Finding Lady Enderly

by Joanna Davidson Politano

  I lay huddled in a cramped, dim little space, garbed in my old rags. The clock had struck the final hour of the night, and like Cinderella I had lost the magic of the lovely ball gown and once again become the rag woman. I glanced around my dirty little flat in Spitalfields and deflated my aching chest with an exhale. All those gowns, those elegant people . . . it had all been a dream. I was still Ragna of Spitalfields and Sully was dead.

  I blinked and looked around with a frown, turning my head. There was no cracked mirror or corner cot for the widow. The walls looked different. No, this wasn’t my flat. Had the abbey and everything in it been a dream? Or had Spitalfields?

  My vision swam. So did my conscious thought, and I waded through thick cotton in an effort to find answers. All my names made a lazy circle around my mind, but I cast them all aside as my brain righted itself.

  Raina. I was Raina. That thought oriented me, even when I hadn’t any idea where I was or how I’d arrived there. The scent of ash and fire still burned in my nose. With each breath of fresh air through tinged nostrils, my hazy mind drew clarity and a small measure of strength returned to my body. I struggled to sit and look around, despite my chest feeling weighted with some inexplicable thing. What had happened to me? Why did everything smell of—

  The fire. There had been a fire at the abbey, a trap set by Simone, and I had lain dying. Yet here I was, rescued. But by whom? I turned my stiff neck for a look about the dim space that seemed to be a farmer’s cabin, lit only by a fire in the shallow hearth. I shoved back the covers and saw my dress had been stripped and replaced with a tattered and many-times-patched garment I didn’t recognize. I lifted my head, and there by the fire hunched my rescuer, a cloaked figure stirring a caldron of steaming food. She unclasped her cloak and let it sag about her shoulders, and when she shook out her long dark hair, the face I saw made me gasp.

  Simone.

  My temples began to throb with those few moments of sitting upright, and when pain stabbed through my skull, I collapsed back onto the bed with a groan. Simone saw I was awake, and she leaped up and launched herself toward me, covering my mouth with both of her hands. “You will not scream?” Her wild eyes searched mine.

  I nodded my pounding head, the friction against the straw mattress making the ache worse.

  She slid her cold hands up to my head and poked at a tender place on my scalp. She seemed shaken. Jittery. “I suppose you’ll heal. That wasn’t part of the plan, you know—you tripping and knocking yourself senseless like a fool.”

  “Was my death?” The words escaped as a harsh croak, then I was consumed by coughing.

  A flicker of a smile turned up her lips for the first time I could remember. “In a manner of speaking. You see, now the Countess of Enderly is dead. And you are not.”

  I stared at her. “You nearly killed me.”

  “I saved you.” Her eyes glowed. “Don’t you see? When you refused to leave the abbey on your own, the only way to keep you alive was to arrange your death myself so Victor wouldn’t. You would not have survived the death he’d have planned.”

  Thoughts flew like lively tadpoles through my brain, but I could scarcely find my voice.

  “I couldn’t let him kill you. You’re just a poor girl from the East End. At least the others were crooks and swindlers.”

  “Others?”

  “The other people Victor’s killed. Certainly that is no surprise to you.”

  “He was going to kill me?” I struggled to keep up.

  “Eventually.” She thrust a tin cup of water at me. “It was the only way out of the stage he’d set, for you couldn’t play at being countess forever.”

  I cleared my throat, making it sting worse. I frowned at her, trying to make my dry throat form a question, but she shushed me. Rising, she towered over me in the little hovel. “I must return to Rothburne and keep up appearances, especially with Victor. He cannot know what we’ve done.”

  We?

  “Sleep now, and I’ll be back.”

  I grabbed her hand. “Simone, who is she? The real countess, I mean? Someone gave all those orders, spent all that money.”

  Her unchanging eyes searched mine. “You truly wish to know?”

  I nodded.

  “Victor.”

  I blinked.

