Mistress of My Fate (40 page)

At that pronouncement, I exploded into a shower of tears and ran from the table. How my friend had betrayed me! She understood that Georgie’s removal would break my heart, and yet she conspired to have it done. Never could there have been a more unforgivable deed than this!

“Henrietta… Henrietta!” I heard St. John calling, but it was no use. He would never have convinced me of the correctness of this plan, nor of the good intentions of the friend who had pushed a dagger into my maternal breast. Naturally, it was only after the deed had been done that I came to see the merit in it, and to comprehend the wisdom of her experience.

I wept the entire distance from Mayfair to Primrose Hill, which lay across tawny autumnal pastureland a few miles to the north of London. I clutched Georgie to me, my sobbing causing him to accompany me in my sorrowful song of parting and sadness. By the time we arrived, I had soaked his blankets and linen with my tears.

It was not such a terrible place, the clean, whitewashed cottage to which he was sent. Mrs. Brown was a full-bodied woman of no more than twenty-six, with two children and an infant of her own. Her face was ruddy with health, as were the cheeks of her girl and boy. “The older ones have taken the inoculation,” she assured me, rubbing their tow heads, “so there will be no smallpox here. No, we are a healthful household,” she boasted, before adding that no one ever went hungry, for in addition to her own two breasts, they owned “two fine cows as well.”

I suppose this went some way towards easing my distress, but it failed to cure it altogether.

“Mrs. Brown has nursed two sons of the Duke of Portland,” St. John said upon our return, attempting to comfort me, but I said nothing. Tears were all I could produce.

I wished myself dead in the days following our visit to Mrs. Brown. I lay in bed, entertaining all manner of thoughts. I imagined that my boy should be overlaid, that one of the nurse’s stupid children would
drop Georgie or one of the cows might kick him just when he was learning to toddle about on two feet. Oh, I could not count how many possible fates awaited him! And when I had finished enumerating those, I wept over Allenham, that the only remembrance I had of my true love had now been stripped from me. When I had embraced Georgie in my arms it was as if I had held his father as well. “Dear God, where is he?” I sobbed. “When in heaven will he return to me? Surely, he must know,” I told myself. “He must know I have had his son.”

To be sure, I truly indulged in my melancholia upon this occasion. I wallowed in my depressed spirits, behaving much as I had observed Lady Stavourley in her times of unhappiness. I refused to dress and believed myself ill. Foolishly, I even dared to turn St. John from my bed, prompting him to think me hysterical.

“Hysterical women require a visit from the surgeon to cure them of their distemper,” he threatened me with a wagging finger. So, the following day, the surgeon arrived to cup me. As this had no effect, in a rash final attempt to revive me, he sent word to the Bird of Paradise.

As I had lain in bed, Mary entered and announced that Mrs. Mahon was below, wishing to call upon me. The mention of her name drew such hot indignation from my heart that I sat up straight.

“I shall not see her!” I declared. “Tell her that I am not at home to a Judas, nor shall I ever be again!” With that, I fell back upon my pillow in a torrent of tears.

And this, dear reader, was how I repaid that woman’s kindness to me.

After that disheartening episode, I can only say that I am grateful to Fortune for interceding on my behalf. With hindsight, I came to appreciate how the loss of Georgie spared me from complacency. It was not my destiny to remain at Park Street; indeed I had almost forgotten what were my intentions when I had arrived at this place. I was only reminded of them again when Lucy Johnson appeared in my dressing room.

I have heard it said that when a great thing departs one’s life, the space is soon occupied by the arrival of something of equal importance.
While I cannot say that Lucy Johnson filled the emptiness left by my son, her presence did significantly alter the course of events. And to think I very nearly sent her away.

Nearly a fortnight had passed since I had parted with my Georgie and St. John wished that I should leave it a few days more before I paid him the first of what would become my thrice-weekly visits. Need I say that this news did not have an uplifting effect upon my spirits? Although I now no longer lolled about in my bed, I did little more than stare at the rain-splashed windows and imagine my son’s hungry cries. My misery had begun to offer me the sort of comfort that a drunkard finds in his bottle of brandy; I wished to be alone with it, to savour its stupefying effects, so when Mary rapped upon the door with a message I had no wish to hear it.

