Behind the Shattered Glass: A Lady Emily Mystery (Lady Emily Mysteries)

by Tasha Alexander

  Charlotte did not mention the significant shift in her life that occurred sometime during that year. Not even the most careful reader could have been certain she and Pearce had consummated their relationship. Candid though she was in her diary, she could not have risked putting into writing such a shocking revelation. Frankly, I was stunned she had taken such a step before she was married.

  Although my own marriage provided every sort of companionship and bliss for which a wife could hope, I knew that was not often the case, and common practice was for husbands and wives to seek affection—and love—elsewhere. For ladies, it was essential to delay any sort of affair until after having adequately filled the nursery, preferably with male babies. To embark on folly before then was to court disaster, and disaster is exactly what struck Charlotte. At first, she had no idea that the queasiness she started feeling early in the day was a sign of things to come. She mentioned it only casually. Even I, who had experienced the same myself, did not think anything of it when I first read her symptoms. It had never occurred to me she would have gone so far.

  Eventually, though, she started to worry, and confided in her maid, who confirmed her worst fears. Charlotte was with child. She could not hide her condition forever, so there was nothing to be done but confess everything, or almost everything, to her parents.

  Papa did not react quite so violently as I had feared, though I was afraid he was on the verge of striking me when I refused to tell him the name of my child’s father. I would have withstood any blow to protect My Dear, Dear P. How could I bear to have him sent away from Montagu? I must have him near me. Papa yelled and bawled and quite lost his composure, and Mama’s eyes looked like a summer storm. She will not forgive me for a very long time.

  I shall have to be married, now, and as quickly as possible. Papa insists on it and I suppose he is right. I know better than to form opinions about any suitor now presented to me and it doesn’t matter who it is regardless. I shall never love anyone but My P. Papa is even now arranging things and says the business shall be settled before the end of the week. I am not far enough along, Mama assures me, to have to admit to my condition. My husband will be a cuckold from the start, and never know this child is not his.

  Charlotte was naive to believe her parents would let her hide her lover’s identity for long. So far as I could tell, they handled the situation as deftly as possible. They remained calm, let her think she could keep her secret, and arranged a quick marriage with Sir George, who was pleased to know that his son, should he be fortunate enough to have one, would someday be Marquess of Montagu, quite an elevation from his own knighthood.

  The need for a quick marriage was explained away by Charlotte’s father’s health. He had taken a nasty fall while hunting the previous month and injured his leg. The wound had become infected and wasn’t healing well. He told Sir George he feared he would die before seeing his daughter married and ensuring that the Montagu line would continue. No doubt Lord Montagu made it abundantly clear to Sir George the necessity of ensuring Charlotte would produce an heir as quickly as possible.

  Sir George seems a pleasant enough man, but I cannot bear to let him touch me. I shall have to, I know, but the very idea sickens me. How have I come to be in such an untenable situation? All I want is to love My P. Is that so wrong? The next Marquess of Montagu will be the son of a groom, no matter what anyone believes. Why cannot my family accept the truth for what it is? Why must my life be one long, hurtful lie?

  A fortnight before the wedding, Charlotte told Pearce what had happened and that she would have to marry at once. He begged her to leave with him and to run away, but she could not bring herself to abandon her dying father, not even for Her P. Pearce, devastated at her willingness to have another man as her husband, fled. He could not understand how she could let society do this to her. He could not understand the pressure she was under from her family. He could not understand that anything mattered more than their love. He disappeared before Charlotte became Sir George’s wife.

  “How sad,” I said. “What a foolish, foolish girl.”

  “Do tell.” Colin rubbed my hand while I recounted for him the story. “Foolish, yes, but doesn’t it strike you as an absurd way to live, dividing people into classes and judging them more on their birth than their merit?”

  “You need not try to convince me,” I said. “I am well aware of your antiaristocracy views, and you know I respect them. My mother is the one who was furious when you refused the dukedom.” Colin had twice refused knighthood and once, more recently, a dukedom that had been negotiated by my mother. I knew full well Her Majesty was the less upset of the two ladies, but the queen could not be described as pleased. My mother had still not given up hope that someday my husband would accept a peerage. From the day I was born, she had longed for nothing more than to see me a duchess. It was her life’s ambition, and unfortunately for her, one I had never shared.

  “Not half as furious as the queen,” he said. “She’ll never forgive me.”

  “I shall let you believe what you want. Regardless, you are fortunate that she can’t do without you,” I said. “No one else in the empire has half your skill and discretion in handling difficult matters.”

  “I am more fortunate that you do not mind being banned from court.”

  “There is no court to speak of,” I said. “Who would want to sit through those tedious dinners at Windsor being questioned, one at a time, for the whole table to hear?”

  “Bertie won’t be better,” Colin said. “Different, certainly, but not better.”

  “More, shall we say, lively?” Bertie, the Prince of Wales, and his Marlborough House Set were not a crowd with which Colin and I chose to run. The queen refused to allow her son and heir to engage in any sort of politics, and as a result he was a man wholly without purpose but in possession of all but unlimited resources. His excesses were notorious and his affairs a constant scandal, but he was congenial enough, if not particularly bright. I felt almost sorry for him, and wished his mother would let him come into his own. As it was, she was making it extremely difficult for him to learn to be an effective sovereign.

