Jane and the Stillroom Maid

by Stephanie Barron

  The day was cloudy and promised rain; the first cool breeze of autumn fingered the leaves overhead. Services were at ten o’clock, and all of Bakewell seemed bent upon the old Norman edifice—all except those who inhabited the great estates. Chatsworth House boasted its own chapel, where the family attended each Sunday; services were held as well in the little village of Edensor, that the fourth Duke had seen fit to demolish and reassemble at a convenient remove. I understood from Lord Harold that it had been Georgiana Duchess’s practise to visit both chapels each Sunday, as an example to the estate’s dependants—a fact that had recommended that lady to my good opinion more than anything I had yet heard of her. It was a custom I could imagine Lady Harriot continuing; she was the sort to understand the power of example, as Lady Elizabeth never should.

  “Did you enjoy your evening at Chatsworth, Jane?” Cassandra enquired.

  “Very much,” I replied, feeling again the rush of guilt at my own selfish joys. “Your grey silk was much admired.”

  “I cannot suppose it was anything out of the ordinary way, in such a company—but for the fact that you were wearing it,” she said simply. “I am glad to know it did not disgrace you.”

  “Not at all!”

  “And … did Lord Harold admire it, Jane?”

  I shrugged a little, as though it could not matter to me if he did. “You have been indulging our mother’s fond hopes, Cassandra. Or should I say, fears? Lord Harold is not in the way of admiring me—unless it be for the keenness of my understanding.”

  “You have been acquainted now a number of years,” my sister observed in a lowered tone, “and neither of you has married. He disappears for months at a time—and then, when chance throws you in his way, renews his attentions. I cannot think that such behaviour is suggestive of true ardour—”

  “No, indeed!”

  “—but any woman should consider it most marked.”

  Any woman, but one who had observed how he looked at Lady Harriot Cavendish. Could I have seen even half so much passion in Lord Harold for myself, I should have ordered my wedding-clothes long ago.

  There was a moment, last evening—when the whist tables had just broken up, and the ladies were strolling idly about the room, and the gentlemen were lost in conversation with their boots propped up on the hearth-fender—a moment just before the cold supper was laid out at midnight—when Andrew Danforth bent his golden head over Lady Harriot’s fiery one, and drew her with him out onto the darkened terrace. No one should dare to follow them there; but I observed the eyes of more than one person in the room stray most speculatively towards the French windows.

  Charles Danforth stood correctly with Lord and Lady Morpeth by the drawing-room’s far wall—a strained smile upon his face while they talked insensibly of their children. Granville Leveson-Gower maintained the liveliest conversation with His Grace the Duke, regarding the foibles of a common acquaintance—but so arranged himself that his gaze was fixed upon that open French door. The Countess of Bessborough, his avowed love, watched Leveson-Gower most narrowly over the head of a talkative Lady Elizabeth, whom I am sure she had not the slightest trouble disregarding. They were all alive to the possibilities inherent in moonlight and passion. But Lord Harold—

  Lord Harold approached no one, Lord Harold said not a word. He resolutely ignored the balcony scene played out for the party’s amusement, and poured himself a glass of Port. As he stood sipping at it speculatively, his eyes rose to meet mine. I do not think there was another person in the room—besides myself—so much in the grip of agony at that moment; no other person who failed to seek relief in converse with another. His grey eyes were blank; even to myself they disclosed nothing; but one muscle of his jaw commenced to twitch.

  And then Hary-O walked swiftly back through the doorway, her face flushed and her eyes alight.

  “I have had a little too much of happiness tonight, and must own that I am dreadfully tired,” she told the room in general. “I would beg you all to forgive and excuse me, when I would retire. No one ever had such a family, or such friends; and I thank God that I have lived so many years among you, and pray that I may witness as many more. God bless you all—and good night!”

  Then she swept away, not as a little girl over-excited by a party; but as a young and powerful woman will cede the stage, secure in the knowledge that it is hers for the asking whenever she should wish to tread its boards again. I could read nothing in her face of Andrew Danforth’s fate—nothing of whether she had accepted what must surely have been an offer for her hand, or slapped him for presumption. The gentleman in question merely took up a position by his elder brother without a word. And in Andrew Danforth’s countenance? Only the unvaried charm, the perpetual softness that must weary with time.

