Lady August

by Becky Michaels

  He walked toward his bed, falling upon the soft bedclothes with a loud sigh and squeezing his eyes tightly shut. Idiot, he thought.

  Samuel turned over on his back, nestling himself back into the pillows at the head of the bed. He looked out the window, an oppressive feeling of loneliness developing in his chest. Birds chirped outside as the sun began its afternoon descent in the sky.

  Hearing giggling coming from the hall, he blinked, propping himself on his forearms so he could see who was coming. It was Lucy, who was dragging Edward behind her. Despite the dragging, he was smiling; cousin Edward was always better at humoring Lucy and Rosamund than Charles.

  “Samuel! Samuel!” Lucy exclaimed, rushing toward her older brother. “We are playing hide and seek. Will you play with us?”

  He hesitated, glancing at Edward. Would Charles even want him there after what happened?

  “Pleeease,” Lucy begged. She looked up at him, pouting, her dark brown eyes like two round saucers. Even Edward encouraged him now.

  “Come on, Brooks,” he said. “I know you’re upset about what happened with Robert this afternoon, but try to forget it, won’t you? Besides, I’m not sure I can stand to listen to your little sister whine for much longer.”

  Lucy gasped, spinning around to face Edward. She crossed her arms across her chest, mustering all the precociousness the three-year-old could manage. “Excuse you!” she shouted.

  Edward laughed, and so did Samuel despite himself. “All right,” Samuel said, standing up and placing a hand on little Lucy’s shoulder. “I’ll join you. Who shall hide first?”

  She excitedly turned and looked at her older brother, her dark brown curls swaying, tied back with a pink ribbon at the top of her head.

  “Hooray!” she yelled, grabbing Edward by the arm once more, guiding him out of the nursery as she seemingly forgot all about his earlier rudeness. “Edward and I will hide first! Samuel, you stay here and count.”

  Samuel nodded. He turned around, closed his eyes, and began to count, all the while doing his best to forget the day’s earlier unpleasantness, not knowing such unhappy memories would haunt him for many years to come.

  Chapter One

  Hampshire, England

  August 1813

  * * *

  August Summer laid in bed, pretending to sleep. The room she shared with her friend Jane was dark and quiet, the light of the moon blocked out by a thick curtain covering the window. August listened carefully, waiting for Jane’s soft snoring to begin. Then she would know it was safe.

  Minutes that felt like hours passed. August rolled over on her side, facing Jane and slowly opening her eyes. The girl’s mouth was slightly open against her pillow, and a mass of brown hair draped over part of her face. Was she asleep? August couldn’t tell.

  Quietly, August propped herself up with her forearm, peering over at her friend, watching for any sudden movements, but Jane remained still underneath the bedclothes except for the steady rise and fall of her chest. She must have been asleep.

  Now was the time to move, yet a pang of guilt rocked August’s stomach, holding her to the mattress beneath her. She hadn’t told Jane her plans for that evening, yet August couldn’t quite say why not. She knew she didn’t have to fret over any kind of judgment from Jane, though her friend might have offered an apprehensive objection or two if she knew the truth of what August was about to do.

  August slowly lifted her bedclothes, sitting up and swinging her feet over the edge of the bed, placing them on the cold floor. She tiptoed across the room toward the armoire, where she quickly changed out of her nightgown and into a day dress. The dress was a simple cut, yet still the best one in her wardrobe. She ran her hands over the soft muslin fabric, wondering what Henry would think.

  Henry. Just the thought of him made her smile. The handsome young curate would be expecting her at his cottage any moment now.

  As she reached to close the doors of the armoire, August heard rustling coming from the direction of Jane’s bed. August froze. Slowly, she turned and glanced at Jane, who sat up in bed with her arms crossed. Jane regarded her friend with a confused look.

  “What are you doing?” Jane asked, paying no mind to how loudly she spoke.

  August crept toward the edge of Jane’s bed, bringing a finger to her mouth and hushing her as she did. Jane regarded her with an unapologetic look, but when August didn’t answer right away, she repeated her question, this time more softly. August sat down on the bed, closing her eyes and sighing. When she finally admitted her treachery, she spoke softly, looking down at her hands.

  “You’re going to have to speak up, August,” Jane said, exasperated.

  August sighed again, turning to face her friend directly. She was sure her face was a dreadful shade of red. “I am going to meet Henry.”

  “What?”

  Jane shouted more than asked the single-word question. Eyes wide, August hushed her again, this time slapping her palm over her friend’s mouth for good measure. Jane said something else, the words muffled against August’s hand.

  “You have to be quiet,” August urged, her words coming out like a cat’s hiss. She glanced toward the closed door of their bedroom, then back at Jane. “Mrs. Thorpe will hear us.”

  When Jane finally nodded in agreement, August removed her hand. The two girls stared at each other for a moment.

  “Have you lost your mind?” Jane finally asked, her voice still much too loud. August cringed before glancing at the door again. If Mrs. Thorpe, their headmistress, discovered her out of bed, she would be in all sorts of trouble, but at least August was leaving the next day.

  “No, I have not lost my mind,” August replied as calmly as she could, turning back toward Jane.

