To Love a Duchess EPB

by Karen Ranney

  “No,” Mrs. Armbruster said flatly. “They don’t. We give each baby individual care and pride ourselves on the fact that each thrives under it. Yet we have a list of nearly five hundred women and their children who desperately need help. I don’t know how many of them are still alive, Your Grace. I do know that we could have saved most of them.”

  “Have they no place to go?” she asked.

  “One would think their families would take them in, but that isn’t the case, regrettably. They’ve shamed their relatives and they want nothing to do with them.”

  “Not even for the sake of the child?”

  “Unfortunately, the child is seen as expendable.” Mrs. Armbruster’s voice was dull. Gone was her bright smile, and tears pooled in her eyes. “That’s why, Your Grace, I’m appealing to you.”

  She didn’t want to help. She didn’t want anything to do with Mrs. Armbruster and her Foundling Hospital. She wanted to be returned to Marsley House now, as swiftly as the horses could carry her. She wanted to retreat to her suite, bolt the door behind her, and take some of Ella’s tonic, the better to forget everything.

  “We exist not only to save those poor children, Your Grace, but to give their mothers a chance once more to enter society. We teach them to read, do sums, and write. We train them in various positions so that they are able to support their children. When the children get older, we provide a school for them.”

  “All of which sounds exceedingly virtuous, Mrs. Armbruster. If you’ll return me home I’ll communicate with my solicitor and ensure you are given a generous sum.”

  “But that’s not enough, Your Grace.”

  It was assuredly going to have to be. She could not tolerate much more. Her hands were clammy. Her heart was beating entirely too fast. Her stomach was churning. She was going to be deathly sick in front of the woman, in front of all of London, but she didn’t care as much about that as the feeling that she was breaking in two.

  What had she said to the woman to give the impression that she was interested in this cause? She suspected that she’d said almost anything in order to keep the woman from going on and on about her charity. People normally didn’t mention children around her. They knew enough to keep silent on that topic. She doubted that Mrs. Armbruster had been as tactful and now she was trapped in a carriage with the woman.

  Any moment now and her heart was going to spill out of her chest. It would go tumbling down over her bodice, her skirt, and throw itself out the door of the carriage, there to be run over by the wide wheels.

  What did she need with a heart, anyway? Hers had been dead for years.

  She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the seat.

  “Please, Mrs. Armbruster. I’m feeling unwell. I need to return home.”

  “But Your Grace, we’re here. We’ll get you a bracing cup of tea and all will be well, you’ll see.”

  Chapter Eight

  Mrs. Armbruster didn’t offer her tea. Instead, she led Suzanne to the main part of the hospital.

  Suzanne didn’t know what she expected, but it wasn’t a neat row of cribs, each sitting next to an iron cot with a thin mattress. Every cot had a small table next to it with a lamp and a Bible and a small trunk at its foot.

  Only five of the twenty beds and cribs were currently occupied.

  “They’ve just given birth,” Mrs. Armbruster whispered. “The girl at the end, the one with the short black hair, is our newest patient. Amy was found in the ocean. It was thought that she tried to drown herself, but she was rescued by a kindhearted sailor and brought here. I shudder to think what would’ve happened to her if she’d been taken anywhere else.”

  “Where are the rest of the girls?” she asked.

  “Some might be with the physician. Others might be in the garden. We have a small yard in the back. We want them to take their babies with them, of course. There will be plenty of time for them to be separated. Now it’s important that they get to know each other.”

  She turned and walked with Mrs. Armbruster as they headed down a wide corridor with windows at each end, flooding the space with light. Everything was painted white, but instead of giving it a sterile look, the absence of color merely brightened the space and allowed the sun to tinge everything a pale yellow.

  Mrs. Armbruster opened a door at the end of the hall to reveal a room with a wall of windows. The space was bright and sunny, and the yellow, green, blue, and pink cribs added color to the space. Here there were no cots, only cribs, each one of them occupied.

