Summer Darkness, Winter Light

by Sylvia Halliday

  Chapter Seven

  “May I come in?”

  The soft voice interrupted Allegra at her work. She put down her beaker and turned, smiling. “Lady Dorothy. You are always welcome,” she said with a curtsy.

  The young woman took a turn about the stillroom, her wandering glance taking in every detail. The morning sun streamed through the open casement and sparkled off shining copper pans. “What a cheery place!” she exclaimed. Her voice was filled with an admiration that seemed excessive for such a humble chamber.

  “Aye, my lady. I like it.”

  “And what a pleasant breeze! I was so very grateful for the rain last night. It took away the dreadful heat.”

  Allegra eyed the woman with curiosity. She flitted around the room like a butterfly afraid to light. Clearly, Lady Dorothy hadn’t come to discourse on the room or the weather. “Is there something you wish, my lady?”

  Lady Dorothy hesitated, then turned and faced Allegra squarely. Her eyes were puffy and swollen, with deep lavender circles beneath. “’Tis…’tis only my eyes,” she said with a bright smile of apology. “I need a cure from you. I fear it must be the weather.”

  Allegra wondered if the poor thing had sat up all night weeping, after that terrible scene in Lord Ridley’s closet. But it wasn’t her place to intrude. “Yes, of course. The weather,” she agreed.

  The brave smile faded. Lady Dorothy sank onto a stool and covered her eyes with her hand. “Or a surfeit of grief,” she said, choking on the words.

  Allegra stared at the unhappy woman. There must be more to Grey Ridley than there appeared, she thought, to cause a sweet creature like this to weep for him. The tears of a friend, not a lover. She was sure of that, after seeing them together last night. “’Tis just His Lordship’s way, my lady. You mustn’t cry.”

  “But it isn’t his way! Or it wasn’t. Now…I don’t know.”

  “Perhaps—forgive my boldness, my lady—His Lordship changed when his wife died. Was he fond of her?”

  “He adored her. We never met her, but all his letters to us in India were filled with praise for Ruth. Peter…that is, Lord Mortimer, my late husband, used to say he reckoned that Grey and Ruth were almost as happy as we were.”

  “How did Lady Ridley die?” She had no right to ask the question, but Lady Dorothy seemed eager to confide in someone.

  “She lost his son in a stillbirth, then died of a childbed fever herself. Or so we were told.”

  “Some of the servants whisper that…that he killed her.”

  Lady Dorothy looked shocked. “Merciful heaven! How could anyone think…Grey? I’ve known him most of my life. It simply isn’t in his nature.” Her face fell. “But the stories they told in London weren’t like him, either.” She began to tremble.

  “Here, my lady.” Allegra poured a bit of soothing rosemary water into a glass and urged the young woman to drink.

  Lady Dorothy’s blue eyes were warm with gratitude. “You are very kind, Allegra. That is your name, is it not? Well, Allegra, if you should ever wish to go for a lady’s maid, you may seek me out in London. Bloomsbury Square. Near King Street.”

  “Thank you, my lady.” She hesitated. It was none of her concern, but she wanted to know. It suddenly seemed vital to know. “Lord Ridley…the stories in London…?”

  “This is only between us, you understand. But…they said he was challenged to a duel. He had killed a man in a previous duel, and the man’s friends demanded satisfaction.”

  “Was it in his nature to quarrel often? To duel?”

  “Not at all. After his years in the Army, Grey always said that he preferred peace. But…” Lady Dorothy turned anguished eyes to Allegra, “he was never a coward! Nor yet a drunkard. But they say he came to the field of honor so intoxicated he could scarcely stand. And when the signal was given, he…he dropped his sword and ran away.”

  Allegra bit her lip in dismay. She didn’t want to hear this. She realized with a start that she had hoped it wasn’t true. Hoped that they were mistaken, the people who had called him the coward of Baniard Hall. It was mad and foolish of her, but she was desperate to defend him. “A temporary lapse,” she insisted. “Surely the gin must have clouded his judgment.”

