Lady Helena Investigates

by Jane Steen

  “It’s entirely possible there were children in between.” Thomas looked interested. “Miscarriages, s-stillbirths, and so on.” He stopped, blushing. “Am I allowed to mention such things to a lady?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m country bred, Thomas dear, not one of those fainting London women. I can stand to hear the word ‘miscarriage.’”

  “Good. Or there were children who died, perhaps.”

  “Surely not. We would have known about them because our parents would have visited their graves.”

  “No living children, then. I doubt G-Grandmama would have told you if she’d had miscarriages. L-Ladies don’t discuss such things, even in the country.” He wrinkled his nose at me.

  “That’s true,” I conceded. “Mama was never one to complain or make a fuss. Poor thing, now all her bad memories are locked away in her head, and she can never tell anyone.”

  “I hope she doesn’t have too many. She and Grandpapa doted on each other, didn’t they?”

  “In the way of old married couples—with little outward show.” I looked at the journal again, smiling. “Here Mama’s mostly writing about her early fascination with herbs. It all started when she began talking to the gardeners at Hyrst. One of them explained you could make a soothing salve with the petals of the calendulas he was setting out. She talks about going to the bookseller in Littleberry and ordering a book about salves. Perhaps her hands were dry.”

  “Of such a small beginning is a passion born.”

  “A purpose,” I mused. “A life lived with purpose. Mama used to say I was her last hope for drumming the notion of a purpose in life into her girls.”

  “She succeeded with some of the others though. Look at the twins, always doing something useful. And Auntie O lives for her art, spurning all offers of marriage. Of which I’m sure she’s had many.”

  “Your mother and Blanche were conventional enough to make good marriages.” I smiled. “Even if your father’s in the wine trade, his family is so eminently old and respectable—and Blanche outshone us all.”

  Thomas shrugged. “You made a g-good marriage too.”

  “I can’t help feeling I let Mama down somehow. I let my grief over Daniel overwhelm me and rob me of all ambition, all energy. I became an empty girl who thought of nothing. Even when the worst of my sadness had passed, I idled my days away and drifted into marriage.”

  “Did Grandmama intend you for a b-bluestocking, then?”

  “She wanted me to be a healer, like her. I must have been a disappointment. And now my husband has gone and with him my purpose in life. I feel useless, Thomas. I suspect Mama felt the same way as a young bride, but she was a countess and obliged to play a role in the county. I don’t even have that.”

  Thomas’s mouth twisted. “At least you’re free to decide what you want to do next. You don’t have to clerk for your father.”

  “Is it really so bad?”

  “I’m an embarrassment to the old m-man.” Thomas’s handsome face flushed with color again. “I suppose it’s nice of him to employ me, but I’m no use. I c-can’t dash around like he does, jumping in and out of carts to inspect the merchandise. I can’t even open a bottle easily. I have someone else do it to spare Father the embarrassment of watching his crippled son struggle. I don’t write well. I suspect I wasn’t born to write with my left hand, and I smear the ink over the ledgers. I’ve tried hard, Auntie Helena, for four years. I’ve had enough.”

  I looked at my nephew closely. “You have something else in mind, don’t you?”

  “I want to go into the ch-church.” Thomas looked defiant. “It makes sense. As a v-vicar, I could do some good in a small way in some remote parish. I shan’t need much to live on unless I marry. And I’m not the b-best of marriage prospects.”

  “Aren’t you?” I murmured, looking at his beautiful face. Privately, I thought my handsome, intelligent, kind nephew would make an excellent catch—but he was right, perhaps not among the county gentry whose lives revolved around hunting, shooting, and other active pursuits. A nice church mouse might be just the thing.

  But there was one question that had to be asked. “Is this a vocation? I’ve heard that loving God is something of a prerequisite for a priest. Even in the most worldly corners of the Church of England.”

  Thomas frowned. “I’ll admit I might have some making up with God to do. I’ve been pretty angry with Him. The rector says faith’s a slippery business at the best of times and that if I can find my way back to God, I’ll stick right enough.”

