Lynne Connolly (33 page)

“Why would he come to you?”

“I am part owner of a registry office for domestic staff. I have very little to do with the day-to-day running of the establishment, but I could offer Jones lodging there.”

“And you claimed that Mrs. Drury was involved with the unfortunate conflagration at the premises of the said establishment? What evidence do you have to support that?”

Trying to show that Richard had laid evidence with malicious intent, but Richard had an answer. “You have already heard that the fire began in Jones’s room with an arrow loaded with combustible substances. We would have had two witnesses to that, had the other man lived. However a witness had come forward to say he heard a discussion between Mr. Drury and his wife, in which he accused her of setting the fire.”

“Mr. Drury cannot lay information against his wife.”

“Nor has he done so. The witness is a servant in the Drury household.”

The prosecutor made frantic notes. Richard had made the case carefully, determined that Julia wouldn’t get away with this. She couldn’t. She’d caused the death of too many people, created unrest and attempted to pervert the proceedings of Parliament with her Cytherean Club. Even now she couldn’t believe what was happening here or that she’d do anything but walk out a free woman.

But the prosecutor hadn’t done. “There are very strong rumours in the papers and amongst society in general that the dead man, Mr. John Kneller, was your son. How do you answer this?”

Richard sighed and spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “I can’t help gossip. However I can say that the boy was probably a Kerre, albeit on the wrong side of the blanket. My brother, Gervase Kerre, has claimed him and his sister as his own.”

The court erupted and I took a few deep breaths to steady my spinning head. Richard had indeed avoided lying outright, and we’d done justice to Susan. She was currently lodged at Gervase’s house, and he had said he wanted to care for her as if she were his daughter. He couldn’t introduce her into the higher echelons of society or present her at court, of course, but he could provide her with a comfortable, easy life, and he intended to do so. She hadn’t attended court today, having no wish to become the cynosure of the multitude.

Half an hour later we left the Old Bailey with Julia’s fate decided. She was guilty of murder twice over, and she was to hang. She received the verdict with an outraged shriek and a flood of tears, but she had received her just deserts. In the end, lying and distorting events to her lawyer had proved the end of her machinations. The man laboured under misapprehensions he could not overcome to make a reasonable case for her.

I didn’t attend the hanging.

Chapter Twenty

Three months after Julia Drury hanged for murder, my labour pains began. As before, they began in the night, but unlike the first time I’d given birth, these escalated to a frightening level very quickly. I’d thought to lie next to Richard and let him hold me, as he did before, but he leaped out of bed and called for Nichols within an hour of the first pain.

This time I’d worried him. I already suspected that I had twins, and when Mrs. Rooke, the midwife, arrived, closely followed by the accoucheur, Mr. Simpson, they agreed that I probably had two babies in my belly.

It took some time. On first examination, Mr. Simpson concluded that the babies were tangled up together, but they couldn’t come out together so he had to separate them. I prefer not to recall the pain that followed, but it had the required result and it could have been much worse.

Downstairs, Richard paced and this time he came when I screamed. Despite the strenuous efforts of Freddy, Gervase and finally Nichols, he burst into the chamber and strode to my side, dropping his coat on the way so he could help me. Mrs. Rooke yelled at him to leave, but Simpson, noting my reaction to Richard’s presence, sighed in resignation and pulled up a chair next to the bed for him to occupy.

I held out my hand and he gripped it, hard. Mrs. Rooke had tied my hair back in a severe knot, and the gown I wore was sweat-stained and severely creased, but Richard didn’t concern himself with those matters. He gazed into my eyes and held my hand, murmuring words of love and encouragement.

“She seems past the worst now, my lord. You might wish to leave,” Mrs. Rooke said, more calmly.

He spared her a glance. “I stay.” Such was his tone that nobody asked him again. He turned his attention to me, and I fear I abused him dreadfully before the first baby came. A boy. I heard the lusty cry and rejoiced, but in the middle of renewed agony, I couldn’t hold the child or take any interest in him other than gaining the reassurance that the child was small, but healthy.

I cried out again, despite my determination to bear the pain for Richard’s sake, and he bathed my face in cold water. “Rose, I love you. Don’t let go, keep pushing. I’ll never put you through this again, I swear it!”

At the time I would have responded that I’d make sure of it, but then another pain gripped me, this one with more purpose. It seared deep inside my body, wrenching my muscles into obedience to bear down, hard, and rid myself of this intruder.

“Yes!” The triumphant cry from Simpson told me I’d succeeded in crowning the child. A couple of hard pushes later, and I was done.

Another cry, not so lusty, and then more pain. “What?” Richard demanded, his voice filled with terror. “What is it?”

“Another. Triplets.”

Richard gave a strangled cry before he restrained his reaction and turned to me with a wry smile. I knew he’d forced it, but I appreciated the effort. “Can you manage another, sweetheart?”

This time I found it easier and guessed the reason why. A small, sickly sibling to the two lusty boys currently bawling their hearts out. I was right. The resulting cry was feeble, and my heart went out to the third child neither of us had even suspected existed.

I fell back against the pillows, sweating, and waiting for the verdict. “You’re done,” Simpson pronounced. Mrs. Rooke presented me with three wrapped bundles, but I only had two arms, so I made do with the first two and Richard took the tiny one. I wanted to give him everything if only he’d live. I held my children, gave Richard one of the two eldest and took the tiny one.

“Lancelot,” I said.

“Hm?”

“He’s a valiant knight.”

“Then he shall be whatever you wish,” he said. “My love, thank you. For this, for everything. You will not do this again, I will make sure of it.”

I knew then that he’d made up his mind, and I couldn’t be sorry, although I knew that nothing was certain in this life.

Even my life.