  There was a curious sweetness to the air, as if there were flowers somewhere nearby. Was the Foundling Hospital normally this clean or had it been straightened for her arrival?

  Suzanne froze in the doorway, watching as three girls went from crib to crib, caring for the infants.

  One girl went to the crib closest to Suzanne and lifted an infant from it.

  “Henry, what have you done so soon? You just want to make sure I can’t sit down for a moment, don’t you?”

  The baby drooled happily down the shoulder of her dress, reached out, and batted her nose with his clenched fist. The girl laughed as if it was a game they had played many times before.

  “Come, my dear,” Mrs. Armbruster said.

  The woman grabbed Suzanne’s arm and nearly hauled her into the room, making a sweeping gesture with her free hand to encompass all the cribs.

  “These are our foundlings, Your Grace. These poor babies have either lost their mothers or they were found on our doorstep.”

  She couldn’t imagine anything more terrible, having to give up a child in order to ensure its life. Would she have done that? Yes, in a heartbeat.

  The young girl assigned to care for Henry turned and walked toward them.

  To her absolute horror, the young girl thrust Henry at her.

  “Would you like to hold him?”

  Suzanne broke free of Mrs. Armbruster’s grip and stepped backward, away from the infant, and kept going until she hit the far wall.

  Henry didn’t like being held with hands beneath his arms and began to wail. The young girl pulled him back into her embrace, cradling him until he was calm. Mrs. Armbruster nodded at the girl, and she took Henry to the changing table and replaced his diaper.

  Suzanne crossed her arms in front of her, expecting a lecture, a verbal treatise on the joy of caring for an innocent child. At the very least, she anticipated a solicitation for funds.

  Instead, Mrs. Armbruster approached her slowly, almost as if Suzanne were a rabid dog or a fox that had been cornered and was now snarling and threatening to bite.

  The woman reached out and touched her arm again.

  “I know, Your Grace. I know.”

  That’s all she said before dropping her hand.

  No one ever said a word. No one offered condolences or sympathy. Not one person had, in these last two years, ever come to her and said, I am sorry, Suzanne.

  Yet Mrs. Armbruster had done more than that.

  There were tears in the older woman’s eyes. Suzanne closed her own eyes, kept her arms folded, the better to prevent herself from shattering.

  The silence lengthened and strengthened, creating a bubble around them. No doubt one of the babies cried. Or was soothed by one of its minders. Perhaps someone even spoke or crooned or laughed. But here, in a room set aside for orphaned infants, neither of them spoke.

  Words were beyond Suzanne. Nor would she have been able to listen to anything Mrs. Armbruster had to say.

  Finally, when she could bear the silence no longer, the other woman said, “We should return to Marsley House, Your Grace.”

  Suzanne only nodded, so grateful she nearly wept.

  Suzanne walked swiftly back to the entrance, nodding to the driver, who dismounted from his perch and opened the carriage door. Once inside, she settled herself in the corner of the seat.

  Mrs. Armbruster remained silent for long moments.

  Suzanne studied the passing scenery. Not that there was anything
to admire about what she saw. The darkness, the grayness of the very air pushed down on her. She pressed her handkerchief to her nose in an effort to tolerate the stench.

  “I’m sorry, Your Grace,” Mrs. Armbruster finally said. “I should not have taken you there. But I’d heard that you were a kind woman and thought you might be able to help. Those poor babies need someone to care.”

  Suzanne didn’t respond. At least she hadn’t burst out wailing in front of Mrs. Armbruster. For a good many months she had done that, to the shock of the servants. That’s why she’d finally gone to their country house, where there were fewer witnesses to her grief.

  “You expect too much from me.”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Armbruster said, surprising her. “I have, Your Grace, and that is my failing. I sometimes push too hard, and I ask your forgiveness.”

