The Chaperone's Secret

by Donna Lea Simpson

  “I don’t believe you,” Pierson said, his voice coming out in a hoarse croak. He would not allow Bainbridge to taint the memory of that moment of realization for him. He remembered with such great clarity Lady Rowena Revington’s pale, lovely face in the carriage window, and how it struck him at that moment that he wanted that beauty in his life, that purity, that sweetness. He had transformed his life based on that one moment, and he would not allow Bainbridge to taint it, nor to mock it. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, Bainbridge, but I won’t smash you in the face as you deserve. I will hear nothing more against Lady Rowena, as she will be my wife. If we are to be friends no more . . .” He couldn’t finish that sentence, for to lose Bainbridge’s friendship was an awful consequence.

  “I have nothing to say against Rowena, my friend.” With a heavy sigh, Bainbridge paced over and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “But you will never marry her.”

  “I’m ready to counter whatever the duke has to say against me. I know I’m not the richest man nor the best titled. But I’m willing to work. And I’ll wait to marry, if he thinks—”

  “No, Pierson, I mean you will not marry her because . . .” Bainbridge, his face white and his lips compressed in a tight line, swallowed. “I hate to do this to you, my friend, but you don’t understand her and you don’t love her for who she really is.”

  Pierson’s stomach churned. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that you only love who you think she is. You love this simple, pure, sweet flower. But Rowena is willful and selfish and a little wild. You would hate each other within a se’nnight. You would hate her because she couldn’t forever be who you want her to be, and you would think she changed horribly after marriage. She would hate you for expecting things from her that she can’t possibly live up to. No one is that perfect, Pierson. No one.”

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  “No, I’m not.” Bainbridge stared at Pierson, then buried his face in his hands. “Oh, God, this is so much harder than I even thought it would be.” He dropped his hands, took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You’re going to hate me but I can’t help it, I can’t! If there was any other way . . . Pierson, she doesn’t love you. She loves me. We’re eloping this very night.”

  “Eloping?” Pierson felt a strange urge to laugh at his friend’s words. Instead he blurted, “Are you out of your mind? You’re lying, or you’re imagining—”

  “No, hear me out!” Bainbridge put out one hand to ward off Pierson’s vituperative spew. “I had to do it this way. I knew that if I went to the duke he would accept my suit in a second and bring pressure to bear on Rowena. But I want her to want me. I believe she loves me, but I want her to choose me and to be willing to defy society, to do what she has never done and expose herself for the wild girl she is.”

  Pierson felt sick inside. Could this be true? Surely not! He felt weak inside, as if his very entrails were collapsing. “But, Bain, you . . . no, I won’t believe it. You would never do such a mad, impetuous, wild thing! You are staid, respectable—”

  “And sick to death of it!” Bain was shouting now, red-faced and angry. “I will do this,” he said, jabbing the air with one finger. “I will run away with her and cause a scandal, and then joyfully do my damnedest to live it down.”

  “How can you do this,” Pierson mumbled, his voice sounding hollow and sick even to himself. This was a bad dream; it must be, for everything in the world was strange to him that moment, including his own feelings. He should be devastated. He should be angry. He wasn’t, but neither did he know how he felt. But still he said the right words, the words that expressed how he should be feeling at that moment. “How can you do this knowing how I feel about her, knowing of my love, and how I have—”

  “Leave off! You don’t love her,” Bainbridge said savagely, pacing like a caged lion. When some other men in the club glared at them he lowered his voice and stopped pacing. “You love some chimera, some . . .” He stopped. “Think about it, Pierson. Who do you really love?”

  Pierson dropped into a leather chair and covered his face with his hands. “Rowena, of course,” he mumbled. “Have I not told you so?”

  “Time and time again, but I don’t believe you.” Bainbridge took a deep breath and his voice was calmer when he spoke again. “I hope you don’t hate me, old man, but I must do this. If I did things through the proper channels I would never know if she married me for the right reasons, Rowena being who she is. If she does this, if she runs away with me, abandons all her rigid training and all the effort she has put into forming her public face, then I will always know what a great sacrifice she has made for me. And I will spend the rest of my life making it up to her.”

  Pierson uncovered his face and gazed up at his friend. “But, Bain, your mother, your sister . . . the scandal!”

  “Harriet will laugh. Mother will be furious, but she’ll come around once the first baby comes.”

  “You’re out of your mind!”

  Bainbridge laughed. “You know, I think you’re right! Isn’t it wonderful?”

  “It will ruin her!”

  Bain shook his head. “No, it won’t. It will be a wild story for the moment, and then when we reappear and affirm our love, and when it is learned that there is no seven-month babe, all will write it off as a peccadillo in an otherwise stainless life. For both of us.” He turned on his heel and strode to the doorway, but turned back just before leaving. “Wish me well, Pierson, and don’t hate me. This will be best for you, you’ll see. If you search your heart, I know you’ll find the truth.”

  Cold fury clutched Pierson. This was the death of all his carefully laid plans, all his hopes for the future. How could Bainbridge think he would just accept this outcome? “I will despise you for the rest of my life, Bain, I swear it.”