After I’d received the congratulations of my immediate family and Richard had gone to organise another wet-nurse, because one would not do anymore, I slept the sleep of the exhausted, feeling smug and happy, if very sore.

A day later I woke to a world of heat and light and very little else. I knew something was wrong, but I had no idea what that something was. I fought and cried and demanded, or so I’m told, because not much memory remained of that terrible time when I finally awoke, more tired than I can ever remember feeling.

Richard was there. He’d had a truckle bed moved into the room and never left me, day or night. In the hot summer nights he opened all the windows and bathed me to bring down the temperature that could have killed me. Without his care I doubt I’d have survived.

I awoke and spoke his name. He was sitting in his shirtsleeves, his head bowed low, his hands over his face. When I spoke he looked up, tears staining his countenance, but I thought I’d never seen anything so wonderful. “How are the babies?”

“Thriving. Even the little one seems well.”

“I want to see them.”

“In a little while. Do you think you could take some liquid if I raise you up?”

My body felt as if it had been through a clothes-mangle. Several times. But with his help, I struggled up against the pillows and took several sips of the lemon-flavoured barley water that he poured from a pitcher on the bedside table. The drapes of the bed had been swung up and tied out of the way, and much of my room was clear of furniture to make room for the small bed, its sheets rumpled, where Richard had lain. I had vague memories of my calling his name. It had never gone unanswered.

I rested against him, savouring the warm, hard flesh and the comfort of another person. “What day is it?”

“Friday.”

Shocked, I turned my head to meet his gaze. I’d given birth on Thursday. “I’ve been insensible for a day?”

“A week.” He held me close, then loosened his hold so I could take a few more sips of the drink. “Now you must eat and grow strong again.”

“The babies?”

“I’ll have them brought to you after you’ve slept.”

No, I wanted them now. I fretted, so he had no choice but to send for them. I met the new wet-nurse, one Mackintosh, as well as Campbell, the unfortunate maidservant we’d originally hired to help me feed my babies. She’d had her infant a month before and was now full of milk. I feared I would not have the felicity of feeding the babies from my own breasts. I’d been a week away, fighting this illness that could have killed me, time enough for my own milk ducts to begin to dry up. But I held the boys and loved them. They gurgled, cried and I insisted that I saw them at least once a day. I made Richard and the nurses promise before I dropped into sleep.

Richard didn’t leave me. At one point he swore he’d never leave me again, which made me laugh for the first time since I’d had the fever.

Mr. Simpson said I’d had childbed fever, and for two days they’d despaired of me, but Richard had stayed by my side, threatening, cajoling and pleading with me, and I’d survived. I remembered very little except for his voice, the discomfort, and disjointed, nonsensical thoughts.

Sometimes I’d wake up to find him watching me, a pensive expression on his face. Every time I woke, he seemed to wake, and I knew without anyone saying anything how much he cared, and how I’d come close to death. Many women died of puerperal fever. I’d been very lucky. I didn’t need anyone to tell me.

My family came as soon as Richard allowed me to have visitors. Even Lady Southwood made an appearance and gave me grudging congratulations. I had, after all, provided the heir, the spare and an extra in one birthing.

After an additional four days in bed I made Nichols dress me so I could sit by the window on a large chaise they’d had brought up from the parlour. I felt like a prisoner, cut off from the world, but at least I could watch now. After initial annoyance, Richard understood, and I pointed out to him that he couldn’t keep me wrapped up in bed forever.

“I can try,” he said. He sat next to me and held my hand. “In fact, I want to talk to you about that. How would you feel about a trip abroad?”

“With the children?”

He laughed. “My mother will protest, but yes, with the children. You’ve been very good, having Helen in here every day. Don’t imagine I don’t know how tired you are sometimes.”

“It annoys me. I can’t get as much done. I’ve spent some time with my gardening books, though.” I paused. “That reminds me. How is Steven? I was afraid he’d fall by the wayside after the trial.”

“He’s still in the country with Mr. Cartwright. They’re trying to redress the little that Julia left.”

“I never thought she’d end on the gallows.”

He sighed and glanced out of the window. Looking at life, the people walking down the street, the chairmen grumbling at the people getting in the way, a carriage or two passing by. All sights that Julia would never see again. “I did, but only towards the end, when you showed me her true nature. I’ve never met anyone so self-centred that they seemed unable to see anyone else as a person. That was it, I think. To Julia, we were all things. She couldn’t link us with them. She even enjoyed her own hanging, right up to the last part.”

“You went?”

He swallowed and nodded. “I dressed down. Nobody recognised me, but I thought I owed her something.”

“You gave her justice.”

“She did that to herself. I couldn’t let her continue, couldn’t let her kill indiscriminately.”

“And John?”

“Hopefully the Navy will help him come to terms with what he is, rather than what he wants to be. He’ll come back to a different name.”

A notion struck me, one I hadn’t considered before. “What if he wants to come back as John Kneller?”

“To create more trouble?” He gave me a wry smile and squeezed my hand. “He’s legally dead, and there’s nothing left of the money that his mentor left him. And that’s another reason I want to take you away. Gervase can deal with any unpleasantness. He wants Susan to stay with him, you know.” He grinned. “Our mother was furious when he claimed her. Did you know that?”

I shook my head. “I thought she’d welcome it.”

“No. Luckily Susan had one keeper for most of her disreputable career, but she can face any accusers down. Gervase plans to introduce her, to find her a husband, if she wants one. He’s turning into an anxious mama before my eyes.”

I laughed. “And Ian. When he came to see me, he talked about Susan. She’s enchanted both of them, I think.”

“Gervase has lent us his yacht,” said Richard. “If we want to use it. We planned a honeymoon on our yacht, do you remember?”