Jane and the Stillroom Maid (34 page)

Sunday
31 August 1806
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I
DID NOT FIND MY OWN BED UNTIL NEARLY THREE
o’clock in the morning. Lady Harriot would have had me stay the night at Chatsworth, but I declined the honour most vociferously—being little disposed to tarry too long in Paradise, lest it make me ill-suited to my usual realm. Besides, I had brought no change of clothing, and could not appear at the breakfast table in evening dress.

His Grace the Duke was so kind as to send me back into Bakewell behind his own horses, the moonlight being strong enough to permit of driving, even at so advanced an hour. Dawson the coachman having been summoned from his bed, he vented his grievance in pounding soundly at the broad front door of The Rutland Arms. Stumbling and weary, I mounted the stairs behind the candle of the unprotesting Mr. Davies—who must be said to possess experience of Dukes and their shocking hours. I do not think I was suffered even to dream.

But I awoke with a start at seven o’clock, as though
the presence of a stranger in the room had unnerved me. All was still; only birdsong and sunlight crept through the window-curtains. Without hesitation I reached under my pillow for the stillroom book of Tess Arnold, and began to read where I had left off Friday evening.

LH: Lord Hartington? Lady Harriot? Or—Lord Harold Trowbridge? The appearance of no one among Tess Arnold’s patients should surprise me now. I suspected, however, that LH signified one person only; and though Tess offered no hint of what she had supplied or charged for her services, there was reason for secrecy in their meetings.

Of course the boy possessed a tutor, one who might go with him from London to Derbyshire and back again; one more suited to the instruction of a pupil with impaired hearing, than a host of Eton masters should be. I did not need Andrew Danforth’s indignation to fear Lord Hartington’s fate among schoolboys; they should despise him for his awkwardness, and taunt him cruelly for infirmity. But what a lonely life the Marquess seemed to have led! No small matter, then, the attentions of a worldly young woman; and well worth a winter ride to the heights of Miller’s Dale.

Bruised woodlice? I shuddered. Lady Elizabeth appeared to have suffered from a variety of ailments, and to have dosed herself most liberally; there were further entries for the liverish concoction, each with increasing amounts of morphia. I had not thought she should have found occasion to visit Chatsworth during the London Season; but in fact I knew very little of her movements.

By post. The malingering Bess had not, then, been in residence at Chatsworth. No mention of what use might be found for Tincture of Bitter Almonds.

How sick Lydia Danforth must have been, of these useless draughts for ills no human hand could cure! How desolate that last, and most dreadful, lying-in, with her faint hopes of happiness staring sightless from the eyes of a stillborn babe!

There was a further episode in the Danforth tragedy; and I found it not long thereafter.

There were entries enough after this—Tess Arnold’s careful hand ran all the way up to the twenty-second of August, when she had applied a poultice of elderberries against a scullery-maid’s burn; but none of them afforded me so much interest. It was singular, I reflected, that Andrew Danforth had suffered not the slightest indisposition in nearly four years of record-keeping; and Charles Danforth had been ill only once. The entry that referred to him was the very last one contained in the stillroom book.

Charles Danforth had refused the maid’s physick; and Charles Danforth was still alive.

I sat upright in bed for close to an hour, while the light and birdsong of morning strengthened beyond my window, and considered of the nature of the Danforth ailments. Of Lady Elizabeth’s peculiar combination of liverish complaints and blocked menses. Of Lord Hartington’s loves and Lord Hartington’s silent rages.

I thought of Michael Tivey, and how useful a friend he had proved; I thought of the lies Tess Arnold had told her sister, of Freemasons and sacrifice in the hills above Miller’s Dale.

Lastly I considered of George Hemming. There was but one reason I could think of for his perilous course towards judgement and execution—for if Tess Arnold had blackmailed the solicitor, she had taken his secret to the grave. The stillroom book betrayed not the slightest hint of the reasons for his shame and misery. But I thought I could conceive of explanation enough.

I closed the quarto volume at last and set it carefully to one side. Then I got up and went in search of paper and a pen. Before I might dress for Sunday service—before I might do up my hair, or petition Mr. Davies for hot tea—there was a letter to be drafted to Dr. Bascomb of Buxton. The innkeeper must certainly know the physician’s direction; and Sunday or no, I would have the answers I required.

“Y
OU WILL BE SURE TO OBSERVE THE TOMBS IN THE
Vernon Chapel, Jane,” observed my cousin Mr. Cooper as we toiled up the hill to All Saints Church.

The day was cloudy and promised rain; the first cool breeze of autumn fingered the leaves overhead. Services were at ten o’clock, and all of Bakewell seemed bent upon the old Norman edifice—all except those who inhabited the great estates. Chatsworth House boasted its
own chapel, where the family attended each Sunday; services were held as well in the little village of Edensor, that the fourth Duke had seen fit to demolish and reassemble at a convenient remove. I understood from Lord Harold that it had been Georgiana Duchess’s practise to visit both chapels each Sunday, as an example to the estate’s dependants—a fact that had recommended that lady to my good opinion more than anything I had yet heard of her. It was a custom I could imagine Lady Harriot continuing; she was the sort to understand the power of example, as Lady Elizabeth never should.

