A Damsel for the Mysterious Duke

by Bridget Barton

  “And it was Lady Beatrice who paid for her daughter to remain here?”

  “Yes, Lady Beatrice and, I believe we received an extraordinarily large donation from another source. Baroness Elizabeth Jeffries, as a matter-of-fact,” he said wide-eyed. “Goodness, that is how the name was so familiar to me. Your grandmother had been the lady who made a very great donation at the time of Esme Montgomery’s admittance.”

  “That is very interesting, Dr Ellis. I had no idea that my grandmother had been so charitable.” Georgina tried to smile, but she knew that her grandmother was anything but charitable.

  No doubt there was some cold calculation in her donation to the previous warden. Perhaps it had convinced the man that Esme Montgomery really did belong in an asylum instead of just at home where the smallest amount of loving kindness might have gone a long way to curing her maladies.

  “We are very grateful to all our benefactors, Miss Jeffries, for a place such as Ainsley is not cheap to run.”

  “Quite so, Sir,” she said and then suddenly another question occurred to her. “Tell me, did Lady Beatrice attend her daughter’s funeral? I am assuming that it took place here in Devonshire given that this is where she died.”

  “Funeral?” Dr Ellis placed both of his palms on the desk in front of him and leaned back, pushing down hard on them. “What funeral, my dear?”

  “Esme Montgomery’s funeral, Dr Ellis.”

  “Miss Jeffries, Esme Montgomery never had a funeral.”

  “She never had a funeral? But why?” Georgina said reeling.

  “Because she did not die, Miss Jeffries.”

  “Are you absolutely sure, Dr Ellis?”

  “Given that I have only seen the lady this morning, Miss Jeffries, I can tell you with certainty that Esme Montgomery is still very much alive.”

  Chapter 31

  Dr Ellis was so quick to allow her to visit Esme Montgomery that she realized he was actually relieved that the poor woman finally had somebody from the outside world to see her.

  When Georgina had immediately said that she would wish to see her if he would allow it, she had thought for a moment that the doctor might allow his emotions to be seen. At least, if nothing else, Esme Montgomery had Dr Ellis on her side.

  “Introduce yourself to her very gently, Miss Jeffries,” Dr Ellis said as the two of them made their way through an extraordinarily long corridor. “She is not given to bouts of wild emotion, so you need not have any concerns there. My only worry is a deepening of the melancholy so you will be careful, will you not?”

  “Dr Ellis, I shall be most sensitive, I assure you.”

  There had been no question of Jeremy joining her, and he had been left enjoying some light refreshments in the doctor’s office.

  “Well, here we are. I shall come in with you for a moment so that Esme realizes it is quite safe, and then I shall leave you, but I shall not be far away.”

  “Thank you, Dr Ellis, you have been most kind.”

  Georgina was surprised to be walked into a pretty and private bedchamber. It was a room on the far side of the west wing of the building, and it looked out over a beautiful woodland and the lake.

  A woman with fair hair sat with her back to them in a chair, staring out of the window. She hardly moved as they entered and did not turn her head to see them.

  “Esme, it is Dr Ellis.”

  “Good afternoon, Dr Ellis.” Her measured, cultured voice was a far cry from the moans and groans Georgina had heard at the other end of the asylum.

  The west of the asylum was a very quiet place, and she wondered if the more manageable inmates were housed there, people just like Esme Montgomery whose conditions did not lead them to behave in a distressing manner.

  “I have a visitor for you, Esme.”

  “I do not get visitors, Dr Ellis.”

  “But Miss Jeffries has come a long way.” At the sound of that name, Esme jumped out of her seat as if she had been fired from a cannon.

  She spun around and looked all around the room, her eyes searching for somebody she did not see. Immediately, Georgina realized that she was looking for Elizabeth Jeffries, the old Baroness.

  “Esme, my name is Georgina Jeffries. You need have no fear that my grandmother, Elizabeth Jeffries, is here, for she passed away many years ago. You are quite safe, and if you will give me a few minutes of your time, you will find that I am by no meets the same woman that my grandmother was.”

  “You do not really look like her,” Esme said, immediately calming down on hearing that the old Baroness was dead. She walked slowly towards Georgina, closely studying her face the whole time. “Perhaps there is a little resemblance, but there is none of the hardness. What did you say your name was again, young lady?”

  “My name is Georgina,” she said, and as she regarded Esme closely, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that she was the young woman who had paced the lawns of Ashdown Manor fourteen years before.

  “Georgina,” Esme said and smiled. “So, you have come all the way from Hertfordshire to visit me?”

  “You know where I am from then?”

  “If you are the granddaughter of Elizabeth Jeffries, then you have undoubtedly hailed from Ashdown Manor in Hertfordshire.” Georgina had not expected Esme Montgomery to be particularly lucid, and she had certainly not expected her to be as quick-witted as she seemed to be.

