An Independent Miss

by Becca St. John

  She reached over and patted Felicity’s hand, making her jerk with the shock of it. “He just didn’t have time to put much thought to it. ‘ Rubies paled by the warmth of your heart?’ Can you imagine?” She laughed. “What woman wants to be considered powerful? Oh, my, but then there is The Scandal.”

  “I do not believe he referenced that,” Felicity said, hating Lady Jane for that, knowing full well Lady Jane would delight in Felicity and Andover’s failed match.

  “You handled that beautifully,” Lady Westhaven wrapped an arm around her daughter.

  “My jaw is sore from clamping it shut.”

  “But you did, and she came off the worse for it. What a wretched girl.”

  “Her mother encourages her.”

  “Two peas, as they say.”

  “Poor Bea!” Felicity rolled her head.

  “Oh dear, it’s all a bit much, isn’t it?” her mother commiserated. “Let’s go upstairs and have Jasmine rub your back. You’re as tight as a clock spring.”

  But a neck rub was not what Felicity wanted. Her parents had been watching her as if they half expected her to run off. Or worse, run into someone who would give her the cut direct. That had happened once, in the park. A place she now avoided.

  “I will nap,” she lied, again thrown by this new ability for falsification.

  As soon as her mother closed her chamber door, Felicity snuck out of her own.

  ****

  Andover considered his words carefully, measuring the balance between dictate and consideration. He’d put considerable thought and effort into finding just the right gifts for Felicity. Surely, by now, she would know he cared for her happiness, even if he couldn’t allow the practice of herbalism under his roof.

  The demands of Montfort Abbey, being a wife, daughter-in-law and, hopefully soon, motherhood, would fill her life. He would outline his expectations, while assuring her that he too must meet her expectations.

  He dipped his pen in the inkwell, blotted it on the desk pad, and started to write.

  My Dearest Lady Felicity ~

  Is it arduous, missing the resurgence of the social whirl? Your last letter implies not. I would that matters were different, that I would be in town with you, leading you onto the dance floor but, alas, Montfort needs to be awakened to welcome a new bride.

  And what of this conversation you so desperately seek, is it not better left in that courtyard, complete? Surely, the death of Mrs. Smith conveyed my feelings far better than words ever could.

  You have my oath, I will do everything in my power to provide you with a rich and full life. You’ll have no need of gypsy-scratching in the woods.

  My regret is that you were left with my ill temper, forged by the measure of my fear. To lose you, to lose anyone I love, to such a foul end, is crucifixion beyond bearing. And to have that placed upon a fierce desire to remain in your company when needs must for me to be away, was beyond my ability to stem. Forgive me. I should not have been so hard.

  Oh, that you could have joined me, that we did not already have enough scandal to subdue.

  As I am requesting your forgiveness, I must forebear upon you again, for not speaking of my mother’s melancholy sooner. In my defense, I cannot believe she will suffer so, once your soothing calm reaches Montfort Abbey. No need for any concoctions to confuse her mind. Just you, as you are, my dear Felicity, a bright light to sweep the darkness of mourning from Montfort Abbey.

  Soon, I will be in London, to offer escort and quiet any tattle-mongers. Mother is improving, which I had feared impossible, so well I believe she will travel with me. A good thing, except it delays my arrival. Another fortnight, I fear.

  A trial, thinking of you, eager to be by your side, soothed by your gentleness.

  A fortnight, a short time that now seems interminable.

  Your Servant, forever

  Andover

  ****

  London ~ Day 5

  The bell over the door jingled, as Felicity stepped into the apothecary shop, Jesse close behind her. The herbalist looked up from the packet he offered another customer. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

  Feliciy nodded, and went to the cabinets on the other side of the shop, looking down into a case filled with dried herbs and roots. Much like the other shops they’d stopped in that afternoon, three sides held floor to ceiling rows of cubbyholes holding bottles, small box-like drawers, and a ladder with wheels for reaching each.

  Impossible to keep surfaces free of dust when one worked with dried plants, this place was surprisingly tidy, with its musty aroma. Like a home away from home. She noted particles caught in the sunlight streaming through the large picture windows.