  Lady Dorothy shook her head, her face a study in misery. “It happened again and again, they say. Until he became the laughingstock of London. Young bucks vied with one another to challenge him. To call him craven and strike him in the face. To visit upon him every indignity. He allowed it all. Their mockery, their insults. He could only slink away to the sound of their taunts.” She sighed, fighting against fresh tears. “They called themselves the three Princes of Camelot—my Peter, and Richard and Grey. But we all knew that Grey was the natural heir to Arthur’s throne, a king among men. And now, to see him so low…” Her voice caught on a sob.

  Allegra felt helpless, aching for the woman’s pain, suffering even more for Lord Ridley’s humiliation, though she couldn’t understand why. She put her hand on Lady Dorothy’s shoulder and managed a gentle smile. “Please, my lady. Don’t begin to weep again. I can distill a soothing water to take away the redness from your eyes. But it will be useless if you continue to cry.”

  “Lady Dorothy! Has something distressed you?” Jonathan Briggs hurried into the stillroom and glared at Allegra. “Have you allowed your saucy tongue to get the better of you again, girl?”

  Allegra stared in surprise. Mr. Briggs had never spoken so harshly to her before. And for so little cause.

  Lady Dorothy composed her face, rose from her stool and smoothed her brocaded skirts. “You are mistaken, Briggs,” she said. “I am in no distress. ’Tis merely an inflammation around my eyes that Allegra has vowed she can cure.”

  Briggs clapped his hands together in annoyance. “Then do it at once, girl! Don’t keep Her Ladyship waiting!”

  “I shall need time to prepare…” began Allegra.

  He refused to let her finish. “Then bestir yourself!” he said, pacing the floor impatiently. “Why do you dawdle all day long? When our guest has need of your services.”

  “Please, Briggs,” said Lady Dorothy in her sweet voice. “For my sake, don’t scold the girl. I’m sure she will send the balm to me as soon as it is prepared.” She turned and made for the door.

  Briggs stopped pacing and bowed deeply. “Of course, my lady.” He bowed again, cleared his throat and bowed a third time. “I will see to it personally, my lady.”

  Lady Dorothy suppressed a smile. “Do so,” she said. “But spare me further bobbing up and down, or I shall soon grow quite giddy.” When Briggs blushed at her words, her gentle smile broke through—a teasing sparkle of blue eyes and white teeth. She nodded at Allegra and left the room.

  In the silent minutes that followed her departure, Allegra crumbled a handful of herbs and dried blossoms into a stoneware crock and poured in a few drops of sweet oil. She took a small pestle and began to grind the ingredients into a paste.

  Mr. Briggs sighed and gazed up at the beamed ceiling. “1 behaved like a damned idiot,” he muttered at last.

  Allegra had to agree. It was scarcely like him, to rail like a fishwife and bow and scrape in a flurry of servility. Not calm, reasonable Jonathan Briggs! Unless…Allegra stared, her jaw dropping open. “Mr. Briggs, can it be that you have lost your heart to Lady Dorothy?”

  “Don’t be absurd,” he growled. “’Tis entirely unsuitable. The woman is a lady in her own right, and the widow of a marquis besides. I’m the second son of an improvident knight, who wasted half of his inheritance long before my brother and I were born. I have neither the title nor the riches to approach a woman of Lady Dorothy’s rank.”

  “I didn’t ask what was suitable,” she said softly. “I asked if you had a fondness for her.” His embarrassed silence told her all. She laughed in tender understanding. “I wonder if you truly tried to urge them not to come.”

  “I serve my master first, whatever my own desires,” he said indignantly, as though he couldn’t imag
ine any other way to behave. He sighed. “But, yes. I was glad I could not dissuade them from coming.” His soft gray eyes were filled with longing. “She has only been at the Hall twice. Yet I feel as though I have known her forever. A lovely creature who makes the humblest rooms glow with her charm.”

  “Does she return your sentiments?”

  “I know not.”

  “Then why not show her your heart?”

  He frowned and waved his hand as though he were brushing away a foolish thought. “’Tis not to be. We’ll speak no more of it.”

  “But, Mr. Briggs…” It didn’t seem fair that such a kindly man should suffer the pain of hopeless young love.

  He drew himself up. “No. You forget yourself, girl. I have my honor. And my duties. As you have yours. Now—Mrs. Rutledge tells me you wish to go to Ludlow tomorrow.”

