by Annis Bell
A pleasant scent of exotic flowers and sandalwood hung in the air, and Jane suddenly felt even dirtier than she actually was.
“Blount, would you tell me where we are?” she asked softly, but the servant, who had left them alone, returned at that moment.
“This way, please.” He led them into a small salon with a divan and a folding screen. “A messenger has been sent to fetch the doctor.”
“The doctor?” On a table, Jane spied bandages and a number of medical instruments. “Is this a private practice?”
Blount, who had followed them, replied, “No, my lady. This is the house of Madame La Roche. She is a friend of the captain’s and absolutely trustworthy. I believe it is for the best to keep you out of a police investigation, my lady.”
“The two dead men . . . were they both dead? My God, what did we get ourselves into? Hettie?” She turned to her maid, who had slumped onto the divan with a light sigh. “A brandy would probably be . . .”
Blount crossed to a sideboard and returned with a glass of amber-colored liquid. He handed it to Jane, and Jane pushed it into Hettie’s free hand.
“Drink some,” she ordered.
Hettie obeyed, but did not regain any of her color. Just then, the door opened and an elegant, dark-haired woman entered.
It was only when the light fell directly on the woman’s beautiful, expressive face that Jane saw the network of fine lines that signified an eventful life of more than five decades. Relief filled Jane and, as if her hostess had read her mind, the elegant woman’s lips curled into a slightly mocking smile.
“Blount, my dear, what have you brought me?” Her voice was deep and smoky and marked by a foreign accent.
More Russian than French, Jane suspected, despite her name.
“Now leave us women alone so I can tend to the wound.”
Blount nodded and exited the room.
“Madame, pardon our barging in like this. It was not my intention—,” Jane began, then faltered. She was standing beside Hettie and stroking her shoulder.
“There will be time for formalities later. Better help me get her undressed. She has lost a lot of blood.”
In silence, they freed Hettie from her jacket, her top, and the laced bodice underneath, the heavy material of which had protected her somewhat from the blade of the knife. The maid leaned on her side against the raised end of the divan and kept her eyes closed the whole time.
“The blade cut through the material, but did not penetrate her ribs. She was lucky. We’ll clean this up, I’ll make two tiny stitches, and in a few days she’ll have forgotten all about it,” Madame La Roche declared. She clearly had some medical experience.
Hettie’s eyelids fluttered. “Stitches? I don’t want any needles in my skin, thank you!”
“Oh, no, you’ve misheard.” Jane watched Madame La Roche dribble a few drops of liquid from a tiny bottle onto a handkerchief.
“Chloroform?” Jane asked. She had heard of this new sedative, but had never seen it administered. A Scottish professor had discovered it and, in a single stroke, elevated surgery above the work of a slaughterman. And when Queen Victoria allowed chloroform to be administered during the birth of her eighth child, the substance became firmly established.
Madame La Roche nodded and held the cloth under Hettie’s nose. “Breathe in, slowly now.”
Jane stroked her maid’s forehead and hair and watched as her eyelids grew heavier. When Hettie was breathing easily and her limbs were relaxed, Madame La Roche said, “Quickly, now. Before she wakes again.”
Jane watched with respect as Madame La Roche deftly cleaned, stitched, and bandaged Hettie’s wound. Jane handed her what she needed without being asked. Finally, both women washed their hands with soap and water, then Madame La Roche tugged on a bell pull beside the door and an elderly woman in the black dress of a housekeeper appeared. The two women spoke together softly in Russian for a moment.
Madame La Roche indicated to Jane to follow her into a small living room. The room was more plainly decorated and intimate. A number of gilded icons hung above the fireplace, and on a round table there stood a samovar, a tiered dish with pastries and cookies, and a large silver bowl with a lid.
“Please, sit down. Olga will take care of your maid.” Madame La Roche poured tea into dark-blue cups with golden rims.
Jane raised her cup, then set it down again. She had a hundred questions she wanted to ask.
