Jane and the Sins of Society

by Sarah Waldock

  “She is a nice girl, though I confess, I partly encourage the friendship because she is plain at the moment, and it is a foil for my Cora, who is not clever.”

  “Which is why you are happy to settle for a respectable match with a kind man like Mr. Brasenose, rather than a brilliant match with Falkrington.”

  “Absolutely, my dear Lady Armitage. I want her established and protected.”

  “As every mother of daughters does,” said Jane.

  “You have daughters?”

  “Three of them; Cecily is my stepdaughter, she is eleven, so I will be worrying about suitors before I can turn round! Frances is my first husband’s child, and is still a toddler, and Susanna is the baby of the family, born last December.”

  “My, you are doing well to be back on your feet so quickly and to have recovered your figure.”

  Jane smiled.

  “Part of the secret is in feeding your own babies, not getting in a wet nurse, and in having remained fit before birthing. I fancy if Princess Charlotte had walked vigorously every day until the birthing pangs began, she would have been in a better state, and we should have had a live prince as heir presumptive, and we should not have seen the scandalous scrambling of all the royal dukes to provide themselves with suitable wives, and legitimate heirs to trump their pack of royal bastards.”

  Mrs. Fielding sniggered, then sighed.

  “I was not given the options to do that, nor to feed Cora,” she said, a trifle wistfully. “I don’t suppose Princess Charlotte found herself permitted to make many choices, when the birth of a royal baby becomes the business of the accoucheurs more than of the mother.”

  “More than likely,” said Jane. “I am sorry you found yourself without choices.”

  “I think the length of time it took birthing her had something to do with her being slow, and no forceps for me,” said Mrs. Fielding, almost viciously. “But having her gave me the incentive to fight to see that she had more options than I have ever had.”

  “Yes, when one has a baby, totally dependent on one, it opens one’s eyes to the surroundings, and to things one wishes to change,” said Jane.

  “Your first husband did bad by you?”

  “Let us just say that when he fell in with a bad crowd and got himself murdered, I was not exactly prostrated with grief,” said Jane. “Were he and Mr. Fielding of a piece in that respect?”

  “I would prefer not to speak about it,” said Mrs. Fielding.

  “That, I can quite understand,” said Jane. “I do not like to talk about Frank, but I have the best part of him in Frances and Joseph, so that is quite sufficient. Moreover, I can quite see that you would not wish to even think about your situation at the time.”

  “What do you mean by that?” demanded Mrs. Fielding.

  “Oh, nothing particular, though I cannot think it polite to interfere in Draisine races because of the inconvenient memories of those who recall a time which you would rather forget. I myself find it hard meeting those who thought my late husband was a charming man as he could be on the surface.”

  “And there was me thinking you had had the easy life, born with a silver spoon in your mouth, and then marrying a man of substance,” said Mrs. Fielding. She gave a rather forced laugh.

  Jane laughed.

  “Oh, do not make up as many fairy-tales as Rosalind, I pray you,” she said. “Dear me, I hardly know whether to tell you to let her make up her whimsies, or disabuse her. My husband has worked very hard for us to be in a position of some financial comfort.”

  “Indeed? What has he done to achieve that?”

  “He is a consultant to Bow Street, and has been instrumental in helping out Lloyds of London to recover stolen goods, and in investigating insurance claims,” said Jane. “A step up from being an officer of Bow Street to keep body and soul together when he first invalided out, taking those cases which needed the tact a gentleman could bring.”

  Mrs. Fielding paled.

  “My goodness!” she said.

  “I am not ashamed of his efforts,” said Jane, softly. She was not ashamed of the fact that Caleb had never been a gentleman before Fowler had taught him to speak like one, and his former colonel, Sir Henry Wilton, had arranged a late field commission for him, so he could at least muster out as an officer. However, that was not information to bruit abroad at Almack’s.

  The effect on other people on learning that Caleb was associated with Bow Street was, however, always interesting.

