“Perhaps it would be best if you waited in your room for him, my dear. I dare say he won’t be long.” Clarissa moved to take her patient’s elbow and Lady Aria reluctantly allowed herself to be propelled out into the hall.
As they began to cross to the stairs, there was a hurried rapping on the front door. Clarissa was not anxious to have any visitors at the moment. Meg arrived in the hallway, took one glance at Lady Aria and paled. Steven stood in the doorway of the sitting room, looking helpless. The knock came louder on the front door.
“Steven! Are you in there, Steven?” demanded a soft but insistent female voice.
“Oh, my God, it’s Jane,” he said.
Meg looked to Clarissa for guidance. “Well, you will certainly have to let her in,” Clarissa sighed, shrugging helplessly at Steven. “Surely she cannot have come here in her state! You must be mistaken.”
But he was most assuredly correct, as he should be in recognizing his own wife’s voice. As Meg quickly drew open the door, a very small and very enceinte young woman was revealed, her eyes blinking back tears of distress.
“But look,” Lady Aria exclaimed. “She’s about to have a baby. How did she get here? Is she one of Kinsford’s lovers, do you suppose?”
“No, I do not suppose,” Clarissa said, sternly hushing the young woman. “This is Mr. Traling’s wife, Jane.”
Steven had dashed forward and pulled his wife across the threshold of the cottage. Outside he could see his in-laws’ carriage, but he caught no glimpse of anyone else in the vehicle. “You haven’t brought your mother?” he asked, both alarmed and relieved. “What are you doing here, Jane?”
‘‘You shouldn’t have left me at a time like this," she protested as she allowed herself to be lowered into a chair Meg thrust forward for her use. The maid uttered something about going into the kitchen to get the young lady a glass of tea or water, and disappeared with one brief, scandalized look at her mistress.
Steven was kneeling beside his wife, clasping her hands in his, trying to get the words out that he meant to say. “But I did want to stay with you. Your mother refused to let me. I would have stayed, I swear I would have stayed. You didn’t tell your mother that you wanted me to stay.”
“But I
did.
I most certainly did. Didn’t she tell you?” Jane was quite adamant in her protestations, and everyone hung on the gentle insistence of her words, so they were quite aware when a look of pain overcame her face and she bent forward and clasped her abdomen.
“Do you suppose that the carriage ride has brought on my time, Steven?” she asked almost meekly.
“Several times on the way here I had these feelings of pain that could be the child coming, you see. Perhaps I should not have come.”
“No, of course you shouldn’t have come,” he said, but not in a scolding way, more out of fear and worry for her safety. “I don’t think we can take you back in this condition, Jane. Not if the child is coming. You’ll have to stay.”
“Well,” said Lady Aria, excited by the possibilities here, “you shall have my room for your wife, Mr. Traling. It’s a delightful room, if not particularly large. And we shall send for the midwife. Don’t you think so, Miss Driscoll?”
Clarissa, amused at this abrupt return to practicality, agreed. “But Mrs. Traling shall have my bed-chamber. Meg can prepare it for her straightaway.”
“I don’t believe I shall go to the ball after all,” Lady Aria declared. “You do have the most fascinating household, Miss Driscoll.”
“It never used to be,” Clarissa said dampeningly. There was a knock at the door. Clarissa had a moment of supreme desire to be elsewhere, then descended to answer the summons herself, since Meg had not returned from the nether regions, and Steven had disappeared. On the doorstep stood William, resplendent in a hussar’s uniform.
“I knew you would look quite dashing in uniform,” Lady Aria cried.
When William saw his sister, he exclaimed, “What the devil are you wearing, Aria? You look ludicrous.”
Before his sister could answer, there was a moan of pain from the lady seated to his left in the hallway. The young man turned to her, blinked his eyes uncertainly and said, “Can I help you, ma’am?”
At that moment Mr. Traling issued forth from the kitchen with Meg, her sister Betty, and a cup of tea which he insisted on carrying himself. “Here, my dear,” he said, as though it were exactly what she was waiting for. “This will be just the ticket.”
Betty removed the cup from his hands and told him that they had much better see my lady up to a bed than to be feeding her cups of tea at this moment. Steven looked as if he meant to take exception to this advice, but sighed and swooped his wife into his arms. “Just show us the way, Clarissa.”