  “That’s clever of the rector. So what do you need to do?”

  “That’s the difficult part. I’ll need to go to university if I want to be ordained. I can p-prep for the entrance exams under my own steam—I can afford to pay a Latin tutor—but Papa will have to cough up my university fees.”

  “And why shouldn’t he?” I asked. “Your father’s a reasonable man.”

  Thomas used his good arm to push himself to his feet and lurched toward the window. He stared at the sudden December squall of icy rain that was spattering the panes of glass.

  “It’s going to look like petty jealousy, isn’t it?” He sounded despondent. “Because Petey’s being made ready for school. I don’t want P-Papa to think I’m behaving like a girl who wants the same dress as her sister.”

  The analogy made me smile, but I didn’t want to laugh at Thomas. I rose and went to stand beside him. “If Ned refuses to pay, tell him I will. His pride won’t let him accept that. And if by some remote chance it does, I will pay. After all, I’ve no son and plenty of money. Justin would have said the same thing.”

  “I didn’t come here to ask for money.”

  “Of course you didn’t. But speaking as one useless person to another, I think we should help each other find our vocations. You give me hope for my own future.”

  I felt the weight of Thomas’s good arm around my shoulders, a solid comfort.

  “Very well, Auntie,” he said with mock meekness, giving me a quick peck on the cheek. “You’ve always been on my side. To t-tell the truth, I’ve already started working with the Latin tutor.”

  “So your mind is made up.”

  “All but the difficult part of telling my parents. I tell you what—if I promise to take steps to change my life, will you promise to work on finding your vocation and not just let this family push you into another marriage? This is your chance—perhaps your only chance—to make your own decisions. You were a good wife to Uncle Justin, but fate—or God—has decreed you’ll have some t-time to yourself. Use it wisely.”

  Evensong was my favorite church service, and St. Michael’s in Littleberry had an excellent choir. I decided by the second week of December that I could decently put in an appearance, suitably veiled. I took Guttridge with me, both of us well wrapped up against the damp cold.

  To my surprise, on the way out a familiar voice accosted me.

  “It’s good to see you here, Lady Helena.” Monsieur Fortier was smartly and soberly dressed, a picture of respectability in his silk hat and spats.

  “It’s astonishing to see you here. I thought you were a Catholic, being French.”

  “My father began attending a Protestant church five years after we came to England. To the horror of our relatives.”

  “But I’ve never seen you at evensong before.”

  “Have you not?” His lips twitched. “Well, we sit somewhat farther back.” His eyes sought the Scott-De Quincy family pew. Although not boxed off as happened in so many churches, it was nonetheless reserved for us alone. We had sat directly under the pulpit for the last hundred years, watched over by the banner that proclaimed the church’s loyalty to the Crown.

  “Are you a Republican, Monsieur Fortier?”

  “I’m not a monarchist, certainly. France is better off without the weight of a useless, expensive top tier of society.”

  “Like us?” Fortier no doubt couldn’t see my expression behind my heavy veil, but I was sure he could hear the ice
in my voice.

  “England has at least espoused some measure of reform. I don’t mean to insult you, Lady Helena. What I meant to say was that most Frenchmen are now sufficiently accustomed to the way things are.”

  I decided to let the matter drop. It wasn’t good manners to stand in the transept of one’s church arguing politics with a Frenchman. Guttridge stood behind me and slightly to one side, ostensibly not listening but of course a party to every word.

  “How is your patient?” Fortier asked.

  “My—? Oh, my patient. She’s feeling rather better.”

  “And Susan Hatherall?”

  “I haven’t seen her lately.”

  Farmer Hatherall had greeted me as I’d slipped into the family pew. In his Sunday clothes, he looked as distinguished as any man in Littleberry, with nothing of the farmer about him. Why some widow hadn’t snapped him up was a mystery to me.

