by B L Bierley
“It’s probably about the new baby, isn’t it?”
Bliss had already known her mother was going to have another baby. There were plenty of signs even without the vision she’d had of another cradle rocking while baby Cori crawled nearby.
“How did you ... no, don’t tell me. It doesn’t matter anyway! You are so very special, Bliss. I’m sorry if we didn’t take you seriously earlier. And from this moment forward I promise I will never doubt you, sweetheart!” Ollie gathered his daughter up in another bone-crushing hug.
“Papa, you’re squishing me! And you’re getting wet. Now, can we go up to the veranda? I need to tell Eric something very important.” Bliss felt impatient now to have the final task over with.
“Of course we can, my darling girl.”
They followed the makeshift litter that carried Russ toward the house. Mrs. Pressley stood at the steps, wringing her hands nervously for the injured boy.
Nanny Pearl was waiting nearby to take Bliss back to the nursery. Before anyone could stop her, Bliss wriggled free of her father’s arms and scurried over to where Eric Benchley waited for his father.
“Hi!” Bliss greeted the older boy.
“Hello, Bliss. Did you fall into the lake too?” ten year old Eric asked with a slightly concerned expression. Bliss couldn’t let that sidetrack her. It was irrelevant to the conversation she needed to have with the boy anyway.
“No, I went in to get Russ. I warned him not to leave the house today and definitely not to go into the lake, but he refused to listen. I knew he wasn’t going to be able to swim once that roof hit him, so I had no choice but to jump in. It was really scary, too! I don’t like the water. I don’t like to put my feet anywhere that I can’t see where they’ll land.”
“You saw the roof hit him? That must have been really scary, huh? You’re probably the bravest little girl I know! Did you get hurt?” Bliss couldn’t mistake his patronizing tone.
Five was a great chasm of years between a boy and a girl aged ten and five respectfully, but Bliss couldn’t help feeling irritated by the way he treated her. Eric was one of the few non-family members whose future she was attuned to with regularity.
“Nope, I just went in to get Russ so he didn’t drown. But now I need to tell you something.” Bliss gave Eric a look of stern warning.
“Tell me later. I’m going in with Papa and see how he sets the bone. He told me he would let me help him today. I’m going to be a barber-surgeon too, you know?” Eric explained, trying to write the younger girl off as he turned to leave.
“Eric, you need to stay outside while your father works with my brother. You won’t like it if you don’t,” her reproachful warning was not very welcome to the determined boy.
“It’s nothing I’ve not seen before! Go get a bath, Bliss! You smell all musty and wet!” Eric scoffed.
Bliss briefly appeared pained but quickly masked the emotion. She had plenty of practice thickening her skin against the barbs of doubt.
“Suit yourself, but you’ll be sorry!” Bliss replied loftily. Then she turned on her heel and marched over to where a very young nursery maid and Nanny Pearl both waited for her.
An hour later, Eric was indeed very sorry for not having listened to Bliss. While his father repositioned the humerus, the patient succumbed to a wave of nausea.
Russ vomited all over Eric, who stood nearby helping to steady the patient during the process of resetting the bone. Eric barely registered his father’s warning just as Russ rebuked his lunch and then passed out.
Dr. Benchley looked mildly exasperated as Eric jumped to avoid the projected sickness. Then he told his son that a barber-surgeon never reacted when administering treatment, even if it was unpleasant. Dr. Benchley suggested for Eric to go to the housekeeper and ask for a room to wash up.
Mrs. Pressley was leading Eric up the stairs to the boys’ nursery to get a bath of his own when they encountered the newly clean Bliss with a nursery maid ushering her toward the children’s sitting room carrying a steaming teapot in one hand and a blanket in the other. Her still-damp hair was underneath a mob cap, and her stocking-covered feet made no noise.
“Oh, Eric!” Bliss said with a sigh as he passed by.
