Mistress of My Fate (29 page)

“And what of Stavourley, what of your father in all this? Surely he would not turn his daughter out of his home?”

I recognized that I was a terrible liar. I was saved only by my tears and my inability to speak further on the matter.

“Oh sir… I flew…” were the only words I could manage. It was not entirely untrue, was it?

My patient host could see that my face was now awash with agony. I pressed my rag of a handkerchief to my eyes and attempted to catch my breath.

“I am afraid, sir, it was a most imprudent decision…” I hiccuped “… for I have no means and no friends. What little I possessed, a pearl necklace and eardrops, I was robbed of, right off the mail.”

“And you came here, to London, because you wished to find your true mamma.” He spoke in a sort of low purring.

“Nmmmm,” I moaned in agreement, “and now you tell me she is no more… and I… I…” I fell into sorrows once more.

To this day, I am sceptical as to whether St. John believed all of my tale. When I think back upon it, to one more experienced in life, my fibs would have seemed as flaw-ridden and transparent as a sheet of glass.

“There, there, dear poppet,” he said, obviously quite unaccustomed to comforting young ladies in distress, “what sort of brute would I be were I to turn a helpless, motherless creature such as yourself loose on to the streets? You are my dear Kitty’s own flesh and blood and she would roll over in her blessed grave were I to inflict such a cruelty upon you.”

I do believe St. John was truly in shock, but I sensed that his disbelief was more on account of his sudden good fortune, rather than at my appearance alone, for how often do comely young girls at the bloom of womanhood arrive upon the step of a
roué
in his forty-fourth year?

“Why, never in my life did I think I would live to see this day!” he exclaimed, his gratitude thinly veiled. “My dear, dear girl, you must make your home with me, for as long as you see fit… I positively insist on it…” he commanded. “You are my Kitty’s daughter, and that association demands that I protect you as I did her. I shall be devoted to serving you, Miss Lightfoot. Your every need and whim shall become my business. You may depend upon it.”

After such a gallant speech, I might well have believed him, had I not spied a certain glint in his eye which reminded me too much of that other gentleman into whose care I naively went: Mr. Fortune. I do not doubt that St. John meant what he promised, but I also understood that in this contract there would be clauses of which I was not yet aware. It is always the way with gentlemen such as these. I did not like this proposition one bit, and vowed to myself to quit this place as soon as I had received word of Allenham and his whereabouts. Until that hour arrived, I would accept what hospitality my host offered me, as cautiously as Persephone partook of Pluto’s company.

I could not have imagined the speed with which St. John was prepared to take me into his household, but lust is a powerful engine. He sent immediate orders to his staff that “Mrs. Byram’s apartments be prepared.”

“You will sleep in your mother’s very bed, my child,” he beamed. “You will have your hair arranged at her dressing table… Mrs. Hooper,” he called out to his housekeeper, who stood at the door, “do see if there are not some of Mrs. Byram’s effects which may be of use to her daughter.”

Of course, St. John’s behaviour was most generous, and to be sure I was grateful for the shelter he offered, but as he escorted me through the rooms of his masculine home, replete with walls of books, paintings of unclothed nymphs and the scent of uncorked port, I fear my mind was elsewhere. I could think of nothing beyond the moment when I might request writing paper and ink and send word to Arlington Street
of my change of address. As I sat at my host’s table, enjoying his dinner, he explained that he had cancelled all his day’s engagements to wait upon me. He addressed me in a tender, instructive voice, the sort that a father might use with a child of five This, I am afraid to say, did not put me at ease. If anything, I began to I nurture a sinking dread of what might come once I was put to bed. Indeed, as the day became night, so his look of benevolence melted away to reveal the more predatory stare of a snake whose yellow eyes have fixed on its prey.

“We must attire you, Miss Lightfoot,” he simpered as he examined me from behind the hand of cards he insisted we play. “Some of your mother’s gowns may do nicely… the material, that is, for Mrs. Byram was a good deal fatter than you.” He nodded with approval. “They are fine fabrics, too expensive to waste but no longer
à la mode
. We shall have a mantua-maker refit them,” he said, walking his eyes across my décolleté. “I should like to see you hold them against the cream of your complexion, my dear. Shall we retire to your dressing room, and you may amuse me with the sight of them?”