  “Yes, that is right. But I am visiting you today from Devonshire, for I have been staying in Rowley with relatives.”

  “Rowley?” she said and her eyes, pale and blue, widened with emotion. Rowley,” she said again.

  “Yes, my relatives live at Winton House.”

  “Yes, of course. Elizabeth Jeffries was an Allencourt.” Esme spoke almost as if to herself and nodded gently. “Yes, of course.”

  “I am so very glad to finally meet you, Esme,” Georgina said and then turned to look at Dr Ellis in the hope that he would leave them alone for a few minutes so that they might talk in private.

  That wonderful and kindly physician immediately perceived her meaning and nodded gently at both women before making his way out of the room and gently closing the door behind him.

  “And I am glad to meet you, Georgina. I do not get many visitors. No, I do not get any visitors. I have not been visited for more than eleven years.”

  “Not even your mother?”

  “Yes, she was the only one who came. But she only ever came so that she might tell me that I would never get out of here, that I would never be able to cause her trouble again.” Elizabeth’s shoulders sagged. “Is she still living?”

  “She is still living, Esme, but she is old and frail and bound to her bed. She can do you no more harm.” Georgina knew that she spoke out of turn, but it was clear to her from everything that she had learned that Beatrice Montgomery most certainly had done her daughter harm.

  “That is not a thing to be believed, Georgina. She is not a good woman, and I would beseech you to have nothing more to do with her. If you have met her in this lifetime, swear to me that you will never meet her again. She is the foulest person in creation, a poison.”

  “I know. She and my grandmother would seem to have been cut from the same cloth.”

  “They most certainly were, although my mother outstripped your grandmother by many a furlong.”

  “I have seen you before, Esme.”

  “But you seem too young. I cannot imagine that you have seen me.”

  “It was fourteen years ago at Ashdown Manor. I know it was you; I am certain of it. You have not changed a great deal I am bound to say.”

  “When one is in an asylum, my dear, the stresses and strains of ordinary life are non-existent. I have been here in the west wing for many years, and it is so quiet and peaceful. I suppose the peace and solitude stops my hair from turning grey and my skin from turning to powder.”

  “You were so distressed when I saw you. I was but six years old, or thereabouts, and you were pacing the lawn outside the house as if you
were looking for somebody.”

  “Yes, I remember it. It was not long after then that I was brought here.”

  “But what happened?”

  “To tell you, it would be to tell you something that I have never spoken of before. With your grandmother gone, and my own mother surely soon to follow, there will soon be nobody left who remembers.”

  “You may tell me. You may tell me anything in the world, and I will keep it safe.”

  “It has long passed the point where there is any benefit to be gained from saying it all aloud,” Esme said and sighed before turning to look out of the window again.

  Georgina had the awful sensation that she might once again be about to hit a dead-end, and she knew she could not let that happen.

  “Were you looking for Samuel that day?” Georgina said, following her instincts.

  And her instincts served her well, for Esme turned around to face her with such a look of pain that Georgina could have cried.

  “He was your son, was he not?”

  “Yes, yes he was my son,” Esme said, and tears rolled down her cheeks.

  Without another word, Georgina walked towards her and pulled her into her arms, holding her tightly and allowing her to cry for all she was worth.

  “My son, my little boy. Destined to be trapped in servitude his whole life to pay for my mistakes.” She extricated herself from Georgina’s embrace and made her way back to her chair, lowering herself down into it and staring out of the window again.

  Georgina continued to stand behind her, speaking gently.

  “They took him from you, did they not? Your mother and my grandmother?”

  “The Devil himself could not have pared two more suitable friends,” Esme said bitterly. “And their friendship seemed to give them greater power somehow.”

  “Esme, what happened?”

  “I was but nineteen years old when I first met the Duke of Calder. It was at a week of sporting events held by an Earl on the border between Devon and Cornwall. He was more than seventeen years my senior, and yet I thought I had never seen a more handsome man in all my life. His hair was such a beautiful shade of brown, in some lights almost silvery,” she said and stared off into space.

  Georgina felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up; the Duke was certainly Emerson’s father, of that she had no doubt. Perhaps his hair had simply been more silver than brown by the time he had become acquainted with his own son.

  “I knew that he was married, of course, and you must not think that he was an evil man, for he was not. He was just so very sad, so very alone. The Duchess had no time for anything in the world but her illness, although I felt nothing but pity for her on its account. She had been an invalid for so long that it seemed she was simply waiting to die. It was silly, I know, but I fell in love with him, and to my amazement, he fell in love with me also. He came across to Cornwall from Devon at every opportunity, and I spent the happiest moments of my life with him. But our affair did not last long. It had been just a few months when I discovered that I was with child, and I truly did not know which way to turn. I knew I could not tell him, for his life was already so very complicated. But I had nobody else in the world, and in the end, I was forced to tell my mother. In truth, I would have preferred to have told my father, but he had been gone for so long. But had he been alive, I know that he would have understood. He was such a fair and good man, and I would have given anything for him to have been spared; I would even have thrown my mother’s life away in his place.”

