As she watched her interact with Blixford, a thought took hold, but she dismissed it. No, it couldn’t be. Surely not.
Then he left and Miss Bella returned to her sour expression and blatant dislike of Jane. “When I heard of your marriage, I was beyond shocked. In truth, I couldn’t imagine his grace sullying the ducal position by taking to wife a woman such as yourself. I didn’t wish to pay this call, but I felt it my duty, as a woman of God, to come and attempt to lead you from sin, that upon your death, you’re not doomed to hellfire. Would you pray with me, Jane?”
Upon her death. The thought returned and wouldn’t let go. The look in Miss Bella’s eyes was not one of a rational person. She looked to be a bit mad.
Jane’s memory raced back in time, to the day Annabel died. Miss Bella was there, in the chamber where Annabel labored, praying, reading scripture, sometimes so loudly, the midwife had to shush her. Jane had been overset, of course, Annabel in so much agony, writhing upon the bed. The midwife had commented, several times, that her labor seemed strange, too strong, too painful. Annabel screamed and screamed, and began to bleed. Copious amounts of blood. The midwife was alarmed and said the womb must have ruptured, that Annabel was in grave danger, and if she survived, she would never have another child.
All the while, Miss Bella prayed and read scripture. She didn’t approach the bed, didn’t offer words of comfort. Jane was so young then, with no knowledge of such matters, and extremely hysterical over her friend’s imminent death. In the midst of Annabel’s horrible, agonizing pain, she didn’t find it odd that Miss Bella, who claimed also to be Annabel’s friend, didn’t offer comfort, but instead stood back and read aloud a somber, depressing Psalm. Looking back upon it, she realized it was very strange, that Miss Bella’s demeanor had been cold and uncaring, as though her only duty was to read the Bible and intone long prayers asking God not to save Annabel’s life, but rather to save her soul from the devil.
She looked at Miss Bella, at her expression of hatred, and instinct told her she was correct. The vicar’s daughter must surely have given something to Annabel, and most likely Blixford’s next two brides, to bring on labor, and cause hemorrhaging. Fear crept down her neck and settled in her spine. Remembering Miss Bella’s rude question as to whether she was with child, and her insistence just now upon pouring tea, she glanced at her teacup and praised God she’d only barely sipped it, then said to Miss Bella, “I’d ask that you return to your home and there you may pray all you like.” Rising, she gave the woman a hard look. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t express appreciation for your call, or welcome your return to Eastchase Hall in future.”
“I do not call on you, but upon the duke. He would be dejected and sad if I didn’t come and see him. He has long loved me.”
She was, truly, mad as a hatter. Jane felt nauseous. “I’m sure he does, Miss Bella. This is why he’s taken four wives and none of them you.”
“Oh,” she said with a wave of her hand, “he’ll marry me, eventually. It’s only that he feels he must marry a lady of consequence, and I’m merely the daughter of a vicar. He’ll come round, however, and realize our love cannot be denied, that consequence matters naught when God has fated two to be together.”
“I see.” She did indeed. “Does his current state of marriage not deter your thinking?”
“Of course not. I foresee you’ll have similar problems with breeding as the previous duchesses, and after you’re gone, his grace will finally see the truth to things, that he cannot deny our love, our divine fate.” She assumed a pitying look. “I’m sorry you’ll have to die, but it’s God’s will. I know this because my mother told me, long ago, I was to be the duchess, that she had been fated to marry the old duke, but he succumbed to the sins of the flesh and was led astray by his harlot wife, so it will be I who fulfills our family’s destiny to marry into this, the most ancient of ducal titles. His grace is a fine, Christian soul, and not prone to sins of the flesh. He will come round, most assuredly.”
Jane walked to the door, now overcome with nausea, no doubt the result of fear, but denied herself the urge to run. Miss Bella was frightening in her insanity and Jane was so ill at ease, she truly felt sick. “Please take your leave, Miss Bella, and do not return.”
The woman swept forward and as she passed, she gave Jane a sly look. “I ken that I’m correct and you are breeding, even as we speak. What a pity you won’t live to see your child, and he’ll die along with you.” Then she was gone.
