By a Lady

by Amanda Elyot

  “SOMETHING MUST BE DONE!” Darlington raged, as he paced the carpet in Lady Dalrymple’s drawing room.

  Lady Dalrymple put three lumps of highly taxed sugar in her tea. “Not only is Miss Welles perfectly sane, Percy, but she is carrying your child. You did believe her when she announced her condition at the Assembly Ball? Do you wish that horrible Dr. Squiffers to salve your conscience and subject her to further shame by verifying her condition? Heavens! What unmarried young woman would go to such risks? Was it a mad thing she did that night—or a brave one? My niece loves you, you foolish man. From the moment I saw Miss Welles, even in her ill-fitting servant’s garb, I thought that you and she would suit. She has a lively mind, Percy. You need that.”

  “Well, ’tis true enough that the girl possesses an uncommon spirit.”

  “One that will be utterly destroyed if she is permitted to languish in that asylum a moment longer. If she dies there, your child dies with her.” Her voice choked with emotion and anger. “So help me, Percy, that girl is my happiness—and yours—you damn fool. If we lose her forever, you will never again be welcome in my sight!”

  “I am thoroughly aware of my own culpability in this affair. Let me be the responsible party here,” Darlington fumed. An afterthought overtook him. “Perhaps I drove Miss Welles to madness by abandoning her when I had all but offered for her.”

  “Fie, Percy, you give yourself far too much credit! My niece is heartsick; that’s what’s the matter with her and you did indeed drive her to that, but she is no more mad than you or I, and you know it. I have my flights of fancy, to be sure,” the countess continued, aware of the deception she had perpetrated on her friends as well as on the rest of the gentry of Bath. How well she knew that the noblest among us are not always fortunate in having a noble birthright. “They have always served to entertain me . . . and will have to do so even more now that I am alone in the world.”

  “You’re never alone, mum. You’ll always have me. I promise it,” Mary blurted earnestly. “I give you my solemn word that even if I do become a midwife, I shall see to your care for the rest of my days.”

  “Midwife?” Darlington and Lady Dalrymple echoed.

  “Forgive me for speakin’ so; I know it is not my place, but I have always dreamed of it. I have fancies too! Although I know that I cannot have thoughts above my station—and have no proper learnin’ besides—I was born on a farm, and babe or calf or foal, I know how to assist a female who is going to be a mum.”

  Darlington tried to maintain a clear head. These women were plaguing him with the sort of circuitous logic that was peculiar to their sex. Talk of babes and midwifery and flights of fancy—while Cassandra was incarcerated in a madhouse! “Mary, I give you my pledge that if we manage to free Miss Welles from Bethlehem, I will permit you to be present when she is delivered of her babe. But for the nonce, we must see what can be done to effect her release from the asylum.”

  “Precisely, Percy.” The countess rose from her seat and began to pace to and fro, nearly wearing a path in the carpet with her tread. Her front parlor was fast becoming its own Bedlam. “Wherever one wishes to lay blame, I remain certain that Cassandra does not belong in Bethlehem.” She leveled a stern gaze at the earl. “To my mind, we have one course yet to pursue, though it unnerves me to think that an inveterate bettor may be the ace up my sleeve.”

  AT PRECISELY EIGHT O’CLOCK the following morning, a portly gentleman was seen rubbing the sleep from his eyes in the tastefully designed vestibule of the Cadogan House Hotel on Gay Street. Two cups of strong black coffee—Sally Lunn’s Gamblers’ Blend—had not provided even half the energy he needed to perform the role required of him.

  As the marquess had been compelled to sell off his equipage in order to satisfy creditors, which is why he had endured the journey to Bath in the mail coach, Lady Dalrymple had arranged to have her brother’s coat of arms painted on one of her own carriages. She had paid dearly to achieve the appropriate effect on such short notice.

  Now Albert Tobias, Lord Manwaring, fiddled with the shiny brass buttons on his new coat—a gift from his sister—remarking upon the fact that the glint they made in the bright sunlight produced no adverse effect whatsoever on his head. Perhaps this was the first morning in many that he had not awakened suffering from the aftereffects of too much brandy, wine, or gin. He had not been particular of late when it came to a preference in spirits. Come to think of it, he mused, running a plump hand along his blond, balding pate, this was the first day in many that he had awakened in the morning at all. Ordinarily, Nesbit, an ever faithful valet—and his sole remaining servant apart from the housemaid—would bestir him with a glass of brandy sometime during the midafternoon hours.

