Deadly Affair: A Georgian Historical Mystery (Alec Halsey Crimance)

by Lucinda Brant

  “Of course not, but she’s placed a tremendous burden on you.”

  “She’s scared out of her wits, sir. And rightly so. She witnessed her cousin die in childbirth in the most horrific of circumstances; we both did. The physician hacked the baby from her belly; it saved the child but killed the mother. The thing of it is, sir, the girl wasn’t dead, near death but not dead, when he butchered her.”

  Alec blanched. “Good God. How horrifying… But… Surely Mrs. Bourdon should be reassured that won’t happen to her given this is her second lying-in?”

  Tam swallowed hard, wanting badly to confess all to his master yet hesitating to do so because it would be a breach of trust. But he needed to confide in his lordship; he could think of no one else who would be more understanding to his plight, and to hers, except perhaps Mr. Halsey. And what if something did go wrong with the birth? It had been her cousin Miriam’s first child and it had killed her; it could happen to Miranda Bourdon. But he would not let anyone do to her what had been done to her cousin, under any circumstances. He needed Alec to realize that, to support her decision and his.

  One look into Alec’s blue eyes full of worried concern and the accompanying understanding smile and everything came tumbling forth: Cousin Miriam’s difficult labor—all forty exhausting hours, with Dobbs unable to turn the baby from the breech position; that she was only fifteen years old or thereabouts, as was Miranda; the girls so alike in countenance that it was uncanny. They were runaways and Mr. Blackwell had given them sanctuary; the heartbreaking decision the old vicar had been forced to make to choose between dying mother and child; that a physician had cut open the dying girl in the hopes of saving the baby; that he had never witnessed anything so horrifying in his life and never hoped to again; how he had wondered and worried what had happened to Miranda and the baby and to save his sanity Mr. Dobbs had told him he must put the whole episode out of his mind as if it had never happened. And then Mrs. Bourdon had been thrust back into his life, and revealed to him that her cousin Miriam was the Reverend Blackwell’s natural daughter.

  “…So you see, sir, it’s no wonder Mrs. Bourdon is scared out of her wits, this being her first babe.”

  Alec did not answer immediately. He could not. He was still trying to absorb everything Tam had told him. It was as if he had just woken from a nightmare and in a mental fog was recalling details of the bad dream without really wanting to. He picked up his coffee cup, drinking down the last of the coffee without realizing it was cold and nodded distractedly, a glance over Tam’s shoulder at the bedchamber door.

  “The poor woman has every reason to be terrified… Her cousin, she confided, was Blackwell’s natural daughter? And Mrs. Bourdin and her cousin… Miriam? Mrs. Bourdon and Miriam were so similar in appearance they could be mistaken one for the other?”

  “Yes, sir. Mrs. Bourdon said that when they were growing up, sometimes Miriam would pretend to be her, just to make mischief.” He smiled crookedly. “Sounds as if Miriam was a right wild thing.”

  “An understatement. The girl was pregnant at fourteen.”

  “Mr. Fisher! Mr. Fisher!”

  It was Janie, calling from the bedchamber. She appeared at the door in a rush, hands bunched in her petticoats, but seeing Alec, she dropped into a curtsey and lowered her eyes to the floorboards. “Beggin’ your lordship’s pardon.” She glanced up at Tam. “I think the babe’s almost here. She’s askin’ for ye. You’d best come quickly.” And disappeared back into the room on Tam’s nod.

  “Sir,” said Tam, immediately on his feet but staying his ground. “Mrs. Bourdin made one last request concerning the babe. She wants me to say it’s a girl, whatever its sex.”

  “How curious… But if it makes her comfortable and less fearful, there can be no harm in it. She could very well give birth to a daughter. Now go. Mr. Halsey and I, and indeed Mrs. Bourdon, we have every faith in your abilities.” He smiled. “I know you’ll do splendidly.”

  Tam returned Alec’s smile, feeling more confident about the task ahead of him, made a quaint little bow and was gone into the bedchamber just as Hadrian Jeffries re-entered the sitting room.

  Alec wrote three short notes of invitation, one each to Sir Charles Weir, Lord George Stanton and Lady Rutherglen requesting the pleasure of their company in the drawing room of Barr’s of Trim Street at their earliest convenience, promising them they would have the opportunity to meet a ghost.