Jane leaned against the door, feeling decidedly dizzy. Of a sudden, she knew she would be sick and ran into the great hall, but quickly determined she wouldn’t make it to the privy. Spying the flower filled urn resting upon the long table that ran down the middle of the hall, she ran to it, tossed aside the flowers and was violently sick.
Mr. Dashing hurried to her and placed his hands upon her back. “Your Grace, what’s this? You are ill!”
In between her retches into the mouth of the urn, she managed to choke out, “Michael! Please go and . . . Michael.”
The butler forgot himself enough to shout, “I say, Mathilda! Come at once! Her Grace is ill!” He patted her comfortingly. “There, there, fear not. I’ll go for your husband. Ah, here’s Mrs. Dashing.” His hands went away, replaced by his wife’s.
“Poor angel! We must get you upstairs. Oh dear, this is distressing, Your Grace. Can you stand?”
Jane thought her belly might well explode, she was in such pain. “I believe I’ve been poisoned,” she said as she stood erect, then immediately doubled over in pain. She felt a rush of liquid between her legs. Great God, had she wet herself? Could this be more frightening, or humiliating?
“Poisoned? Oh, surely not, Your Grace!”
“Miss Bella . . . crazy as . . . Oh! God, this is horrible!”
“Come along and I’ll get you to your bed.” With Mrs. Dashing’s assistance, she made it up the stairs and into the bedchamber connecting to the one she shared with Blix. When she was laid out, she reached for her skirts and pulled them up.
Mrs. Dashing’s eyes widened. “Oh, Your Grace, you’re bleeding!”
Ah, so she had not wet herself. The rush she’d felt was blood. Jane gasped for breath around the severe cramps in her abdomen. “Send for the physician, and find out if there’s an herbalist in the village. Bring them here, as quickly as possible. Send Rose to look after me. Go, now!”
Mrs. Dashing hurried away and Jane lay still, her knees drawn up, praying fervently that God wouldn’t let her die. She knew the truth of it, that she was pregnant.
Now, it appeared she was losing the babe, even before his father knew of his existence.
She didn’t weep, the pain keeping grief at bay. She thought to sit up, to remove her apron and dress, but the attempt sent jabs of pain through her abdomen and she fell back to the bed.
Out of nowhere it seemed, Miss Bella appeared, an open Bible in her thick hands. She moved close and intoned a solemn prayer that Jane would be saved from the evil clutches of Satan.
“Go . . . away.” She couldn’t bear it.
Miss Bella began to read a Psalm in a loud voice and Jane kicked out at her. “Leave! Now! Horrible murderer! You’ve killed my baby, may you rot in Hell.”
The vicar’s daughter merely moved back a pace and continued as though Jane wasn’t screaming at her.
That’s when Blixford ran into the chamber, eyes wide, face pale. “Jane, what goes on? Dashing says you are . . . oh, dear God!” He came to the bed and saw the blood. “Is it your courses?”
Grimacing when another wave of nausea struck, she managed to roll over and retch from the side of the bed. “Poison . . . Miss Bella in love . . . with you. Mad . . . completely mad.” She retched again. “A babe, Michael. We were to have a . . .” She didn’t finish because she lost consciousness.
Chapter 15
It was his worst nightmare. He bent a knee to the bed, reached for Jane and turned her over, his eyes welling with tears, his heart pounding so har
d, he was dizzy. “Jane, love, do not die. Please, Jane –wake up.” She was so pale and one glance told him she was bleeding heavily, her very life flowing from her before his eyes. He couldn’t bear it. Petting her hair, he begged her to live, prayed to God to save her. “The doctor is coming, love.” How long would it take?
He noticed Miss Bella then, standing beside the bed, holding a Bible, reading in a loud monotone. “What have you done to Jane?” She didn’t look at him, but continued to read. Leaping from the bed, he grabbed the Bible, closed it with a snap and dropped it to the floor before grasping her shoulders and shaking her. “What have you done to Jane?”