  A conveyance that looked remarkably like the ghost of his own carriage rumbled up to the portal. It was being driven by the burly coachman whom Manwaring recognized as an employee of the countess.

  A plump hand, also quite similar to his own, though bedecked with rubies and opals, gestured wildly for him to ascend. “Get in, Bertie. Heavens, you dawdle!”

  The liveried and periwigged footman practically whisked the marquess into the barouche, where he sat facing his sister and Lord Darlington.

  Lady Dalrymple fished in her reticule and, after some searching, retrieved a small envelope. She handed the packet to Manwaring. “There are one hundred pounds in here, Albert. I have spoken with my solicitors in London, whom I have authorized to write you a draft for another nine hundred should you play your part to perfection this morning.”

  It was a bloody windfall. “Oh, Euphie,” the marquess slobbered. Tears of gratitude coursed down his florid cheeks.

  “Don’t blubber, Bertie, you’ll ruin your new waistcoat.”

  Manwaring took his sister’s hands in his own, clutching them so tightly that his palms bruised from the pressure made by Lady Dalrymple’s enormous rings. “I always knew you were the kindest, dearest sister a creature could ever hope to have,” he continued theatrically.

  “You shall see how kind I can be if you do not win the day,” the countess scolded. “I hope all the liquor you have consumed over the years has not destroyed your memory. You will need it for what I am about to remind you, as it concerns the history and particulars of your daughter, Cassandra Jane.”

  “JOHN HASLAM, RESIDENT APOTHECARY,” the tall, gaunt man said as he extended his hand to Lords Manwaring and Darlington. “Perhaps your ladyship would prefer to wait in our garden—it’s quite lovely, very restful—while the gentlemen and I see to business.”

  “Her ladyship will do nothing of the sort,” Lady Dalrymple snorted. “If your conditions here are tolerable enough for female patients, they will be tolerable enough for female visitors.” The truth was the countess desperately wanted to be in her brother’s company should he require any prompting. Besides, she was curious about the institution itself. From the façade, it seemed no more threatening than an average hospital, but from the fetid smells lingering in the air and the stifled cries that she could hear from where she stood in the vestibule, she surmised that there was a goodly degree of barbarism practiced here. What vile, inhumane things had these monsters already inflicted upon her “niece”? It was too horrible to contemplate.

  “And what might bring your lordship here?” the apothecary asked Darlington.

  The earl kept a hand on his sword hilt. “Merely an interest in how you treat your patients, Mr. Haslam.”

  Haslam led the way down the dingy corridor to the cell where C.J. was incarcerated, still in her black iron birdcage, an immobile bundle slumped on the straw below her. Lady Dalrymple gasped. Her hand fluttered to her heart. Her “niece” looked as though she had not had a bath since her arrival, her rosy color had turned pale, her usually glossy dark curls hung limp and lifeless about her face. Even C.J.’s eyes had taken on a dull sheen.

  “My niece,” the countess cried, stretching her arms toward the cell.

  By way of greeting, C.J. regarded her with a swollen,
tearstained face and pointed at the body lying in the straw beneath her.

  “What is it, child?” asked Lady Dalrymple, her handkerchief to her nose.

  “The last act of a tragedy.” C.J. quietly wept, the tears coursing down her grimy cheeks. “That was Lady Rose. She’s dying and no one would come to her aid. They killed her; they all killed her,” she muttered. “And her innocent babe as well. A double murder,” C.J. added, placing her hand on her own womb.

  “Lady Rose,” sneered Haslam. “She’s naught but a lying doxy,” he grunted to a shocked Lady Dalrymple. “Claimed she was ravished by a dozen different upstanding members of the ton—lord this and earl that—the finest men in Bath. Help her? She deserves all the suffering she brought on them for blackening their good names!”

  “Heavens!” the countess gasped.

  “Release my daughter this instant, you quack!” thundered the marquess in his finest theatrical timbre.

  “Y-your daughter, sir?” Haslam stammered.

  “Of course, my daughter, you nitwit. Release her from this barbaric contraption immediately, before I have the law on the lot of you here.”

