Lady Sarah's Redemption

by Beverley Eikli

  “My father would never fight a duel over a woman.” Caro’s voice was full of scorn. “He is far too principled to commit murder over something so … unimportant.”

  “Yet not too principled to fight a duel over something else.” This time it was Sarah’s turn to sound scornful.

  “Obviously you care nothing for the people to whom Papa has devoted his parliamentary career championing,” said Caro through gritted teeth as she reached for her book. “You’re lucky you’re not a man, Miss Morecroft. It was an argument just like this that Papa had once in the House of Commons. Lord Miles challenged Papa to the duel right there and then.”

  One minute Sarah was directing an indulgent, slightly mocking smile at Caro, the next she was wincing at the sudden roar in her ears. For a moment she truly thought she was going to faint. She sat heavily upon the bed.

  Caro didn’t notice. She was too busy thumbing the pages of her book with unusual energy, a snarl upon her face. “Narrow-minded bigot! That’s what Papa called him, and said it demeaned him to have to answer his challenge.”

  Blinking rapidly to clear her head, Sarah murmured, “I never heard about it.” She gazed at the brushes and combs lined up on the dressing table.

  Her own father! Fighting a duel with Mr Hawthorne. She tried to imagine it. Her red-faced, apoplectic father, trembling with the passion of his convictions, seeing nothing but a dangerous radical as he stared down his opponent.

  No doubt Mr Hawthorne coolly stood his ground. Compared with her father he was a very controlled man.

  “It was lucky they both didn’t have to resign from Parliament,” said Caro, “because of course he thought it was ridiculous that honour decreed he must fight.”

  “What happened?”

  “Papa shot wide and Lord Miles missed. Well, he grazed Papa’s shoulder but it was only a flesh wound.” Caro shuddered. “Why drive a man to murder for pride?” She hugged her book to her chest, rolled over and presented Sarah with her back.

  Sarah did not leave, as Caro had clearly indicated was her desire. Instead, she rose and went to the window.

  “It’s called passion,” she murmured, drawing aside the curtain to look into the darkness. “Sixteen-year-old girls are not supposed to know about such dangerous emotions.”

  Her voice trailed away as she contemplated if she had ever felt passion.

  “I’ll never fall victim to my passions,” mumbled Caro.

  Sarah quirked an eyebrow at the huddled bedclothes then returned her gaze to the darkness beyond the gardens. Not even a sliver of moon touched the landscape with light. “Really?” Her tone was droll. She sighed. Such talk made her restless. She wanted to feel desire but it was as if in this household love, desire, passion … had destroyed the trust of a generation. Passion at Larchfield was the handmaiden of sin and vice. If Caro were lucky enough to experience the same spark of feeling which Sarah found so necessary to sustain her enthusiasm for life, she’d be forced to extinguish it long before it took root and blossomed.

  “Do you not wish to fall in love, Caro?” she asked. “Is it not the desire of your aunt and father that you marry a good man? That you marry for love?”

  Caro said nothing.

  Sarah sighed again, the girl’s pubescent virtue suddenly irritating her. Caro would be dried up by nineteen.

  She turned back to the window. “Do you not long for the embrace of the man whom you admire beyond all others? The caress of his hand upon your cheek…?” Her voice dropped to a whisper as she added, “The sweet, gentle touch of his lips upon yours.”

  Turning at the loud thud of the book thrown forcefully upon the floor Sarah realised she’d gone too far.

  It was time to apologise and take herself off to bed before she reversed all the gains she’d made with her difficult, but increasingly endearing charge.

  Chapter Five

  As Roland turned into the gallery, he was arrested by the odd sight of his sister-in-law on her toes upon the window seat, peering through the mullioned windows.

  She swung round, red-faced — with anger not embarrassment — at the sound of his footstep. “If Harriet’s new dress is ruined I want Miss Morecroft dismissed upon the spot.”

  Roland put out his hand to help Cecily to the ground. “I wonder if their expedition will be as successful as last time?” His tone was mild. “Harriet and August tell me they captured a dozen inmates for their new worm farm.”

  Cecily glared at him. “I do not share your amusement, Roland. Miss Morecroft is impulsive and wayward and as such, highly unsatisfactory.”

