by Annis Bell
Jane sighed, and briefly related the most important incidents of recent months. When she mentioned the accident with the coach, Alison clapped one hand to her mouth. “And you’re well again, I hope?”
“It could be worse. The arm is coming along well. Look, I know that Mary is here in London. You have to help me, Ally. Couldn’t you ask your servants? They must know something among them. I’ll come visit you and bring my maid. They—”
That was as far as she got, for just then Florence Rutland joined them. “Dinner is served, ladies. My cook is determined to spoil us with a crab dish, some French recipe.”
Florence had clearly gone to great effort in dressing for the evening. The gleaming violet of her dress was certainly all the rage just then, but clashed with her glittering diamond necklace, elaborate earrings, and colorful brooch. And she had added ornamental pins to her lavishly piled hair. With all her finery, she practically blinded anyone looking in her direction.
During the meal, Jane was seated between Rutland and Hargrave, with Wescott, Alison, Devereaux, and Florence across the table. The lofty gathering also included the up-and-coming politician and businessman Mr. Lock, with his shy young Prussian wife, and Kayman, a famous cricketer.
Once the six-course meal was finished, the guests strolled through the rooms on the ground floor, while the string quartet continued to play minuets and polkas in the music room. Bennet Kayman was an interesting young man who had spent a large part of his life in India. His skin had the olive tone of one who had spent his life in southern climes.
Jane found herself beside the sportsman as they entered a salon hung with paintings and handicrafts from the Orient. A water pipe and a samovar stood on a table, but Jane was drawn to a depiction of an Indian wedding parade.
“I can almost smell the sand and the spices, and hear the bells on the elephants and the women singing,” she said dreamily.
“Were you in India?” Kayman asked. He was only slightly taller than Jane and wore his blond hair cut short. His green eyes gazed at her.
“As a child. I spent my first few years there.” She heard footsteps and saw Wescott enter the room.
“Devereaux was asking after you, Kayman,” Wescott said firmly, and waited until the cricketer had left.
“A beautiful picture, isn’t it, David?” Her husband seemed to be in a bad mood, but Jane ignored it.
“What was that all about?” He was standing close and glaring at her.
“I’m sorry, I don’t follow you. Have I said something wrong?” If she had not known better, she would have said he was jealous.
“Enjoying yourself, are you?”
“Isn’t that the point of social evenings like these? People come together to chat.” She opened her fan and swished it through the air with deliberate slowness. “Mr. Kayman is very entertaining, and he was about to tell me about India before you came in. But perhaps you could continue in the same vein?”
His dark eyes sparkled in the low light of the salon, and Jane’s heart beat a little faster. She could see the rise and fall of his chest while he considered her words. Finally, he smiled wryly, and Jane could not take her eyes off the lovely curve of his lips. Sensual, she thought. My husband has sensual lips. Wasn’t that a strange irony? Here stood an attractive man who was her husband, and he was no more than a business partner.
“I would like to ask you to talk to Mr. Lock’s wife. Perhaps you can find out whether they are planning to travel on the Continent.”
“Why?”
“Jane, can’t you just do it?” he said. He looked back to the door; outside it, the guests were strolling back and forth.
“I would at least like to understand what it is you do. What business are you pursuing? Or is it a secret? Is Mrs. Lock a spy?”
Wescott audibly drew a breath. “I am not allowed to discuss it with you, but it is, in fact, in the interests of national security. Lock is being groomed as a candidate for the office of prime minister, and his wife has been seen in reactionary circles a number of times. There is talk of secret dealings between Prussia and the Russians.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “The Russian bear suffered from its defeat in Crimea and is out for revenge.”
“So it is espionage! Have you left the army to become an agent of Her Majesty, David? You don’t wear your uniform anymore.” She looked at him wide-eyed.
He shook his head. “Enough now. The less you know, the better.”
She took his arm and they strolled into the brightly lit music room together. The moment they entered, Violet and Florence made a beeline for them. Wescott excused himself and wandered off toward Kayman and Lord Thomas.