“Don’t you dare tease me!” Eric whispered angrily, his face cast down.
“I wasn’t going to. But you really ought to listen to me,” Bliss remarked as the nursery maid nudged her onward and away from the soiled boy. Eric merely shook his head.
Chapter Two
Bliss, age ten, Cardiff, June 1800
At Penwood Manor Estate there was plenty of abundance. Not only was Lord Oliver “Ollie” Penwood a most successful shipping magnate with the largest privateering shipping export/import business, he was a duke of the realm blessed with a wife and six children with another on the way.
This might not seem like much, plenty of families within his ancestry could boast more than six or seven offspring. But given the fact that he and his beloved wife didn’t meet until she was well upon the shelf, they were so prolific it was staggering.
Lord and Lady Penwood weren’t your average Duke and Duchess either. Before marrying, Lady Luxury “Luxie” Donovan was the eldest daughter of the Earl of Donovan, betrothed while still in her cradle to Lord Donovan’s best friend’s only son, the future Count of Varenne.
On the other hand, Ollie was reared as a common sailor. Placed in the care of a merchant ship’s captain at age six, he started out as a cabin boy and worked his way up within the ranks until he became an officers’ cadet, his commission purchased by a generous benefactor or at least a wealthy relative that couldn’t claim him. Ollie was believed to be the by-blow of a sailor and an unfortunately married lady of noble birth.
But the boy who grew up thinking he was Ollie Terry, cast off by-blow, was actually Oliver Porter, future Count of Varenne. Due to some familial espionage, Ollie had been smuggled from his home by his title hungry paternal uncle in the dead of night.
Lord Oliver Varenne, Sr. had died a few months after young Oliver was betrothed to Lord Donovan’s daughter. Ollie was barely six and unable to know what was wrong when Mr. Sherman Porter kidnapped him from his bed. Sherman put his only nephew into the care of Lord Captain Shrift, a desperate man who owed too many debts.
Sherman told the captain to tell Ollie anything he liked, but to keep him out of England until someone sent for him if he wanted his debts relieved. It was hardly a consolation that Sherman set aside additional funds to manage the boy comfortably as a sailor, giving him a paid naval education by commission. His title was to be kept a secret.
Ollie grew up living exactly the sort of life Sherman Porter was supposed to have gotten as a second son, except he’d been too cowardly. Sherman was a simpering, feminine fellow with no true character to speak of who wouldn’t have survived a month at sea.
In addition to avoiding his destined life at sea, Sherman wanted to hold the hereditary title for a few years professedly until Ollie gained his majority. He wanted to do it as the true count, not a stand-in substitute. Even if when the boy returned his holding of it would go away, while the boy was gone he’d be respected in parliament and the ton.
He intended to continue the ruse only until Ollie was eighteen. But due to a mishap in communication, and the death of the indebted sailor, Sherman was unable to locate Lord Oliver when the year of the boy’s majority arrived. Forced to keep up the deception until the situation could be resolved, Sherman continued without saying a word to anyone.
Due to his indulgent weakness and his shame, Sherman carried out the injustice nearly twenty nine years. And most unfortunately he died before he was able to fully rectify his wrongdoing. He was almost too late to beg for forgiveness of his kind sister-in-law, who by his greedy hand had lost both her husband and only child within the same year. His deathbed confession was the last hope she had of ever seeing her missing son again.
Luxie was also an unfortunate victim of Sherman’s treachery. Lord Donovan, stubbor
n all the way to his Irish roots, vowed never to give up on his promise to his deceased best friend. While the fate of Lord Oliver was still unknown, he kept Luxie quite literally set aside and off limits to any other proposals for nine seasons out, still hoping with Lady Varenne that the young count would someday be discovered one way or another.
Some might have said this was a tragedy, and indeed for the agony of the Countess of Varenne it was. But this twist of fate made Ollie a man among men. At age eleven, he’d been entrusted to the care of another man, Captain Russell Nieland, upon the death of Lord Captain Shrift.