  A young woman who’d been talking to her friends now swept past us. She bobbed a little curtsey as she passed me, but her eyes were on Fortier, who smiled and lifted his hat. The young woman headed for the door, swaying her hips in a manner that indicated her mind was perhaps not entirely on the evening’s service. Behind me, I heard Guttridge’s “hmph” of derision.

  “I was thinking of setting up my own workroom,” I said to Fortier, keeping a tight rein on my desire to ask him who the young woman was. “I can bring my mother’s equipment and so on over from Hyrst.”

  “A very commendable hobby, Lady Helena.”

  That stung. “It’s not intended as a hobby. I wish to learn some skills that will be useful to the people around me.”

  His thick black eyebrows rose. “I apologize again. I seem to have developed a skill for saying the wrong thing this evening. And as always, I will be delighted to help you in any way I can.”

  He bowed and turned in the direction of a dark-haired woman I thought was his sister. She was accompanied by a tall man—no doubt her husband, the pottery owner Quinn Dermody.

  “Hmph,” Guttridge said again as we climbed into our carriage.

  “Who was the girl?”

  “Nobody. A shopkeeper’s daughter. Engaged to be married, and her making eyes at the Frenchman.”

  “He’s a good-looking man.” I felt a rush of relief at the news that the young woman was engaged, followed by guilt that I felt relief.

  “He’s a rum ’un. And you heard what he said about useless and expensive. His sort would murder us in our beds, the servants along with the masters.”

  I put a steadying hand on the carriage’s window frame and leaned backward as the horses made their careful way down the steep street. “He doesn’t look like a revolutionary.”

  “Don’t you be taken in, my lady. His sort can’t be trusted.”

  Despite Fortier’s disparaging use of the word “hobby,” I rose early the next morning in an optimistic mood. I’d read some more of Mama’s first journal before falling asleep, and her fascination with her new interest was catching.

  When she’d written that journal, she’d been younger than I was now. Born late into the family, I had no recollection of Mama as a young woman. My memories of her began with the woman of almost fifty, the countess, the mother of seven children, the grandmother.

  Those memories were strong when I awoke. Perhaps I’d been dreaming of her. I remembered walking along Littleberry’s narrow, cobbled streets, seeing people greet Mama with respect and even effusiveness, making way for us as we proceeded. When she entered a room, those already in it would become more alert, as if something had changed in the air. The servants at Hyrst picked up the pace of their work as she passed by. Energy, power, sheer force of will—that was the Mama I remembered, a persona fully formed.

  Reading the story of her formative years felt like a wonderful privilege. This journal was the first of many. Through them, I could recapture the vibrant, beautiful creature who had been the Countess of Broadmere. I could keep that memory alive against the reality of the sad, vague, often angry woman who rarely ventured outside her suite of rooms at Hyrst.

  I practically leapt out of bed and sang as I lathered up my favorite rose-and-geranium soap. Lists, of course there must be lists. I would visit Hyrst with my own notebook in hand and make a long list of all the equipment I could use for my workroom. I’d talk to the gardener about taking cuttings and divisions of the plants in Mama’s herb garden. The weather was so mild down here by the coast that some of that work could be done even now. I’d speak to my own head gardener about the best site for my herb garden. I’d make a list of the steps that would have to be taken come the spring.

  I had just finished the best-tasting breakfast I’d eaten for some time when the footman announced the arrival of my sisters Alice and Annette.

  “Ally! Netty! What are you doing here?”

  My twin siblings rarely graced Whitcombe House with their presence. Excellent organizers, they were much in demand on committees and charity boards in Littleberry and Broadmere. Even when they were at home, I almost never saw them. They were so absorbed by their own concerns that they took most of their meals by themselves. They seemed to have no need whatsoever for friends. They showed little inclination even for the company of their siblings. They were whole, complete, in a way few married couples ever were.

  Today they wore identical mourning of practical bombazine. A rather old-fashioned fringe of elongated jet beads made a faint tinkling sound as they moved. I thought it might be their second mourning for Papa made over, as the twins were notoriously thrifty. Their earnest, heart-shaped faces were dominated by their large, round, blue-gray eyes, whose otherworldly quality was magnified by the mirror effect of seeing them side by side.