  Unsatisfactory? With an effort Roland kept his expression neutral as an image of Miss Morecroft’s lovely face, eyes dancing with merriment, mouth trembling with barely suppressed laughter, appeared before him.

  Steeling himself against the extraordinary and dangerous yearning to possess that which he knew could only bring heartache, he asked through gritted teeth, “How could I refuse Godby’s wife?”

  Cecily stamped her foot. “What Godby did to you, not to mention to his men in battle can never be forgiven. His daughter is cut from the same cloth, Roland. Do you see the way she courts attention? It’s a good thing Cosmo’s returning to his own home-”

  “Miss Morecroft may not be as docile as her mother led us to believe, but she is capable and the girls are fond of her.”

  Cecily glanced over Roland’s shoulder at Venetia’s portrait and her eyes narrowed. “Surely you are not suggesting Caro model herself on Venetia!”

  Roland turned away from the venom in her eyes, even though he acknowledged the many good reasons Cecily had to despise his late wife. “I am suggesting nothing of the sort.” Though his response was mild he could feel the blood pumping through his veins, under great pressure. Normally he avoided Venetia’s name, but now he felt it was pertinent.

  Striving to keep his growing anger in check, he went on, “However Venetia was her mother. I believe Caro tries too hard to be everything Venetia was not.”

  “Of course Caro must endeavour to be everything Venetia was not!” Cecily flared. “And if you think I am responsible for the whispers, you are wrong.”

  Roland looked at her steadily. Her face was red, knots of anger protruding from her scrawny neck. Anger had been his first impulse, too. Now he merely felt sorry for Cecily. How cruel of his brother to have made no secret of his enduring love for Venetia, while happy to take Cecily’s money. Hector and Venetia should have married. They’d have made each other miserable very quickly instead of drawing the rest of them into it … the survivors who had to keep living with the memories.

  “I have always admired your discretion, Cecily. It is the servants who are not so reliable.” He seated himself on the window seat and beckoned to his ugly, red-faced, trembling sister-in-law who was not a bad woman by nature, but who had never got over being so ill-used. He sympathised. It was hard to live with the betrayal of the only person one has ever loved. How much worse, though, to be a woman, seeing oneself age with little, if any, prospect of love on the horizon to ameliorate the damage of the past.

  She sat, and he took Cecily’s clasped hands between his. “I have long suspected that Caro has been aware of the whispers.”

  Cecily jerked her head up. “You must refute them. Deny everything!”

  With a sigh, Roland dropped her hands, and rose. Changing the subject, he said, “You will, of course, launch Caro next season. I trust it’s not an imposition for I realize I am sometimes guilty of taking your good offices for granted. Perhaps you might enjoy a little enforced gaiety.” He managed a smile.

  Cecily was in no mood to respond with similar good humour. “I consider it a duty I am happy to discharge, Roland,” she said through pursed lips. “Hardly a pleasure! Ugly old women like me are fools if they deck themselves out in frills and furbelows to seek out pleasure.”

  “Good,” said Roland, ignoring her last remark. “In the meantime I thought a little practice in advance of Caro’s come-out would be in order. I plan
to hold a small ball at Larchfield for Caro’s seventeenth birthday next month. Just twenty or so people from the neighbourhood. Caro will, of course, hate the idea but I think Miss Morecroft might be just the person to bring her round.”

  Seeing her stiffen, he tried a final approach. “Come now, Cecily,” he cajoled. “With your deft touches and skill at organization the evening is sure to be a success.”

  * * *

  “It’ll be a disaster!” wailed Caro, twisting her handkerchief around her fingers and looking at Sarah as if for corroboration.

  Unmoved, Sarah bent over Harriet’s shoulder to correct her French translation. Caro, opposite her, gripped the back of Augusta’s chair as she fixed Sarah with a tragic look.

  “The evening will be a disaster, or you will be?” Sarah enquired, gently, not looking up.

  With a huff Caro began pacing around the table. “Both,” she said, finally. “I will be a disaster and so bring great shame and embarrassment to Papa.”