  “Lady Enderly was his creation, a figment of his imagination—nothing more than a pile of false papers and wild stories.”

  “All so the earl could have that fortune.”

  “It began as a simple scheme—a romantic story of a couple meeting abroad and marrying in haste, then the woman traveling extensively while her husband sat in the House of Lords. It was common enough, and everyone would believe it, especially with a man as private as the earl. They had only to convince a dying old uncle that the earl had married, receive the inheritance, then later pretend she was lost at sea or some other calamity.”

  I struggled to grasp it all. “But why would he do all this? Victor wasn’t inheriting the fortune.”

  “Not directly, but what belongs to the earl is accessible to Victor. He takes what he wants.”

  “That’s terrible. The poor earl.”

  “I wouldn’t waste pity on the man.” She shrugged. “When the earl was poor, he stole. There were funds, and he—what’s the word—embezzled them. Victor was the one who helped him cover it up, and he has had one hand in the man’s pocket ever since.”

  “When was the earl ever poor?”

  “Rich men fall hard when money is tight. A poor man, he is used to going without. He has nothing to sustain. When a man has great houses and many servants requiring money, he cannot be poor. He made some bad investments and hit a low. He struggled through until this farce of a marriage and his uncle’s gift of Rothburne and all its wealth. Victor promised him it would be an easy way to get what he needed, and it was—until the uncle ruined their plans by recovering.”

  “How wretched of him.”

  “He even went to visit the earl in London once, so they had to continue to convince him that everything was as they said. They showed him some painting of a woman and told him she was the new bride, and the uncle believed it all.

  “The earl was wrapped up in his work, so Victor took the helm, drafting letters from her and running the estate in her name, creating an entire writing style and signature for her, making it seem as if she truly existed. The ‘simple’ scheme grew more and more complicated with each turn of events. When it was clear the uncle was in no danger of dying, and that he wished to have his solicitor meet with the new wife, they needed a better plan—a real woman. Only, she had to look like the one in that picture they’d showed the uncle. That’s when Victor found you.”

  “And the woman in the painting?” I held my breath.

  “She is the lost love of the earl. He has been pining for her for years, and he refuses to marry anyone else. This ruse is the most he would agree to do.”

  If he’d refused all others in the hope of marrying that elusive woman, why hadn’t he snatched up his chance last night at the masquerade? My heart broke all over again at the memory of her slipping away into the night. I sighed. “What happens now?”

  “The countess will be declared dead, the estate will fall to the earl, and Victor will continue to take what he can from everyone.”

  I stiffened. There was one small problem. Should I tell her? I closed my eyes with a small sigh and pictured that will with Philip Scatchard’s name at the top and my signature at the bottom.

  “Victor will go free, but so will you.”

  Free. I opened my eyes again. “I will return to Spitalfields?”

  “Only if you wish to be dead. No, I am giving you a new life, a new name, and a new home.” She dug in a little bag hanging on a door hook and brought me a train ticket. “You are going into hiding, where you will find life very affordable and many people in need of well-pieced rags such as you can provide.”

  My heart sank to my stomach. Was I destined to be a rag woman forever? Was t
hat all I was worth? Renaugh, the girl who renewed rags—that was my identity and my lifelong work, it seemed. “I don’t want it.” I held out the ticket.

  Her eyes snapped. “I don’t recall giving you the choice.”

  I looked at the slip again and panic clutched my throat. “Wait—there is only one ticket here. Where is—”

  Sully.

  “You cannot mean to separate us.”

  Simone watched me, unflinching. “Everyone at Rothburne is dead to you now, as you are to them.”

  “Sully!” I grabbed the rough bedpost and scrambled out from the tangled covers.

  Simone pinned me to the bed, her grip like shackles. “It’s too late.”

  “No!” I was dizzy with panic and horror. Pain shot through my chest. Thrashing and beating the air with my feet, I screamed with all the agony that burst in my soul until Simone’s strength won out over my damaged body. “Sully!” He’d come to find me. He always did.