  Chapter 13

  Jane was not expecting the cry,

  “Stand and deliver!” in the middle of town, on the way home from Almack’s. The coachman they had hired for the season brought the carriage to a halt, causing Jane to frown. Fowler would have whipped up the horses and ducked.

  “What the....?” Caleb was incensed. “Now that’s downright lawless.”

  “Well, I have taken off the demi-parure so maybe the fellow may be bought off with a few guineas,” said Jane. “And we can have him pursued later.”

  The door was wrenched open, and a man, whose face was covered with a muffler, and who was holding two pistols, stood there. He shot deliberately at Caleb, who gave a grunt of pain, and subsided.

  Jane gave a little scream.

  “Hand over the demi-parure, or you’ll get it too,” said the man.

  “I put it in my reticule; it was heavy,” said Jane, meekly. “I will get it out, please do not hurt me!”

  His eyes said that he had no intention of leaving her alive.

  Jane fumbled in her reticule, making little sounds of distress. It was not merely her jewels which were in there, but the muff pistol Caleb had bought her, and insisted that she be proficient with it. Jane found it.

  It would be a harder shot through the reticule, but he had moved up into the carriage, and lowered over her, and she could hear his breath, fast and excited.

  She looked up at him, and pulled the trigger. She aimed at his face.

  The warm spatter of blood and ... well, Jane preferred not to imagine if it was brain matter ... was most unpleasant.

  “Caleb!” She turned to her husband.

  “Damn!” said Caleb. “I owe a heap of thanks to the Almighty, I think.”

  “Where are you shot?” asked Jane.

  Caleb produced a ball.

  “I was shot in my heavy military cloak, which appears to have caught the ruddy ball,” he said. “I have a bruise on my belly the size of my fist, I suspect, and I was thoroughly winded, but I am not actually hurt.”

  “Oh, thank G-d!” Jane sobbed suddenly.

  Caleb investigated further.

  “The blighter has killed my watch, however,” he said. “Well, a combination of a thick cloak and a good steel hunter. Be damned if I replace it with a silver one like I was considering; in fact, I’ll see if I can get it mended.”

  “Indeed!” said Jane, with heartfelt thanks. “Where is that dratted coachman? Fellowes!” she called.

  “My lady?” the window between carriage and coachman’s seat opened, timidly.

  “Fellowes, come here at once and dispose of the corpse of this wretched highwayman,” said Jane.

  “Not until I’ve had a quick look at his phiz, and you’d drawn it, Jane-girl,” said Caleb, grimly, leaping over to undo the muffler.

  He lifted the carriage lantern to give a closer view. Jane gasped.

  “He has powdered hair and is in a livery,” she said.

  “Indeed. And he looks to me like a bouncer at a most insalubrious place,” said Caleb. “Here, Fellowes, you run to Bow Street, my lad, and have them send a couple of men out. If you find a watchman ... no, they’re worse than useless.”

  “I ain’t paid enough to tangle with Bow Street nor to ‘ave to run places,” said Fellowes.

  “Dear me, what a singularly useless fellow you are, Fellowes,” said Jane. She was reloading her pistol, and the coachman was watching her with horror. “Very well, tomorrow morning you may come for your money to date, and I will wr
ite you a reference that you are a good driver providing nobody minds how timid you are. In the meantime there’s a guinea for you to go to Bow Street, and collect a couple of men for Captain Armitage. They’ll care more for that than for his knighthood.”

  “Er, yes’m,” said the coachman. He wanted to be well away without having to look at that awful thing hanging out of the coach, with its brains dripping onto the ground. And the lady was drawing it, for goodness sake! Mad, they were, absolutely insane!

  Fellowes had no intention of going to ask for his wages to date; he would use his letter of reference from his previous employer who had not expected him to either stand up to highwaymen, or to look at them when they had been done to death by a lady of all things!

  He did go to Bow Street, however.

  He had a lively fear that a man who permitted his wife to shoot footpads might hunt him down if he did not carry out instructions.

  “You did well, Jane,” said Caleb. “I was taken by surprise.”

