Lady of Spirit

by Edith Layton

  “Now, it’s a better financial proposition than that for a draggletail slut such as used to haunt your old neighborhood, but then, she has only to put up with her customer for a brief fumbling moment, a fleeting hour. It’s true she works in a doorway or on a rented cot, while you, my sweet, shall have silken sheets and gilded rooms. But a mistress, oh, love,” he said with nothing like love blazing in his eyes as his hand closed to a fist in her hair, catching it up and paining her as he spoke, although she doubted anything could hurt so much as his bitter words stung her, “silken sheets or no, she at least has some respite when she wants it, but you, why, you shall have to be ever and always at my immediate disposal. Those are the rules.

  “Should you like me to come to you foxed?” he asked insolently. “Not just a trifle elevated, mind, perhaps even stumbling drunk, and then enter your bed and body? For I’d have every right to, at my whim, at any time, or in any condition. Perhaps I’d come at noon, or after an unexplained unrepentant absence of a month or so, or directly from a rival’s bed, or from my wife’s embrace. It would be my right. Or I might lend you, as a book or a sum of money, to a friend. Though I don’t think I would,” he snarled, “since I’m possessive, and people never remember to return things they borrow. But it would be my right, as well.

  “Oh, there’d be grace notes,” he said, refusing to allow himself to look away from her tear-filled eyes. “I’m civilized, you know. But you, Miss Dawkins, descendant of a mistress, so eager for the post, why, you’d have to be ever easy, ever loving, ever joyous in my company,” he insisted, his slightly slurring accents dragging out the words and etching them in acid. “That’s what I’d pay for, that, and not ‘love,’ which is always given, and never bartered.”

  “No, I never meant that,” she cried, pulling away, but not running from him, knowing that he had only spoken truth, and horrified yet grateful that he had destroyed all her roseate childish illusions of glory with him, “that is never what I meant, I couldn’t be that, do that. Don’t you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand,” he said, suddenly releasing her. After turning from her and resting his hands against the rail, he said wearily, “All too well, my poor girl. That’s why I’m leaving. Yes, I’m decided, I’m off to London. For a space. It’s best. The children will regret it, of course, but I’ll make a game of it and solicit all their orders tonight at dinner. If I promise to return with bags full of good things from the great city, I believe I can make my departure more of a treat than a loss. And what may I bring you?” he asked more lightly, glancing to her. “Or will my remove be enough for you?”

  “I didn’t mean to drive you away,” she began, but he cut in, saying swiftly:

  “You did not. I brought you here for your own safety’s sake. I’m driving myself away because of it, and my own good opinion of myself, as well. Because I don’t know that I was about to do anything respectable for you just now, no matter what my heated, belated, puritanical little lecture implied. And I can’t seem to keep my hands off you long enough to find out.

  “And I don’t want to sour something so very new, and so very sweet. I was raised a gentleman. Forget my position—god knows I have often enough. I will not take advantage of yours. I’m your employer. If I’m to be responsible for you, I must first ensure that I can be responsible for myself. It’s too easy to blame phantoms.”

  He gripped the bridge’s railing until his knuckles showed white, and muttered, as though to himself:

  “A grown man ought to know better than to mew himself up on his country estate for weeks on end, with few more attractive rumps to behold than those of his own sheep. Small wonder then he’d sink to pawing at the one presentable female servant who crossed his path, prodded by evil spirits or not.”

  The small sound of her quickly indrawn breath made him grimace: “But you’re far more than merely presentable, aren’t you, Miss Dawkins?” he asked, glancing toward her with a twisted smile. “And we have a certain history, don’t we? And yet we’d established a sort of domestic friendship in spite of it, hadn’t we? Forgive me my rash act as well as my unthinking tongue. I hope you’ll find it easier from a distance. I won’t become a true Earl of Clune, no matter how this place pushes me to it. You’re very lovely, but even though I was the only legitimate heir to my title, I can never forget how very many illegitimate ones there were.”

  And then, since there was obviously nothing she could say, and nothing he chose to, he bowed, and left her there.