  “Which should see them here with all speed,” he said with satisfaction as he folded in half a fourth sheet of paper and ran his thumbnail along the fold to give it a clean crisp line, much to the approval and admiration of Jeffries. He handed his valet three notes and kept the fourth back; it was addressed to Talgarth Vesey. “See these are delivered at once. Then inform Barr I shall require exclusive use of his drawing room. I want my uncle to be present also…” When the valet stood riveted, listening in pale-faced terror to the screams and grunts and loud encouraging chants of push coming from the bedchamber, Alec dared to grin and slap the young man’s rigid back. “Terrifying, isn’t it? But necessary to bring a baby into this world.”

  “Good God! What is that awful clamor?”

  The declaration came, not from Hadrian Jeffries, but from the servant door, and it broke the spell on the valet who could not leave the sitting room fast enough, though his exit was temporarily blocked. He caught a fleeting glimpse of a halo of mussed apricot colored curls and the glint from a swinging diamond drop earring before the servant door was thrown wide, and he could make good his escape without a glance at the majestic woman who swept into the room on the pronouncement.

  Selina took one look at Alec by the fireplace and her dark eyes softened.

  The two hours of torment, of being bumped about a wet and rutted country road, confined in a carriage with her somnambulist-like brother, her long suffering lady’s maid and a precocious chattering child of four who hardly drew breath and never sat still, was forgotten. As was her resolve to be strong-willed enough to resist her need of him.

  One welcoming smile and she melted.

  “The sounds of a new life coming into this world, my love,” Alec replied and laughed when Selina’s nose wrinkled in distaste.

  She drew off her kid gloves and tossed them on the windowseat, a curious glance at the bunch of wilted flowers.

  “You say it as if it’s the most natural thing in the world!”

  This made Alec laugh harder, and he drew her to him. “Well, childbirth is, is it not? I am so pleased to see you safe here, if a little tired from your ordeal?”

  She returned his kiss and pouted. “Childbirth, yes. I meant you, you standing here composed. And yes, it was an ordeal, but I had you to look forward to.”

  He kissed her again and touched his forehead to hers. “Oh, I won’t be so cool and I’ll be far from composed when it’s you having our child, rest assured. And it’s a façade. Inside I am as wobbly as a frumenty. What is it?” he asked when she pulled out of his arms, a knot of pain between her brows.

  “When your uncle told me it was Miranda having a baby, I was never more shocked,” she said, ignoring the restriction in her throat at his gentle pronouncement.

  She had so wanted to tell him she had miscarried their baby in Paris, but she could not say for certain that the child was his because just before he had shot himself in the head her violent husband, George Jamison-Lewis, a doyen of Polite Society and nephew of a duke, had raped her, as he had done throughout their six year marriage. And so she had not mourned the loss of yet another unformed child as she had not mourned the time she had fallen pregnant by her husband only to terminate the pregnancy as quickly as possible; she would not bring into the world the offspring of such a violent and abusive man. It had been the opinion of the attending Parisian physician that this miscarriage had left her barren. And so the cries of a woman in childbirth coming from the other side of the bedchamber door only served to underscore the heartbreaking reality that she would never be able to have Alec�
�s children. As the Duke of Cleveley had rightly pointed out, gently but no less bluntly, if there was no hope of her providing the Marquess Halsey with a son and heir then she did not have the right to give him false hope by marrying him.

  “There’s a veritable crowd gathered on the other side of that door,” she added brightly, forcing herself from falling into a pit of despair and pointing to the entrance door where the mountainous footman stood guard in the passageway. “Barr has given up on trying to get them to disperse. Footmen are now bringing old ladies chairs and cups of tea and gentlemen tankards of ale. Of course your uncle remains master of ceremonies. He and his walking stick are in charge and he is enjoying himself hugely! I remarked that wielding such control must surely conflict with his Republican principles to which he replied begone witch! And so here I am—having run the gauntlet of the kitchen staff—scullery maids, cook and a startled pot-scrubber, who has possibly never seen a lady in a kitchen before or scuttling up the servant stairs.” She smiled with self-satisfaction. “And as I’ve never been in a lodging house kitchen, that makes two of us. Such a novel experience!” When Alec laughed she smiled. “Your irascible republican relative has also become fast friends with Bear Brown—”

  “Bear Brown?”