“Drink your tea. It’s strong and will do you good. Then eat some blini.” She raised the lid on the silver bowl and removed two small pancakes, which she arranged on a plate with sour cream and a piece of smoked fish. “You were lucky that Blount followed you. Someone wanted to kill you, my lady.” Madame La Roche took an almond ring and dunked it in her tea.
“But—”
“You don’t trust your husband, and that is not good. David is an honest person, a man of character. If he gives you a piece of counsel, you would do well to follow it.”
Jane set down her teacup and saucer fiercely and was about to square her shoulders when she caught sight of her own dirty dress. Her concern for Hettie had caused her to forget her own soiled state.
“Would you like to change? I’d be happy to let you borrow a dress. I would hazard a guess that we are about the same size,” Madame La Roche proposed, unconcerned by Jane’s show of affront.
“No! I am not feeling especially comfortable, I admit, but I would like to ask you where you know my husband from. And why you feel you have the right to give me advice. Were you in Crimea with him? Did you learn to sew from Florence Nightingale? We have not been properly introduced, Madame!”
Madame La Roche’s full lips widened into an eloquent smile, and her dark, now-earnest eyes rested on Jane’s. “I take it you haven’t opened your uncle’s letter?”
“I . . . no!” Jane almost shouted in surprise, suddenly recalling the sealed document her uncle had given her shortly before his death.
“I am mentioned as a reference in it. As a reference with regard to your husband, my lady.” Madame La Roche looked at her in silence. “You don’t know, do you?”
“What?”
Madame La Roche looked up to the ceiling and drew a deep breath. “It was a long time ago, but I had a relationship with Lord Pembroke for many years.”
“Excuse me? But when? I mean, I don’t remember him ever mentioning a woman.”
The Russian woman looked her in the eye. “There are women with whom one is not seen in polite society.”
“Oh” was all Jane could think of to say. She searched her memory for any hint that her uncle had had a secret love life. She realized that he must have been exceedingly discreet. Apart from his regular trips to London, there was nothing that even suggested what Madame La Roche was telling her. And even for those London trips, he had always had an explanation. “Well, it seems I didn’t know my uncle as well as I thought.”
“You have no reason to feel hurt, my lady. We had an arrangement that suited us both. I was only ever the consort of one man.”
“Then you must have had generous patrons, or still do,” said Jane, looking around the room.
Madame La Roche laughed a deep, sparkling laugh. “A woman must be able to manage her money as much as her beauty. There was only one man I would have married, but we were both too young, and his parents would never have agreed to him marrying a Russian companion with a dubious background.”
“My uncle?”
“Oh, no, that was much later. My lady, I was the best friend of David’s mother, Larisa, the daughter of Prince Turenin. My mother was the princess’s lady-in-waiting. Larisa and I grew up as sisters. Her family went on an extended tour of Europe that took us through London and Paris. It was there that Larisa met St. Amand. Larisa was a girl of unearthly beauty, and the duke had been a widower for a year. He was captivated by her instantly. She
could have had any man she wanted. If she had been stronger and believed in herself more, she might have been another Lady Ellenborough.”
The scandalous life of the fiery and travel-besotted Lady Ellenborough, who’d had four husbands and finally found the love of her life, an Arab sheikh twenty years her junior, had stirred the soul of stiff and stodgy English society. Mesmerized, Jane drank her tea, bit into a blin—which tasted surprisingly good—and had all but forgotten the dramatic circumstances that had brought them to Madame La Roche’s house.
She sat up abruptly. “The police! Mrs. Sutton! Don’t I have to lodge a report?”
“No, my dear. It is always better to keep the police out of such matters. The less notice taken, the better. Send Mrs. Sutton a note to say that you are well. Most likely, she simply ran off in a panic and left you in the lurch.” She stood and pulled on a cord.
Olga came in and Jane wrote a few soothing lines to Violet, whom she couldn’t help but feel sorry for. “She’s probably afraid of her brother,” said Jane, giving voice to her thoughts as she folded the letter and passed it to Olga. “How is Hettie?”