  • • •

  Amy awoke to the sounds of crying, a long keening wail that could only indicate something was terribly wrong. Puss had heard it too and was glaring at the door, her green eyes holding something like irritation. After a night of too little sleep, tossing and turning, Amy drew on her robe and wearily exited her room, trying to follow the source of the lament. She had not far to go, for it was from Lady Rowena’s room.

  She ran into the bedchamber, fearing sickness or injury, to find Jeanette standing by the bed holding a piece of paper in one hand and tearing at her hair with the other.

  “Jeanette, what is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Milady, Milady Rowena . . . she is gone, zut, like that, gone! What have she done? Where have she gone?” The maid’s voice was rising to hysteria and ended on a shriek. She fell to the floor.

  “Jeanette, slow down! What do you mean?” Amy trotted across the room, knelt by the woman and yanked the piece of paper out of her hand. She looked it over, could not understand it, and read it again, more slowly.

  Amy, it read. I have gone to follow my heart. I know you won’t understand this, any of you, but I have decided there are some things more important than my reputation, and being with the man I love is one of them. I know we should have waited, but I didn’t want to. Goodbye. Tell Papa to treat you well, and I will explain all when I come back.

  Rowena

  Amy plunked down on the smooth bedcover and laid the paper carefully down as the maid collapsed and wept softly on the carpeted floor. So, Rowena had run away with Lord Pierson after all, and after what happened last night! How could he do that?

  How could he, after kissing her—

  She pushed away all personal feeling. First, Amy thought, she must find a way of concealing this from the duke and recovering Rowena before word got out of her precipitate action. If the pair could be brought back to London and married quickly, or—

  Amy could not get past that. Marriage, to Lord Pierson. She had known it was going to happen, but for it to be so sudden! And why had he done things this way, forsaking his new steadiness, his intent to recover the Pierson name from decades of infamy? An e
lopement would just undo all the good work he had done in the past month. It was a shocking conclusion to the Season for both Lord Pierson and Lady Rowena. Was it because of his embarrassment over kissing her that way in the garden the previous night? She covered her face with her hands. Oh, Lord, she hoped not, but he had seemed horrified by what he had done, even though she would never forget the moment of his lips touching hers and the way her heart had soared for that brief, precious instant.

  She took a deep breath and stood. She had to act and quickly; she had to make sure no one—

  The roar from down the hall was her first inkling that she would never have the chance to hide Rowena’s elopement from the duke. It was already too late. Servants’ gossip had no doubt been the rapid carrier of the awful truth. It struck her in that second that of all the people in the whole affair it was likely her who would pay the highest price.

  The day passed in a blur from there, from her initial encounter with the enraged duke, through the shocked murmurings of the serving staff—whom she finally had to gather and, with the help of the housekeeper, warn not to spread gossip—and on through a mind-numbing hour of writing notes to cancel engagements with feeble excuses. Only one brief encounter stood out with great clarity.

  She had a visitor in the early afternoon just before she was scheduled to meet with the duke, who had demanded a formal audience. Apprised of her waiting visitor, Amy wasn’t sure who to expect but entered the drawing room to find Lady Harriet waiting, ankles primly crossed and gloved hands folded.

  “My lady,” Amy said with a curtsey. “I take it you have heard of our . . . our trouble.” She couldn’t imagine any other reason for the lady to visit.

  “Heard of it? Well, of course.” She laughed, but it was a mirthless sound. “But surely not your trouble only, Miss Corbett,” Lady Harriet said, compressing her lips in a tight line.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your charge has beguiled my poor, infatuated brother into eloping with her. Surely that is as much to do with us as it is to do with your household?”

  “Your . . . brother?” Amy sat down abruptly, that seeming her only reaction to things lately, she thought. Her knees were perpetually weak. “Lord Bainbridge?”

  “Yes, who did you think—”

  “Lord Pierson, of course! He was . . . I know for a fact he wished to . . .” Amy couldn’t finish her words. Her mouth had gone suddenly dry.

  Lady Harriet shook her head. “Another poor fool. What is it about that girl that has men acting like idiots? Shrewsbury, Pierson and even my sensible brother.” The lady rose. “Well, I just came here to find out if you knew where they would be heading; my mother, as you can imagine, is distraught and beside herself. But clearly, if you did not even know it was Bain, then you wouldn’t have any idea where they would be.”

  “Oh, poor Lord Pierson!” Amy said. “How crushed he will be.”

  “Yes, well, I heard from Bain’s valet that Pierson had an urgent message from home; something about his land manager being found, or something like that. Anyway, he has departed from London and no one expects him back after this humiliation. It was so very clear he was courting Lady Rowena; he will not want to face London society for some time, the object of a jilt like your precious Lady Rowena! If we do not learn something this day we are leaving London too. Neither my mother nor I wish to be here for any length of time. Good day, Miss Corbett. Next time you take on a charge, perhaps you should consider the efficacy of locks on bedroom doors.” She departed with not another word.

  It was a lot to take in and Amy was stunned still when she had her confrontation with the duke. He was wild with baffled fury. How could Miss Corbett betray his trust in her so contemptibly, allowing such shame to fall on his old and untarnished name?

