Jane and the Stillroom Maid (18 page)

Lady Harriot took Lord Harold’s hand, planted a kiss in the palm, and then turned hurriedly to me. “We are to have a trifling dinner on Saturday, Miss Austen, in respect of my twenty-first birthday. Do I presume too much—or may I beg you to make another of the party?”

“With the greatest pleasure,” I replied. I was sensible
of the signal honour Lady Harriot thus did me, in extending the invitation to a relative stranger; her warmth must be all on Lord Harold’s behalf.

“Until Saturday, then.”

She moved swiftly back towards the terrace and the waiting Danforth brothers without another glance at Lord Harold; and so I was free to witness the expression that swept across his countenance. It was hollow, and yearning—the palm she had kissed still cupped at air—and I recognised the look for what it was: the pain of a man denied his very breath of life.

28 August 1806, cont.
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L
ADY
E
LIZABETH
F
OSTER WAS BORN A
H
ERVEY; AND
as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu once famously observed, the world is divided into three sorts of people: men, women, and Herveys. They are a family marked by considerable beauty, by varied talents, and by eccentric behaviour; by a whining nasal tone to the voice, and a bird-like frame; by a thread of insanity and a singularity of character that inevitably embroil them in scandal. Divorces, bigamy, and the murder of duelling opponents have dogged the Hervey clan; there have been Herveys estranged from their wives, Herveys who die without recognising their children, Herveys who clutch at greatness and fall rather short. Lady Elizabeth Foster may be deemed one of these.

As the Cavendish carriage conveyed me steadily towards Bakewell, I reflected upon the nature of The Adventuress’s career. Its broad outlines were known to me, as they must be to anyone who has lived in the world.

Lady Elizabeth Foster is approaching the age of fifty. She was married when still quite young to an Irishman
whose violent temper and habit of seducing his wife’s maids had early estranged her affections. Divorced by Mr. Foster after only a few years of marriage, she was deprived of her two sons, then in their infancy, and forced to live on a pittance. Her father, Lord Bristol—one of the more bizarre of the Hervey clan—then threw off Lady Elizabeth and her sister, whose marriage had also failed; and the two ladies moved forlornly about the watering-places of Europe, presuming upon the privileges of birth, and clinging to a threadbare decency. It was then that Lady Elizabeth fell in with the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire—childless, not long married, and not entirely able to suit one another.

She lived with the pair for over twenty years, acknowledged as the Duchess’s dearest friend and the Duke’s principal mistress. The perfect delight of the three in each other was not unmarred by comment; in the salons of the Great, eyebrows and questions were raised regarding the Duke’s behaviour, and rather more gossip concerning the Devonshire progeny. Georgiana’s daughters were deemed above suspicion; but Georgiana had also condescended to rescue several “orphans” from war-torn Europe, and had raised them as her own in the Devonshire nurseries. The Duchess, moreover, had gone so far as the Continent to produce
her
son and heir, Lord Hartington—accompanied by none other than Lady Elizabeth. The Vicious in Society wondered aloud whether Lord Hartington was Georgiana’s son—or a Hervey bastard, exchanged for an unwelcome daughter at birth.
1

Lady Elizabeth’s continuance in the Chatsworth household after Georgiana’s death must be perceived as awkward, both by intimates of the Cavendish family and by those more hostile to their circumstances. Convention held that Lady Harriot should assume the duties of her father’s household, her elder sister being already several years married; and yet there was Lady Elizabeth—senior to Lady Harriot, clearly held in preference by the Duke, and determined to wrest at last some acknowledgement of her claims and position from the Great World.

She would continue to make life painful for Lady Harriot until the girl fled the Devonshire
ménage
for a suitable household of her own. Was it this that Lord Harold had meant, when he advised Hary-O not to exchange one misery for another? Could any young woman, raised in so divided a household, regard
marriage
as a form of salvation?

Lord Harold would not allow Georgiana’s daughter to fall prey to a man who had brutally despatched his own maid. But which did he fear most: the easy charm of Andrew Danforth, or the subtle warmth of his brother, Charles?

As we descended the Baslow road towards Bakewell, my thoughts turned from Lady Elizabeth to the scene that had preceded her entrance. Whatever had been her principal object in engrossing all our attention, Lady Elizabeth had certainly succeeded in diverting us from the Marquess. Young Lord Hartington had behaved in a most extraordinary manner; but I suspected that such was often the case. He had the look of a boy tormented: by grief, by the deafness his family seemed determined to ignore, by the rumours that had dogged his birth. He must often be flying alone on horseback through the fields of his father’s estate.

I’d hoped the witch had died in agony!

Disturbing sentiments to voice aloud, even in the
company of one’s friends. It must be impossible that Lord Hartington would expose himself in such a way, were Tess Arnold a complete stranger to him. The bitterness of the pronouncement—his rejoicing at the maid’s death—suggested rather that the boy harboured some deep grievance towards the woman that found satisfaction in her gruesome murder. What could possibly inspire so profound a hate?

Madness. Madness born of grief and despair, madness born of unrequited love. Which had stirred in the Marquess’s breast with those final, fatal words?

A madman is loose in the hills
. And Lord Harold, it seemed, was afraid that the madman was the Duke of Devonshire’s heir. It was for this he had begged me to observe the household; not for Lord Harold the unhappy duty of naming Georgiana’s son a murderer. He would leave that to strangers.

I sighed in exasperation. Impossible, to consider any part of the whole with clarity. I was too much unsettled in my mind—too little familiar with the habits of Whigs—too greatly troubled by the secret Lord Harold’s countenance had lately betrayed.
The Gentleman Rogue was in love with his oldest friend’s daughter
. Did he find Georgiana’s bewitching charms revived once more in Lady Harriot?