  He was right. It was none of her concern. “Yes,” she answered. “I need to go there. The apothecary in Newton has too limited a trade to properly supply my stillroom. I need ambergris and Florentine iris, as well as other substances.”

  “Ludlow is not Newton. A person—were she so minded—could vanish there. I trust you will not forget the contract you signed with His Lordship.”

  “Mr. Briggs,” she said sharply, “I was raised with as much honor as you were. I will ‘vanish’ when Lord Ridley releases me from my contract, and not before! Do you think I’m like the other servants here, a flock of do-naughts, loiterers, and scoundrels?” She felt her anger growing. She pounded her herbs as though she meant to murder them. “Have you no care? They steal from His Lordship and you don’t even see it!”

  Briggs scowled. “I see it,” he said bitterly. “But when I try to tell Lord Ridley, he laughs and makes a jest of it. If I persist, he tells me to leave the servants to the care of Mrs. Rutledge. I think he knows very well what goes on at the Hall—sober or not. I suspect it amuses him. Sometimes I even think he encourages the dishonesty. He sends a footman to buy a handkerchief, bearing a sack of coins fat enough to purchase a whole suit of clothes. And never asks for any return. I know he’s not blind to the cheating and thievery.” The scowl deepened. “So I must pretend to be, to satisfy him.”

  Allegra felt a pang of remorse. Mr. Briggs had scarcely deserved her condemnation. After all, the master of the estate, not the steward, set his seal on the character of the household. And if Ridley courted financial ruin, what was Briggs to do? “Forgive my outburst, Mr. Briggs,” she said.

  He tried to look stern, but his gentle voice put the lie to his expression. “You must learn to guard your tongue. If not, it will bring you grief. His Lordship is a man of strong passions, for all his seeming indifference. There is anger sleeping within him, I think. And you have roused it more than once. I fear you could goad him into a thrashing one day.” He searched her face, then shook his head. “You have no fear of that, have you? I see it in your eyes.”

  Her mouth twisted in a wry smile. “Shall I tell you about grief, Mr. Briggs?” she asked.

  He laughed softly. “Am I to learn of the mysterious Allegra Mackworth at last?”

  She looked toward the open door through which Lady Dorothy had passed. “’Tis a day for hearts to be opened, perhaps.”

  He looked disconcerted. “I’ll guard your secrets, if you will mine.”

  “Fair enough. Well, then…When I was a child, I lived with my mother in the Colonies. She was an indentured servant. Housekeeper to a rich squire who had bought her contract for seven years. And every night, until she died, the fat pig would come to our room and rape her. Afterward, she would creep to me in my little trundle bed and hold me. And weep until she had no tears left.”

  Briggs’s gray eyes were soft with sympathy. “Allegra…”

  She gulped, surprised at the depth of her pain, even now after all these years. “’Tis still so real. So fresh. I think it will haunt me forever. She was such a frail creature. I did her work—as much as I could—to spare her. I thought, in my child’s way, that Squire Pringle would see how hard we worked for him and leave her alone at last.” She laughed bitterly. “A child’s dream.”

  “You had a good heart, even as a child, I think.”

  Allegra shrugged. “Good hearts are for fools. She had a good heart. But not the strength to save herself. She died, quite worn out, with two years yet to serve of her contract. The debt had become mine, the squire said. What could I do? I signed his accursed paper. And another as well, in which he agreed to pay my passage to England in exchange for a year’s labor.”

  “Three years?”

  She nodded. “Three years. But it wasn’t long before he began to notice that I was no longer a child. I swore he wouldn’t ill-use me as he had my mother. I swore I would kill him or myself first.”

  “And did you sway him with your determination?”

  She shook her head. “God’s faith, no. He was an evil man. Quite heartless. But a cowardly bully as well. He tried to take me, but I fought him off. He saw that I would never break, as had my mother. He had taken pleasure in making her weep, a hundred times a day, with his cruelties. But I would not.”

  “And still will not,” he said in wonder. “Your eyes are dry even now.”

  “I weep for others, Mr. Briggs. I have no tears for myself.” She sighed. “But he longed to crush my spirit. And so he gave me out in rent to his spinster aunt who had a farm just outside of the town.”