  “We have some news you won’t like.”

  The twin who’d spoken kissed me on one cheek, and the other one saluted me in identical fashion on the other side. Their lips were cold and dry. Having greeted me, they seated themselves on the sofa in my morning room with the air of two judges about to render a verdict. Scotty settled at their feet like a small heraldic lion on a crusader’s tombstone.

  “We don’t like listening to gossip,” the other twin said and added helpfully, “Do we, Ally?”

  “You know we don’t like gossip, Baby, dear,” said Alice. “But we thought it was very important we impart this particular piece of news to you. It concerns a person you have permitted to enter Whitcombe on more than one occasion. We feel you must be warned.”

  “After all, your position—”

  “—is a delicate one,” Alice continued smoothly, picking up Annette’s interjection as if it hadn’t happened.

  “—is a prominent one in this county,” Annette said as if Alice hadn’t spoken. “In a year or two, God willing, you will cast off your widow’s weeds and be once more the happy beloved of some fortunate man.”

  “Not ever relinquishing your sorrow for dear Justin, of course.” Alice leaned forward, her hands clasped in her lap.

  “Not ever,” echoed Annette.

  “So you must be careful—”

  “—of the company you keep—”

  “—and not allow such persons to accost you at church.”

  “Accost—?” I was puzzled, and then my mind cleared. Oh, how quickly the gossips of Littleberry worked. “Do you mean Monsieur Fortier?”

  “The very same. The Frenchman.” Alice clutched at her sister with one hand, peering solemnly into my face.

  “Precisely. The physician,” Annette said at the same time.

  I shook my head, smiling. “I’ve spent perhaps two hours with him, all told, in my entire life. He was Justin’s physician, not mine. And now that we’re acquainted, it’s hardly surprising he’d take a moment to greet me at church. Many people do.”

  Alice’s eyes narrowed. “The devil is full of subtlety and mischief.”

  I stared at her. “That’s ridiculous. Unless you’ve come to tell me he’s done something alarming, I’ll put your lapse of charity down to concern for me. I
have no intention of cultivating Monsieur Fortier’s acquaintance beyond a mere casual contact.”

  “But he has done something alarming.” Alice sounded triumphant. “He has brought disgrace down on the head of a most respectable man, one closely connected to you—”

  “—in short, your tenant at Dene Farm.”

  “Disgrace? Farmer Hatherall?” My first thought was that it must have something to do with the day of Justin’s death. Had Fortier accused the farmer of some kind of misconduct? Of lying? More importantly, had he done so without even telling me first?

  “Disgrace.” Alice once more took the lead. “You will find it shocking, Baby, dear, to learn that Susan Hatherall is with child, and no father in sight. It was Mrs. Bearcroft of the Moral Improvement Society who found it out. She had a quiet word with Farmer Hatherall, and he quite broke down, poor man, right in the church vestry.”

  “When was that?”

  “Yesterday, after evensong.”

  Soon after I had left, then. I supposed Mrs. Bearcroft had been lurking, waiting for the right moment to do her mischief.

  “You wouldn’t think these stolid men of the earth could suffer from nervous prostration, would you?” Annette raised her eyes to the ceiling. “But it took the combined efforts of the rector, the verger, and of course Mrs. Bearcroft to calm him down.”

  “He was perfectly distraught, from what we heard,” said Alice. “Of course, he must have known the truth would come out. It’s very hard to hide such a catastrophe in a small town like Littleberry.”

  Given that the gossips and busybodies in Littleberry probably outnumbered the more generously minded townspeople, it certainly was. At that moment, I felt sorry for Susan.

  “But what does Monsieur Fortier have to do with all this?” Had Fortier tried to help the farmer and somehow made things worse?

  “Why, he’s the father of the child, of course,” said Alice. “The young woman confessed the whole thing.”