A sudden chill passed through me. St. John had hardly permitted me to stray from his sight. He was so incredulous, so surprised by the gift Heaven had dropped into his drawing room, that he feared I would slip from his hands just as unexpectedly as I had been placed into them. An entire day had passed and my host had never offered me a moment of respite, never an instant where I might close a door behind me and collect my thoughts. Oh, my fingers positively itched to hold paper and pen so I could send word to Allenham! My hopes that he might come to me had not entirely faded. I held my thoughts close to me, as near to my chest as I pressed my hand of cards. Should my host suspect I had come to London on account of a gentleman whom I was now seeking, he would show me the door to be sure! There, with St. John preparing to devour me, I felt very much like a mouse, backed to a wall by a cat, and I waited in terror for him to swing his claws at me.

“Sir, I beg you will forgive me,” said I, rising to my feet, “but I
am most tired from the day’s events, and would wish to retire to my rooms.”

St. John inhaled and settled back into his chair.

“Perhaps tomorrow then?” He raised his eyebrow, and then took my hand to his lips, much in the way of Mrs. Anderson’s lascivious guests.

I looked away demurely and left him.

Up two pairs of stairs lay my mother’s rooms and entering them was, to me, like lifting the lid of a box of wonders. Although Mrs. Byram had been dead since 1781, her devoted lover had maintained her apartments as if they were the temple of a goddess. I do not know the details of the story, but it seemed to me that hardly a vase or a jar, a mirror, warming pan, comb or pin had been removed. My mother had ceased to live, as did everything around her at the moment she expired.

The lights had been lit in this dressing room, and they glowed within the wall sconces. There upon her dressing table, a candelabrum cast its arm of illumination against the mirror, and upon the mantel, a row of small white vases were stuffed with the red berries and evergreen of winter. I walked about this place on light toes, almost fearful of waking the dead. I stroked her silver brushes and peered into the gold and porcelain patch boxes, still holding the moleskin circles and crescents that she had worn upon her chin and breast. A hardened circle of carmine lay in a silver dish, beside a thin, frayed brush. I did not wish to open the various jars of crusted creams and powders.

The housekeeper had done her master’s bidding and laid over a chair what seemed to be three of my mamma’s open-fronted gowns with their matching petticoats and stomachers. One was large indeed, but there were two, which I gathered she had worn in the final months of her illness, that were half their size. I touched them—the pink ruffle along the sleeve and neck; the satin, whose colour I could not identify under the dim light—and then retracted my hand quite suddenly. This felt like too much of an intrusion. Here lay what remained of my
mother. Her blood coursed through my veins, yet she was no better than a stranger to me. Her effects held no warm remembrances, but felt instead like the cold shroud of a dead woman.

It was my good fortune that Mrs. Byram’s dressing room also contained an escritoire, still full of writing implements, sealing wax and paper. Although the ink had dried within its pot, it was easily revived by the application of some water. My heart beat steadily as I stirred it and then sat down to write another desperate plea to my love. Like my last attempt, it was a short note, informing him that I resided at the home of Mr. St. John, “a friend of my late mother,” on Park Street, Grosvenor Place. Once again, I begged for his forgiveness and for word of his whereabouts. After sealing it, I rang for a housemaid to prepare me for bed.

As she untied me I mentioned to her that there was a note I wished her to deliver. I drew it from my pocket along with my purse, which now held nothing but two pennies.

“Would you have me deliver it tonight?” she enquired.

I paused. It was now growing late, and to send someone from St. John’s house at such an hour might raise suspicion. My heart drooped.

“No,” said I, “tomorrow morning, as early as you are able.” I placed one of the pennies into her palm. “There will be another upon your return, when you tell me that it has been delivered and inform me of whom and what you saw when you delivered it.”

I was most grave in my manner in order to convey the seriousness of this errand, and impressed upon her that it must be done in secret.