  “He will ruin you!”

  August snorted. “Janey, you speak of me as if I’m some sort of fine lady. Today, I am an orphan. Tomorrow, I will be a governess for a merchant family. What is there to ruin? I am a nobody. If I were somebody, perhaps—”

  “What if you get with child?” Jane asked.

  Her friend’s voice was a horrified whisper. August fell silent, a thoughtful expression passing over her face. Of course, any intelligent female would consider such things before jumping in headfirst to what she was planning, and indeed she had. Henry had promised there were precautions he could take to prevent an event like that from happening, as he probably wanted one of her babes even less than her.

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” August replied, the sort of headstrong response that only eighteen-year-old girls knew how to give. But Jane was three years younger, and although she was August’s best friend, she was nowhere near as audacious. Tonight, Jane seemed to have found her nerve.

  “I am not worried, but perhaps you should be!” she argued.

  August sighed. What could she say to convince her? August shot Jane a pleading look as she searched for the right words. “When I leave for Portsmouth tomorrow, I will become a governess,” August finally said. “You and I both know there aren’t many chances for romance as a governess. Meeting Henry tonight could be my last chance to do something like this. My only chance.”

  Jane’s face showed signs of softening—August knew Jane loved Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels as much as she, after all—but she still ended up shaking her head. “What is romantic about sneaking out in the middle of the night for a tryst?”

  August rolled her eyes at her young friend’s naivety. “This is not about romance, Jane. This is about carnal pleasure, something you are much too young to understand.”

  August recalled her fear the first time Henry touched her and then the first time that touch lingered a little too long. But then that fear was replaced by curiosity and passion. She was always the first girl at Hardbury to volunteer whenever the parish vicar asked Mrs. Thorpe for help with one of his charitable projects—making baskets, knitting gloves and scarfs. Whatever it was, August always jumped at the chance to see Henry Fitzgerald, the curate.

  Soon t
hey would be alone. In his cottage. August’s stomach fluttered from a combination of nervousness and excitement.

  Meanwhile, Jane looked disgusted. “Do you honestly care so little for your virtue that you will give it to someone who will allow you to leave the next day with no promise of ever seeing you again?”

  “Yes,” August snapped, glaring at her friend before quickly turning away. She nervously wrung her hands in her lap, then laughed a little in an attempt to lighten the mood. “Honestly, Jane, you are beginning to sound puritanical.”

  Little did Jane know, August had considered such questions for the past year, ever since her flirtation with Henry began. August always knew such a flirtation would lead nowhere, but she never moved to end the budding attachment, despite Jane’s constant chiding over the matter.

  August took a more practical approach to the situation. Henry was the third son of a viscount, destined to become a vicar and perhaps even a rector after that. They both knew any relationship between them would be fleeting. He would marry a gently bred lady, and August would go on and become a governess. And not just any governess, a governess to a merchant family. She had already accepted her fate, even if Jane was having trouble doing the same.

  “Who cares for a woman’s virtue but her future husband?” August opined—a bad habit of hers, according to Mrs. Thorpe. Girls, especially orphans destined to become governesses, were not supposed to have opinions. “And what chances do I have of ever meeting such a man? I am an orphan, a soon-to-be governess. I have no one to recommend me but Mrs. Thorpe and Mr. Brooks. Whoever he is.”

  Mrs. Thorpe called Mr. Brooks her benefactor, but August only met him once. He was the one who paid her bills and determined her allowance ever since she arrived at Hardbury School for Girls at age six. August could not recall life before Hardbury, but she suspected she was a nameless babe left on the steps of an orphanage in the middle of the night. The matron there probably named her for the month and season she was born as some sort of a cruel joke, as if being an orphan wasn’t already unpleasant enough.

  Why Mr. Brooks chose to pluck August from that orphanage, where she lived in total obscurity, was a great mystery. Was he her father or a more distant relation? Or perhaps no relation at all? But such questions were not what August and Jane were discussing.

  “Henry could propose if he wanted to,” Jane mumbled.

  August scoffed at the idea. “I don’t blame Henry for not wanting to propose to me. He is the third son of a viscount, only three-and-twenty, with his whole life ahead of him. He could have anyone he wants. If I were him, I wouldn’t propose to me either.”

  Jane pursed her lips. “I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit,” she said, somewhat begrudgingly. “Any man would be lucky to have you as his wife.”

  August looked at Jane sideways. “You are only saying that because you are my friend.”

  “Perhaps,” she said with a slight giggle. Even August couldn’t hold back her smile. “And because I’m your friend, I won’t stop you if you must go.”

  August grinned even more broadly, then reached for Jane’s hand across the bed. She took it and squeezed. “Thank you, Janey.”

  “What should I do if Mrs. Thorpe checks in on us?” Jane asked, folding her knees into her chest and wrapping her arms around them as August moved to stand up and put on her boots. She shrugged, moving toward the window. After pulling back the curtain, she began to open it.

  “Feign innocence, of course. Say you have no idea where I went! Someone could have kidnapped me in the middle of the night for all you know—you sleep so deeply, after all. There’s no reason for you to get into trouble as well as me, especially when you still have three more years here.”