  “That is perfectly understandable, Esme.”

  “But I told her, and it was the worst thing that I could have done. I should just have told the Duke and taken some money from him and run away. I would have happily lived in anonymity with my child and a story of my origins. But I was young and afraid, and I had this silly notion that my mother would surely help me.”

  “But she did not.”

  “No, she only helped herself. And that dreadful woman, Elizabeth Jeffries, helped her.

  “What did they do?”

  “Well, it was an easy thing to get me away from Wighton Hall. My mother and I lived in the Lodge, and we had very little to do with my father’s nephew and his family. They lived in the main hall, you see, and we so very rarely went over there. So, when my mother declared that we were taking an extended trip to the North country, there was nobody, in particular, to think anything of it, let alone be suspicious.”

  “And did you go to the North country?”

  “No, we did not,” she said and shook her head bitterly. “We went to Hertfordshire.”

  “Good heavens, where?”

  “We stayed on the very edge of Horley, no less. We were in a little house, just my mother and I, a place that your grandmother had rented for us. We stayed there throughout my confinement, and I was never once allowed to leave it until after I had given birth.” Esme paused for a moment to compose herself. “Elizabeth Jeffries was a regular visitor, and I always dreaded it. When she and my mother were together, they seemed to encourage each other in their cruelty. The things they said and the names they called me I cannot repeat; it was so foul and unfair. Neither one of them understood what it was to truly love another human being. Even if the circumstances were not perfect, it was still love.”

  “I know.” Georgina tenderly laid a hand on Esme’s shoulder as she stood behind her.

  “And then my child was born. Oh, Georgina, he was the most perfect little boy. He was chubby, and he had the sweetest face, like a little angel. Oh, and he was noisy. He wriggled and made noises all day long.”

  “Oh, how lovely. How long did you have with him?”

  “But three days, Georgina. When it came to the third day, my mother said that she supposed that the child would live, and she seemed most disappointed by it. But since he had lived, she had determined it was time to put their plan into action.”

  “And so, he was sent to my grandmother, to be used by her as a servant at Ashdown Manor?”

  “You know the rest?”

  “Only that Sammy was brought to us as a baby. I do not remember it, for I was not yet born at that stage, but I have lately discovered it.”

  “And you remember Sammy? When you were growing up, you remember him?”

  “Oh yes, oh yes I do,” Georgina said as the first of her own tears began to fall.

  “I was taken back to Wighton Hall, and I am bound to tell you that I was a broken woman. My mother declared that I would never see Samuel again, and I would simply have to forget him. She talked of marrying me away to various gentlemen, none of whom I had a single interest in. I did not even have an interest in living anymore, not without my child. I beseeched her to let me see him, to let me go to Hertfordshire and at least look at him from time to time. But she denied me, almost keeping me a prisoner in the Lodge for several years. But the pain did not ease, not for a moment. It simply grew and grew as every day passed.”

  “But you did come to Hertfordshire in the end, did you not?”

  “I had spent a good deal of time acquiescing to my mother’s wants and wishes, and in the end, she saw no harm in leaving me to go into town now and again to purchase fabric and other such things. I planned it meticulously, travelling post-chaise from Cornwall to Hertfordshire. It was a terribly long and hard journey, but I did not mind. I was so sure that I would see my boy at the end of it. He would have been eight years old by then, but I knew that I would know his face the minute I set eyes on him.”

  “And did you see him? When you came to Ashdown that day, did you see his face?”

  “No, your own parents seemed to have no idea who I was. Your father asked me to leave, but I paced the lawn, waiting for any sign of my boy. And then, before I knew it, Elizabeth appeared. She gripped my arm so tightly, and I was so exhausted from my journey that I had no strength with which to fight her. She walked me right off your estate and back into town, putting me on the next mail carriage out of Hertfordshire. She told me never to return or she would
tell my mother everything, and I would be all the sorrier for it.”

  “I can quite believe that.”

  “I had no doubt that she would tell my mother anyway, for Elizabeth Jeffries felt nothing for me. And so, I decided to find the Duke, to tell him everything and to beg that he rescue our boy from a lifetime of servitude even if I, his own mother, could not save him.”

  “So you went straight to him? You went to Devonshire?”

  “I did, I went to Calder Hall and found him walking on the grounds. The moment he saw me, his eyes lit up, and I fell into his arms. I still loved him you see; I love him even now. None of it was his fault, nor mine. We had simply fallen in love, two wounded people who needed comfort in this world.”