I went to my mother’s bed that night and, crawling beneath the coverlet, I imagined I lay in the very spot where she had died. The feather mattress had been plumped and firmed into a flat dome, which raised me as if my back rested upon a tablet. With the bed curtains pulled around me, I felt as if I lay in her tomb. However, this did not disquiet me half as much as the sudden realization that St. John saw me as the resurrection of her. He believed his inamorata had returned to
him, as if by some divine miracle. No sooner had this occurred to me, than I leaped from the bed.

The bedchamber had two doors. The first of these, which connected it to the dressing room, had a key within it. I hastily twisted it in the lock, but when I approached the second door, I noticed that the key had been removed. Placing my eye to the keyhole, I saw the outline of St. John’s as yet unoccupied bed and gasped. All at once his design became clear. Remembering too well what had nearly become of me at the Bull, I found myself for the third occasion in my young life dragging a chest of drawers across the floor to bar the route of St. John’s plotted incursion. It was a good stroke of luck that I thought to do it. No sooner had I been swept into the mists of sleep, than I was roused by the sound of my intruder. Silently and carefully, he had twisted the door handle, only to hear it collide noisily against the wooden back of a tallboy.

I cowered under the bedding, listening with fear to the smack of the knob against the chest, once, twice, thrice, before my embarrassed host realized he had been thwarted.

As the house filled with stillness once more, I lay, wound within my dead mother’s sheets, my heart pounding in my ears. Staring at the hangings above me, I wondered how many more nights I was destined to pass behind a barricade, and whether or not my beloved would arrive in time to save me from its certain fall.

Chapter 22

I awoke to the same noise to which I had fallen asleep: the unmistakable sound of a person trying the handle of a door.

“Madam, madam…” whispered the voice from my dressing room, “there is a letter for you.”

My eyes had scarcely opened before the meaning of these words entered my mind.

“Letter,” I said aloud, scrambling to my feet. As the maid had not yet been inside to draw back the shutters, the room was still sealed in darkness. I turned the key and opened the door.

“I was to leave it by the side of your bed, but I found the door locked,” she apologized, while passing it into my hand. Indeed, it bore the name “Miss Lightfoot,” written in Allenham’s script. I felt as if I might choke; my hands shook.

“Who… who gave this to you?” I demanded.

“I went to the house on Arlington Street, just after seven o’clock, as you directed,” said she, “and gave the letter to a footman, who examined it and, if you do not mind me saying, was so bold as to open it and read its contents…”

I looked at her with astonishment, for such a presumptuous act was most irregular, unless, of course, he had received specific orders to do so.

“Once his curiosity had been satisfied, he bid me to wait and then went away and returned with this note, addressed to you.”

“And that was all?” I asked frantically. “You met with no other person, you saw no one but that footman?”

“No one but a housemaid, who appeared, if I may say, quite idle, with no tasks to perform. It appeared to me that the family above stairs had gone away, for all was most quiet.”

“You have done well,” I commended her, placing my last remaining coin into her hand and fairly pushing her out of the door.

In a frenzy, I threw open the shutters and tore into the letter.

Gentle reader, had you been there to see me… My eyes wished to consume every word upon that sheet all at once! Oh, I remember it well. How could I ever, in all the days of my life, forget its contents?

“My dearest love,” it began, and at the sight of that salutation, I pressed my hand to my throbbing breast, as if to contain my heart.

I do not know where or indeed if this letter will find you, but I pray to God it makes its way safely into your hands.

As you may have surmised, circumstances beyond my control have called me away from you—and away from my home. I fear I am not at liberty to reveal the details of what has come to pass or of my whereabouts, but suffice to say, the situation was entirely unforeseen and unwished for by me. In short, I now find myself in a position from which I cannot be extricated. I cannot say for how long I shall be absent from you, nor am I able to present you with a reason for this cruel parting other than to say my life is no longer mine to do with it what I will.

Please believe me, my most Beloved Angel, the suddenness of what transpired caught me entirely unprepared or else I should have left you with some instruction. The circumstances of our separation are the cause of infinite pain to me, worsened still by the terrible confession I must put to you, that I have no means by which to support you in my absence. All I possess has been spoken for, and Herberton is to be let out with immediate effect.
May God forgive me, dear sweet Henrietta! May you find it in your heart to forgive me for this most intolerable situation, for I can hardly forgive myself!