  *

  There might have been several dozen dead but nonetheless overactive Haverfords lurking in High Wyvern Hall, but it was the absence of just one living earl that caused the house to feel so empty, and cast a pall of deeper gloom over the place. He left on a Friday morning, full of smiles and trailing promises behind him even as he threw his portmanteau into his carriage. He took with him his valet and his tiger, and the good wishes of everyone at the Hall who’d come to see him off, and he left a solemn fretful household in his wake.

  The children took their lessons, did their chores and behaved well, but without the sparkle that had characterized their activity since they’d come to live with the Haverfords. It was obvious the earl was never far from their thoughts; they spoke of him often, even when they thought they were alone, lovingly detailing his smallest actions and comments as though they were the stuff of epic legend. They missed him so profoundly because all of them, including the usually cynical Alfie, Victoria thought, caught between amusement and a new and rueful cynicism of her own, seemed to believe that the sun set over the earl’s left ear and rose over his right one each dawn.

  His mother regretted his departure as well, but then, as she so often said, with a grin very reminiscent of her absent son’s, the devilish difficulty in it was that it seemed poor parenting profited one more than good, since the more successful one was at raising one’s progeny, the more painful it then was when one was done with the task. For while one never wished to have a dreadful child, of course, she sighed, the more charming one’s offspring turned out to be, the more lonely it made one when they left to take their place in the world. And as the world was, of course, London, Mrs. Haverford had a sigh for absent laughter, but got on with her life, gracefully accepted the inevitable, and made sure to include the earl, in his turn, in her regular correspondence with her other children.

  Victoria never brought up the earl’s name in conversation. She smiled and nodded when she heard the children’s tributes to him, and placidly agreed with Mrs. Haverford whenever his virtues were documented. But she never ceased to think of him, never while she was awake, and seldom when she was sleeping. Dining made her remember his favorite foods; when she bathed, the smell of the soap and spicy herbs the housekeeper provided made her recall the scent about him she’d savored when he’d held her close. A fleeting expression on his mama’s face could bring him back to her with the force of a blow, and even the innocent darkness of night brought the touch and feel of him back to her senses. Yet all the while she knew, and kept reminding herself constantly, that nothing else would actually ever bring him back, at least never to her. He’d return to the Hall, she knew, but there was no forgetting that he’d as much as said directly that he was leaving it because of her.

  Her only consolation lay in the fact that perhaps she’d have found a new position and so would be gone when he finally returned, so she’d at least have bright memories to bear away with her. She didn’t wish to have those admittedly disturbing memories, which nevertheless she suspected would be the most important episodes of her life, ruined by further remembrances of him returning to the Hall and then going through the awkward painful business of attempting to avoid her, so that she in turn wouldn’t remind him of that odd and rash impulse that had come over him that odd and rash day.

  But thinking about the earl and all his reasons for those strange and more strangely gratifying moments only saddened Victoria, and even that sorrow, she knew guiltily, was for all the wrong reasons. For thinking
of his actions and her reactions made her feel not so much put upon as she knew they ought to do, so much as they made her feel vaguely ashamed of her temerity, and embarrassed by her morality.

  Her own wicked ancestress, Victoria thought, the lady whose painted miniature likeness she sometimes stared at in her sleepless nights, would certainly have known what to do about such a strong attraction to such a troublesome gentleman. As a commoner who’d consorted with a king, her unhappy great-great-great-granddaughter thought, no doubt she’d have been thoroughly ashamed and scornful of a descendant with such watery blood trickling through her veins.

  The one comforting, or irritating, fact, depending upon which night the sleepless sufferer thought on it, was that she could no longer even consider becoming his mistress, not now that she knew precisely what that demeaning role would offer. But unfortunately, she could scarcely bear to think of how she’d go on with her life without him now, now that she’d some idea of the delights his embrace could offer. At any rate, since he could be most persuasive if he wished, and yet had obviously gone out of his way to stress all the disadvantages of such an arrangement, there was little doubt he disliked any idea of such an arrangement with her. Whether the fault lay in herself, her stars, or her status, she didn’t know, but it didn’t matter, she decided, since he likely had filled that vacant position the moment he’d arrived in London town.