  “You can’t have failed to notice the bear-sized footman in the doorway?” she replied rhetorically. “Bear because he is the size of a bear and Brown because that’s his surname. Quaint. He’s been in Cleveley’s household since I can remember. If memory serves me correctly, the Duke rescued him from a travelling circus when he was but a child, but a very oversized child.”

  “I hope Bear Brown told my uncle so. It may soften his retractable opinion of the Duke.”

  “Does it soften yours?” she asked too quickly and instantly bit down on her lower lip, blushing at her impetuousness.

  “Selina… Dearheart…”

  A frightful wail, much louder than previous cries of painful childbirth exertion made them both look to the bedchamber door in expectation, but when the door remained firmly closed and there was a period of quiet with only the sound of voices in conversation, Selina blurted out,

  “It’s not Talgarth’s!”

  “I know that.”

  “Oh? Then you know who the father is?”

  “I believe I may but I am not at liberty to say. Miranda must tell us that herself.”

  “Miranda? So you have met her?”

  Alec grinned at her obvious note of feminine jealousy and the unfathomable fact that even beautiful women suffered from uncertainty. He gently pulled her into his embrace. “I do love you, despite your foolishness. No. I have not met Mrs. Bourdon. That delight still awaits me. Tell me about your journey from Philip St. Norton. Did everyone behave as they ought, or were you sorely tried by the company and the carriage ride?”

  “Both, and I was sorely tried because everyone behaved as they ought.”

  Alec drew her to sit in the windowseat with him, her hand in his, and she told him about the journey to Bath; he at pains to look grave and be sympathetic of her loathing for cavorting about the countryside in a carriage.

  “Did you reunite Talgarth and Nico?”

  “If you mean did I set my brother down in Milsom Street before coming here? No. I ordered him to remain in the drawing room downstairs to keep an eye on Sophie while Evans dealt with bags, rooms, and a lodging house whose servants seem incapable of functioning because upstairs a woman is in labor! I need him here until Sophie can be returned to her mother. Aside from Evans, Tal is the only one capable of keeping that child occupied. And he does so with such languid ease that it makes me feel completely ineffectual. I don’t see what there is to laugh at in that!” she said squeezing his hand a little too tightly when he chuckled. “Five minutes cooped up with an over-active child is five minutes too long in my reckoning book; and I had two hours of her restlessness and chatter. If I did not know her for human, I would say she is a mechanical clock fashioned as a doll with her springs wound so tight she ticks along at time and a half!” She shook her fair red hair at his cluck of sympathy, saying on a sigh, “So very different to her mother who is the most biddable, sweet creature living.”

  “Selina, there is something I need to tell you about Sophie…”

  “My lady! The baby! She’s been snatched away by a-a monster.”

  Alec and Selina were instantly up off the windowseat, Selina glancing at the bedchamber door, but as that remained closed, the moans, cries and words of encouragement ongoing, she turned to the servant door where Evans swayed on the threshold as if glued to the floorboards, one thin hand twisted up in her plain linen petticoats, the other holding fast to the door jab; her face white and fearful.

  “Evans? Monster? Don’t be absurd!” Selina said dismissively, and more harshly than she intended because she was tired and the cries from the bedchamber were starting to set her teeth on edge. “As you can hear for yourself, the baby is yet to be born. The journey has worn you thin. I shall come and keep Mr. Vesey company and you will lie down for a few moments and feel better directly.”

  “No! No! No, my lady! Not that baby. Miss Sophie! Miss Sophie’s been snatched away by a pockfretten devil.”

  “Snatched? What can you mean, Mary?” Selina demanded, alarmed. “Who snatched her? Where is she?”

  Evans stared at Selina, stricken. “I thought Mr. Vesey was keeping watch over her…”

  “He’s in the drawing room where I left him, isn’t he?” Selina asked, alarmed.

  Evans nodded. “Yes, my lady. Asleep.”