“Madam,” she whispered, poking her head round the door, “there is a girl come to speak with you.”

“I know no girls who would wish to speak with me.”

“She insists you will know her.”

“What is her name?” I asked, attempting to muster the thinnest of interest.

“Lucy Johnson, madam.”

“I know no one by that name.”

“She says she is of number five Arlington Street.”

At first I did not think I heard Mary correctly, or perhaps that I had imagined she spoke the address.

“Arlington Street? Number five?”

“Yes, madam.”

Suddenly, I found my heart in my throat.

“Well, well, do show her in, Mary,” said I in a trembling voice, arranging myself upon the sofa and nervously smoothing my skirts.

After a minute or so, Mary reappeared alongside a young woman in a brown woollen cape, a starched white apron peeking from beneath it. She hardly dared look at me as she folded herself into a polite curtsey.

I instantly recognized her as the maid I had spied listening to me plead with Allenham’s butler. Her auburn hair and freckled features made her unmistakable. I dismissed Mary and waited until the door shut fast behind her.

“Lucy Johnson, of number five Arlington Street?”

She curtseyed again. “Yes, madam.”

I swallowed anxiously. “Do you come with a message?”

Lucy Johnson corrected her posture. “No, madam, I come begging a place in your household.”

I sighed inwardly at this announcement, but remained intrigued by her presence.

“But you have a place in Lord Allenham’s household.”

“Not beyond this week, madam. The house is to be closed up. His lordship’s cousins, Sir Folbert and Lady Jervas, who had rented it earlier in the year, have now gone abroad. I have been told I must find another place, but I have only a reference from the butler, not his lordship or his cousins, and that does not go far for securing another place, not as far as a letter from a person of breeding, madam.”

“The house is to be closed up?” That was the only information I had correctly taken in. “By whose orders? Where is his lordship? Have you received word that he will not return?” I heard the pitch of my voice begin to rise, and immediately and rather ashamedly attempted to compose myself.

Of course, Lucy knew too well that this information should pique me.

“I was told his lordship is to be gone for some time.”

My face fell, like a banner stripped of the breeze. I looked down at my lap, unable to think what to ask next. This news had pricked the small bubble of hope that I had managed to carry within me over the past months. Lucy stood patiently, observing my distress.

“I… I saw you, madam, come to the house, begging to see his lordship,” she began, her tone now more tentative and confessional. “I said
to myself, this lady has some business with Lord Allenham. I read the message you sent round by one of your servants. I know I ought not to have… but I remembered your address… I remembered it, thinking there might be a time when I am in need and she is in need and I can give her something she would want…”

At that I looked up and locked my eyes upon her.

“Do you wish to find his lordship, madam?”

I continued to stare at her, my mouth parted in disbelief.

“I can tell you where you might find him, but first, madam, I ask for a place in your household.” She dropped another deep, obeisant curtsey, knowing all too well the boldness of her proposition.

I rose unsteadily to my feet, my face and neck flushed with heat.

“Yes,” I whispered. “Yes, yes, please. You shall have a place,” said I, between frantic breaths. “Please… please sit, Miss Johnson,” I stammered, my eyes roving the room while I decided upon my course of action. By God, I would not permit this girl to leave St. John’s house without disgorging her information. “I must first make an enquiry,” said I, reaching for the door. I had to find St. John immediately.

I rushed down the stairs in search of my keeper, and found him in his study, hard at work on a play he was devising,
Icarus Aflame
.

“Sir,” I said, startling him from his pen. He took in my flustered expression with a puzzled look.

“I have in my dressing room a girl who comes to me for a position… as a lady’s maid. You know I am in need of one, sir, for while Mary is diligent, she knows nothing of dressing me properly and I am always scolding her. I should like very much to hire her. Oh Jack, it would make me so happy to have the company… with Georgie now gone…”

“Say no more,
chaton
.” He dismissed me, waving his hand. “Do as you will.”

“Bless you, dear Jack. Bless you,” I thanked him with a smile more of relief than gratitude. I turned on my heel—no, rather I spun on my heel to leave, when his voice halted me.