“She sleeps, madam. She is sleeping well,” the woman answered with a heavy Russian accent before departing again.
“My Olga is a loyal soul. Loyalty is not something you can buy—or at least sincere loyalty cannot be bought, and I cherish sincere people.”
“What do you think of Lord Hargrave?”
Madame La Roche made a dismissive gesture. “A passionate man, very power-conscious, and with certain inclinations, as far as I’ve heard. It could cost him his office one day, but the elegant gentlemen of society do stick together, don’t they? Do the English have the expression ‘a crow does not peck out another’s eye’?”
Jane bit her lip and, in a cautious tone, said, “I barely dare to say it aloud, but I suspect Lord Hargrave may be employing orphaned girls and abusing them, or even killing them.”
Madame La Roche raised her eyebrows in astonishment. “Really? I know about his dissolute parties, and I like to imagine I am well informed, but rumors of that nature are not something I have come across before. Do you have proof?”
“Not directly. But the assault today leads me to think I am on the right track. Everything is connected to the girl who died at Rosewood Hall. Has David talked to you about that?”
Jane’s hostess nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. He is investigating the matter, my lady.”
“He’s what?” Jane said, flaring up, at once disappointed and angry.
“I should not have mentioned it. He is worried about you, my lady. You will have to take my word for that. He would not be able to bear it if something happened to you. You saw for yourself the danger you were in today.”
“Perhaps it would not have come so far if he had told me how things stand.”
“So you would have done as he said and stayed home?” The question sounded like a rhetorical challenge. Jane thought it over, and Madame La Roche said, “I didn’t think so.”
The door swung open silently, and Olga said something in Russian to her mistress. Madame La Roche thanked her and stood. “Your maid is awake. She should go home now and spend a few days in bed. Talk to David about what you found out today. And if the police do happen to turn up on your doorstep, you don’t know anything. Act nervous and hysterical.” She smiled and stroked Jane’s arm. “Although I know you are far from that.”
“One more thing, madame. My uncle and David were well known to each other, weren’t they?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“Did they discuss our marriage? It is vital for me to know that.”
Madame La Roche’s dark eyes softened. “Not in my presence.”
“Thank you. One last question. Your name doesn’t sound Russian . . . ?”
The sparkling, smoky laugh rang out again. “Blanche La Roche. Who wants a courtesan with a name like Uljana Achmatova?”
30.
As they stepped through the door into the townhouse, the master of the home himself appeared in the hallway, his expression dour. He was wearing a dinner jacket and had come either directly from one of his clubs or was on his way out to one.
“Jane!” It was hard to tell whether he was angry, worried, or simply annoyed at the disruption to his daily routine.
“Don’t let us hold you up. We’ll cope by ourselves.” Jane had one arm slung around Hettie’s hips and, with Blount’s help, set about getting her upstairs.
The patch of blood on Hettie’s dress and the dreadful state of both women’s clothes must have been a terrifying sight. Levi, who had opened the door for them, was terribly shaken and running around like a startled chicken.
“Levi, you and Blount take the girl upstairs. Jane, you come with me,” Wescott ordered, taking her by the arm.
She could see that his scar had reddened and a vein on his forehead was throbbing. Her husband was more furious than she had ever seen him before. However, as they had barely spent any time together, she could not really say what kind of emotional outbursts he was capable of. Right now, though, she decided it would be wiser to not object.
His hand was wrapped around her wrist, not too tightly, but with enough pressure to add emphasis. He laid his other hand on the small of her back and pushed her ahead of him into a small salon that served as a reception room. After closing the door behind him, he stood in front of her and looked her up and down thoroughly. “Are you injured?”
“No. But Hettie is.”
He raised one hand for silence. “You acted irresponsibly, Jane. I’m terribly disappointed in you. Why the devil didn’t you tell Blount where you were going? If I hadn’t told him to follow you at all times, you would be dead now. You’d be lying in the gutter of a slum with a knife in your ribs!”