And what did
she
think of
him?

Or say rather—what did Lady Harriot think of any man?

Charles Danforth was marked in his reserve; yet there had been meaning in all his words to Hary-O. He had told her, in effect, that his will was hers to command. But so much dignity and suffering—such a weight of years and loves already outworn—might well terrify a girl of one-and-twenty. Andrew Danforth—the maid’s seducer—had no such reserve; his back was unbowed by sorrow, he had charm and looks enough. He was ambitious in the field of politics, which Hary-O’s entire world had taught her to admire. Andrew sought
the Duke’s patronage, and he desired the Duke’s daughter. It would be a brilliant match for the younger son of an un titled family, however respectable.
He
would gain everything—a formidable Whig hostess, practised in Parliament and Society; a considerable fortune; and the sponsorship of one of the greatest Powers in the land.
She
would escape from the misery of living under Lady Elizabeth’s reign, and acquire a gentleman with pleasing manners, an air of affection, and the best humour in the world.

But Tess Arnold had stood, quite possibly, in the way of it all—

By the time the carriage achieved The Rutland Arms, I was in the grip of a severe head-ache.

“A
ND SO YOU HAVE RENEWED YOUR ACQUAINTANCE
with the Countess of Swithin, Jane,” my mother observed as I entered the parlour. “And how did you find her? Wasting away from a life of dissipation and vice?”

“Indeed not, ma’am. Lady Swithin is presently increasing,” I remarked, as I removed my hat and spencer. “She was in excellent looks, I assure you, and begged to be remembered most fondly to yourself and my sister.”

“Increasing! And so she gets on, does she, with her scoundrel of a husband?”

“As to that, I cannot say. The Earl did not put in his appearance.”

“He leads her a merry dance, I’ve no doubt,” observed my mother in satisfaction. “It is some comfort to reflect, Jane, that however sad your situation in being as yet unmarried, you have not chosen a man solely to disoblige your family. It is a great thing, now I am in my failing years, to find you are not the mother of ten children, and all ill-provided for.”

“And Lord Harold?” enquired Cassandra, as though
the word
scoundrel
had given rise to an idea of that gentleman. “He is well, I trust?”

“Not so well as I could wish.” I settled myself in a chair and observed the linen Cassandra was embroidering. “He is presently in mourning for the Duchess of Devonshire. She was a great friend of his youth, it seems.”

“
Great
is but the first of the superlatives to describe her,” intoned my cousin Mr. Cooper from his chair in the corner. “One cannot escape hearing her spoken of in this town. Her death has been most deeply felt; and yet, I rather wonder at such a figure being held in high esteem by the common folk! My noble patron, Sir George Mumps, was a little acquainted with Her Grace—such people of Fashion are always aware of one another, you know—and Sir George assures me that the Duchess owed no less than an hundred thousand pounds at her death—and all, debts accrued at the gaming tables!”

“A gamester!” cried Cassandra, horrified. “How is half such a sum to be repaid?”

“Very readily,” I murmured, “if the riches of Chatsworth are a token of the Duke’s wealth. I suspect he should no more regard the debt than you should moan over your laundry bill, Cassandra.”

“I am sure that the Duchess was everything that is pleasing,” my mother observed, “but she was a Whig, my dear, and you know they cannot be respectable.”

“It is dreadful, indeed,” my cousin reflected, “to consider the course of her life. Such great gifts, and so little principle; such riches, and yet such a squander of what might have gone to the greater Glory of God! I hope you were sensible, Cousin, that in entering that house you visited a place of lamentation—a place where Death has taught the most awful lesson it may bestow: that of waste, and misery, and a life struck down in its very prime!”

“I am afraid, sir, that I observed only the natural
grief for a beloved parent gone too early to the grave,” I rejoined. “And as I have endured a similar loss myself in recent months, it could not seem extraordinary.”

“Was the estate very grand, Jane?” enquired Cassandra eagerly.

“What little I saw of the house was almost oppressive in its grandeur,” I said thoughtfully, “and not what I should consider a home. But for a family of Whigs I am sure it would do very well. And the grounds are magnificent. I could wish for a week together to ramble over the estate; a phaeton and a pair of ponies would be the very thing.”

“And may you hope for a second invitation?”

“I have already received one. Lady Harriot Cavendish has asked me to dine at Chatsworth on Saturday, in respect of her twenty-first birthday; and I have agreed to go.”

“Saturday!” Mr. Cooper cried in horror. “But I had intended to quit this dreadful place as early as tomorrow, or Saturday morning at the very latest!” He waved an unsealed letter in the air. “My dear Caroline writes that the whooping cough has taken hold of the entire family; several of the little ones are in a most parlous state. Her mother urges draughts of black cherry water, but the apothecary, Mr. Greene, will have none of it, and abuses the good woman for her interference. It is imperative that I return to Staffordshire immediately. I am certain that Sir George Mumps would wish it.”

“But has Sir James given us leave to go?” I enquired, surprised.

My cousin flushed. “I have not the least intention of conducting my affairs at that gentleman’s behest,” he retorted. “It lends a most unseemly air to my conduct, to kick my heels in Bakewell like a guilty party when I might better be in attendance upon my family.”

“If you
do
mean to throw yourself in Lord Harold’s
way again, Jane, you had better have the wearing of Cassandra’s grey silk,” my mother observed in a resigned accent. “Its tone should soften the ill effect of your blushes, and pay some deference to mourning. Unhappily, it can do nothing further for your complexion; you are most disgracefully tanned!”