  Jesse fooled with the napkin covering their wares from earlier ventures.

  “Yes,” the apothecary asked, as the woman and her small child left the shop. “May I help you?”

  “Please,” Felicity smiled. “Have you anything for gout? My father is suffering badly.”

  “Ah!” The man nodded his balding head, adjusted his glasses. “I have just the thing.” He gestured toward the back-to-back benches in the center of the room. “If you’ll have a seat, I will make some up for you.” And headed toward his back room.

  Felicity always asked for gout remedies. Liked to see what others used for the one recurring ailment she had trouble with. This way she could compare the various methods.

  “Thank you.” She started to sit on the bench but stood up, before she even got properly down. “Oh, my, I’m sorry. Is this something of yours?” She lifted a piece of paper—one that hadn’t been there a moment ago—for his inspection.

  “What?” He turned, halfway through the doorway to his back room. “What is it you have there?”

  Felicity studied it herself. “This looks like a flyer of sorts. By a Mrs. Comfrey?” She gave it to him.

  “Mrs. Comfrey?” His lips tightened. “I see. Hmm. And where did you find it?”

  Eyes opened wide, Felicity gestured to the bench. “Just there, on the bench. Do you think someone left it there?”

  “Yes,” he nodded, speaking more to himself as he studied the paper. “Yes, I suppose. I’ll just keep it back here, in case they come back.” He looked up, offered a small smile. “Thank you.”

  “You’re very welcome.” Felicity returned his smile and promptly sat down to wait.

  Gout mixture in hand, she and Jesse stepped outside.

  “That’s the last one, isn’t it, m’lady?’ Jesse asked.

  “Yes,” Felicity told her, “It’s the last apothecary, but I have one more errand.”

  “But I thought we were just delivering flyers?”

  “Yes, we were, but I heard Papa talking to Thomas this morning. Our Jack is convalescing somewhere near here, I would like to find him.”

  Jesse tripped after her. “But m’lady, you can’t go there, not with just me! You need your father or your brother to take you to such a place.”

  Felicity stopped at the crossroads, comparing street names to a small handwritten map she’d pulled from her reticule. “Don’t be silly, Jesse. Rules do not apply in cases such as this.”

  “They do if you’re the one tattling.”

  Astonished, Felicity turned on her maid. “Are you planning on tattling on me?”

  “No, m’lady, but you never know who might see you.”

  With a quick look down at herself, Felicity laughed and moved on. “Who would know me dressed as I am? With this plain straw bonnet hiding my face? Surely I’m as well disguised as I would be at a masquerade.”

  She took Jesse’s hand, tugged her around the corner and halfway down the street, to stand behind an unpretentious townhouse.

  “Oh, please, miss, don’t go there.”

  “Jesse, for goodness’ sake!” Felicity scolded. “I know you don’t like to be around the ill. That’s fine, but please, do not stop me.”

  Jesse shuddered. “It’s more than that, m’lady. It’s a place for men, in beds. Their limbs will
be showing, if not worse. It’s not a place for a fine lady, really it’s not.”

  “I’m not just any lady, Jesse. You know that well enough and you don’t have to go in.” She stopped in front of a townhouse in a quiet little neighborhood. “You can wait out front.”

  Jesse stood rigid, shaking her head.

  “Really, I shan’t be long.”

  “How do you know this is the place?” the girl asked.

  “Look, see?” Felicity pointed to a placard placed inside one of the ground floor windows picturing a man in uniform on a bed. “This is it.” And she climbed the stairs of the modest home.

  CHAPTER 15 ~ CHANGING GOALS

  Andover,

  If you have yet to leave for town, do so. Now. Town is ripe with rumors. People are saying you introduced Lady F. to a frolicking orgy at Easter. Which lends itself quite nicely to wicked, evil doings. All believe you’ve given her the slip.