  “I did not face up to Sparkler Jack to be shot by some dandyprat jackanapes of a counterfeit highwayman,” said Jane. “I want to confirm with Cecily that this is the man hanging around outside Montgomery’s house, and then we shall have solved who made an attempt on the lad and why, and will have a result for Lady Lieven as well, though there are some loose ends.”

  “I don’t see why he should suddenly attack us now,” said Caleb.

  “Because I mentioned you were with Bow Street,” said Jane. “I thought it might shake Mrs. Fielding, but I did not realise how much it would shake her. I was rather expecting her to send a house breaker, and planned to warn you and Fowler to be ready accordingly. Well, she is a decisive woman, and I am warned that she will act fast. I’ll like to have any evidence Jackie and the boys find as well to lay out, for a full picture, but decisive as she is, at least she is an inept killer, or rather her man is. Was, rather.”

  “And it’s to hide her background. Seems extreme.”

  Jane sighed.

  “To be fair, I suspect that her main motive was to keep her daughter safe,” she said. “But she can’t go around killing people whom she suspects know her secret. I would like to come to an accommodation with her, if I can, for her daughter’s sake, because I suspect she is dying from some disease contracted in her youth. Her air of desperation to get Cora safely established would suggest she has a limited time in which to do it.”

  Caleb pursed his lips.

  “I don’t like it,” he said. “But if you see her in the book room, I’ll lurk in the Bramah closet eavesdropping.”

  “Just what I intended suggesting,” said Jane.

  They were glad to get home when a couple of officers of Bow Street arrived to relieve them of the body, and Caleb had been able to make a written report. No suspicions were mentioned in his report, just the bald facts of the attack. Caleb would leave Jane to handle things her way. They would have to replenish the supply of paper kept in the carriage door pocket, however, with Jane needing to draw, and him needing to write, and Caleb was glad that Jane always insisted on having some paper in case of needing to make a sketch, or send a note, and that they carried steel nibs and a short pen body and ink bottle in etuis. Caleb had little use for men with an excess of fobs, but he did find the decorative etui boxes he had instead very useful. Not that many gentlemen with etuis also carried a set of lock picks, but then, there was nothing wrong with being prepared.

  Jackie was waiting to give a report early in the morning. Jane saw him at the breakfast table. He and the others would be taken care of and well fed by Mrs. Ketch.

  “We went all abaht the area of Wiltshire where there are Fieldings, Mrs. Jane, and even to some villages wot we didn’t have on the list, account o’ how Daniel say, we can see if they lived there, if they died there, which was uncommon clever of him.”

  “It was, and he shall have a bonus for thinking of it,” said Jane, impressed. Daniel was simple, or rather, his thought processes were very slow. If he worried at an idea, however, he could occasionally come out with some quite profound observations.

  “He’ll be right pleased you fort it a good idea,” said Jackie. “Anywise, we stopped and looked at gravestones, and if any was in the name o’ Fielding, we went through the parish register, to see what we might find. It’s why we took longer.”

  “And better to be thorough,” said Jane. “What did you find?”

  Jackie scratched his nose.

  “We found an Eliza Clark who gave birth to a daughter, Jane, thirty-seven year ago, noted that the father was one Harry Fielding. Seeminly he was already wed,” said Jackie. “And we was lucky, there was a note that Eliza Clark moved to London when her daughter was just a few years old.”

  “I thought I heard the tones of St. Martin at Bow in her voice,” said Jane. “Well done, Jackie, and well done all of you for undertaking a thankless task.”

  “Well, Mrs. Jane, we’ve done worse, and at least we can read fluent-like, fanks to you and the Capting, so we could do it bowman,” said Jackie.

  “What is this about?” asked Cecily.

  “It’s about your Captain Hackum, for one,” said Jane. “I have a sketch to show you. Is this the man?”

  She took the sketch out of her damaged reticule.

  “Yerse, vat’s ‘im,” said Cecily, reverting to the vernacular. “’Ere, missus ... mama, I mean ... did ‘e attack you?”