“Did you enjoy your evening at Chatsworth, Jane?” Cassandra enquired.

“Very much,” I replied, feeling again the rush of guilt at my own selfish joys. “Your grey silk was much admired.”

“I cannot suppose it was anything out of the ordinary way, in such a company—but for the fact that
you
were wearing it,” she said simply. “I am glad to know it did not disgrace you.”

“Not at all!”

“And … did Lord
Harold
admire it, Jane?”

I shrugged a little, as though it could not matter to me if he did. “You have been indulging our mother’s fond hopes, Cassandra. Or should I say,
fears?
Lord Harold is not in the way of admiring me—unless it be for the keenness of my understanding.”

“You have been acquainted now a number of years,” my sister observed in a lowered tone, “and neither of you has married. He disappears for months at a time—and then, when chance throws you in his way, renews his attentions. I cannot think that such behaviour is suggestive of true ardour—”

“No, indeed!”

“—but any woman should consider it most marked.”

Any woman, but one who had observed how he looked at Lady Harriot Cavendish. Could I have seen
even half so much passion in Lord Harold for myself, I should have ordered my wedding-clothes long ago.

There was a moment, last evening—when the whist tables had just broken up, and the ladies were strolling idly about the room, and the gentlemen were lost in conversation with their boots propped up on the hearth-fender—a moment just before the cold supper was laid out at midnight—when Andrew Danforth bent his golden head over Lady Harriot’s fiery one, and drew her with him out onto the darkened terrace. No one should dare to follow them there; but I observed the eyes of more than one person in the room stray most speculatively towards the French windows.

Charles Danforth stood correctly with Lord and Lady Morpeth by the drawing-room’s far wall—a strained smile upon his face while they talked insensibly of their
children
. Granville Leveson-Gower maintained the liveliest conversation with His Grace the Duke, regarding the foibles of a common acquaintance—but so arranged himself that his gaze was fixed upon that open French door. The Countess of Bessborough, his avowed love, watched Leveson-Gower most narrowly over the head of a talkative Lady Elizabeth, whom I am sure she had not the slightest trouble disregarding. They were all alive to the possibilities inherent in moonlight and passion. But Lord Harold—

Lord Harold approached no one, Lord Harold said not a word. He resolutely ignored the balcony scene played out for the party’s amusement, and poured himself a glass of Port. As he stood sipping at it speculatively, his eyes rose to meet mine. I do not think there was another person in the room—besides myself—so much in the grip of agony at that moment; no other person who failed to seek relief in converse with another. His grey eyes were blank; even to myself they disclosed nothing; but one muscle of his jaw commenced to twitch.

And then Hary-O walked swiftly back through the doorway, her face flushed and her eyes alight.

“I have had a little too much of happiness tonight, and must own that I am dreadfully tired,” she told the room in general. “I would beg you all to forgive and excuse me, when I would retire. No one ever had such a family, or such friends; and I thank God that I have lived so many years among you, and pray that I may witness as many more. God bless you all—and good night!”

Then she swept away, not as a little girl over-excited by a party; but as a young and powerful woman will cede the stage, secure in the knowledge that it is hers for the asking whenever she should wish to tread its boards again. I could read nothing in her face of Andrew Danforth’s fate—nothing of whether she had accepted what must surely have been an offer for her hand, or slapped him for presumption. The gentleman in question merely took up a position by his elder brother without a word. And in Andrew Danforth’s countenance? Only the unvaried charm, the perpetual softness that must weary with time.

Lord Harold’s looks were as fixed as stone. He set down his empty glass, and devoted himself to my amusement for the half-hour remaining before my carriage was called; but in all his remarks I detected an absence of mind, as though he played a role long familiar from habit, a role that demanded nothing. His thoughts and his heart were moving through the upper halls, clutched in Hary-O’s elegant hands; they drew off her silk dress in the company of her maid, they brushed her red-gold hair in the candlelight. They stood with her in the darkened chamber, when her maid had long since gone away, and stared out once more at the moonlight that silvered the lawns of Chatsworth; and when she cried for the mother who had not lived to see her twenty-first birthday—they kissed her tears away.

“—nine children,” my mother was saying, “including
an infant in swaddling clothes, who is possessed of the most malicious countenance in the world. I must suppose him to have died of colic.”

“Of what are you speaking, madam?” I enquired with effort.

“Of the tombs your cousin refers to, Jane, along the south wall of the church. They memorialise Sir George Manners and his wife, along with their nine children. But as they died in Elizabeth’s time, or thereabouts, I cannot find it very tragic.
Everyone
died in that period, you know.”

“And sooner rather than later,” I murmured. “Mr. Cooper—”

My cousin mopped his reddened brow with a square of lawn. “Yes, Jane?”

“Did your excellent wife disclose in her letter the reason for her apothecary’s abhorrence of black cherry water?”

“She did not. But I suspect Mr. Greene to possess a very natural distaste for the interference of females—and the strength of mind to declare it. Were the general run of gentlemen so forthright, the general run of ladies might appear to greater advantage: their conduct seemly, their ambitions modest.” Mr. Cooper eyed me with disfavour. I was not to be forgiven my insertion in the affairs of his friend, Mr. Hemming, it seemed, nor absolved of culpability for the disaster that had followed.