  The books are filling, all bets on. No one questions Lady F. now in delicate position, but betting is on whether she has gone, post-chaste, to resuscitate up north versus having developed such a rabid taste for the orgy, she’s left for the continent in search of greater adventure. All this despite Lady F. being seen in the park, lithe as ever, receiving the cut direct.

  Lord D. placed ten pounds she ran off with the gardener.

  Lady B. is frantically determined to defend her cousin, which terrifies me the stink will rub off and I’ll be dueling for her honor. How we’ve kept Lord R. out of the wind could inspire a comedy of errors, if the greater fear of multiple duels didn’t weigh so heavy.

  This would all be a damn sight easier if you were here with a special license in your pocket.

  Upton

  The fecundity of the hot house hit Andover with the assurance he needed. Flowers would be available to greet his bride on their wedding night.

  “You’re certain we will have enough.”

  “A roomful of sweet-scented blooms. That’s a promise, my lord. We won’t disappoint your marchioness.” The gardener pulled on his forelock. “We even have orchids just about ready. I can push them a bit harder and you will have what you want.”

  “And oranges?”

  “Aye.”

  “Good.”

  The last of his errands, now done a week earlier than expected.

  He left the greenhouse for his carriage. His mother, so much better now, waited outside the coach, her face to the sun. Better, but still a worry.

  After that awful night, he refused to leave her again.

  He helped her into the conveyance, settled her with a lap robe despite the warmth of the day. As he settled beside her, he covered her icy hands with his own, lifted them to the warmth of his lips.

  “Are you comfortable, Mother, for the journey?”

  “Yes.” Her eyes drifted shut. “I will rest.”

  He allowed a full measure of evening draught for this ride, to stave off the boredom. To aid her to sleep through the ride.

  The miles carried them, as he leaned against the squabs, focused inward, picturing Felicity. Sweet, calm, practical Felicity, the perfect bride, the perfect wife, to marry into the most imperfect of households.

  ****

  London ~ Day 13

  Screams echoed against the walls, two beds away from Jack.

  “You really must move him, Robbie. He really must be in another ward,” Felicity fretted, as she bathed the raw stump of Jack’s leg.

  “We are lucky to have him here,” Robbie argued.

  “But you won’t…” Fiercely, she met his eyes. “…if he is not moved.” She risked a look. Jack watched them, silent, his jaw clenched in pain. “I know this hurts, Jack, I know but it needs be done.”

  He shook his head. “Just hurts,” he gritted out. “Wash soothes.”

  She blinked, focused on pouring another fresh bowl of herbal water over the wound, fighting tears. She could not let her emotions show, refused to cringe from the screams down the ward.

  “I’m sorry about the sounds, Jack.” Robbie offered.

  But it was not the sounds Felicity fretted over. It was what those screams meant, hospital gangrene, so-called because it spread so virulently within a hospital. This meant a higher percentage of such deaths for amputees in hospital together than treated alone.

  Unfortunately, Jack was far too ill to be moved again. He suffered enough, being brought over from the continent.

  “What’s the time, Robbie?” she asked, knowing she could not leave, even as she knew she must. Her mother would fret if she weren’t home for afternoon tea.

  She dipped her bowl into the bucket by her side, washing away the thick goo on Jack’s leg, worrying over his skin, hot and dry and yellowing. His pulse was weak and sporadic, his tongue shades off from what a healthy tongue should be.

  All signs he’d been infected, leaving her with little hope.

  “Let’s cover this up.” She smiled at her patient, even as he groaned. “We’ll not use dry cloths,” she promised, dipping clean dressing material in her mixture, folding it and placing it ever so gently over the stump. Still, Jack stiffened as he stifled a cry.

  Robbie turned away.

  “That’s the worst of it,” she promised, though she knew it wouldn’t be. At best, he would suffer more dressing changes. At worst, the pain would be critical even when no one touched the wound.

  Swiftly, but very gently, she wrapped his wound and placed a tented sheet over it to keep even that small weight from his leg.

  “Robbie,” she summoned, “I think our Jack could use some more laudanum.” All the while, she smiled at Jack, soothed. “I’ll just have a word with the nurses, shall I?” She kissed her patient on the forehead, squeezed his hand and left, to beg the nurses to allow her treatment plan.