  I had, not long ago, struck up a friendship of sorts with him, knowing that our mothers shared more than a few questionable qualities and thinking we could commiserate. Bertie, however, had other ideas and soon proved himself worthy of his playboy reputation. To his credit, he did not press the issue when I rebuffed his advances, and always treated me with the utmost courtesy. Nonetheless, I never felt wholly comfortable in his presence afterward.

  “You are very polite, Lady Emily,” Colin said, grinning and giving me a kiss.

  I pulled away from him, my jaw dropping open. “You do realize what all this means?”

  “Bertie? The queen?”

  “Charlotte,” I said. “Matilda is the one descended from an illegitimate line, not Rodney.”

  “She will not be pleased.”

  “Maybe it will make her current situation easier to bear.”

  “You are assuming the groom’s child survived infancy,” Colin said.

  “I’ve read past that,” I said, “and then I skipped ahead to make sure. He inherited.”

  “And no one ever knew?” Colin asked.

  “Apparently not. Charlotte’s father died two months before the boy was born. That is why she was marchioness in her own right.”

  “Stories like these make me angry,” Colin said. “She was forced to marry someone she didn’t love just to ensure some ridiculous line continued without a visible blemish. And for what?”

  “You cannot say the English system is completely without merit, Colin. Great families do much for their tenants and their households.”

  “Some of them do, but I don’t think the lower classes should be forced to rely on the generosity of their landlords to ensure a decent living. It isn’t right. Particularly when not all so-called great men do anything for their tenants.”

  “Dear me,” I said. “I am afraid you are
ready for armed revolution.”

  “I don’t think it will take that,” he said. “Our way of life has been changing since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and nothing is going to stop it. For that, I am immensely grateful.”

  “If you keep talking like this, my mother is likely to believe you are secretly a republican. Or even worse, an American. Do be careful. I don’t want any more trouble from her.”

  The train slowed as it pulled into Dover Priory, and we gathered our belongings. I felt sad for Charlotte, but angry at the same time. She had put herself into a dreadful situation, and she had no one to blame but herself. Or did she? Gentlemen sometimes married their maids. It was unusual, but it did happen from time to time. A lady, however, would never be able to do such a thing. I might not agree with all of my husband’s politics, but he was absolutely right about the inherent injustice in our way of life. It was a system too rife with immorality to be allowed to go on for eternity, but when it ended, where would we all be left? Change did not always lead to improvements, sometimes only to change.

  Downstairs

  xi

  Alice had finished with Mr. Hargreaves’s room and was now in Lady Emily’s pale blue dressing room. The walls were close to the same color as that in the room Alice shared with Lily, and she liked to think this was because Lady Emily was so very pleased with their work that she wanted them to feel more like family than servants. It was a foolish notion, but there was no harm in it. She had everything just about ready for her mistress to dress for dinner. Really for dinner tomorrow, or maybe luncheon, as she and the master were to stay overnight in Dover. Alice had been to Dover once and had picnicked below the great white cliffs, where she felt so proud to be English she had belted out every verse of “Rule, Britannia!” She wondered if Mr. Hargreaves would show the cliffs to Lady Emily. She hoped he would. They were, she was certain, the best part of England.

  Lily came into the room, breathless and flushed. “Good heavens, girl,” Alice said. “What have you been getting up to?”

  “My book,” Lily said. “It’s gone. Have you seen it?”

  “No.” Alice shook her head. “I know you told me I could look at it, but I felt funny taking it out without you there, so I thought I’d wait till you could show it to me yourself.”

  Lily was glad she hadn’t gone through Alice’s drawers. She knew she could always trust her friend. Alice was closer to her than her own sisters had ever been. They had even traveled to York together last winter, for a little holiday, and had walked along the old city walls, arm in arm, watching the people on the pavements below. It was one of Lily’s happiest memories. “I think Pru took it.”

  “Pru? Why would she do that?”

  “I don’t really know, but who else? She can’t stand me.”

  “What about Lord Montagu’s Red Indian?” Alice asked. “He was brought up a heathen savage.”

  Lily crinkled her brow. “That is true, Alice, but he’s behaved in no way that suggests he’s still one. He’s extremely polite and helpful. I like him much more than I thought I would.”

  “I am in absolute agreement,” Alice said. “Still, it’s something to think about. We don’t really know him. I do have another idea, though. Lord Flyte gave it you, didn’t he? The book, that is.”

  “Yes.”

  “Does Mrs. Elliott know?”

  “I don’t think so. I haven’t told anyone but you.”

  “I haven’t told her, but she has a way of knowing things. If she did get wind of it, she might have taken it, deciding it wasn’t appropriate for you to accept a gift from one of the master’s guests.”

  “Do you think it’s inappropriate?” Lily asked, pouring fresh water into a ewer.