  “There’s nothing you can do. You are dead, remember?” Her eyes were wide and dark, her breathing labored as she looked down at me pinned on the bed. “You’ll put everything at risk if you go back now. Do you want to lose your life and his? Mine too, now. Don’t forget I risked myself for you.”

  “I have to tell him. He has to know where I am.”

  “It’s too great a risk. He already thinks you dead.”

  I curled away from her on the bed around the great hole in my heart. How could a hole cause so much pain? I couldn’t even cry—I’d emptied the great basin of my tears onto the windowsill of Spitalfields months ago when I thought him drowned.

  My rigid soul, twisted up with tension and pain, grabbed at the sliver of hope this memory brought me and I began breathing again. He’d come back to me once—he could do it again.

  “This is the only way. He cannot simply disappear from the abbey, or Victor will suspect. He’ll come looking for you and it’ll all be for naught.”

  “Maybe that is best.” I mumbled this facedown into the clammy blanket.

  Her steady voice slipped out into the dark room. “You’ll begin a new life. You can be anyone you wish, and it will be a fresh start. Stop fretting over what you leave behind and think instead on what you will have, on the possibilities before you.”

  How like Victor’s little speech in the alley. What do you have to lose? That had been his question to me, and it was only now that I had an answer for him.

  “You would truly have all those people think me dead? Bradford, Philip, the earl. Will you allow Lord Enderly to believe he was partly to blame for my death? He’s already drowning in sorrow for what happened with his lost love.”

  “Don’t waste your pity on that man. He’s no different than any other who takes a fancy to some poor girl. It isn’t love that weighs him down, but guilt. She was but a common girl that he left with child before refusing to marry her. He awoke to the atrocity of his actions one day, and now he cannot live with himself, knowing he’s left her penniless and alone with his child.” Simone rose and the pallet shifted. “You have no idea what a turn of fate this is for you. Perhaps you thought living as the countess was the finest stroke of luck, but this is. Your freedom, a new start, that is the true blessing. Use it wisely.”

  Bitterness welled. I didn’t wish to start over away from Sully, leaving this great mess behind me. Who was she to decide who and what I would become?

  Yet her words echoed in the darkness as she left the little cottage and locked it from the outside. I rose and felt my way to the door, testing it with my feeble strength, but it was secured. The stone walls offered no other way out. I felt along the walls for a window, growing agitated until I clawed at the rocks in desperation. There was no exit from these four tight walls. I climbed back onto the bed, defeated, and shook. What would become of Sully, after all this effort to save him? With me gone, would Victor turn him in anyway?

  And my new life—what would become of me there?

  I laid my head on the mattress, but my brain spun thoughts like silken webs, this way and that until I had a mess of them weaving through my weary mind and the chaos inside multiplied once again.

  I opened my eyes toward the dark ceiling. Here I was, without excuses or distractions, facing nothing but those empty rooms in the core of me that I’d neglected for so long. Yet it was too much—too much for my small hands to unclutter and repair. How had it gotten so heavy?

  Guilt warred with desperation in my soul. I wanted God—needed him—but my chaotic mess inside wasn’t fit for a holy God’s presence. I’d worked and pushed and strove, stopping before God for the briefest of prayers to ask his help as I tumbled forward on my own. How arrogant and foolish. How bold of me it was to even cry out to him at all in this state.

  Yet I had nothing else.

  God, I can’t! Please help. I’ve come to the end of my abilities, and they are not nearly enough. I need to untangle the mess I’ve become.

  I waited. Awareness of God’s greatness beside my brokenness made me want to weep, to give up. Then came an echo of the beautiful, merciful words spoken by Uncle Wells: Why don’t we do it together?

  At the blessed invitation, my tired soul sank into God’s presence, and like the weight of the bench suddenly lifting, the release was sudden and immense. It was more than I deserved, but I grabbed on.