  “Oh, so you do recognize the correlation,” said Sarah, as if discussing a lesson in logic. “I’m glad, Caro. It’s time you learned that how you deport yourself reflects upon those who reared you. If you behave charmingly your father’s guests will go home saying, ‘How fortunate Mr Hawthorne is to have a daughter with such pleasing manners. What a credit she is to him’.”

  Caro was not such a fool she could not recognize the sarcasm in her governess’s tone. But when Sarah looked up she was taken aback by the anger in the young girl’s eyes.

  “You understand nothing!” Caro hissed. She thrust herself across the table to glare at her governess. Harriet and Augusta looked up in alarm. “No, nothing!”

  Sarah eyed her with concern. “Calm yourself, Caro,” she soothed. She did not fancy another hysterical outburst with consequences worse than last time.

  “Do you think I’m insensible to every nuance of my voice?” demanded Caro. “Or that I am not afraid every time I smile that I might be creating the wrong impression? If I smile ‘charmingly’ as you put it, how is that different to the enticing way my mother smiled? She used her ‘pretty manners’ and enhanced her beauty to enslave men. Do you think I wish to be called a harlot, too?”

  Sarah did not interrupt. Her heart went out to the girl.

  “This birthday ball of mine-” Caro put a hand to her temple and closed her eyes briefly. “I shall feel like an-an animal in the zoo. Everyone will be watching me, studying me, making comparisons. They won’t come with the object of helping Mr Hawthorne celebrate his daughter’s birthday. They’ll be there to see if his daughter is as beautiful as her mother, as flirtatious as her mother, as gay and lively and … and likely to be as immoral as her mother.”

  She sank down upon the paint-chipped nursery chair and covered her face with her hands. Sarah stifled the urge to go to her. A brisker approach, she decided, was safer.

  “You’ve made some interesting observations, Caro, and with your permission I should like to conduct an experiment.” She smiled from across the table, her tone matter-of-fact. “I have an aptitude for charades and amateur theatricals, I am told, which will enable me to show you how to create any impression you want.”

  Caro looked at Sarah as if she were speaking nonsense.

  “But the experiment is to be conducted in the evening, when your aunt and father are out visiting. I believe they are to play cards with Colonel Doncaster and his wife tomorrow night?”

  “What do you want me to do?” Caro sounded suspicious.

  “Oh, you don’t have to do anything, except observe and” - Sarah crinkled her brow - “supply me with one of your mother’s old dresses.” She gave a satisfied smile at Caro’s look of horror. “One of her most alluring.”

  Despite Caro’s apparent reluctance, the girl’s curiosity clearly overrode her aversion to looking through the scandalous, diaphanous wisps of fabric that had once clothed her mother. A sense of devilry obviously made her select the most scandalous, diaphanous of them all.

  Sarah was still wearing her own evening gown when Caro came to her tiny bedchamber while Ellen put the girls to bed. The garment had been bequeathed to her by Mrs Hawthorne but Sarah had transformed it into an eye-catching sheath of peony-red gros de Naples with three rows of gold trimming around the hem. She’d noticed Mrs Hawthorne’s gimlet eye stray towards the creation throughout the evening. Mr Hawthorne’s ill-concealed admiration had, however, been more gratifying, even though he’d addressed her with the same studied coolness.

  “Wait for me in the drawing room,” instructed Sarah, relieving Caro of her mother’s evening gown.

  “Why can’t we go down together?”

  “Because I am the one issuing instructions and it’s my desire that you take a seat by the fire and pretend you are simply a guest. I shall come down in one guise, take my seat at the piano, and pretend to entertain my audience. Remember, you are merely to observe. I shall then leave, and return, as another person-”

  “You mean my mother.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Perhaps I will pretend I am Lady Venetia, or perhaps I will pretend I am Caro who is pretending to be her mother. You will know, believe me. Just do as I say, Caro.”

  She leapt into action the moment Caro had closed the door. Out of her trunk she pulled the real Sarah Morecroft’s most hideous garment and, with satisfaction, struggled into the drab grey merino gown with its ill-made trimmings. She then rearranged her hair to fall in two unflattering loops over the sides of her face and topped it with a poorly sewn toque adorned with a sadly drooping feather.

