by Lucy Gordon
She never knew how she managed to do what she did next. Stark terror drove her to push up the window and climb out on to the half roof immediately below. She slid helplessly down the tiles and crashed into a tree that grew close by. It broke her fall, so that she landed on the ground bruised, her clothes torn, but without serious hurt. Then she was out of the yard and running down the road.
Luckily the school was in the country, and there was nobody to see her headlong flight. She ran as far away as she could, and then hid among the trees until night fell. She could travel more safely in the dark, although where to, she didn’t know. She had nowhere to go, and no friend in all the world.
For three days and nights she proceeded like this, hiding by day and moving on by night. She lived on some apples she managed to take from an orchard, and water she drank from a stream. At last she reached a farm and collapsed outside the back door, where she was found by the farmer’s wife.
She gave her name as Kate because it was short and plain, in contrast to the pretty name she’d borne in the happy, innocent life that was gone for ever. The farmer’s wife set her to work in the scullery. For three months Kate slaved away at the most menial work, glad of the exhaustion that blotted out her anguish each night and sent her into a deathlike sleep. When her waist began to thicken she managed to conceal it for a while. Nobody looked at a scullery maid anyway.
At last her condition could no longer be hidden. She prepared to be thrown out, but her employer, after lecturing her on her wickedness, gave her the address of an institution, and enough money to get there. With nowhere else to go, Kate entered a home for fallen women.
There she found charity of a kind. It was a chilly, hard-faced kind, in which her sins were repeatedly stressed. But there was food, cleanliness, and a competent midwife to help her baby into the world.
Later there was more help, even a little kindness. She was directed to a decent wet nurse, who would care for her son while she worked. She found a job as chambermaid in an hotel. For two years she worked there, seeing her child whenever she could, but always longing for some way they could be together.
And then, one day, there was a flurry of excitement at an unexpected arrival, a countess, no less. The lady had been taking her baby son on a visit to her parents, who lived nearby, and was stopping off for one night, on her way home. The hotel, which catered more to prosperous merchants than to the aristocracy, was in delighted uproar. Kate was sent to Her Ladyship’s room on an errand, and found herself face to face with Amelia.
She was Lady Farringdon now, and a very great lady indeed. But her face was as sweet as ever, and within moments of their mutual recognition she had settled down for a coze with her old friend. In the face of her sympathy Kate told the whole story, hiding nothing.
When, the following morning, Lady Farringdon left the hotel, she had added a governess to her retinue. A short stop at a house in the village, and Kate’s little son joined the party that made its way to Farringdon Park. That had been twelve years ago.
Chapter Two
Before retiring for the night Amelia looked into the room of her eldest son, Philip. He was in bed, but awake and reading.
‘You should have been asleep long ago,’ she said, but with a smile that took the rebuke from her words.
‘Just let me finish this chapter, Mama,’ he pleaded.
She looked at the book and found it was a work of astronomy, too advanced for most thirteen year olds, but Philip already had the makings of a scholar. His eyes were wise, and he’d developed the habit of slipping away from the rest of the family to enjoy some life that he could only find alone. Of all her children he was the one she worried about most; proud and sensitive where his brothers were boisterous and heedless.
‘You’ve only just started the chapter,’ she pointed out, trying to be firm.
‘But Mama, Kate says you should always finish the chapter before you settle down, or you’ll be kept awake wondering about it.’
Amelia smiled. ‘Well, if Kate says so, it must be right. Just to the end of the chapter, and then I trust you to go to sleep.’
She kissed him, and passed on to the room where Grace, her six-year-old daughter, slept. After Philip she worried most about Grace, an affectionate, confiding little girl, who needed to be treated gently.
‘A stupid child,’ Millicent had said trenchantly. And it was true that Grace was not needle-witted. She was shy too, clinging to her mother and in tongue-tied awe of her father, which irked him. He could have showed tenderness to his daughter, as he did to his wife, but his attempts were clumsy, frightening the child off. Apart from herself, only Kate had been able to win Grace’s confidence.