  “But, I thought . . .”

  “Clearly, when one spends the better part of one’s days in the company of madmen, one loses one’s own ability to think sanely. Although I have not seen my daughter in some years, that does not alter her birthright or her lineage. Come to me, my child!”

  Manwaring opened his arms, striking his most paternal posture, and C.J. saw Lady Dalrymple behind him, beckoning her to go along with the charade. When Haslam unlocked the cage, C.J. tumbled to the straw beneath her, nearly falling on the inert Lady Rose. Owing to her close confinement, her limbs had all the strength of tapioca pudding. C.J. stumbled to her feet, trying to recover the sense of feeling in her legs. She ran a hand through her tangled hair and tried to make herself presentable. “Papa?” she questioned tentatively. “Papa, is that you?”

  “My child, my dearest, only daughter,” Manwaring sobbed in a maudlin display that nevertheless had Haslam reaching for his linen pocket square. “I thought never to see you again.”

  “I-Is this indeed your daughter, your lordship? Look closely.” The apothecary bent to whisper in the stout man’s ear. “If you have not seen your daughter in some time, this young woman could be an impostor.”

  The rail-thin medic received a swift elbow to the gut for his pains. “Not know my own daughter, you charlatan?! My little Cassandra . . .” Manwaring ran stubby fingers through C.J.’s matted curls. “She has her mother’s hair. Look! Her mother’s eyes!” He raised his hands to the young woman’s face, pudgy thumbs pushing down her cheekbones as if to accentuate C.J.’s brown eyes. “Euphie, the locket,” he called, reaching out an arm toward his sister, who was sobbing noisily into her handkerchief.

  Lady Dalrymple fumbled with the clasp on her locket.

  “Heavens, Euphie,” a frustrated Manwaring sighed. “Come forward and show Haslam the resemblance. Is it not remarkable, sir?” the marquess asked when the locket was opened and the portrait revealed.

  “Indeed it is, your lordship,” the apothecary was reluctantly compelled to agree, as he glanced from the painted miniature to the disheveled inmate.

  “And look, she wears the cross that was her gift at her birth from me and my late wife Emma, Cassandra’s dear, departed mother. Such a beautiful woman Emma was.” Now Manwaring’s tears were genuine. It had been years since he’d spoken aloud of his late wife, and it was her untimely demise that had triggered his rapid descent into the hellish depths of drink and gambling. Compounding matters, he had defiled her legacy to their daughter, having been forced to pawn the engraved silver backing into which the cross had been inserted. The marquess reached for C.J.’s throat and fingered the pockmarked amber talisman. “I’d recognize that nick in the bottom right corner anywhere,” he sniffled, practically slobbering on his starched cravat.

  C.J. reexamined the cross and, to be certain, there was a notch in it. Lady Dalrymple briefed her brother well, she thought with a smile. “We have . . . ever so much . . . to discuss, Papa,” she began haltingly, but the marquess enfolded her in a paternal bear hug.

  “Hush, my pet. There will be time aplenty for swapping stories.” He turned to address the apothecary. “First we must get my own flesh and blood released from this pit of insanity,” and turning back to C.J., he added, “and get you home, where Mary will fix you a nice hot bath. And,” he muttered to himself, “I think, under the circumstances, a brandy would not be remiss.”

  Lady Dalrymple glared at the marquess, then fixed her stern gaze on the keeper of the madhouse. “I expect that you will release my niece immediately, Haslam,” she ordered. “And that you will deliver to me all of your papers concerning her incarceration. You will keep no copies, do you understand?”

  The apothecary, cut down to size, merely nodded meekly, then showed the little party the door.

  Once safely in the confines of the carriage, Darlington, who had remained a silent, shadowy figure for much of the duration of their visit to Bethlehem, extended his hand to the marquess. “Congratulations, my man. That was well done! Bloody well done!”

  Manwaring preened like a peacock. “Nice to know the old boy’s still got a sense of improvisation,” he crowed.

  Lady Dalrymple patted her brother’s knee. “I am quite proud of you, Bertie,” she smiled. “And you may keep the suit, especially as you sobbed all over the front of your silk waistcoat.”

  “Would you mind terribly if I returned home today, by the Royal Mail?” Albert asked his sister.