  With that, August lifted one of her legs over the windowsill, easily maneuvering herself onto the grass below, thankful their bedroom was on Hardbury’s ground floor. Before she shut the window once more, she peeked her head around the window frame to look at Jane. “Try to get some sleep. I’ll be back before morning.”

  “August,” Jane said, scrambling toward the window from her bed. There was a pleading look in her eyes, but both Jane and August knew it was no use. When August Summer made her mind up about something, there was no persuading her otherwise. “Be careful. Please.”

  August laughed. She was always careful, wasn’t she? “Good night, Jane.”

  * * *

  A few hours later, August walked back down the dirt road that connected the school with Wilton, the closest village. The full moon illuminated the surrounding pastures, and she heard a cow moo in the distance. She picked some stray wildflowers off the side of the road, picking at the petals as she considered the evening’s events.

  When she finally came into view of Hardbury, a large brick building that couldn’t be missed—even in the dark—she quickened her pace. Jane would be worried, of course, and August was eager to speak to her. She hoped Mrs. Thorpe hadn’t risen in the middle of the night to perform bed checks.

  August had left their bedroom window slightly open when she left, and upon returning, she slipped her hands between it and the frame, pushing upwards. Using all her strength, she pulled herself up onto the ledge and slipped inside the room. After closing the window behind her, she turned toward Jane’s prone figure beneath the bedclothes.

  “Jane,” August whispered, kneeling beside the bed. Her friend didn’t stir, her face peaceful in her slumber. Meanwhile, August frowned. So much for being worried.

  “Jane,” August said again, this time more sharply—and with a firm poke to Jane’s ribcage. The girl’s eyes shot open, startled, but she sighed with relief when she saw August hovering over her.

  “August,” she said groggily. “You’re back.”

  Jane sat up, watching as August moved to the armoire. She began to remove her day dress, silently switching into her nightgown. When she finished, August returned to her bed, burrowing beneath the bedclothes and then facing Jane.

  “I am back,” she said finally.

  “What happened?” Jane asked, concerned, probably sensing the lack of enthusiasm in August’s voice. After all, how could she be enthusiastic? The mystery of Henry Fitzgerald was over, and the reveal had not been as incredible as she hoped.

  “Not much at all, actually,” August said, furrowing her brow. She sat up in bed as Jane watched her with concerned eyes. “I mean, everything happened so quickly. There was some awkwardness, and then some discomfort, and then it was over. I thought I would understand all the poetry now—” she shook her head, eyes going wide “—but I still do not!”

  Jane was quiet, and the two girls stared at each other for a long moment before Jane finally spoke. “Perhaps you were missing the key ingredient to achieving such understanding,” she said thoughtfully.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were missing love.” The word was practically a sigh on Jane’s lips. August groaned, rolling her eyes and falling back onto the bed, her head hitting the pillow.

  “I suppose I shouldn’t have wasted my time, then,” she grumbled. Henry Fitzgerald was attractive, yes, but they never had much to talk about, nor was he a keen listener. He was much too self-absorbed for that. The idea of loving him was comical to her.

  “I tried to warn you,” Jane said. “If Mr. Fitzgerald truly loved you, he would have proposed by now.”

  August scoffed. “I do not want Henry’s love or a proposal from him. The only answer I could ever give him would be no, for I do not love him, regardless of what happened tonight or how shocking that may be to you. But I suppose if you are right and I was missing that key ingredient, then perhaps I have not solved the mystery yet and never will.”

  A sadness grew inside her chest. It was unfair that some women grew up to be fine ladies who fell in love and married. The only future August knew was that of a mousy governess.

  “What mystery is that?” Jane asked, interrupting August’s thoughts.

  “Sex and why some people lose their m
inds over it.”

  If the room wasn’t dark, August might have seen her friend’s face turn red. Instead, she only heard Jane sputter. “August! We shouldn’t be discussing such things.”

  “Haven’t we already, though in much less vulgar terms?”

  Jane fell silent. August sometimes told her what Henry would do in their stolen moments over the past year. Frequently, she would describe the way he always left her wanting more. August believed tonight would be that more. Except tonight was much the same, even when it shouldn’t have been.

  “Do you know what he said to me tonight?” August asked, her head turning in Jane’s direction once more. “He said he would marry me if I weren’t a poor orphan. Well, mark my words, Jane. If I were a wealthy lady, I would not marry him—even if he were the last man in all of England.”

  Chapter Two

  London, England

  April 1816

  * * *

  Samuel Brooks stood outside St. George’s, holding an umbrella over himself and his mother. He shifted impatiently from foot to foot as his mother spoke to Mrs. Jennings and her daughter, afraid they all might catch a chill if Mrs. Brooks didn’t let the poor women go soon. That or Miss Jennings might get the wrong idea about him, which he was sure was his mother’s real intention behind making them stand out in the rain after church that morning.

  Miss Jennings was a pretty girl—if one liked brown-haired, brown-eyed, slight things. But looks alone could not tempt Brooks into marriage, even as his mother’s harassment over his perpetual bachelorhood became more severe with each passing year. He discreetly consulted his pocket watch for the time.