  “Maggots?” the head nurse cried. “Those filthy little buggers. Do you know how many of those we cleaned from his wound when he arrived?”

  Cleaned from his wound.

  “Filthy it was. I don’t think anyone bothered to change his dressings, half off, they were.”

  “Those maggots may have been his saving, and, as he is now, worth trying. It is believed they eat the dead flesh from a wound, this sort of wound,” Felicity argued.

  “I don’t think so.” The woman sniffed, arms akimbo, shaking her head.

  “Please, nurse, please.” Felicity stilled as another scream split the air. “Don’t risk him getting to that stage.” She gestured toward the source of all that pain.

  “Do you really believe you can keep him from getting there?” The woman scowled. “I don’t think the doctor will like it.”

  The overburdened doctor had readily agreed to let Felicity oversee Jack’s care, Felicity readily reminded the nurse.

  “I’ll not have them crawling about my rooms!”

  “They won’t be,” Felicity promised. “They stay secured in a muslin pouch that’s fit over the wound.”

  “You say it will keep him from…” No need to finish her words as another painful cry carried through the home. “I’m half-tempted…”

  Felicity didn’t need any more permission. Robbie had hired a returned soldier to help with Jack’s care. She spent the next hour explaining to him Jack’s treatment. How to mix the herbal water for washes and the use of maggots.

  Fearing they would come to this, she’d spent the night before sewing up pouches to apply the little buggers, as the head nurse called them. For the past few days, she’d had the stable lads find the best fishing maggots, which they assured her were from blue bottle flies, and place them in a container of oatmeal. Last night, she doused them in her father’s finest brandy for cleaning, as her grandmother had taught, alcohol cleared debris from most anything.

  Long after she should have gone home, Felicity broke free, promising to return the next day.

  Jesse jumped from her bench in the entry hall.

  “Did you get the missives delivered?”

  “Yes, I gave them to boys, with a halfpence, an
d made sure they entered the shops before I left.”

  “Brilliant, you are a gem, Jesse, and the ribbons?” Felicity asked as she hurried down the hall.

  “Aye.”

  “The feathers?”

  “They are here, in this bundle.”

  “Wonderful!” Felicity took her apron off, grabbed her shawl from the peg, and found her bonnet.

  “Here, m’lady,” Jesse offered. “Let me fix your hair before you put your hat back on.” Thick straight tendrils escaped their confines in her efforts to write and read and console.

  “Thank you, Jesse. I don’t know where I would be without you.”

  “Still at home, I imagine.” Jesse worked quickly. “Which is where you should be. Especially today, with your gentleman calling.”

  Felicity grabbed her arm. “Gentleman calling?”

  “Lady Westhaven asked me not to tell you.”

  “Lord Andover?”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Oh dear.” Her heart thumped, a misstep for a missed encounter.

  Foolish of her, when in truth she merely wanted to speak with him. Must speak with him. Urgently, now that he was in town.

  No yearning allowed. He could not save her from the torment of men screaming in pain, or the almost certain death of a friend.

  The last pin in, hair secure, Jesse arranged Felicity’s bonnet. “At least this will fit right and tight now.” She stepped back and grimaced. “I don’t want to know what those stains are on your dress, my Lady.”

  Felicity rose from the bench, beyond tired. “No, I don’t suppose you do.”

  “There’s something else,” Jesse warned, as they stepped out into the grey drizzle of the day.

  Adjusting her shawl, Felicity asked, “And what is that?”

  “A friend of yours was at the haberdasher’s when I was getting the ribbon.”

  Felicity scowled, as she considered which path to take home. They didn’t have the time to meander. She would have to risk passing acquaintances; certain no one would recognize her in her servants’ clothes.

  “A friend?” None seemed important after a day such as this.

  “The fair-haired girl, Lady Jane.”

  Felicity snorted, “Missing her was a pleasure. She is one of the reasons I prefer not to go out and about.”