“We were just talking about our activities with the orphanages,” said Violet. “Wouldn’t you be interested in joining a committee here in London, too?”
Florence nodded. “It would be wonderful. One can’t party all the time, after all! The Season is such a strain. I don’t know where my head is half the time. I have to pay a visit to the tailor tomorrow. We’ve been invited to the royal court, and then there’s the regatta. My God! One really ought to do something for the poor children as well.”
To mollify your conscience, thought Jane, and immediately chastened herself. For whatever reasons the women made their donations, the money was urgently needed. “Gladly. Listen, Violet, I stopped by Newbridge on the way to London. Things look much worse there than they do in the other orphanages. What do you know about the Ledfords?”
Violet’s expression darkened. She thought for a moment, looking around, and winced when she saw her brother approaching. “Not much, Lady Jane. Nothing, really. They do what they can.”
“Who does, my dear?” asked Lord Hargrave, joining them.
“The Ledfords in Newbridge. They manage an orphanage and workhouse. It’s a deeply impoverished place, and the children seem extremely low-spirited,” said Jane.
Lord Hargrave shot his sister a quick warning glance and said, “Well, that’s what orphanages tend to be like. The children there haven’t had much luck in their lives. They should be thankful that anyone looks after them at all.”
“Is that how you see it?” Jane was feeling combative. She flapped open her fan and eyed Lord Hargrave.
“It’s late, Robert, and I’d like to go home. I’m not feeling well.” Violet did, in fact, look anything but healthy, but Jane knew the source of her problems.
“They’re not all little angels, my lady, though women would have it so.” Lord Hargrave took his sister’s hand. “My sister’s heart is far too soft for her own good, like most of your kind. But that is how nature arranged things.”
“And you reproach us, as women, for that? Didn’t you have a mother?” Jane, incensed, shot back.
Florence fluttered her eyelids nervously, and Violet scratched gently at her brother’s arm, but Hargrave, seemingly unperturbed, replied, “You have misunderstood me, my lady. It is merely my conviction that everything has its counterbalance, and that it is nature’s way.”
“Then you are a Darwinist?” Jane was not about to simply give up. She sensed that she had gotten deeply under the man’s skin, and she knew that in such moments, people were apt to give away things they normally kept under wraps. “The stronger defeats the weaker, and that is a God-given fact?”
Hargrave’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Yes, my lady. If you want to put it so bluntly. Yes, I am convinced that might is right, as they say. Or else there would be no strong and no weak, would there?”
“Ha! I reject that argument, it is absolutely—,” said Jane, warming up, but a soft touch at her back interrupted her.
“Here you are, darling,” said Wescott loudly and then, his mouth to her ear, whispered, “That will do!”
Hargrave, whose cheeks had gone bright red, relaxed. “Wescott, save me before I insult your charming wife beyond repair. You do lean toward hysteria, don’t you
, my dear? Violet here has a wonderful cure for that—”
“Ah, there is dear Mrs. Lock. Excuse me.” Retreat, Jane thought, is the wiser course. She swallowed her wrath at Hargrave’s self-importance.
At the mention of her name, Mrs. Lock turned her dainty head and smiled shyly at Jane. The woman was very young and had a boyish figure. She was unusually attractive, helped by her captivatingly large, dark eyes.
Her timidity may just be a means to getting what she wants, thought Jane. “My dear Mrs. Lock, how do you find it here in England? You must miss your homeland terribly. I’m sure I would.”
Mrs. Lock stood with her hands folded primly in front of her. Her pale-pink dress made her look almost translucent. “You are so kind, my lady. I find my feet here, and also some who are like-minded.” She spoke in broken English. Her accent was so strong, she was not easy to understand.
Jane raised her eyebrows. “Like-minded? In what way? A religious society?”
The young woman shook her head. “Oh, no. Foreign artists, like me. We meet once in the week. I was a singer.”
“Wonderful! That is a talent not to be cast aside. We English love music. I will arrange a social evening soon and invite you. You could sing for us. What do you think?”