His hostess, after tossing a brief glance skyward, did indeed lead the party up the stairs and into her own room. The sunlight poured through partially open windows, making the room bright and fresh smelling.
“What a lovely room!” Jane Traling exclaimed. “I wish my room were so bright and airy. There is nothing so stuffy as the way my mother has kept the house all these years. And even though the fashion has changed, she will not come round to seeing that it is healthier for one to have fresh air than stifling air in a room."
Steven, who wondered if this criticism of her mother was something that only the pains of childbirth had induced, helped settle Jane on the bed. “We should have a small house of our own,” he suggested, taking advantage. “Just a small place, but one where we could have sunlight for ourselves, and for the children."
“Now that will be enough talking, ma’am,” Betty cautioned. “You’ll need your strength for the work you have to do here. The gentleman will not want to be staying here with you until all is over and done with.”
“But I do,” Steven protested. “At least until I would be in the way. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do.” And he held tightly to his wife’s hand.
Clarissa prevented William from following her into the room. “No, my dear, this is no place for you.” She closed the door and directed him into Aria’s room. “Just be sure the dog is under control, will you?”
“Aria seems quite capable of that,” William remarked, watching as his sister placed the animal on a pillow she had covered with a cloth from the dressing table. “You may be wondering why..."
They heard a loud hammering at the front door. Clarissa was not about to entertain any more guests. The upstairs of her cottage at least, was bursting at the seams. When she glanced out the window of Aria’s room, however, she could see that it was Lady Kinsford at the door. Reluctantly she left brother and sister to fend for themselves and went to admit her ladyship.
“You cannot keep her from me,” Lady Kinsford insisted as she elbowed her way into the hall. “I am the child’s mother and I
will
see her, this instant.”
Clarissa, torn between amusement and despair, dipped her head and agreed. “If you will come this way, Lady Kinsford. Lady Aria is upstairs in her room.”
“Her room! Her room is at the Hall, not in this shabby little cottage,” Lady Kinsford informed Clarissa as Meg helped relieve the woman of her pelisse and walking stick. Not that Lady Kinsford had walked. There was now a second carriage outside the cottage, in addition to Steven Traling’s horse. Clarissa thought it looked as though she were running a stable.
“Come with me, please,” she offered and led the way up the precipitous stairs, hoping that Lady Kinsford would not trip on her long robes and tumble down the short flight.
At the head of the stairs they were met by a wail from Clarissa’s bedroom as Jane Traling suffered a pang of labor. Lady Kinsford clutched her breast and cried, “What are you doing to the poor child?”
“That’s another guest of mine, who is in child-bed,” Clarissa informed her in an offhand manner meant to disarm the woman.
“In childbed? Here? Do you run a boardinghouse?” Lady Kinsford demanded. “I don’t believe I knew you ran a boardinghouse. What is my daughter doing in such a place?”
“Oh, Mama,” Lady Aria called from her room, where she was feeding Max tidbits from the breakfast tray. “Come and see my new dog. His name is Max.”
“My poor child! What have they done to you?” Lady Kinsford’s eyes had widened considerably at the sight of Aria in her outlandish outfit. “They have taken away your clothes! They are treating you as a lunatic!’’
“Hush, Mama,” Lady Aria insisted. She dusted her hands together to rid them of crumbs and said stoutly, “I’ve just been dressing up. Will can tell you..."
“Will? Is Will here, too?”
William, who had been hiding behind the door, now stepped forward to confront his mother. “Yes, indeed I am here, ma’am. I have been keeping a constant watch over my sister and no harm has befallen her here.”
“How can you say that? She is at this moment in a boardinghouse where strange women give birth to children, probably out of wedlock. This is not the place for any daughter of mine to be found.” Lady Kinsford glared at Clarissa, who merely returned her look with a slight twitching at the corners of her lips. “Aria must be removed at once!”
“I think we must consult Kinsford about that, ma’am.” Will suggested. “He has instructed that she stay here.”