  That depressing thought occurred to her often, so it was understandable that her eyes became heavy with missed sleep and she became overly familiar with the sights and sounds of the nighttime Hall, almost as much so, she sometimes thought sadly, as poor Lady Ann was supposed to be. In fact, since the day the earl had left, she often found herself wishing his Hall boasted a ghost or two, for she’d have liked company of any sort for those small dreary wakeful hours. There were even nights when she wished she could sneak off with a warm dog from Bobby’s room, but he tried to keep them all safe from marauding footmen, behind his door. Even the one great independent beast, the massive black dog with drooping ears and eyes that Victoria still spied now and again trailing about the corridors searching for the children, remained aloof from her hesitant blandishments, regarding her with a quizzical stare before vanishing into some more interesting portion of the house.

  But her days were well spent. The children were a joy. Mrs. Haverford was such an entertaining companion Victoria sometimes wondered just who was supposed to be companioning whom. Even Miss Comfort, she discovered, had a wealth of information to dispense. And since she’d made the further acquaintance of many persons at the Hall, there was seldom a daylight hour when she had to be alone if she didn’t care to be. The librarian, Nurse, and housekeeper, the estate manager and his shy wife, and the Lawrences, who were restoring the art gallery, could all usually spare a moment for some pleasantry in the course of their crowded days. Some, she continued to see only now and again, like the housekeeper’s perennially bustling, busy niece, or the lovely fair-haired girl she often encountered in the music room and elsewhere, but unfortunately still, so far, always just as she was almost gone from a room Victoria was entering. But even there, by the sweet sad smiles of regret she was always given, Victoria knew that there were still other relationships that might be pursued further someday.

  But only if there were to be much more of a future for her here at the Hall, she thought, as she went to visit Miss Comfort in her room one fine August morning. A week had slipped into a month, and now, however tepid the Colfaxes’ commendation, however reluctant young Theo’s mama was to insist on a better one from her erstwhile ally, certainly enough time had passed for a substitute governess-companion to ask for an equally valid, enthusiastic one from Mrs. Haverford. It was only that the substitute governess-companion rationalized that not enough time had elapsed for her to bring herself to ask for it. For although the longer the earl stayed in London, the more she began to feel that her presence was keeping him away, the longer he stayed, the more she began to imagine that if she remained he might forget about her enough to return anyway. Perhaps she’d ask in a week, then, she decided resolutely as she tapped upon Miss Comfort’s door, and then tried to put the thought behind her. Perhaps in a century, she admitted to herself in a burst of honesty, just before she was bidden to enter.

  Mrs. Haverford sat at the bow window with her invalid companion and gave a genuinely warm and beaming welcome to Victoria when she came into the sickroom. By Miss Comfort’s petulant look and forced smile, Victoria assumed the two had been at their usual gentle argument. Miss Comfort no doubt wanted to rise from her bedridden condition and get on with her duties, or her journeys, or her life again, and her employer no doubt was still insisting on her further rest for the sake of her complete recuperation.

  “But, Comfort, my dear,” Mrs. Haverford continued to say, too involved with her argument to give it up as Victoria took a seat, “the doctor has said that you ought to remain at rest, he even said so again just yesterday when he was here.”

  “And he said so the day before,” Miss Comfort replied waspishly, “and the day before that. Really, Roberta, even you ought to acknowledge that I am not so ill that I require the daily attention that I’ve been receiving. I believe that the young doctor comes here as often to see Miss Dawkins as he does to visit me. And further,” she said, as Victoria’s eyes opened in shock at this tack the elder woman was taking, even as her cheeks turned a dim rose as she remembered the amount of unsubtle attention she generally received from that young man, “I cannot help but think that he has his own reasons for wanting me to remain in an invalidish condition. After all, he’s likely realized that once I am up and about, Miss Dawkins will be gone from here, and I don’t believe the good physician wants that.”