  Her hand curled below the window, the knuckles showing white. When the carriage turned left, an errant beam of sunlight danced along her skin. She pulled her hand back and buried it in her cloak. She wasn’t dead, but sometimes she felt guilty for being alive. Why should she feel the sun when he didn’t?

  “What will happen to them? All those infants?”

  “There aren’t that many,” Mrs. Armbruster said, a touch of defensiveness in her voice. Suzanne wanted to tell her she wasn’t being critical, merely curious.

  “That’s why we keep our numbers down, Your Grace. We want to ensure a favorable outcome for each child we take in.”

  “Is there a reason for the different colored cribs?”

  She glanced over at Mrs. Armbruster. The other woman had tilted her head slightly, reminding her of an inquisitive bird.

  “The pink, blue, yellow, and green,” Suzanne said. “Is there a reason for those colors?”

  Mrs. Armbruster shook her head. “No, but how wise of you, my dear. Perhaps we should make it mean something. An infant below six months could go in a blue crib. One below three months might go in the yellow. That sort of thing. We don’t do that now, but it’s definitely an idea.”

  “And the girls, assigned to care for the babies,” Suzanne said. “You might have them wearing a different colored smock depending on what age they are assigned to.”

  Mrs. Armbruster smiled slightly as she nodded.

  “To answer your earlier question, Your Grace, some of the infants will be sent to foster homes until they’re four or five years old. At that time, they’ll come back to the hospital to live. In a different section, of course, but there all the same.”

  “Isn’t that cruel? To pull them away from the only family they’d ever known?”

  “Most foster families are not equipped to raise a child, but they’re willing to help one get past infancy.”

  “And the girls? The girls who stay with their children? Is there a favorable outcome for them?”

  Mrs. Armbruster gave her a look that she couldn’t interpret. It was almost as if the older woman didn’t wish to speak any further. As if Suzanne had asked her an intimate question, one that was rude by its very nature.

  “Your Grace, does it matter? You’ve already given me the impression that you prefer to have nothing to do with the hospital. I can certainly understand why.”

  Suzanne wanted to explain, to offer some kind of justification. But what would she say? She didn’t expose her grief. She didn’t parade it, unveil it, and hold it aloft for other people to see. It was hers and perhaps some would say that she had breathed life into it, that she’d made it substantial and real. Perhaps she had, but who could blame her?

  Perhaps little Henry.

  “I know what you’re feeling, Your Grace. You think that if you put aside your grief, even for a moment, it means you didn’t love him. But I can assure you that caring about something else will not mean that you love him any less. Or that you’ve ceased to mourn him.”

  She glanced at the other woman to find Mrs. Armbruster regarding her with kind eyes.

  She’d gone along with the woman practically kidnapping her, thrusting her into a carriage, and taking her to the Foundling Hospital. She’d endured a tour, and then, when it was too much, demanded to be returned home. She would not tolerate being lectured on grief.

  What did the woman expect? That she would want to hold each and every one of those infants? That she would kiss a downy head and smile at an infant’s grin? That she would put out a finger to have a chubby fist grip it?

  The ache was back, but then it had never truly gone away. It sat there, waiting, for something to unfurl it. A sight, a sound, a thought was all it needed and then the ache became a very real pain.

  She was not given to being direct in her speech, but it seemed as if Mrs. Armbruster was demanding it of her. Whatever happened to tact or a little reticence in manner? The woman had said it herself. She pushed too hard. Perhaps she deserved Suzanne pushing back in turn.

  “What is it you want from me, Mrs. Armbruster?”

  “I didn’t have the opportunity to show you our other project, Your Grace. The Institute. We’re taking in girls who have gotten themselves in trouble. That is not the proper way to call it, of course. They did not do it to themselves, but the law does not see that as correct. Society punishes only the female in this case.”

  Mrs. Armbruster turned a little so that she was facing Suzanne.