  Alice finished wiping the large glass over Lady Emily’s dressing table before she answered. “I don’t know, Lily. You’re always so careful about things and are always warning me to watch myself with the gentlemen. Lord Flyte seems a nice enough bloke, but what can he really be after? You’re not going to be a countess, though I do suspect you’d make an excellent one.”

  Lily’s breath caught in her throat. “No, I would never expect such a thing. That would be silly.” A wretched feeling coursed through her chest, going all the way through her stomach to her knees and back up again. Silly did not begin to describe it. It was naive and stupid to think anything good could come from such a friendship. She knew better than to get caught up in it.

  “You’ve told me more times than I can count that gentlemen don’t want to be friends with girls like us. They might be polite and they might even be kind on occasion, but if they go further than that, it can only mean one thing.”

  “I know,” Lily said, turning her attention to cleaning out the fireplace. “I feel so foolish.” She chastised herself, more disappointed than angry that she had allowed herself to be swept up in such a fantasy. For that’s all it ever could be. It was shameful, really. She vowed to say four rosaries before bed that night as self-imposed penance.

  “Don’t be hard on yourself,” Alice said. “Nothing’s happened yet, right?”

  “Of course not.”

  “And you’re not going to let something happen?”

  “No! I’m not Pru, you know.”

  “Lily, no gentleman is ever going to try to trifle with Pru.”

  This made Lily laugh. “I suppose not.”

  “Be polite and civil to Lord Flyte, but don’t let yourself be compromised. You must make it clear to him that you’re not going to provide him anything beyond that.”

  “What about my book?” Lily asked.

  “If Mrs. Elliott’s got it you’ll know soon enough,” Alice said, giving the brass fittings on the door a final polish. “And that will give you something new to worry about.”

  12

  Although I knew it had become something of a seaside resort once the railways had arrived, I had never given Dover much thought beyond its being the place where one leapt off the train and onto the boat when going to the Continent. Mrs. Tindall, aunt of Mr. Porter, now operated a charming inn there, perched above the white cliffs, with stunning views of the Channel. She welcomed us warmly and plied us with perfect tea and lemon cakes in a bright room lined with windows at the front of the building.

  “I do so very much appreciate you both taking the time to come see me,” she said. “I realize dear Cedric may be in more than a spot of trouble.”

  “He and Archibald Scolfield stayed with you before going abroad, is that correct?” I asked.

  “Yes, they did,” she said. “Mr. Scolfield was a most pleasant gentleman. He flirted with me and flattered me and kept the house filled with fresh flowers the whole time the boys were here.”

  “You mentioned it was only later, after they had gone, that you discovered a problem?” I asked.

  “Yes, five months passed before I noticed one of the girls in my employ—a housemaid—had got herself in a spot of trouble. She was with child.”

  “Archibald Scolfield was the father?” Colin asked.

  “Yes. Not quite the gentleman he presented himself to be,” she said. “I sent her to a home for girls in that condition, and she stayed there through her confinement.”

  “What became of the child?” I asked.

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” she said. “I heard no more news from her after she had given birth. I can only assume she returned to her family, wherever they were.”

  “Was Mr. Scolfield informed about the baby?” Colin asked.

  “No,” Mrs. Tindall said. “What would be the point? He wasn’t going to acknowledge it. Trying to force him to would have done nothing but spark a scandal, and the poor girl didn’t need more of that.”

  “Indeed,” Colin said. “Forgive me, Mrs. Tindall, but could you not have told us all this in a letter?”

  “There is more, Mr. Hargreaves,” she said. “There were eventually rumors about what had happened to my maid, you see, as was inevitable. It turned out not many in town were su
rprised by the story. Mr. Scolfield had trifled with girls in other establishments, more than I can count. Dressmakers’ daughters, serving girls in taverns, and maids in several respectable households.”

  “I thought the boys were only in Dover a fortnight,” I said. “Archibald must have been a very industrious man.”

  “He was,” Mrs. Tindall said. “Now, I am not gullible enough to believe all the stories, but I have no doubt some of them are true, and if he did even half of what he was accused of, you could find a right lot of suspects for his murder here in Dover alone. I’m sure his behavior didn’t change when he reached the Continent. If anything, I would expect it to have been worse. Not all foreign girls have the strong morals of an Englishwoman.” Her voice was so sincere. I did my best not to smile.

  “Did your nephew know what his friend was getting up to?” Colin asked.

  “I can’t be sure of that,” she said, the corners of her mouth turning down. “He tells me he did not, but I am not so innocent as to believe him without hesitation. Cedric was always a good boy. He worked extremely hard to earn that spot at Oxford, and he didn’t come from a background where men were used to taking whatever they want.”

  “You do not believe he was behaving in a similar way?” Colin asked.

  “Mr. Hargreaves! My nephew would never act in such a base manner. He may not be from a family like the Scolfields, but current evidence would suggest that is not a bad thing, wouldn’t it now? The Porters would never dream of lowering their morals so far.”

  “Forgive me, Mrs. Tindall,” Colin said. “I had to ask.”

  “I suppose so,” she said, “but I do not have to like it.”

  “Mr. Porter did not mention anything about this to us when we spoke to him,” I said. “Why do you think that is?”