  Lord Harold’s looks were as fixed as stone. He set down his empty glass, and devoted himself to my amusement for the half-hour remaining before my carriage was called; but in all his remarks I detected an absence of mind, as though he played a role long familiar from habit, a role that demanded nothing. His thoughts and his heart were moving through the upper halls, clutched in Hary-O’s elegant hands; they drew off her silk dress in the company of her maid, they brushed her red-gold hair in the candlelight. They stood with her in the darkened chamber, when her maid had long since gone away, and stared out once more at the moonlight that silvered the lawns of Chatsworth; and when she cried for the mother who had not lived to see her twenty-first birthday—they kissed her tears away.

  “—nine children,” my mother was saying, “including an infant in swaddling clothes, who is possessed of the most malicious countenance in the world. I must suppose him to have died of colic.”

  “Of what are you speaking, madam?” I enquired with effort.

  “Of the tombs your cousin refers to, Jane, along the south wall of the church. They memorialise Sir George Manners and his wife, along with their nine children. But as they died in Elizabeth’s time, or thereabouts, I cannot find it very tragic. Everyone died in that period, you know.”

  “And sooner rather than later,” I murmured. “Mr. Cooper—”

  My cousin mopped his reddened brow with a square of lawn. “Yes, Jane?”

  “Did your excellent wife disclose in her letter the reason for her apothecary’s abhorrence of black cherry water?”

  “She did not. But I suspect Mr. Greene to possess a very natural distaste for the interference of females—and the strength of mind to declare it. Were the general run of gentlemen so forthright, the general run of ladies might appear to greater advantage: their conduct seemly, their ambitions modest.” Mr. Cooper eyed me with disfavour. I was not to be forgiven my insertion in the affairs of his friend, Mr. Hemming, it seemed, nor absolved of culpability for the disaster that had followed.

  We had achieved the threshold of All Saints. I sent a prayer Heavenwards for all the babes who are fated to die too soon, and stepped into the dimness peculiar to God.

  Red Surfeit Water

  lean half a bushel of fresh-cut red poppies, and put them into three gallons of fine French brandy. Cover the pan and let them stand two days and two nights steeping, then strain off the liquor.

  Put into this liquor two pounds of thinly-sliced figs, two pounds of prunes, four ounces of fresh licorice root pared and pounded flat, three ounces of aniseed beaten small, and half a pound of brown sugar candy. Stir well together and set in the sun for six days, then strain off the liquor, and bottle it up for use.

  This is a very rich tincture of Poppies. A glass of it drunk at any time is conducive to health, particularly when a person fears a cold, or suffers an oppression of the stomach. It will also throw out the Measles, or Small Pox, or any other scrofulous marks, with small doses oft repeated.

  —From the Stillroom Book

  of Tess Arnold,

  Penfolds Hall, Derbyshire,

  1802–1806

  Chapter 25

  Playing Truant with Purpose

  31 August 1806, cont.


  ∼

  WE DINED EARLY AND HEAVILY AFTER THE SERVICE, though I possessed little appetite. Mr. Davies, the landlord, sent a message by Sally, among the covered dishes and the rolls, to inform me that my urgent letter to Dr. Bascomb had been carried into Buxton. I could expect an answer during the course of the day, did the messenger discover the physician to be at home; or at the very latest, that evening. I hoped that Bascomb was the sort of gentleman to take an unknown lady’s anxiety to heart, rather than to disregard it as the product of an over-active mind; I should know, I reasoned, from the form of his reply.

  The dishes had not been very long cleared away, and the Bakewell clocks were tolling the hour of one, when the noise of a carriage in the street below drew me to the window. I peered out—saw the Devonshire livery—exclaimed aloud at the thought of its being possible that Lady Harriot should drive into Bakewell—and was in time to observe a black silk hat emerge from the crane-necked coach. Lord Harold Trowbridge. This should be fuel for my sister’s speculation, did she require anything further.