“How do you even know about it? We only just got back.” Jane was trying to retain as much dignity as she could.
“Blount sent me a message while you were at Blanche’s house. He is more level-headed than you!” he barked.
“Don’t you dare take that tone with me. I am not a child for you to order around!” Jane said, her voice hot.
“Then don’t behave like one!” He took a step toward her, and Jane retreated. Was he going to hit her?
Instead, he stroked her hair, then turned away and went to the fireplace. He leaned against the mantelpiece. “Jane, I’m worried about you. Is that so hard to understand?”
Relieved, she exhaled and held his gaze. “I do find it difficult to believe. You expect me to ask no questions about what you do. You expect me to trust you blindly, although you are very obviously harboring a bevy of secrets, one of those being Blanche La Roche, or, no, I mean Uljana Achmatova. Who, by the way, was my uncle’s lover. I didn’t know that, but you did. Was she your lover, too? She is a strikingly beautiful and well-educated woman. It would not surprise me to find out she had tutored you. But”—she raised her hand and turned around—“that’s none of my business.”
She went to the door, but before she turned the handle she looked back one more time to where he stood. “There is one thing that certainly interests me. Was this marriage planned? Did you have some sort of arrangement with my uncle, and that’s why you seized upon my stupid, childish proposal? Were you having a secret laugh at the naïve lass who wanted to hold on to her freedom?”
Wescott did not reply. He was still leaning on the mantelpiece, unmoving. But there was something in the way he looked at her that she found confusing. He no longer seemed angry, just tired. “You should take a bath, Jane. Lambeth is a diseased hole. We can talk over dinner.”
“Please don’t let me hold you back from your other obligations,” she said archly, then pulled the door open and stalked out.
She did not go directly to her bedroom, though. Instead she climbed one floor higher, to Hettie’s room. Hettie was lying on her bed, pale faced. She made as if to get
out of bed as soon as Jane entered.
“Don’t get up, Hettie. You need to stay in bed. You’ve been through enough today. I’ll have dinner brought up for you, and then you’ll need to stay in bed tomorrow. That’s an order!” She took Hettie’s hand lovingly and squeezed it.
“Thank you, ma’am. But who will help you change?” She tried to get up again, but Jane restrained her gently.
“Let me worry about that.” She filled a glass with water from a pitcher on the nightstand and handed it to her maid. “Drink this. And try to sleep.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Obediently, Hettie emptied the glass and sank back onto the pillow.
Jane pulled the curtains over the small window and opened the hatch of the heater. It looked as if it had been some time since there had been a fire in it.
“I’ll send someone up to get a fire going. Then I’ll free myself from these rags. Could this be patched, I wonder?” With a grin, she picked at the shredded material, which could clearly only serve as a washrag, at best.
Hettie giggled and held her side in pain. “I can try, ma’am.”
When Jane entered her own room, the young servant girl who also helped out in the kitchen was waiting for her. The girl curtsied shyly. “The master said you would be needing my help, ma’am.”
“Thank you. That’s very nice of you.” How level-headed of my husband, Jane thought cynically, but accepted the girl’s help. Getting out of her corset by herself was practically impossible.
Some time later, she was sitting in the bathtub, and while the rose-scented soap displaced the stink of the Lambeth alleys, she ran through the events of the day again in her mind. Polly, she thought. The young girl had a name, and she had been abused in some high-society house. Had her emaciated body shown any sign of pregnancy? No, at least nothing visible. Was she even old enough? The girl had been so young, and must have experienced terrors of which she had no conception. And now it seemed a similar fate threatened Mary. Jane only had to find out where Polly had been. A foreign man with a scarf. Perhaps Wescott knew of a gentlemen with exotic tastes and servants. For Mary’s sake, Jane determined to keep her annoyance at her husband’s behavior in check.
