by LK Rigel
She hesitated. Carleson Peak was the last place she wanted to see again.
He said, “Don’t worry about Morgan Baker. Yes, I know all about that rascal. You think I didn’t see him trifle with you at our father’s burial?”
More than trifle, but there was no need to enlighten John on that subject.
“He was dismissed not long after you went to London. The man was nothing but hot air. They say he went to New Holland.” John cheerfully loaded her few bags and boxes into his cart, and Susan left Bath forever.
John a tenant farmer! She’d ruined herself and any chance of helping her brother to regain his inheritance. Even the duke would be loath to employ her now. For the first time in her life, she had no idea what she was going to do.
Two months later she still had no plan for the future. She stayed inside John and Meg’s house, a true cottage a quarter the size of Millam Cottage at Millam’s northern border. There were small odds of being seen by anyone who knew her, but she wouldn’t risk it.
The future arrived despite her lack of plan for it. The pain came in waves, closer and closer together until one wouldn’t let go. She had to push. She had to.
Let me die, she thought. Let me die and have done with it. The pains were so close together now she couldn’t catch her breath. She tried pacing her room, which helped for a few minutes. The next contraction took hold so fiercely she let out a scream, a scream that mixed with other screams, terrifying screams, down the hall in another room.
Her brother’s wife Meg had been in labor for three days, and Susan could tell the midwife was worried. When her own pains started that morning, she’d stayed quiet. It was two months too early to be birth pangs. But could anything possibly be worse? If God could just let her die, she really wouldn’t mind.
Something had happened. Meg’s screams metamorphosed into wails of unbearable heartbreak. No. No.
Susan’s bedroom door opened. The midwife came in, worn out, but she eased Susan into the bed. Lying down was worse. Susan tried to stand again, but the midwife would have none of it.
“How is my sister-in-law?” But she knew the answer.
Hours later, when the house was silent with exhaustion and sorrow, Susan woke to the sweet song of a nightjar outside her window. She picked up her baby and studied his features in the moonlight. He had the deep brown eyes of his father and no hair at all on his head. She gasped as her heart swelled.
What wonder was this? That such a small helpless person could give her back her heart and all her belief in life? Love like this made up for everything.
Once she had run to the woods to join the fairies. She’d believed her mother had foolishly left the enchanted world, given up everything good to love her father. But there were no fairies. John Gray made a bad marriage and called it enchantment. He died and left his children to the care of a woman with no connections, no talents, and no ambition.
Susan was no better than her mother or her father. She’d brought this beautiful miracle into a world that would call him bastard and see no beauty, no miracle. She wouldn’t let his life be ruined before it even began.
She slipped down the hall and into Meg’s room. The midwife slept next to the bed, but poor Meg was awake, staring into the night. Her baby lay cold in his crib. Susan laid her own child on Meg’s bed and began to exchange the infants’ clothes. When she tied the last ribbon, she saw Meg staring at her.
“His name is Perseus,” she said. “Persey.”
She offered the baby to Meg, who mechanically opened her night dress to feed him.
Susan turned and froze. The midwife was awake. After an eternity, she nodded her approval and closed her eyes again.
Susan returned to her room with aching breasts and the wrench of longing for the one who’d lived inside her these many months. She felt utterly lost. Soft rain fell noiselessly on the other side of the window. She laid her dead nephew in her son’s place.
Unbearable
Susan set a batch of strawberry scones in the window to cool while she brought out the clotted cream and hung the kettle on the hook. Meg was awake. Her footsteps sounded on the stairs.
“Something smells heavenly.” Meg came into the kitchen and picked up Persey, who was playing on the floor. “Can I help?”
John and Meg had made Susan truly welcome, and she helped with Persey and the housework. They had a girl who served as maid-of-all-work, but Susan and Meg shared the cooking. To everyone’s relief, as Meg had grown stronger she took over more of that duty. Susan’s cooking skills began and ended with scones and tea.