“And does Kinsford know that a woman is giving birth next door to your sister?” his mother demanded, her eyes taking on a cunning look. “Perhaps this has something to do with him. I am not at all happy that he hasn’t as yet married. It’s not a good thing for a young man to be at loose ends at his age. How could it be? His father was married far younger. And married soon after Kinsford’s mother died as well. It’s not wise for these country gentlemen to be left to their own devices.”
William looked despairingly at Clarissa, who said, “The lady giving birth next door is my cousin’s wife, Lady Kinsford. It’s indeed unfortunate that this should have happened with Lady Aria here, but it cannot be helped. Please let me take you down to the sitting room and Meg will bring you a cup of tea.”
There was another wail from the next room and Lady Kinsford grasped the doorknob where her hand rested. “I don’t understand how you can allow such a thing to happen. People just do not come to one’s house to give birth.”
William took his mother’s elbow and turned her toward the stairs. “Now, Mama. You mustn’t let yourself be distressed. Miss Driscoll is more than capable of taking care of everything.”
“But she’s never had a child herself. She cannot possibly be capable of taking care of everything. You have no idea, William. Childbirth is a nasty, painful business and an unmarried woman should be nowhere in the vicinity. I assure you it is best that the young have no idea of what is involved or they would never in their lives become married and have children.”
Chapter Eighteen
Clarissa helped William guide his mother down the stairs, where they found Meg just ascending with warmed cloths and hot water. Clarissa left William with his mother while she went to prepare a cup of tea for the dowager. When she returned, her guest had not finished elaborating on the miseries of childbirth.
“I tell you it is most unreasonable to expect a poor, helpless female to go through that kind of pain,” she was telling William, who looked thoroughly discomfited. “Not that I begrudge you and your sister the difficulties, mind, but it does seem to me that things could have been arranged a little differently. After all, one is imposed upon quite enough by the act of procreating.”
It seemed to occur to her that this was not perhaps something she should be discussing with her son, but William’s eyes danced as he leapt up to help Miss Driscoll with the tea things. Soon enough Lady Kinsford forgot that he was there, though, in her meditations.
“Perhaps my mother was remiss in not telling me certain things that she should have,” she opined. “If I had known what to expect! But I really did not and it was the most horrifying thing, you see. Not that your father was not the most perfect gentleman. Certainly he was. And thoughtful of me in every way. But to have expected me to bear two children when he already had an heir! Still, it is the way of the world. Or at least of men,” she lamented. “One has to do one’s duty.”
“Indeed, ma’am,” William murmured. “Should you like sugar in your tea?”
Lady Kinsford looked up at him as though puzzled to find him there. “Yes, I always take two sugars. You know, William, this is not the time of year you should be home from school, is it? I had thought it wouldn’t be time for a break from Oak Knoll for some weeks.”
“A small matter of being sent down,” William explained without the least embarrassment. “Nothing that can’t be rectified, I assure you. Kinsford has already spoken to me on the subject. In fact, there are several matters which he is at present attending to.’’
“Well, he is not the man his father was,” she said with a sigh. “Always away in London and sending notes to his bailiff. That was not the way his father ran the estate. I should very much like to see him take more of an interest.”
“And I think he will,” William replied, casting a surprisingly sharp glance at Miss Driscoll. “He seems to have found an interest in the country recently. And there is Aria to be considered.”
“The poor child. I’ll send over more clothes for her. What can she be thinking of, wrapping herself up in such shoddy draperies? Is she all right?”
Though Lady Kinsford looked to her son for an answer, it was Clarissa who responded. “We think she is progressing fairly well. In fact, I feel certain Dr. Lawrence will recommend her return to the Hall very shortly.”
“It’s been much quieter here for her than at the Hall,” William explained.
At that moment there was a long, drawn-out cry of pain from the room above them. They heard a door close above and a man’s footsteps proceed heavily down the stairs. Steven Traling appeared surprised to see so many people when he entered the sitting room. “They won’t let me stay any longer,” he complained.
“They’ll take good care of her,” Clarissa assured him. And seeing her means of escape, she added, “It might be an excellent idea if I were to go up and offer my assistance.” Fortunately, for all the help she could be, the midwife arrived as she hurried through the hall. Relieved, Clarissa bore her upstairs to the needy Jane.