Ollie became like a son to the childless Captain Nieland—who in reality was not who he was thought to be or claimed to be either. Nieland was actually the heir to the dukedom of Penwood, a man who had loved the sea so much he avoided his place in society to be a sailor.
Owing to Nieland’s influence with his lesser known, yet noble acquaintances, he was able to send Ollie to the finest naval academy even without a noble parentage. Afterward Ollie served in the Royal British Merchant Navy to high distinction, which wouldn’t have been possible for an untitled man in the King’s Royal Navy. No officers were untitled in the Royal Navy at the time.
And as it turned out, Captain Nieland was heir to a grand fortune and even a private shipping company. Ollie inherited everything when Captain Nieland died unexpectedly due to a mysterious ailment contracted in the tropics during the rescue of fellow sailors whose ship had sunken off the coast of a hostile port.
Unable to inherit Captain Nieland’s title, Ollie was advised by a clever steward to be generous to the King’s needs by donating a couple of ships. As a result Ollie was granted the hereditary title and became the Duke of Penwood, with all of its hereditary distinction—one of the last conferments of the kind ever to be made by the ailing king before madness enacted the regency.
In the midst of all this news and good fortune, Ollie had met and fallen in love with the most beautiful spinster in England. He stole her away with the help of her brother and sisters and married her in Scotland while his mother and her late husband’s best friend searched frantically for the missing count.
When they arrived at his new estate, both Ollie and Luxie had been nearly overwhelmed at the extravagance. The Penwood Manor Estate was an elaborately modernized castle that boasted more square footage, two large grandiose ballrooms, four sitting rooms, and an indoor tennis court that would have made the monarchy jealous!
A large ceramic lined basin, styled like a hedonistic Roman Bath and big enough for several bodies to fit comfortably, was the most unusual jewel on the lowest level. There were pleasure gardens, stables for over at least a couple hundred horses and a wonderful view of the sea port from the tallest tower window!
When it was later revealed that Ollie had been the lost Count of Varenne all along, that the girl he’d stolen to be his bride was in fact his long-waiting fiancée, it became the sensational story everyone talked about for over a decade!
Ollie, being reared away from his noble birth, came into his dukedom with a sense of honor and understanding for the common man. And his family echoed his beliefs in the way they treated the staff of the estate.
The large house, nearly rivaling the monastic holdings in the number of rooms and the curious amenities it boasted, was nearly as unbelievable without the additions of industrial progress that Ollie and his bride had made after the addition of children. It was one of the grandest estates of the nobility.
Having common-man ideals and philosophies, Ollie also managed his private shipping company himself in partnership with his best friend, Lord Daniel “Ozzie” Osterburg. He was a wonderful employer— everyone in his employ from his household staff to his lowest sailor was treated fairly, paid good wages and allowed benefits most people of the gentry and ton thought were downright absurd on such levels.
As a result, the common people of Cardiff were eager to have a job at Penwood Manor Estate. It wasn’t hard to believe that there was an ample amount of jealousy over what the Penwood’s had as a family either.
Ollie lived by a personal code, rather than succumb to the pressure of the gentry. He built a gigantic replica of a sailing vessel on the shore of the estate’s lake for all of the children to play on and have adventures. He believed in education for anyone with a desire to learn and employed nursery and nanny employees enough to satisfy his workers’ youngest children and any he and his prolific wife might be further blessed with.
There were always monies available to anyone wishing to further their education. The result was a loyalty among former employees when they returned to seek advice and received glowing recommendations from the influential family after their schooling ended and their life improved.
People who worked for the Penwood’s enjoyed advantages above and beyond most of their class. They rotated schedules, were given time off if they were sick and a little time off for the major holidays, and received fair pay for their hard work. All of these things were simply unheard of in the realm until Ollie’s example began to set the new standards.