The two women had never discussed the circumstances of Persey’s birth or the other infant’s death. For all John knew, they’d buried his nephew a year ago. Sometimes Susan feared her sister-in-law had been so distraught that night that her mind had blocked the truth.
“There’s nothing to do,” Susan said. “I was just about to sit down and wait for the water to boil. Did you rest well?”
“Very well.” Meg had recovered slowly from her horrendous labor, but she was young. Now that a year had passed she’d regained her strength. “I feel foolish sleeping during the day when there’s work to do. Today was my last nap.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” Susan said. As much as she loved her brother and his wife, living with them had become unbearable. She had to go. “I’ve written to Mr. Peter, the butler at Gohrum House, about going back to my position.”
“Oh, Susan,” Meg said. “We would miss you.”
“You’re mistress here, and I’m in your way. You don’t want your husband’s old maid sister always looking over your shoulder. And there is one thing that is…painful for me.”
As if to illustrate the point, Meg absently kissed Persey’s blond curls and then his fat cherubic fingers.
“At any rate,” Susan said, “Mr. Peter’s answer arrived today. I’ll take tomorrow’s mail coach to London.”
She’d finally made plans for the future. She would do all she could to give Persey something of the life she’d lost. At the least, he’d have an education. To that end she had to be in the world earning an income, not hidden away in a room with no money, no autonomy. No dignity.
Tears filled Meg’s eyes, but she didn’t try to argue Susan out of the decision.
Persey stood up on Meg’s lap and wrapped his arms around her neck. He said, “Mama,” and planted a sloppy wet kiss on her lips.
Unbearable.
Cruel Love
On a July afternoon a year after she’d come back to Gohrum House, Susan was sent for a particular kind of chocolate the duchess wanted for her breakfast.
Life was decidedly more difficult with the new duchess in residence. Her grace seemed to take particular pleasure in bedeviling Susan, though no one could explain why. Unfortunately, she preferred London to Millam Hall and only left town when the late summer heat made the city unbearable.
Mr. Peter and Cook were in the kitchen when she returned triumphant.
“Success!” She handed the prize to Cook and gave Matthew Peter a smile of gratitude. “Matthew Peter knew just where to find it. I’m sure her grace thought she’d stump me on this one.”
Matthew Peter beamed. He was still fond of her, and to Susan’s surprise she was growing fond of him. They’d gone to some theatricals and street fairs along with other servants from the household. He was persistent, and Susan’s resistance was beginning to fail.
He didn’t turn her head. Her heart didn’t leap at the sound of his voice or the mention of his name. With him, she never heard the white lady’s song. But she liked and respected him, and he liked and respected her. Maybe those things were more important.
Susan and Cook and the kitchen maids applauded Matthew Peter, but Mr. Peter seemed distracted. He asked to see Susan privately in his office and closed the door before speaking. Her mind raced with fear.
“Has something happened to—to my brother?” To Persey?
“Nothing of that kind, Miss Gray,” Mr. Peter said. “An acquaintance
of the duke is coming to Gohrum House. He and his wife are emigrating to America, and the wife isn’t traveling with a lady’s maid. The duchess wants you to serve as Mrs. Singer’s lady’s maid during her stay.
The room tilted slightly, and Susan leaned against the edge of Mr. Peter’s desk. “Mrs. Singer, you say?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Leopold Singer of Austria,” said Mr. Peter. “They should be here this afternoon. You may have seen Mr. Singer before. A fine young man. He dined at Gohrum House, I believe, once or twice a couple of years ago.”
He’s married. “But I’m no lady’s maid,” Susan said. “I’m not trained.”
“I pointed that out to her grace, but she insisted. You know how she is.”
Susan went to her room and sat at the edge of her bed for a few minutes, trying to collect her thoughts. Leopold Singer was coming to London. He might be in a carriage, riding toward her from the docks, at this very moment.
But he wasn’t coming to her. He was married, and Susan was to be lady’s maid to his new wife. She felt like a fox surrounded by dogs; nothing good could come of this.