  “Visiting on Sunday?” enquired my cousin Mr. Cooper, in a voice of signal disdain. He had not yet learned to forgive Lord Harold’s biting remarks as to hymns, though he should never be so absurd as to demand satisfaction.

  “It must be something particular that brings him here,” Cassandra said. “It cannot be a social call. Should you like us to walk out into the town, Jane, while he speaks to you?”

  “I do not expect a declaration, Cassandra—I think I may meet him with equanimity, and in the company of my whole family.”

  She took up her needlework and said nothing more; but my mother was not so easily satisfied.

  “Lord, Jane—and you would put off your new gown after church,” she exclaimed in dismay. “How you expect to see that man in a turned muslin, three years behind the fashion and faded with washing, I cannot think. You should not have purchased those ten yards of pink stuff so cheaply; pink never became you as it does your sister, and if I had been consulted, I should have advised most strenuously against it. A lady with a reddened complexion cannot support the colour.”

  “But being at present so grossly tanned,” I returned with some complaisance, “I cannot be anxious on that account. Provided I am decently clothed and tidy, it cannot matter to Lord Harold what I wear.”

  A knock upon the parlour door forestalled her reply; the door swung open, and revealed the Gentleman Rogue himself, with an expression of haste and concern upon his countenance.

  “How very kind of you to pay a call, Lord Harold!” my mother cried. “I am afraid, however, that we were all of us just walking out. Were we not, Mr. Cooper? To visit your friend, Mr. Hemming, at the gaol? I cannot consider it a pleasant duty, but one very well suited to a Sunday morning, provided one has first partaken of a hearty meal. Come along, Cassandra! Fetch your bonnet!”

  “My bonnet?” Cassandra repeated, as one dazed by events.

  “Naturally! Would you grow as tanned as your sister? I have no hope for Jane—her skin is become so coarse and brown—but I will not have your complexion ruined. Make haste, my love!”

  Cassandra stared at me beseechingly; I raised an impervious brow; and so the offending headgear was retrieved from her chamber.

  “Do not hurry yourself away, my lord, on our account. I am sure that Jane will be vastly happy to oblige you with a little conversation—or perhaps some of Mr. Davies’s beer.” And with the most deferential air, my mother nodded and smiled her way out of the room, one hand gripped fiercely on Mr. Cooper, and the other on my sister.

  “A formidable will animates that woman,” his lordship observed, “however much she would affect a decline. Having learned to know her a little better, I perceive the wellspring of your own resolve, Jane.”

  “How may I account for the honour of seeing you here, my lord?”

  “I bear tidings, Jane, that I would not have you know of any other.”

  My heart sank at his sombre aspect. “Lady Harriot is to marry Andrew Danforth, then?”

  Lord Harold stared. “Good God, no! It has always been Charles she admired. Although I suspect there is more of pity, and less of love, in her affections than she understands. But to marry Andrew—how could you conceive of such an idea?”

  “Last evening, it appeared that he petitioned for her hand—when he led Lady Harriot out onto the balcony, just before she retired.”

  “I am sure that he did,” Lord Harold replied with thinly veiled contempt. “He is always dogging the girl’s footsteps—enquiring whether he may have cause to hope, whenever she affords him a spare moment! He has requested the honour of her hand in the Orangery, and in the stableyard, after a morning’s ride; he has popped the question around the potted plants, and while taking her into dinner. To my certain knowledge, Jane, this is the second application the gentleman has made this week—for on Monday evening, he tarried barely five minutes in the dining parlour after the ladies had retired, before excusing himself.”

  “Did he, indeed?” I cried, much struck.

  “No doubt Hary-O refused the scrub on that occasion, too, as she has certainly refused him now. His Grace was quite put out at Danforth’s desertion of the gentlemen; but his absence did not prevent the Duke from embarking upon a discussion of Fox’s program, and the Whig strategy once Parliament sits, that any young fool with a heart for politics should never have missed. But I did not come to speak of that young cub’s pretensions. I came to allay what fears I could.”