  “Yes, he did,” said Jane. “This is why there is the hole you are eyeing askance in my reticule, since I shot him through it.”

  “Gawd!” said Cecily.

  “He had already attempted to shoot your papa, and was not planning on letting me live, so I felt no compunction in so doing,” said Jane.

  “Gawd, I got bleedin’ ‘eroes for bleedin’ parents,” said Cecily, who had a rather more sanguine attitude towards the stray deaths of ruffians than a gently-reared child her age.

  “And fortunately, neither of us was bleeding,” said Jane, deciding to use the wilful change of use of the word as a gentle rebuke.

  Under the circumstances of nearly losing her new parents, Cecily might be forgiven for demonstrating some degree of emotion.

  “What’s ‘e ... he want to kill you for?” Cecily demanded.

  “I may have intimated to his employer that I had some idea why she wanted to have Mr. Montgomery killed,” said Jane.

  Cecily regarded her with disapproval.

  “You didn’t ought to do things like that without taking precautions,” she said.

  “I had my pistol with me,” said Jane.

  “I’d love to see the faces of those Friday-faced dames who run their little subscription club if they knew that all the time you were dancing, and with the Prince Regent too, you had a pistol in your reticule,” said Caleb.

  “You danced with the Prince Regent?” breathed Cecily, awed. “Wass he like in reel life?”

  “Fat, but surprisingly light on his feet until he starts blowing,” said Jane. “He’s actually more charismatic, has more personality, than you’d think and I found myself liking him, despite my generally rather republican tendencies. And your father need not speak as though he does not carry another ladies’ muff pistol in a special holster inside the armpit of his jacket, which is tailored to permit it.”

  “Guilty as charged, m’lady,” said Caleb. “And you’ll be learning how to use a pistol too, young Cecily, and you will carry one at all times in your reticule or muff, because there are people out there who would try to hurt us through our family.”

  “Gawd!” said Cecily again.

  “G-d is indeed good, and preserved the life of your papa when the ball meant for him not only largely spent itself in good wool of a cloak, but on his watch,” said Jane. “And I’m not going to lie to you that you are actually quite right, and we were singularly unprepared because I assumed the, er, arch dell would send a bullyruffian in the darkmans to crack the ken.”

  “I just love listening to you coming out with cant in tha
t refined and disapproving voice of yours, Jane-girl,” said Caleb.

  “I’d like to be excused if you’re going to bill and coo,” said Cecily.

  “We are relieved to be unhurt,” said Jane. “It makes us silly in relief.”

  Cecily nodded.

  “Yerse, I understand that,” she said.

  “We also hired that silly fellow, Fellowes, as a coachman,” said Caleb. “I wanted to leave Fowler at home, in case someone with half a brain was needed. But now we can have Jackie drive us, he’s not going to stop meekly if some fellow calls us to stand and deliver. If he don’t shoot anyone of that kind, at least he’d drive over him.”

  “Indeed, it cannot be easy to be a highwayman if faced with determined coachmen,” said Jane.

  “It ain’t, but they rely on the fellows being cowards,” said Caleb.

  “Well, I have finished my breakfast, and I will write a letter to Mrs. Fielding, asking her to call upon me at around four,” said Jane. “And in the meantime, Cecily, you and I will go shopping. These wretched assemblies were not designed for people with children.”

  “No, Jane-girl, they were designed for people with children to shift on the marriage mart and any younger ones to be farmed off onto governesses,” said Caleb. “These hours don’t suit me any better than they do you, and we are not, either of us, exuberant youths shy of our twenties, to be able to burn the candle at both ends.”

  “I shall be glad to get the other problem solved as well as tying off the loose ends of this one, and go home to Essex,” said Jane. “Dear me! How very fatiguing all this compulsory pleasure is, to be sure!”

  “Laugh, my dear; we’ll be doing it again for Cecily, and then Frances, and then Susanna,” said Caleb.

  “You know how to spoil the day,” said Jane, kissing him.

  “Ah, but you know how to improve it,” said Caleb, kissing her back.

  Cecily sighed audibly.