***
Mrs. Leopold Singer was simply lovely.
Hot with impotent fury, Susan raced down the stairs carrying Mrs. Singer’s traveling clothes to the laundry.
This was how it was. This was how it would be. Upstairs, there was a beautiful doll-like creature soaking off her travel weariness in a steaming perfumed bath. Mrs. Singer, who had the right to call Leopold my husband.
Susan might read a hundred philosophical tomes and understand every one, but she would always be merely Gray, the plain servant who was once someone’s daughter. A housekeeper at best, at the mercy of a duchess who hated her.
At least now Susan understood why. The duchess had burst into the bath room and confronted Mrs. Singer under the guise of welcoming her guest, but her grace’s jealousy was impossible to hide. She loved Leopold Singer too, or had once. She must have believed he cared for Susan.
Would her tyranny cease now that she knew the truth? If Leopold Singer ever cared for Susan, he didn’t now.
Susan should never have accepted the demotion. Right this minute she should walk out of Gohrum House, go to The Lost Bee, and take the next coach back to her brother.
Of course she stayed, for the perverse reason that she had to see him. She stayed to hear his voice just one more time.
***
The duchess’s wrath shifted, for the moment, to Mrs. Singer. Susan lit the candles in the young woman’s room then shook out the skirt of the massive silk gown Mrs. Singer was to wear this evening.
Mrs. Singer stirred in her bed and sat up, staring at the old-fashioned dress.
“I am sorry, madam,” Susan said. “It’s what the duchess wants you to wear.”
The Singers were to attend a ball with the duke and duchess at Devonshire House this evening. Susan still had not seen or spoken to Leopold, though she’d heard his voice somewhere when she was bringing Mrs. Singer’s ball gown down from storage.
“Then I shall,” Mrs. Singer said. “With pleasure.”
Susan liked her timid defiance, but it wouldn’t be the weapon to match her grace.
But Leopold’s bride was the weapon. Susan had never seen a more beautiful creature. Her youthful skin was as perfect as a porcelain doll’s. She had emerald eyes and dark hair. The dress was tight, and its wide skirt made her waist appear even tinier. The accompanying powdered wig set off her eyes like sparkling emeralds.
“You’re beautiful,” Susan said. “I’m told this gown was worn by her grace’s mother at a Whig party at Devonshire House years ago. They are all Whigs around here. Her grace must want to remind the Duchess of Devonshire of old times.”
“Old times.”
“Yes, madam. You seem young, if you don’t mind my saying so, to have any old times to remember.”
“I am nearly twenty-one, but I do feel young.”
“Have you been married long?”
“Just past two years.”
“How did you meet your husband?” Susan forgot her place asking such things. It was self-torture, but she couldn’t stop.
“I cannot remember a time I did not know Mr. Singer.”
She loved him then. But she was so placid it was difficult to gauge any depth of passion. “You have no children as yet?”
“No.” She started to say something else, but just repeated no, like an admission of failure.
Wretched satisfaction flooded into Susan. But for some reason she took pity.
“Do not worry,” she said. “It’s probably on account of the chaos of war. They say cows go dry and hens refuse to lay when the guns are near. Napoleon can’t hurt you now. When you get to America things will be different, so long as the French and the Indians—and the British, for that matter—keep to themselves.”
“Do you really believe this?” Mrs. Singer grabbed Susan’s forearms. “It is my great hope. I was afraid there might be something wrong with me or even…”
“Your husband unable to get a child? Not likely,” Susan said. “And you appear healthy enough. I am sure you’ll find yourself blessed as soon as you’re secure in your new country.”
“That is so kind of you to say.” Mrs. Singer examined herself in the glass. “And as for tonight, I hope they are pleasant memories my costume will recall.”
Another sting awaited at the front door. Mr. Peter said, “The duchess has had to depart early, Madam. She ordered a rig for you.”
“I’m to go alone? What do I do?”