  “A simple old woman? To break your spirit?”

  “That ‘simple old woman’ was the devil incarnate. Gammer Pringle was born with a twisted foot and an abiding hatred of the world and all in it. She had a large farm and a miserly nature. She could not see why two servants should not be enough.”

  “For both house and farm?” he asked, incredulous.

  “Indeed. My partner in misery was an old Negro. A slave. We worked from sun rising to sunset, bending over the fields to plant and hoe and weed. And when we could do no more for weariness, she expected the old man to tend the livestock and see to the repairs, while I was cook and scullion and housekeeper. And lady’s maid to her vanity. And once a month, when she came from church inspired by the sermon to root out evil and sin, she would lay us across a bench and whip us with a switch until the blood ran down our legs.”

  Briggs cursed softly. “But there are laws against such oppression and hard usage!”

  “For bond servants, but not for slaves. I protested only once. She beat the old Negro twice as savagely, and swore he’d bear my punishment henceforth, if I refused to submit.” Allegra’s memories were suddenly sharp talons, clawing at her heart. She pounded the herbs with her pestle—again and again in a fierce rhythm—and squeezed her eyes shut to close out her pain. She felt a soft hand on her wrist, stilling her frenzied movements.

  “God give you peace,” murmured Briggs.

  The moment of weakness had passed. She opened her eyes and made a feeble attempt at a smile. “Don’t pity me, Mr. Briggs. Pity that poor old man instead. I knew there would be an end to my torment. Only death will release him.”

  “Have you ever known happiness?” His voice was deep with concern.

  She turned and stared out the casement window toward the gardens of Baniard Hall. They thronged with ghosts. “Once, a very long time ago,” she whispered.

  No! She mustn’t falter! She shook off the past. She had meant just to tell him a part of her story, not to give in to the frailty of her sex. Memories served only if they fueled her righteous anger, not if they made her weak. Her mouth twisted in a self-mocking smile. “’Twas not all misery, Mr. Briggs. Once a fortnight we would go to market in town. I soon discovered that the good burghers would pay me well for a kiss, or an arm around my waist. And every coin I put in my pocket brought me closer to England. And so I saved and endured. And so I dreamed of Wickham and the day when…”

  “My God,” he breathed.

  She laughed softly. “Hatred, you see, is better than despair. ’Tis how we survive in this world.” She heard a throa
ty chuckle from the doorway and turned, surprised.

  Ridley lounged against the doorframe, shaking his head in disbelief. In his hand was a bottle of spirits. He hadn’t even bothered to put on waistcoat and coat this morning. An added insult for his guests, no doubt. “Such a surfeit of passion in you, girl,” he said. “I shall never fathom it. All that hatred.” He lifted the bottle and took a deep swallow of its contents.

  “’Tis my strength, that hatred,” she said tightly. She prayed Ridley hadn’t overheard her tale to Briggs. It was an advantage she didn’t want to give him.

  “And Wickham? Was he one of your good burghers in the market? Did he take more than a kiss, and pay less?”

  Her heart sank. He had heard at least a part of her confession. Well, she wasn’t about to tell him anything further. She was already regretting her frankness with Mr. Briggs. “Wickham is my affair, milord,” she said with finality.

  “You must have been quite young when you met him,” he persisted.

  She had only a misty recollection of Wickham’s face. But she could still see clearly the smile of welcome on Papa’s dear face as he greeted the new Baron Ellsmere on the steps of Baniard Hall. To put aside the animosity of our fathers, he had said. And learn to live in harmony. “Aye,” she muttered. “I was quite young.”

  “And you hate him still.”

  “I hate him always and forever.”

  Ridley laughed aloud. “Is this not a paradox, Mr. Briggs? Here is a creature who tends her garden with loving hands, who ministers to our disorders here at the Hall. A creature who suffered cruel punishment to spare an old man. And yet—were I to give her one of my blades and put Baron Ellsmere in her path…” He laughed again. “I suspect she would rip him from his throat to his navel without a moment’s hesitation. Do you think it not ironic that she knows the healing arts, yet holds life so cheaply?”