His workers, called “employees” rather than the slave-like “servants”, were allowed to marry if they wanted, and they were given the option to lease properties on the estate to raise their families and still have the convenience of their work being nearby. Anyone who worked for the Penwood dukedom could have a decently comfortable life so long as they did their job, respected the working guidelines and didn’t cause problems.
Luxie was a generous countess and duchess with more than enough to share with those around her. They were the most beloved landlords in every corner of Wales and England where they owned properties. And yet despite their well-liked status, the Penwood family was still a most unusual bunch even without the peculiarity of their intuitive, knowing middle child.
Their eldest son was commissioned as a sailor, even though he was heir to a dukedom and already a count by birth! Lord Russell Varenne lived up to his namesake in that he shirked society and lived for the open ocean and the challenges of a very physical career! It was scandalously flippant and spat in the eye of custom, but the Lord and Lady Penwood did not seem to mind.
Their second son Mac, Miles Allen Christopher Porter, was allowed a full, gentleman’s education, unheard of for a second born male. And worse even, he was leaning toward becoming a scholar or an artist as a life’s career. Friends of the Penwood family urged them to direct the boy to a more acceptable path. Professors were always people without means who lived for knowledge, not wealthy second sons who should live idle lives and inherit their livelihood in stocks and percents! And artists were too lowly to even be mentioned unless they’d done some great work that all could admire.
Their daughters were a bit more gentile by design. Lady Merryann Destiny, the eldest, was an accomplished horsewoman by age ten. But due to painful shyness and a speech difficulty, she was woefully reluctant to participate in society’s remaining rituals like most young ladies her age.
Lady Cordelia Fortunata, or Cori to her family and friends, was determined to escape the rituals of nobility altogether and blend in with the worker’s children that seemed to her to have all the freedom. It was therefore unfortunate for her that she was the most exquisitely beautiful child. She stood out with her stunning features and was rarely ever mistaken for anyone except one of the Penwood daughters. She was also unfortunately clumsy.
The current youngest child was barely four, but already Lady Andrea Serenity- known to them all as Andre by precocious insistence- was showing great musical talent and promise. Her skills were already exceeding expectations, and little Andre’s determination to master any instrument she was given meant that a music master would soon have to be added as part of the education offered at Penwood Manor Estate.
Even with all these unusual characters around her, Bliss was still set apart from the rest of the family as being slightly other-worldly. She rarely needed scolding and was usually the most helpful and least troublesome of all the childr
en.
Her unusual ability to know things in advance gave her an advantage above her siblings in that regard. She was above and beyond the maturity of most children twice her age, and as such it set her apart from most of the children who weren’t related to her.
Bliss could claim only a handful of friends outside of family. And her loyalty to those who trusted her was repaid tenfold. But as she grew older, her abilities grew. She was forced to accept her lot in life, simply because to resist fate meant the worst possible outcomes. And why anyone would avoid the better outcome was beyond her!
When Bliss awoke early one morning during a mysteriously cool day in June, three things were clear in her mind:
First off, she would see her future husband that day. The visions on that end were very clear. Scenes of her wearing a billowing gown and standing with the boy on her arm dressed in a fashionable suit came at regular intervals that morning.
The groom was no stranger, much to her dismay. She’d suspected for some time that they were destined to be together, but this day’s sight confirmed it. For the first time it was obvious in the vision that he adored Bliss. He even kissed her!
The vision of flowers and a festooned carriage waiting for them made Bliss certain this was the day that she should show him a bit more of her true self. In spite of her eagerness to share with immediate family and closest friends, Bliss was secretive about her abilities. Her friend, Dr. Benchley, warned her that it might be dangerous to share her special talent with people she didn’t trust.
The second thing she knew was that Dr. Benchley needed to come to the house. Bliss had a distinct feeling that a medical doctor would be necessary sometime in the afternoon. It was a sound rather than a visual scene that alerted her to this.