind.

  But now? Now Lucinda was nearly grown, and everything was different. She should have seen it coming. Lucinda no longer needed someone to bandage her knee or tuck her in at night. Lucinda needed the friendship of important relatives, people of her own class who could protect her from disasters such as the one that had just befallen her; relatives who could provide her with the cold hard coin a damsel needed to assure herself of a decent future.