She looked into the room Jack and Charlie shared, and found them breathing evenly, as always, two thoughtless animals who nodded off as soon as their heads touched the pillow.
And the fifth one, Amelia thought, laying her hands gently over the swelling. What would this child be like? Please God, let it be a girl, because that was what Ned wanted!
She was halfway back to her own apartments when she met her husband, coming to find her.
‘You shouldn’t wander about like this alone,’ he chided her. ‘Suppose your time had come?’
‘Then I should have walked calmly back to my room and summoned a servant,’ she said, tucking her arm in his. ‘Dearest, you seem to forget that I’ve been through this four times already.’
He closed the bedroom door and guided her tenderly to the bed. ‘I live in dread until I know you are safe.’
‘Silly,’ she chided him fondly, using a word nobody else would have dared use. ‘You know the doctor said no woman gives birth as easily as I do. Once it starts it will be over in a couple of hours.’
But she knew what those hours would do to him. He wouldn’t get drunk like other husbands; instead he would shut himself in the library, in bleak sobriety, and suffer agonies.
To Amelia alone had he managed to confide the details of his wretched childhood, the bullying sadistic father, the cold mother who cared only for society, and her numerous lovers.
There was no one to share the burden, for he was an only child, so the lonely, sensitive boy had been forced back in on himself. Gradually bolts and bars had slammed shut around his heart, and the face he turned to the world was increasingly one of pride and ferocity. He was sufficiently intelligent and self aware to realize what was happening to him, and therefore to value the more the woman who had saved him. Amelia’s love had come just in time to unlock the door to his prison, and he adored her.
Now he pulled the covers over her and sat on the bed, her hands held in his. Amelia smiled into his eyes and was rewarded by his answering smile, full of warmth and love.
How vulnerable he was, she thought. As vulnerable as his own children, in a different way.
‘If only they would all vanish,’ he sighed, ‘and leave us alone together.’
‘Has Millicent been troubling you? I saw her talking to you after dinner.’
‘Lecturing me, you mean,’ he said with a grimace. ‘She wants me to dismiss Hendricks.’
‘How dare she speak to you and not to me.’ Amelia flared.
‘Never fret, my love. I told her I didn’t interfere with your decisions about the children.’
‘You wouldn’t dismiss Kate, would you?’
‘Not without your permission,’ he soothed her. ‘Although I confess she makes me uneasy. Blue stockings always do.’
‘She could hardly be a governess if she wasn’t a blue stocking,’ Amelia pointed out. ‘And I was always glad of it when we were at school. I was a terrible dunce, and she covered up for me.’
‘I know you feel you owe her much, but don’t you think you’ve repaid her by now?’
‘Why Ned, how can you say that, when the headmaster of Eton himself praised her? He said Philip must have had a first class tutor, because he’d never taken in a new boy so well grounded in Latin and Greek. He couldn’t believe it when I said Philip had lea
rned from a governess. No, don’t shudder like that.’ She gave him a little shake and tried to look severe, but she was laughing.
‘I can’t help it,’ he said, grinning. ‘I told you how I felt about blue stockings, and a woman who knows Latin and Greek...saints preserve us! Don’t tell me she learned those at Miss Ellison’s.’
‘No, from her father. He was a clergyman, a very solemn and learned man. He used to write to her at school, and one week the letter would be in Latin, and the next week in Greek. And she had to answer in the same language.’
‘So that accounts for the solemn and learned Mrs Hendricks. How did this paragon of scholarship come to marry a common soldier?’
‘Oh, her heart overcame her head,’ Amelia said vaguely. ‘I’m afraid it’s a common failing of women.’
‘Mrs Hendricks? Don’t tell me a heart ever beat behind that stern exterior?’
‘Well, anyway, I don’t want her to go away.’
‘Then she won’t. But the less I see of her the better. She makes me think of a black crow, perched on top of a bookcase.’