  Amy tried to defend herself, and asked how could she be considered to blame when she hadn’t even known who Lady Rowena had eloped with. She informed the duke that it was Lord Bainbridge who was the culprit, not Lord Pierson, as she had originally surmised.

  But no. The duke was emphatic; it was clearly all her doing. Base, treacherous, despicable: his Grace used all of those words and more, and within two hours Amy found herself on the other side of the ducal door, with her shabby bag in one hand and Puss in the other and a few coins tucked into her reticule, the duke having deducted, from her quarter’s wage, the cost of her dresses, despite what he had originally said, which was that they were part of her pay, not instead of pay.

  It was the great fear of her life: no position, no money and nowhere to go. A hollow pain rumbled in her stomach, the twisting, coiling sensation of fear. The staff had been aghast at the duke’s actions, but not a one dared defend or aid her except the housekeeper, who pressed a couple of coins into her hand and a bundle of food.

  Where would she go? Mrs. Bower was a dependent like her; she couldn’t help. Amy’s Aunt Marabelle, down in Kent, had no room, for she had taken a lodger in to her tiny cottage to make ends meet. Amy was alone in London, with only her own wits to guide her.

  What was she going to do?

  Twenty

  The cramped boardinghouse where Amy found temporary respite was a noisome place. The odors of cooking—mostly cabbage and fish—unwashed bodies and other unsavory smells clogged her nose and fouled her clothing. The stairs were dark and cramped, her room shabby, and yet the landlady was kind, despite her appearance of tottering around in a gin-soaked haze most of the time.

  Sleep came, as each night closed in, only after exhausting hours tossing and turning on the narrow, thinly padded bed and only because with Puss there, at least, to curl up and purr, Amy felt some small measure of comfort. She wasn’t alone in her misery.

  But for all her frugality in choosing the cheapest boardinghouse she could find, Amy’s money would run out soon and she didn’t know where to turn. She had to plan, had to find some work, anything to feed and house herself and precious Puss. She was frightened and her stomach always ached, but she refused to give in to fear.

  “I don’t know what we shall do, Puss,” Amy said as she walked along a dingy street, carrying her carpet bag, in which Puss resided. Amy couldn’t stand to leave her cat in the boardinghouse, not with the way other inmates of that place eyed the animal. In fact, she couldn’t stand to leave anything of hers there, and so she carried her meager belongings as she walked, trying to find a decent job, or any job.

  It was the most frightening feeling, having no home, no family and no one to whom she could turn. Mrs. Bower had offered her what money she had and Amy wasn’t proud; if she was destitute she would take it. But it wouldn’t solve her problem, and that was employment and a place to reside.

  The backstreets of London, even on a lovely spring day with a blue sky overhead, were dull and grimy, a coating of filth over everything. Amy shrunk from the scurrying rats and slimy, malodorous heaps of offal and considered her limited choices. She had tried a couple of employment agencies, but had met with a blank stare when she tried to skirt around her lack of recommendations. Apparently the assurance that her last but one family, the Donegals of Ireland, had been very happy with her was not enough to make them enthusiastic about her chances at a respectable position. A commendation from an Irish family was almost as good as no recommendation at all.

  And so she had tried seamstress shops, to no avail. The proprietors looked her over, her soft hands, her ladylike demeanor, and apparently decided—Amy was not privy to their thoughts, but it was all she could conjecture—that she was unlikely to work hard enough, nor take the pitiful wage they were willing to pay to an untried worker.

  It had been three days since that awful afternoon that she had been tossed out of the duke’s home. Three days of little sleep and endless worry. Though her own survival had taken the uppermost place in her mind, she had spared some late-night thoughts, as Puss curled up to her and purred, to wonder how Lord Pierson had taken the news that his intended bride and his best friend had run away together. He must have been so sad, she
thought, aching to reach out to him and knowing she never could.

  She should be happy, she supposed, that he had retreated from London to his country home, but it made her feel just so much more lonely.

  What was Lord Bainbridge thinking? He had seemed such a levelheaded gentleman, and Amy had had no idea that he and Rowena had even come to like each other, much less love each other. It was unaccountable. It had occurred to her though that perhaps she had been a little too taken up with talking to Lord Pierson to notice her charge’s emotional changes.

  When she looked back she could see subtle changes in Rowena’s demeanor. She had been more silent, more thoughtful, and her pettish outbursts had almost disappeared in the last few weeks. Often she had asked odd questions of Amy, like that one about how to tell if one was in love. Had she even then been falling in love with Lord Bainbridge? Amy had been so sure that Lord Pierson was her object that she had failed to notice anything else. How blind she had been. And yet, what good would it have done to know ahead of time? Would she have been able to change how things came about?

  And why on earth had Rowena and the eminently respectable, eligible Lord Bainbridge eloped? It was a puzzle with no answer.

  She trudged down the alley, taking what she hoped was a shortcut to another employment agency and skirting yet another pile of refuse, where skittering movements indicated the presence of creatures best left to her vivid imagination. Puss growled in his hideaway and she muttered, “Yes, I know you would like your chance to rid the alley of such creatures, but I will not risk your precious life in the pursuit of such diseased vermin.”