  “Just when I was wondering if I’d miss you.”

  As they approached the city, Darlington gave a command to the coachman to stop near the Abbey so Manwaring could catch the next Royal Mail coach.

  “Now don’t spend everything I gave you at the taverns, Bertie,” Lady Dalrymple cautioned in her most sisterly tone. “My solicitors have the strictest instructions that the funds must be used to pay off your creditors first.” Manwaring looked stricken. “It’s time one of us grew up, love. Might as well be you.” The countess gave her brother a sloppy peck on the cheek and squeezed his arm. “Be well, Bertie.”

  The marquess turned to C.J. and beamed. “The pleasure has been all mine, Miss . . .”

  “Welles. Cassandra Jane Welles, your lordship.” She permitted him to kiss her proffered hand. “Garrick would have been proud of you.” She winked at Manwaring, who lit up like a Christmas tree.

  “Would he now? Well, bless my soul, you are an excellent judge of talent, Miss Welles. May I be so bold as to express the hope that we meet in future.”

  “I should like that,” C.J. replied. And she meant it.

  They watched as Manwaring waved a cheerful good-bye at the carriage, and when he thought they were no longer looking, he turned and walked into the nearest pub.

  “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” C.J. said, smiling and shaking her head.

  “I just hope he leaves himself enough to get back to London,” Darlington added. When the carriage stopped in the Circus, the earl stepped out, then reached inside and took C.J.’s hands in his. “Rest assured, Miss Welles, I will visit you when I am able. I hope you understand that there are some matters to which I must devote my most immediate attention.”

  Oh, how she wished he would have enfolded her in his arms and kissed her, not minding her filthy and bedraggled condition, and then carried her inside his town house and bathed her with his own hands.

  “YOU HAVE SUCH LOVELY HAIR, Miss Welles,” Mary said admiringly as she poured a pint of porter through her mistress’s curls. “And this will make it shine all the more,” she added, referring to the mixture of heavy dark beer and water.

  “Perhaps it is foolishness to have accepted his lordship’s offer at all. To go riding with him, I mean.” C.J. inhaled the soothing verbena scent of the water in which she bathed. “For one thing, should we be recognized, Lady Charlotte will pitch a proper f
it. For another, I don’t expect that many ladies in my . . . condition . . . would ever think about getting astride a horse.”

  “In my village, we were too poor to have horses. The beasts fetch a dear price. My mother rode our donkey while she carried a babe within her, and she was delivered of six of us, bless her soul. I lost my four brothers,” the maid said matter-of-factly, “but it had naught to do with ridin’.”

  C.J. gently placed a wet hand on Mary’s arm. “I am sorry about your brothers.”

  Mary shrugged off the touch. She was hardier than C.J. imagined. “I should not have spoken of my brothers. Forgive me, Miss Welles. We do not want to hex the babe.”

  It was quite possible to lose the baby, C.J. knew. An excursion on horseback was tempting the fates, but stillbirths and the infant mortality rate were also extraordinarily high, even among the aristocracy. Not to mention dying in childbirth. She shuddered and tried to lower herself farther into the hip bath.

  “I have been thinkin’,” Mary said as she rinsed the beer from her mistress’s hair, “that I should like to apprentice myself to a midwife so that I may learn how to deliver your babe, Miss Welles. But I know it would never do. A girl like me is lucky enough to have a situation as a lady’s maid, and were it not for your kindness—and that of his lordship and her ladyship—I would not even have that.”

  “Mary!” The notion was a bit overwhelming. C.J.’s eyes began to brim with tears. And this was the timid child who not too many weeks ago refused to use the word pregnant. What a long way she had traveled!

  “I wanted a way to thank you for everything you have done for me. You have taught me my letters, got me to think for myself . . . and this is one of my thoughts!”

  C.J. regarded the little maid. “Why are you crying, Mary?” she asked gently.

  “Because, Miss Welles, I should very much like to have something I can call my own . . . to make myself truly useful in this world . . .” She fought for words. “I want ever so much to learn to be a midwife, but you and her ladyship have been so kind to me, and you are so very dear that I shouldn’t want to leave Lady Dalrymple’s employ. Servants never give notice anyways, ’less they’re gettin’ married and goin’ away.”