“Who sends her?”

I looked back at him.

“Which house does she come from? I should not like a thief under my roof.”

“Lord Kerry,” I lied, hardly drawing a breath to do so. “Who you know to be a relation of Mrs. Mahon’s. The girl was employed by a cousin of his… who has lately gone abroad.”

There was a pause.

“Very well.”

I flew up the stairs to my dressing room, fearing for a moment she might have abandoned me, fretting that she would disappear along with her most precious secret, but she remained where I had left her, with no evidence that she had slipped one of my patch boxes or silver-topped bottles into her pocket either. She gazed at me with a hopeful smile.

“I should like to take you into my service as my maid—from today.”

“Oh thank you, madam.” Lucy beamed as she bobbed. “I am ever so grateful. I shall serve you well.”

Then, sobering herself, she raised her head and with a proud look stated plainly, “Lord Allenham is in Paris.”

Chapter 30

You might be asking how it was that I could remain in St. John’s house for a moment more, now that I knew where my Heart of Hearts resided. Why did I not upon that very day retrieve my son from the teats of Mrs. Brown and make post-haste for Dover? Well, think on the matter, dear reader. Such things are never as simple as that. Journeys require a good deal of preparation, and a vast sum of money. I had neither anticipated the receipt of this information nor hidden away the cost for such a voyage. I could no more spring myself free than could a prisoner unlock his own shackles. But this is not say that I did not react swiftly to this news. Ah no, the revelation of my beloved’s whereabouts altered everything.

By this point in my life, I knew very well the danger of betraying the inner workings of my mind to St. John, and so it was necessary for me to remain as calm and easy as I had been before this turn of events. While I worked hard at maintaining a composed outward demeanour, the inside of my head sparked and raged with the fury of a foundry. My heart raced as I lay beside St. John that night. Sleep would not come to me and, in a torment, I rolled from my bed to collect my thoughts elsewhere. For a spell, I paced the boards of my dressing room, but, fearing that the creaking of my steps would rouse my keeper, I soon fled downstairs to continue my exercise in the parlour.

I sat myself upon the sofa, the very seat where my first interview with St. John had taken place, and there I found my answer. It was as
if she had been waiting for me: my mamma, gazing down from her portrait. The room had been entirely dark, but for the sparse illumination provided by the night sky. Through this cast of starlight, the white paint Mr. Reynolds had used in rendering my mother’s pearls glowed against the blackness. “Here are the means for your flight,” she said to me, through her silent, dreamy smile. “These are my legacy to you.”

I could not begin to calculate their worth, nor had it ever occurred to me to do so. I had not a mind as mercenary as some of my acquaintance, who knew the value of their jewels down to the ha’penny, but I guessed that these items, along with several other brooches, necklaces and eardrops that St. John had given to me would amply purchase my passage to Paris. My pulse quickened at the thought of how I might do it. I would flee to Dover by post chaise before boarding a packet ship to Calais. From there, I had heard there was the diligence which travelled the route from the port to the French capital. I would retrieve my son, and with him in my arms, I would slip away under cover of darkness. Of course, I knew not what to expect from a voyage to the continent, but having undertaken two journeys on my own initiative already, I believed myself capable of adding a third to that list. By Jove, so long as I knew that Allenham could be found at the end of my travels, I should crawl the distance to find him upon my very knees!

I believe Lucy had some inkling of my thoughts before I had so much as mentioned my plan to her. I wished not to be hasty in my judgements, not to make the impetuous mistake of thinking her trustworthy when she had yet to prove herself to me. Mrs. Mahon had scolded me for my rash, thoughtless behaviour and I wished to demonstrate, if only to myself, that she had been wrong in her estimation of me. Oh, but I positively burst to execute my scheme—and I required Lucy’s collusion so that it might work. Alas, my eagerness consumed me and, in the end, I allowed no more than four days to pass before I revealed my hand to her.

When I rang for her on that day, I made certain to shut and lock
all the doors to my apartments behind her. Then I put myself upon the sofa and beckoned her to come and sit close beside me, which she did with hesitance and an uneasy expression.