  “How like Tal!” Selina stated, annoyed. “Sophie probably wandered off to find someone else to play with. I’m sure the hotel servants will find her—”

  “Oh no, my lady,” Evans replied with uncharacteristic firmness. “They won’t be able to do that.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “Because she has been taken.”

  “First I am told by a Miss Musgrave there is a ghost in this establishment and now, you, Evans, the most sensible woman I have ever known, declare there is a monster or is he a devil? Which is it? Perhaps this creature is both? Poor Mr. Barr. Soon he will have no clientele to bow and scrape to!”

  Evans burst into tears and covered her face.

  “Don’t be so harsh. She’s had a shock,” Alec murmured at Selina’s ear, which sent color flooding into her cheeks because he had misinterpreted her cajolery for criticism, and after all, Evans was her lady’s maid.

  “Come in, Evans,” Alec said calmly. “Mrs. Jamison-Lewis was just seeing to tea and you will tell me in your own good time what happened to Miss Sophie.”

  He had picked up on the maid’s use of the word pockfretten and his pulse slowed for he had a fair notion who had taken the little girl, but what he needed to ascertain was the manner in which she had been taken; though he was confident his intuition would not fail him.

  Thus he was calmer than Selina would have supposed at Evan’s pronouncement. And so when he beckoned her lady’s maid forward as if nothing was untoward and expected her to get the tea, Selina just stood there, mouth agape. She could not believe what he was asking of her: to fetch tea from the kitchens as if she was a menial. First he insulted her as to how to conduct herself with her own maid and then he expected her to play housekeeper! Oh, how she wished the noise of childbirth in the next room would cease. Yet, when Alec smiled at her, and she looked into his blue eyes, she could not refuse him, and swept out of the room, stomping down the stairs in her silk mules, cursing handsome men in general, one in particular, and muttering to herself that the noise, heat and smells of a kitchen were preferable to listening to the screams of pain of a woman giving birth. At least she would be spared such a fate, she thought with satisfaction. But satisfaction turned to self-pity and misery soon followed.

  Alec had Evans sit on a wingchair and pressed his clean linen handkerchief into her stiff hands.

  “Thank you, my lord.”

  “Tell me what happened to Sophie and then I w
ill be able to help.”

  “Shouldn’t… Shouldn’t someone go after him, my lord? Find out where’s he’s taken her?”

  “Yes. We will do that. But first tell me what happened.”

  Evans nodded, feeling less apprehensive at Alec’s quiet but firm tone.

  “Yes, my lord. I was away from the room for just on a quarter of an hour,” she explained, twisting the handkerchief between her fingers. “One of the chambermaids had offered to fetch a fresh chemise, gown, and stockings, and if she was able, a woolen cloak, for Miss Sophie; her sister has a little girl the same age and is a maid in a house one street across. And so I left the little one… I left her… Apologies, my lord, I am… The shock of seeing that man in her company…”

  “You said he is pockfretten. Is that why you called him a monster? Because his face is ravaged with smallpox scars?”

  Evans nodded. She looked up at Alec with remorse. “I should not have called him a monster or a devil. That was uncharitable. But he is a frightening sight.”

  “Perhaps you were shocked more by his appearance than seeing Sophie in his company…?”

  Evans pondered this a moment and her eyes widened, and she was even more repentant. “Yes… Yes! That is true, my lord. For when I came into the drawing room Miss Sophie and he were seated on the carpet before the fireplace chattering away together in French as if it was the most natural thing in the world!” She shuddered. “He is most hideously scarred that it is a wonder a grown person would talk to him, least of all a little girl.”

  “Molyneux!” Selina declared from the doorway. At the bottom of the stairs she had encountered a maidservant, ordered her to fetch tea and fled back up to the room, intent on not missing a word of Alec’s interrogation of her lady’s maid. “Molyneux has Sophie! It has to be him because who else has—”

  “Yes, Robert Molyneux, the Duke of Cleveley’s valet. Thank you, Mrs. Jamison-Lewis,” Alec interrupted her with a knowing wink and then turned to Evans and said, “That Sophie was prattling on with Molyneux, and they were easy in each other’s company, would suggest she was not at all frightened of him, would you not agree?”