  “Fears?”

  “From your expression, I perceive that you are as yet in ignorance of events that have animated all Chatsworth for the past several hours.”

  He spoke too gently, as though he would protect me from hurt. I thought of Lady Swithin and her unborn child—and in the fear of sudden death, sat down hard upon a vacant chair. “What has happened?”

  “Lord Hartington has not yet returned home, and being absent now nearly a day, must be regarded with considerable suspense. His Grace’s servants have stood watch for the better part of the night, in both the stables and the main house; but Hart has not appeared, and nothing is known of his intended direction.”

  “But I espied his lordship myself last evening,” I cried, “above the Baslow road, not much past Manners Wood.”

  “So near the house as that.” Lord Harold declined the offer of a chair; he had no intention of stopping very long. “I must inform the Duke. Such a direction had not entered into His Grace’s calculations, it being expressly forbidden.”

  “Because the Duke did not wish Lord Hartington to ride towards Tideswell?”

  “Exactly.” He smiled at me faintly. “You overlistened my conversation with Lady Elizabeth last evening; I suspected as much.”

  “While his lordship was yet under my gaze, he spurred his mount to the west, and vanished into a fold of the landscape,” I said quickly. “Moreover, I have learned from Tess Arnold’s stillroom book that he was much in the habit of meeting her—in the rocks above Miller’s Dale, where she was later murdered.”

  “That is unfortunate,” Lord Harold muttered, “for Tideswell is some distance from the village of Hartington itself, whence His Grace directed the search party.”

  “Search party! The Marquess will not thank you for it. I understand he is much given to playing the truant. And knowing the country so well as he does—surely he can have come to no harm!”

  “I should have said the same—until this morning, just after eight o’clock, when the boy’s black horse limped into the yard. The beast bore bruised knees, and had obviously been down. Of Hart’s fate, we remain in doubt.”

  “Dear God! I had no notion it was so bad as this! But what has been done—what is being attempted, to recover him?”

  “A stable lad detected limestone in the horse’s hooves, such as is prevalent upon the White Moor, not far from the village of Hartington. The Duke has organised a body of men to work over the ground.”

  I studied his lordship’s countenance; he ha
d held somewhat in reserve. “What is it that troubles you? What do you fail to say?”

  He hesitated; then bowed his head in submission. “The limestone of the White Moor has long been quarried, Jane, for a legion of purposes. There are, as a result, any number of pits and eroded cliffs that might do mischief to a wandering lad—particularly if he were not entirely himself, and darkness were coming on. Melancholy—rage—even a guilty conscience, Jane—might drive Hart to recklessness.”

  “Are you suggesting, Lord Harold,” I slowly replied, “that the Marquess of Hartington has done away with himself?”

  Lord Harold’s eyelids flickered, but he did not directly reply. “I know I may depend upon your discretion. Not a word of this has been uttered by the Duke or myself; but the thought hangs heavy in the air of the Great House. The Danforths have exchanged idleness for action at last, and are gone out on horseback; the Morpeths are disposed to be anxious, and talk overmuch; Lady Elizabeth is insensible to everything that does not directly affect her; but Hary-O is afraid, Jane. She knows Hart better than anyone in his family—and Hary-O is afraid.”

  Lord Harold looked at me, all his feeling speaking in his face. “It is this that causes me to wonder what Lady Harriot fears—and just how much in Lord Hartington’s confidence she has been.”

  “But surely, my lord, if she knew something that might assist in her brother’s recovery—surely she would speak it without reserve!”

  He turned away. “Such a thought is obvious to someone like yourself, Jane, who has never been schooled in any but the severest honesty. Deception—particularly the deceit of divided loyalty—is as foreign to you as French bread. But that is not Hary-O’s case. She was raised in a house where the most simple exchange of daily pleasantries is fraught with several meanings, and where those she should naturally trust—her closest relations—have always formed a shifting alliance. Hary-O learned from birth to guard her soul, and display nothing like its true self to the world, lest it be trampled.”