Amelia barely heard the last remark. She was thinking how good it was to see Ned smile, and even laugh. If only he could be like this all the time, so that other people could know what a dear, kind man he was.
Nestled against him, she slipped gently into sleep. She never saw the look he gave her, part fear, part longing, part passionate possessiveness. But in her sleep she felt the gentle kiss he pressed on her forehead, and heard his murmured words,
‘Forever, my love. You and I...forever.’
*
Amelia’s labour began early the next morning. The doctor and the midwife arrived and everyone looked forward to a happy outcome in a short time.
But the hours dragged on. Morning passed into afternoon, and then into evening. Darkness fell on the house and imperceptibly a chill fell over the inhabitants. Lord Farringdon was with his wife.
Kate tried to tell herself that her fear was foolish. Amelia gave birth easily. Jack and Charlie had both been born in four hours, Grace in three.
Now twelve hours stretched into fourteen, then eighteen. At last, in the early hours of the morning, a daughter was born. The nurse came out of the bedroom, the little bundle in her arms, and everyone gathered around to gaze at the tiny child. Surely now, the worst was over and all would be well?
But, by slow degrees, they all seemed to understand that something had gone terribly wrong. Nobody spoke the dreaded words, but one by one the servants gathered in the corridors, on the stairs nearest the bedroom door behind which a battle was being fought out.
Kate sent the children to bed and went to wait in the corridor outside that ominous, closed door. After an hour she was joined by Philip, then by Jack and Charlie, with Grace between them, clinging on to their hands. She didn’t have the heart to send them back.
At last the doctor appeared. Bidding the children stay together, Kate went to meet him, ‘What news?’ she asked urgently.
The doctor’s face was grave. ‘Lady Farringdon is dying.’
Kate slumped against the wall, her hand over her eyes. ‘But why?’ she whispered in anguish. ‘In the past she has given birth easily. Why suddenly now?’
‘I wish I could tell you,’ the doctor said heavily. ‘Many things about childbirth are still a mystery to medical science.’
‘Then you can’t be sure that she’s dying,’ Kate insisted, clutching at straws.
He shook his head. ‘She is sinking fast,’ he pronounced.
When he had returned to Amelia’s room, Kate covered her face and sobbed. But only for a moment. With a shudder, she forced herself to be calm and think of the children, so soon to lose their mother. Little Grace was in tears, but the boys were staring at her in bewilderment, as though unable to understand the words they had heard. Kate dropped to her knees and opened her arms to them all. Over their heads she saw Lady Thorpe watching her with glittering eyes in which there was a horrible look of triumph.
‘You do well to weep, Hendricks. Without Lady Farringdon’s protection, your day is done.’
‘The children will need me more than ever,’ Kate said huskily.
‘The children will need better care than they’ll ever get from you. From now on, I give the orders here. You are dismissed. Pack your things and go.’
‘No,’ Kate said fiercely. ‘You are not my employer, and cannot dismiss me. Do you think I’ll desert these children when they’ve just lost their mother?’
Millicent’s eyes snapped. ‘Exactly. Amelia is dead, or as good as. I am the mistress here, and if you want a reference you’ll go quietly.’
With horror Kate realized that she was helpless. Amelia’s death would devastate her husband, and he would leave such matters to Lady Thorpe, who would vent her spite on Kate, with no thought for the children.
Millicent watched her face, noting the exact moment when the truth sank in. When she was satisfied she turned and went to the sickroom. A glance was enough to show her that the doctor had not exaggerated. Amelia’s face was grey and sunken, her eyes bright with pain and fever, and her breath came in painful rasps. Beside her bed, Justin sat with his head in his hands. Mr Morton, the local vicar, stood beside the wall, one hand covering his face.
Amelia’s eyes darted feverishly this way and that. They fixed on Millicent, but vacantly, as though she didn’t see her. Her lips moved soundlessly, but at last she managed to croak a name. ‘Kate...’