  Regarding herself with satisfaction she proceeded down the stairs. At the door to the drawing room she turned her attention to her posture. With shoulders slumped, neck thrust out, eyes darting suspiciously from side to side, she made her way to the piano.

  Executing a clumsy, self conscious curtsy as if she were about to perform before a small audience, Sarah’s voice was a flat monotone as she muttered in Caro’s general direction, “I shall play Hey, Betty Martin”. Placing the music onto the stand, she dropped ungracefully onto the piano seat and began to play, haltingly. The music’s lack of feeling was matched by Sarah’s unemotional rendering of the words.

  Once Caro’s dutiful clapping at the end of the piece had died away, Sarah rose. Staring over Caro’s shoulder into the middle distance, she collected the music sheets, shuffled them nervously, then muttered an incoherent thank-you before exiting the room.

  She took the stairs two at a time. A few minutes would be needed to transform herself though she did not want to take too long about it.

  “Ellen,” she called in a loud whisper as she passed the nursery, and was glad the girls had obviously gone to sleep so that Ellen was free to assist her.

  The nursery maid’s face was a picture of horror as she stared at the barely decent dress Sarah held out to her.

  “Quickly, help me put it on,” Sarah ordered, as she pulled off the grey merino and stood in only her chemise and short stays.

  “Lordy, what are you doing?” Ellen squeaked. “You’ll lose yer job! That dress don’t belong to you!”

  “The master’s out. This is for Caro’s benefit,” Sarah explained. “I’m showing her the difference confidence and poise can make. And don’t look at me like that. I charged Caro with the task of finding me something suitable of her mother’s, and this is what she selected. Now quickly!”

  The dress fitted like a glove, once Sarah had removed her chemise in order for it to hang properly. Then, on an impulse of pure wickedness, she dashed water from her pewter jug onto the garment and began to smooth it through the folds. Admiring herself in the full-length cheval mirror she had purloined from Caro she was gratified by the seductive effect created as the diaphanous garment clung to her limbs.

  “Dear Lord,” whispered Ellen, stepping back after she had hastily worked Sarah’s hair into an attractive topknot of tumbling curls, “I’m right glad the master’s out. He’d drop dead at the sight of you. Reckon it’s the dress m�
��lady wore the night everything blew up with Sir Richard.”

  “Who is Sir Richard?” Sarah had heard his name before.

  “Another of m’lady’s lovers, only he were the worst.” Ellen looked more scared than eager to impart gossip. “She met her match, alright. He were a true villain. Gave her a pearl necklace wot cost more ’n diamonds so’s she’d run off with him, only she soon came back, she were that scared.”

  “Good Heavens. How many lovers did Caro’s mother have?” Sarah adjusted a curl.

  “Well, there were Mr Hector and of course-” Ellen shot Sarah a quick look, hesitated, then added, “and … Sir Richard. So I s’pose that ain’t too bad.” She bit her lip. “Just don’t let the master see you, for it were the dress m’lady wore when she came back a week later and Mr Hawthorne had to fight Sir Richard.”

  “Mr Hawthorne seems to be in the habit of duelling,” Sarah remarked, her tone dry though her heart beat loudly.

  “Reckon this was the only one. Only lover, I mean. He’s a good shot, the master.”

  “What happened?”

  “He winged Sir Richard. After that, the fellow was exiled for debts.”

  Sarah hurried down the stairs to the large, lovely drawing room where Caro waited patiently. The longer she spent at Larchfield, the more intrigued she became. Poor Caro. Even running a comb through her hair must fill the girl with doubt as to whether she was doing it to court admiration, or simply to get the knots out.

  Well, this was a great lesson in demonstrating the vast middle ground between being a self conscious dormouse and a raging coquette — and it was fun!

  Confidently she threw open the door, boldly meeting Caro’s eyes above her ivory fan. Oh, she knew how to use her eyes to great effect, and she did so now, playing to her young charge as if Caro were the most handsome, gallant gentleman in a room crowded with them.

  “Since you have asked me so charmingly to play for you, sir, how can I refuse?” she asked, inclining her head coquettishly and sweeping Caro a smouldering look from beneath downcast lashes. “Any requests from such a handsome gentleman, will be happily acceded to.”