  “Comfort!” Mrs. Haverford said as her own eyes widened. “I can’t believe my ears. Indeed, I cannot. Dr. Parker is a reputable physician, and although I can’t deny he seems very taken with Victoria…” And here she shushed her new companion as she began a red-faced protest of her innocence in the matter, and overrode her comments by proclaiming, “As indeed who could blame him? He’s young and unmarried and has eyes in his head, hasn’t he? Not that I think she ought to encourage him, because I truly don’t feel they would suit. It’s clear she doesn’t care for him in that fashion in the least, and I’m not gothic enough to preach that that sort of emotion would grow on her, for of course, it wouldn’t. Not that sort of affection which is necessary for a true match…”

  Mrs. Haverford frowned then. “Ah, where was I?” she asked, and then brightening, went on without the prompting that neither woman in her audience, one out of embarrassment, the other from pique, would give her.

  “Dr. Parker, yes. As I was saying, I doubt such motives would influence him. Why should they? Because, Comfort, my dear, charming as they are, anyone can see that the Johnson children are a handful, and that Victoria’s of a perfect age to deal with them. I certainly wouldn’t burden you with their care when you’re well again, especially not when she’s here and able to handle them so well. And I scarcely think anyone, most especially not a physician, would think we’d ask it of you. No, I’m sure he doesn’t for a moment believe your recovery would displace her, and so would have no reason to thwart it, even if he were such a conniving sort of character, which I’m sure he is not.”

  “So Miss Dawkins is to take on my duties with the children permanently?” Miss Comfort shrilled, rising unsteadily to her feet and clutching her morning robe closely together over her narrow breast with one thin gnarled hand. “I quite understand, oh, I do. I suppose you’re waiting until I can walk safely enough to take myself off to a quiet retirement. Well, I assure you, Mrs. Haverford, I am well enough for that already. Doubtless your new broom will sweep cleaner. Doubtless she can cavort with the children, and amuse you, and your son, far more than a dried-up old creature like myself can do.”

  “Whatever are you thinking of?” Mrs. Haverford cried. “I want you to remain with us, and Cole has nothing to say in the matt
er at all.”

  “Oh, does he not?” Miss Comfort retorted, swaying as she stood and glared at her employer and the new governess. “I have seen how he looks at Miss Dawkins, and I assure you, Mrs. Haverford, he never looked at me that way!”

  Victoria didn’t know whether to giggle or weep at the pronouncement, but before she could respond, Mrs. Haverford rose to her feet and put out a hand to touch the old woman, only to find her shrinking back as though she expected a blow. So she only said sadly:

  “You certainly cannot be well, Comfort, to speak such nonsense. Cole thinks of you in the light of a mother…well, not actually,” she mumbled, “rather more of an aunt, I should say, but you are of an age to be his mother. It would be reprehensible, bizarre in fact, if he should ogle you.”

  She paused to suppress a distinct giggle, as Miss Comfort said stiffly, “That is never what I meant,” and then went on, in softer tones:

  “Come, Comfort, be reasonable. He’s young, Victoria’s lovely, what more natural than he should appreciate looking at her? Has the doctor better eyes than he? But he’s never the sort to fling you out of your house—and never doubt that wherever I am is your house as well, my dear—just so that he can continue to enjoy the sight. Be sensible, my dear, sit down and consider what you’ve said, indeed it doesn’t become you and I believe you may even owe Victoria an apology for this morning’s work.”

  “And if you encourage your son in his appreciation of Miss Dawkins, your family may find you owe her a deal more than an apology,” the old woman retorted, “but it would be for the result of a night’s work, and not mine, never fear!”

  “Comfort!” Mrs. Haverford gasped.

  “Miss Comfort,” Victoria ventured, in a sort of anguish of embarrassment at the turn the conversation had taken. She’d been watching and listening to the two women like a spectator at a shuttlecock match, and hardly knew when she ought to put in a word. As the altercation grew louder, and most especially when the earl was mentioned, she became unhappily aware that the two had forgotten her presence entirely, and was even more uncomfortable when she realized she was afraid to interrupt and remind them, lest she miss a word. Now she also wondered if the old woman could read minds, or if she herself had been so transparent in her yearnings toward the earl that even a passionless creature such as Miss Comfort found no difficulty in reading her face.