Mrs. Lock blushed. “You have not heard me sing yet.”
“Let’s chance it. I like to take risks.” She smiled brightly at the woman, whom she found friendly. “Or are you planning a trip home in the next few weeks? I hope not before the end of the Season.”
Surprised, and somewhat hesitant, Mrs. Lock replied, “No, no. I am look forward to your invitation, Lady Jane.”
A short time later, the party began to break up. When Jane and Wescott were sitting opposite each other in their carriage, Jane snarled, “Rebuking me in front of Hargrave was uncalled for. You made me look ridiculous! I am not hysterical.”
Wescott smiled thinly. “Conducting yourself as you did, you refute your own words.”
“You’re all the same. Smug, arrogant snobs. The moment a woman voices an opinion, she’s hysterical!”
He grasped her hand. “Listen to me. I’ll say this only once. I know Hargrave better than you do. He is not a man to provoke just for the fun of it. You would not like the kind of pleasures he pursues. Believe me, Jane.”
“I am not his sister. He can’t take the wind out of my sails with a dose of morphine.”
“Oh, Jane, can’t you just take my advice and show some restraint around him?” She felt moved by the urgency of his words.
“Humph.”
“You’re very stubborn.”
“I know. It’s my nature.”
His face was hidden in the shadows, but she thought she saw him smile.
27.
Mary
“I don’t want to go. No, please, please let Fiona come with me!” Mary cried.
But Mr. Ledford slapped her in the face. “Shut up! Do you want to wake the whole building? Ungrateful vermin. All these years we’ve dressed you, fed you, taught you how to read and write. Now you have the chance to go into a grand house in London, and what thanks do we get?”
It was dark. The clock tower at the church had struck ten, and a light drizzle had set in. The coach was standing at the gate, a lamp gleaming on the driver’s seat where the coachman, wearing a long rain cape, squatted sullenly. “Can we finally be off? This rain won’t be makin’ the roads no better.”
Mary cried and pressed her hands over her face. Her ear hurt and the dizziness set in. Even so, she looked up covertly between her fingers to the dormitory building. She knew they had shut Fiona away in the attic.
Late in the afternoon, Mary had managed to sneak safely into the room to visit her friend. Fiona was still lying there curled up like an embryo under a sheet. Mary stroked her friend’s face, her pale forehead, and saw her split lips and the blue marks on her throat and skinny arms. “Fiona, wake up. It’s me, Mary. Come on, you’re not allowed to die.”
Laboriously, as if returning from another world, Fiona had opened her eyes. Mary would never forget the look of infinite hopelessness and despair she saw there. Fiona—strong, clever, funny Fiona—was gone. In the green eyes of that maltreated creature, Mary saw a maimed and broken spirit. “I am already dead, Mary. I’m dead . . .”
“No! Don’t say that,” Mary sobbed, embracing her friend. Then she was grabbed harshly and jerked away.
“Who let you in here?” Sister Susan hissed at her, pushing her into the bathroom. “We’re going to clean you up, then you’re to put on the new clothes on this chair. You’re being collected this evening, so don’t go getting yourself filthy again.”
Now Mary found herself sitting in the cramped coach beside a man who stank and looked at her in a way that made her skin crawl. But Mr. Ledford had impressed upon the man not to touch her, or he wouldn’t get his money. The man was dozing now. Mary pulled her feet up onto the seat and wrapped her arms around her knees. The stinking man looked like Mr. Cooper, but younger. Mr. Ledford had called him Jed.
“Are you Mr. Cooper’s brother?” They had been on the road for God knows how many hours, and Mary had become used to the sight of the grim-looking man.
“None o’ your business,” he growled, opening his eyes to slits.
“What’s Jed mean? Is that short for something?”
“Jedidiah.”
“I’ve never heard that name. Is it from the Bible?”
Jed grinned hatefully and showed the brown ruins of a row of teeth. “Samuel two, verse twelve, means ‘beloved of Jesus.’ And ’e sent by the ’and of Nathan the prophet; and ’e called ’is name Jedidiah, because of the Lord.”