Susan assured Mrs. Singer all would be well. Gallantry never appeared so quickly as to rescue a distressed and beautiful young lady.
The instant the rig pulled away, Susan rushed down to her room beyond the kitchen and closed the door. She collected her writing desk and sat on her bed, leaning against the wall.
Inside the desk were her most precious things: the Wollstonecraft book, a pen and a small bottle of ink, a few sheets of writing paper, and a miniature hand-carved frame which held the likeness of an infant. Susan set the picture where she could see it and wrote:
Leopold:
You have a son. He is a darling boy, as good and as clever as his father, with the same dark brown eyes and lovely cornsilk curls. His name is Perseus Gray.
When I was sure of my condition, I resolved to rid myself of the child. But my mother’s illness grew worse, and I had to leave Gohrum House to care for her. Too much time passed, and no apothecary would help me.
He was born on 12 May of 1800, an early baby. It was a dreadful birth. I nearly died, but I had to live for little Persey’s sake; Necessity will have her way. Your son is healthy.
I write you now because I have come to believe you have the right to know you do have a child in the world. Persey does not know who his true father is and shall not. When he is older, I will send him to school.
I have no regrets. Persey was conceived in love. I wish you only happiness,
Susan Gray.
She told herself it was for love of Persey she wrote the letter.
***
Lady’s maid was more prestigious than housemaid, and the work itself was not so physically onerous. Susan would acknowledge that much.
After that lady’s maid was a terrible job, the maid at her lady’s call every hour of the day without notice. It was past midnight, and Susan wanted to be in bed asleep. Instead she was in the kitchen with Randall, her grace’s maid. They were making trays to bring upstairs to their mistresses just home from the ball.
“You’ll want to hurry,” Randall said. “Yours has been home for half an hour.”
When Susan entered Mrs. Singer’s room, Leopold was there. He stood behind his wife, his arms around her waist, kissing her neck. Susan remembered the feel of those lips on her skin.
“Shall I bring another cup, madam?”
“We’ll share the one,” Leopold answered without looking at her. As if she wasn’t a person. “Mrs. Singer won’t need you again tonight,�
� he said.
Susan’s eyes met Mrs. Singer’s. It seemed Mrs. Singer was also in distress, but it didn’t make Susan feel any better. With no word and no curtsy, she fled downstairs to the kitchen. She pulled the letter from her pocket and threw it into the fire.
“I was just talking with my father. I thought I heard someone.” Matthew Peter came in as the paper turned to ash. “Are you unwell, Miss Gray?”
Something clicked in Susan’s brain. Everything was clear to her now. To think of Leopold Singer—to think of her old life at all—was the path to madness. Matthew Peter offered her reality. He offered her happiness.
“Dear Matthew Peter,” she said. “I’m merely exorcising an old daemon.”
“You speak in the oddest way.” He gave her a cup of tea, and his hand trembled a little. She smiled when she accepted the cup, and her eyes stayed with his when she raised it to her lips. She was quite aware that she had called him “dear.”
Lost and Found
Susan and Matthew Peter accompanied the Singers to the magnificent new West India docks. They meant to help with the luggage, but they were instantly redundant. The Maenad’s crewmen swarmed over the stowage and hauled it onto the ship, leaving the lubbers to stare, mute and amazed.
“Thank you, Gray,” Mrs. Singer said. A breeze played with loose strands of her uncovered hair, and her eyes were like green hills in sunlight. She seemed sad, drawn into herself. “Thank you for everything.” She handed Susan a gratuity in an embroidered silk purse. The purse alone was too fine a gift.
Susan thought, and now two quid from his wife.
Mrs. Singer joined Leopold on the gangway. He touched his lips to her forehead and never looked back to the dock or to Susan.
She wanted to hate Marta Singer, but where was the fault in simply having been chosen? She could tell that Leopold loved his wife. And Susan had made her choice, too. Already, there was a change in that tender lump of pain that lived in her breast. It was cooling, becoming a hard emotionless knot.