She drew herself up and said importantly, “It is the will of God, and I am his handmaiden. She is evil, a wanton harlot unworthy of the ducal title, unfit to be your duchess. You must face your responsibilities now, Your Grace. We must marry and I will give birth to the next Duke of Blixford. I will raise him up to be a holy, shining example to all England of the nobility of this ancient peerage. The shame brought upon it by your mad father and his whore of a wife must be undone. She had to die, to ensure the sin of her loins, begat in her wicked unfaithfulness, was never allowed to be born.”
“How? How did my mother die?”
Her wild eyes turned toward Jane. “With a babe in her belly, put there by the seed of a man not her husband, by the horrible devil in his breeches.” She looked up at him and smiled the smile of one completely off balance. “My own mother was to be the duchess, but your father was tricked into marrying a whore of no honor, who lay with the devil and would bear his bastard to further degrade the ducal title. To save her soul, to save the title from blemish, it was my mother’s duty to kill the child, his harlot mother, and the devil who betrayed the duke.”
Could it be that the vicar’s wife had killed his mother and the old Viscount Radcliffe? It was so outlandish, he couldn’t believe it. Miss Bella was insane, making her own reality. His hands were still against her shoulders and he squeezed hard, his fingers digging into her thick flesh. “How could you know this? You were but a child.”
“All of my life, until her death, my mother told me it was my duty to succeed where she had failed, that I would become the duchess, and renew the honor and dignity of the title.”
Honor and dignity through the murder of innocents and the babes they carried. Michael was breathless with the realization, cold with deadly fury and heart stopping fear. Jane was so still, the blood was so much. How could she survive? He fought himself to keep from strangling the life from Bella Pool.
“Say you will marry me, that you’ll respect the title and bring honor upon it by taking to wife one who is pure, who knows the face of God, hears his divine voice in the dark of night when my father pierces me with his holiness. It is I, Bella, who understands the purity of God’s plan for a man and a woman.” She shot a disgusted look at Jane. “She understands only carnal knowledge and cannot fathom what it is to find God within her body.”
Michael felt ill, even while he was consumed with rage. Bella’s words could mean only one thing –she had been molested by her father, the pious vicar. In another time, another place, he’d have felt sorry for her plight. But his Jane was dying by this woman’s hand, and he couldn’t find sympathy anywhere in his soul for her.
“You will leave now, so that I may take care of my wife.”
“No! She must die. She will die. You will marry me!”
He modulated his voice, hoping his even tone would calm her. “I don’t wish for my duchess to die. I love her very much and it will cause me great pain and sorrow if she’s gone from me.”
Jerking away from his hands, she withdrew a small knife from her reticule and held it up for him to see. “You cannot save her. She must die so that we may be married and become as one, as it says in the Bible, as I am with my father. I must bear your child, the next duke.”
He saw her intent even before she lunged toward Jane, and caught her, but she was possessed of unnatural strength and he struggled to wrest the knife from her.
“I see now that you are no better than your father, tempted by the sins of the flesh, by a harlot’s body, blind to her evil. If you’ll not seek God’s truth with me, you shall go to the devil and live there in Hell.”
He was startled when he felt the blade slice through his coat sleeve, into his arm, and loosened his hold upon her just long enough for her to twist about and raise the knife, ready to plunge it into his heart.
Michael tried to move away, to dodge the stab, but he saw he would not be fast enough and only was able to turn enough to keep the blade from his heart. Instead, she buried it into his shoulder. She drew back, intent upon trying again, her breathing labored, eyes wild, hair coming loose from its pins. Her arm was raised, the bloody knife clutched within her fingers, when the room exploded with noise and smoke. Miss Bella’s eyes widened in shock before she crumpled to the floor at his feet.
He looked toward the bed just as Jane fell back, the smoking pistol in her hand.
***
In the hours that followed, he died a thousand deaths. Each time she awakened he was reborn, over and over, hope that she would survive burgeoning in his chest. Then she would cry out in pain and eventually lose consciousness again and he would be dashed to bits, his soul howling with despair.