Millicent neared the bed and leaned down, so that her face loomed over the dying woman.
‘You won’t be troubled by her again,’ she said. ‘I have dismissed her.’
‘Wh-what?’ Amelia’s eyes were wild.
‘You may safely leave your children in my care,’ Millicent promised.
A terrible sound came from Amelia’s lips. It was half a cry, half a wail, and its anguish pierced her husband’s grief. He started up from his chair and came to her, gathering her in his arms.
‘Go,’ Amelia whispered, pointing at Millicent. ‘Make her go.’
‘Leave us,’ Justin said curtly.
Millicent’s mouth tightened. Reluctantly she left the room, but remained outside the door, glaring at Kate, who sat, surrounded by weeping children. Kate met her eyes, defiantly, refusing to leave.
Inside the sickroom the ticking of the clock was very loud as Amelia’s life ebbed away.
‘Ned...Ned, listen to me...’
‘What is it, my dearest?’ He could hardly speak.
‘Promise me...’
‘Anything.’
‘When I’m dead...ah, hush!’ Weak as she was, she managed to enfold her husband in her arms, her heart torn by the agony that burst from him. ‘Listen to me...I haven’t much time.’
‘I’m listening,’ he managed to say.
‘When I am dead, you must marry.’
‘Never,’ burst from him violently. ‘No-one but you.’
‘If you don’t want me to die in torment, you must give me this promise. Ah, don’t refuse me.’
‘Very well,’ he choked, barely knowing what he said. ‘If it is your wish, I shall marry...in time.’
‘No. At once. And it must be Kate.’
He raised his head, too shocked to speak.
‘You must marry Kate. The children love her. They’ll need her now.’
The Reverend Morton had advanced a few steps towards the bed, staring at Amelia as if he couldn’t believe his ears. Justin’s horrified eyes met the vicar’s.
‘Do you know what you’re saying?’ he whispered to his wife.
‘I say that I can trust my family to no one else. Don’t scorn her because she is a governess.’
He made a gesture of disclaimer. ‘If I lose you, do you think I care what happens? But I won’t lose you, I can’t. You can live if you try. Say that you will try, for my sake.’
‘Oh darling, don’t make it harder. I can’t stay with you. Something is carrying me away, and it’s stronger than I am.’
‘I shall never quite leave you. You won’t see me, but I love you too much to go quite away. And when you need help, I shall be there. Remember that.’ Her voice became frantic. ‘I have no strength left...swear that you will do the only thing that will give me peace.’
With a cry he dropped his head until it lay on her breast, and she felt his sobs.
‘I swear it,’ he said at last, ‘if she will agree.’
‘She will do it for me,’ Amelia whispered. ‘Send for her.’
He rose abruptly and composed himself. By the time he reached the door his face was set in a mask of iron. Millicent, waiting outside, backed a little from that terrible look.
‘Mrs Hendricks,’ he said curtly.
He turned back into the room without a word to Millicent. Her face was black with anger but he neither knew, nor cared.
‘Ned!’ Amelia was tossing and turning. Two swift strides took him to her. ‘Hurry, I haven’t much time.’
Quietly Kate approached the bed. Justin faced her, his face wiped clean of all expression. His voice was cold and hard.
‘Mrs Hendricks, I have heard you say that my wife was your benefactress.’
`That is true. I owe her much.’
‘What would you do to repay her?’
‘Anything she asked.’
‘Then she asks this. That after her...’ He could not say the word. Even his granite control slipped, and he fought to command himself. ‘That after...for the sake of our children...you become...my wife.’
Kate’s hands flew to her face. Nothing could have prepared her for this monstrous suggestion. She stared at Amelia, whose eyes, full of terrible pleading, were fixed on her.
‘You cannot mean that,’ she stammered. ‘You cannot have understood her properly.’
‘Kate,’ Amelia said hoarsely, ‘do this for me. The only thing I ever asked of you.’
For a long moment Kate was struck speechless, looking from one to the other.