“Then you are a godly man.” Mary could think of nothing else to say. She wanted to talk because her teeth were chattering in fear and the buzzing in her ear was growing unbearable.
“Do I look like a godly man?”
“I’m hungry.” Mary’s stomach growled as if on cue. It had been six hours since her last meager meal.
Jedidiah took a bottle from his coat pocket and held it out to Mary. “’ere. Take a swig. Cures ’unger and thirst.”
“Whisky? No, thank you.” Mary huddled even deeper into her corner. “What about Fiona? Will she also go to work somewhere?”
“Who’s Fiona?” Jed pulled the cork out of the bottle and took a long swig.
“My friend. She’s got red hair. The master locked her up and she didn’t do anything.”
“The master don’t do nothing without a reason. ’e’s a sharp man. That’s why I work for ’im.” Jed contorted his ugly face into a grimace and wiped his throat with the back of his fist. “I’m ’is right-’and man, the ’and of God the just! Your friend got too curious. The master can’t let that go unpunished.”
“Will he kill her?” Mary whispered, her eyes wide with fear.
The coach swayed on the stony road, and Mary had to hold on tight to stop herself from sliding off the seat.
“There are better ways to get rid of someone. She’ll be rode down to Plymouth tomorrow. There’s a ship sailing from there to Australia. There she’ll be of some use at least and can work for the empire.” He laughed venomously.
“No! You can’t let her. Fiona never wanted to leave England. Anything but that, please, anything but that,” Mary sobbed. Her ear was hurting terribly.
“Stop sniveling and shut your mouth,” Jedidiah ordered.
At midday two days later, the coach trundled past a large park. Mary pressed her face to the window, amazed at the colorful parade of strollers, newspaper boys, heavily laden carts, elegant riders, carriages, nannies with their charges, and the many, many street vendors. On one corner stood a singer, and just past him a soup salesman was plying his wares in a loud voice. But despite all the hubbub, there was no sense of the confinement of a city. A glass dome loomed among the trees.
�
�What is that?” asked Mary reverently.
“One o’ the prince consort’s notions. Now listen to me. We’ll be there in a minute. Not a word from you except to answer what you’re asked. Don’t say a word about your little friend unless you want trouble. We ’ave our eyes and ears everywhere. Anyone who tries to betray us gets what they deserved.”
“Polly!” Mary blurted.
Jed leaned forward in alarm and grabbed hold of Mary’s wrist. “That little shite gave us no end of trouble.”
Fighting the acrid smell of the man, Mary dared a final question. “Where is Polly now?”
The pressure on her wrist was so great that she cried out in pain. “Feedin’ worms. Like you will be if you don’t do what you’re told.”
The coach slowed down and rolled through a huge, decorative gate. Stone spheres were set atop the gateposts, and as the coach rolled along a carefully raked gravel driveway, the sounds of the city slowly faded behind them. But Mary did not look at the beauty of the estate or the impressive house. All she could do was stare at her wrist, which was turning blue now that Jed had released her.
“Dead,” she whispered in a hoarse, breaking voice. Polly was dead. Now she knew for certain what she had feared all along. She was certain that Jedidiah, this vile man with the biblical name, was not lying. Perhaps he himself had killed Polly. She fought back the tears that sprang to her eyes, afraid she would not be able to see what Jed did next.
Polly, the friend she’d loved the most, was dead. Her brother had abandoned her, and Mr. Gaunt had disappeared, just like Miss Fannigan and now Fiona. Maybe she brought bad luck to everyone she loved. Maybe this was her punishment for the baby’s death. She was supposed to save her. That was her job, and she had failed. Her mother had entrusted the tiny, helpless thing to her care, had counted on her.
“You, girl! Get out. Or do you fancy yourself the Queen of England?” A woman’s sharp voice cut through Mary’s grief-stricken thoughts. She climbed quickly out of the carriage and found herself at the rear entrance of a manor house that was huge and splendid, like the houses she had seen in fairy tales.