He wouldn’t allow her maid to attend to her, but instead instructed her to bring clean bedding, a stack of towels, and fresh, warm water. He didn’t like to move Jane. She moaned when he tried, so he asked for a pair of scissors and cut her garments away. He washed her gently, then carefully cradled her in his arms while Rose quickly removed the bedding, discarded the soiled topmost feather mattress, and spread out clean sheets. She placed the towels just so and he bent to lay Jane upon them.
Within moments, the towels were soiled, and it became clear to him they fought a losing battle.
The physician arrived and said there was little he could do, that the best thing was to give it time and keep a close watch on Jane. Two footmen had removed Bella from the room and the physician declared what he already knew, that she was dead, Jane’s bullet having pierced her heart. Michael instructed Dashing to send for the constable and the vicar, and have them wait in the library until he could attend them. He allowed the physician to bind the wounds on his arm and shoulder before he put on a clean shirt and resumed his vigil at Jane’s bedside.
The herbalist, an old woman named Dora, arrived soon after. After inspecting Jane’s teacup, saved and not rinsed due to Mrs. Dashing’s quick thinking, Dora declared it was rife with a powder long used by prostitutes to rid themselves of unwanted pregnancies. Under his watchful eye, she dosed Jane with a concoction she said would thicken her blood, and perhaps lessen the flow. She said Jane was, indeed, pregnant, but when it was done, she wouldn’t be any longer. Her prognosis was good, however, because she’d not ingested very much of the tea.
He set aside his grief over the news that she’d lost the babe and prayed constantly that God would allow her to live, that he didn’t care if they ever had a child, but he couldn’t survive without Jane.
When pressed to reveal how Miss Bella came into possession of such a powder, Dora confessed to Michael that she’d been giving it to her for years upon years, due to her repeated pregnancies, which were the result of her father’s molestation. In a small dose, it would start the process of miscarriage or labor, depending upon how far along the mother was, but if the dose was too great, it would cause severe bleeding, even hemorrhaging, and ultimately, death.
He faced the cold truth that his first three wives had not died of complications in childbirth as all had believed, but were, in fact, murdered by the vicar’s daughter, who thought herself ordained by God to become his duchess. Perhaps due to the horror of her life at the vicarage, the sequestered existence demanded by her rapist father, Miss Bella had formed her own reality, wherein he would rescue her and she would be exalted and hailed as good and worthy. Considering how her life was lived behind closed doo
rs, was it any wonder the woman was mad?
Dora also revealed she had given the same powder to Bella’s mother. She’d married the vicar at a very young age, just fifteen, and as she matured, and after she gave birth to Bella, he evidently lost interest in her. “Mrs. Pool was a pretty woman, but prone to spinning tales. When she came to me and said she was with the child of the old Viscount Radcliffe, I didn’t believe her. She became hysterical, and said her husband would kill her if he knew she was with child, that it could not be his and he would know it. I relented and gave her the powder. She came back to me a year later, pregnant again and very angry, certain the duchess, your mother, was also expecting the viscount’s child. Mrs. Pool claimed she had once been betrothed to your father, but he cast her aside for the duchess, and now she was taking away the viscount as well. I told her she was wrong, that the duchess was a good woman, but she was convinced.” Dora shook her head, her wrinkled face filled with regret. “Would that I had not given her the powder. I’ve only just realized she most likely was not increasing, but lied to get the powder, and gave it to the duchess.”
Michael thought of his poor, mad papa, wandering the halls at Eastchase, imagining his wife was still with him. “Do you think Mrs. Pool also killed Radcliffe?”
The old woman shook her head. “I believe the vicar discovered his wife’s betrayal and he killed him. Of course I had no way to prove it, and who would believe me? He’s so pious and none suspect his evil heart. When Miss Bella first came to me, I thought to tell you of what went on, even considered alerting the constable, but she begged me not to, insisted her father would kill her. Her mother took her own life, but I wondered if she had discovered what her husband was doing to Bella, threatened to expose his perfidy, and he killed her to keep his secret.”
Had she not tried to kill Jane, were she not responsible for the deaths of three innocent women and the babes they carried, he would have felt a great deal of sympathy for Miss Bella. As it was, while he hated what her life had been, he harbored great rage toward her.
The Last Duchess (The Lennox Series) Page 33