  “Until they give birth, they have a home and a roof over their heads. They are fed and kept warm and out of the elements. I want you to meet some of them. They aren’t terrible girls, Your Grace. They might have been foolish. They might have listened to the blandishments of young men. Some of them were even taken advantage of by their employers.

  “In addition, I would like to name the Institute after you, Your Grace. That is, if you wanted to become one of our patrons.”

  She looked at Mrs. Armbruster, stunned. She hadn’t agreed to any kind of financial backing. In fact, she didn’t have the kind of funds the other woman evidently hoped she’d donate.

  The only money George had left her was what remained of the huge amount her father had settled on him at their marriage. A dowry, if one was kind. Payment for taking her as his bride if one was more realistic. While her husband hadn’t been profligate, he hadn’t been a miser, either. No doubt he’d purchased a few baubles for his mistresses. She knew, from his bragging, that he’d bet on more than one horse.

  But to sponsor—and fund—an organization the size of Mrs. Armbruster’s? No, she didn’t have the ability to do that.

  What on earth was she supposed to say?

  Thankfully, the carriage was turning into the drive, through the wrought iron gates, up the slight incline to the circular approach to Marsley House.

  Mrs. Armbruster was still looking at her.

  The carriage rolled to a stop and the footman was opening the carriage door.

  Suzanne murmured something about speaking with her solicitor and said her farewells as quickly as politeness dictated before descending from the carriage. She climbed the steps faster than she could ever remember doing and entered the door with a sigh of relief. After she removed her hat and gloves and placed both on the sideboard, the footman helped her off with her cloak.

  Where was Drummond?

  Another irritant—this one, at least, she could do something about.

  Chapter Nine

  Drummond was nowhere to be found. The annoying man was not in the pantry supervising the polishing of the silver. Nor was he in his office—and she’d sent a maid to fetch him.

  “He’s often in the library, Your Grace,” one of the footmen said, bowing slightly to her.

  Why on earth would he be in the library? He hadn’t struck her as being particularly scholarly the night before.

  He wasn’t there, either.

  Rather than send the entirety of the staff looking for him—and causing a great deal of speculation, not to mention gossip—she sublimated her irritation and set herself on another course, that of finding her mother’s hair clip.

  The roof was bathed by sunli
ght. There were only a few tiny puddles here and there as proof of the storm the night before. A cool wind brushed the tendrils of hair away from her cheeks. The air smelled fresh with no tinge of decay. The sky was a brilliant blue and from here, atop Marsley House, she could see the skyline of London stretching out before her. No hint of Spitalfields was visible.

  Although the house boasted a formal Tudor garden, she missed the valleys and fertile fields of the country. Summer seemed to last so much longer there until, at last, autumn reluctantly arrived, turning the leaves brown and scattering them across the lanes.

  Standing here she might have been a princess in a castle, one elevated away from the masses. Instead, she knew she wasn’t royalty. Nor was she exempt from the emotions any other person felt.

  At the moment it was anger. Anger at Mrs. Armbruster, at her father, at Drummond. Some of that anger—perhaps most of it—was set aside for herself. She should have been stronger. She should have refused to go to the Foundling Hospital. She should have stayed in the country.

  Perhaps she should only be angry at circumstances. Fate had decreed her life, altered her destiny, and changed her future.

  She walked to the edge of the roof, putting her hands on the banister, and looked down at the gravel approach below her. The height made her dizzy and more than a little nauseous. Cautiously, she stepped back.

  A sparkle caught her attention. Something was lodged not far from the railing, an object gleaming in the afternoon sun. She was bending to retrieve it when she was suddenly grabbed about the waist and jerked back a few feet.

  “Och, you daft woman,” an accented voice said.

  “Let me go!”

  “Why, so you can try to throw yourself from the roof again? Not on my watch.”

  She tried to wrench herself away, but Drummond had a good grip on her. His arms were wrapped around her midriff and were pressing upward on her breasts. She hadn’t been touched like that by a man for years. She had certainly never been assaulted by one.