  Then I began to pray, in that long and thorough way of one who has all the time in the world. His grace rolled in like pleasant, welcome waves on my tired body, bathing it in peace I had never felt before. It left me with a sense of clean emptiness, a blank slate waiting to be filled.

  But with what? Heavens, what did God expect to do with a woman who was somewhere between a rag vendor and a countess, but with several good-sized mistakes marring her character? Everything was upside down, and I hadn’t any idea who I was from this point forward. I’d asked so many other people this question lately, seeking answers in their expressions, their reactions, their praise or rejection of me. And there was God, waiting for me to try everything else before I finally landed at the feet of the only One who knew the true answer. Who am I, God? What on earth did you have in mind for me?

  Again I waited, but he’d already given the answer, spoken on the lips of the one who had drawn me to him in the first place. Renaugh. The whisper came like an unexpected breeze through my thoughts, settling into the cracks of my heart and solidifying there. Renew. It was who I’d always known I was.

  Yet in quiet reflection, I could almost hear the voices from the past few weeks, brought unexpectedly to memory.

  Perhaps you’ve not been watching him the last few days, but Cousin Philip has become quite a new man.

  You’ve changed the earl, you know. Begun to lighten his burdens.

  I hardly recognized the abbey. Who knew this old place could look so splendid, and that the staff had such immense hidden talents?

  It had been that way in Spitalfields too. I was a rag woman. A restorer of castoffs. Rejected clothing, forgotten people—I was drawn to them all.

  So was I drawn to you.

  Awareness sank through my spirit, along with enough gratitude to make me want to weep. The one everyone—including myself—considered a castoff had been swept up by God and taught to go and do the same. By his grace, before I was even ready for it, I had been made a reflection of God, the ultimate restorer.

  That’s what we all were, wasn’t it? Created beings who bore traces of their Creator, each with a different piece of his nature augmented in order to show the world who he was. You have something powerful in you, Bradford had told me, and for once I believed him—because when I dug deep inside myself, I found evidence of God. His mercy healing my heart, traces of his nature reflected in mine, and an emptiness waiting for him to fill. I felt for the first time that I was more than a rag woman, because there was more to me than me—and more to life than what happened on this earth.

  Yet I was trapped now, and alone. Tears pooled in my eyes and I blinked. What good was such knowledge
when I was not free to live it out? If only I’d realized it sooner, rather than worrying so much about impressing and accomplishing. I might have had a chance.

  God, what do I do with this?

  32

  That’s just what God does—he takes the identity the world has tarnished, polishes it up, and hands back the name he gave us in the beginning.

  ~Diary of a Substitute Countess

  A door closed. It was morning. I lifted my head from the pillow and blinked away the heavy slumber that had finally come to rest on me last night. I was refreshed from the inside out, and the feeling was immense. I stretched, remembering the long and gloriously cleansing conversation I’d had with God last night. I’d put off talking with him for so long—what had I been waiting for?

  Simone was unpacking a basket of food onto the table, and she turned to me with a dark look. My uncluttered mind glimpsed something different in her face—a thousand painful stories were walled up behind that impenetrable mask, her own ruined inner chamber. The darkness that had so intimidated me was not evil, but fear. Anxiousness. And it nearly consumed her. How had I missed this before?

  It was amazing what one noticed when mirrors became windows.

  “I trust you slept well.” She said the words as a statement while she set out bread and cheese.

  My bitterness melted into curiosity. “Did you?”

  She looked at me, chin lifted as if in constant defiance, questions in her eyes, but continued setting out the food. “Victor is suspicious already, so we must be cautious. He’s smart, so we must work to get you away from England as soon as possible.”

  Panic swirled up around my chest, tightened on my throat, but I held on to the peace I’d found as I used to hold Sully’s stone. No matter what happened, I would always be Raina, the one who renews, the one God chose to renew, and I would be that in any circumstance.

  “He is still about the abbey, which means he does not yet consider this scheme successfully completed.”