Mistress of My Fate

by Hallie Rubenhold

  At that moment, instinct caused me to fold my hands over my belly, as if to cradle what lay inside. A strange thing happened as I did it; my heart became like a flower unfolding, blooming with a pride and happiness in the midst of this terrible winter. It was as if I could feel Allenham inside me. I shut my eyes against the tears that wished to come.

  “Should you like to join us,” continued Miss Bradley, oblivious to the wanderings of my head, “there is but one condition.” She hesitated. “I shall tell you now that to keep a child in a house such as this is a folly. As might any wife, you are likely to find yourself breeding often, and were we to maintain all the children of our liaisons, we should have hardly enough bread for our table.” She laughed merrily. “And… gentlemen do not like the sound of squawking babes… as it calls to mind too much of their homes.” She turned to me. “You should rid yourself of this burden, Miss Lightfoot… if you wish to be among us.”

  “No,” I whispered. “I shall not be among you, Miss Bradley.”

  I admit it was a rather thoughtless thing to say to someone whose hand had been extended in charity. But, as I have made plain, I was, for my part, beyond politeness. I lived merely in hope that I should leave this coven of sirens on Mount Street and go again to Arlington Street and there find Allenham, it all having been a terrible error.

  My counsellor shifted uncomfortably, having undoubtedly taken offence at my decision, and the manner in which I put it to her.

  “That, madam, is of your choosing.” She sniffed. “I must ask you then, for your own sake, and because neither I nor my sister are cruel by nature, if you do not have some family to go to? Some family who would not turn you out in your condition?”

  I thought to say to her that I did not intend to repair to the house of “some family,” for my beloved was sure to be found and to forgive me for any wrongs when he knew I carried his child, but some molecule of common sense, most rare in the addled brain of a seventeen-year-old girl, prevented me. Perhaps I feared she would laugh at me, or perhaps somewhere within me lay a certain stubborn determination, that same instinct which in my greatest peril had carried me from Melmouth to Herberton.

  I hung my head and, in exasperation, moved it from side to side. Suddenly, it seemed as if something had come loose within it. There rattled a thought I had not before considered: my mother.

  You cannot blame me for not thinking of her before this time. My entire life prior to October had been spent believing I had none. While knowing this gave me periods of sadness when I was a child, I eventually came to accept the tragedy of my circumstances and pined no more. When at last my father revealed himself and the name of my mother to me, I was in the deepest shock and distress. I hardly had any time to consider the implications of his words. In fact, in the intervening period she and her compromised circumstances in life had entered my preoccupied mind only fleetingly. It was not until that very moment that I had ever considered seeking her. After all, she was, as my hostesses might have put it, “upon the town,” one of those frail creatures to whom men fall prey. I attempted to shake from my head the understanding which then entered it: that gentlemen such as my father visited light girls such as these, such as Miss Bradley and her sister. I could not believe it. The world no longer made sense to me.

  “I have a mother…” I began. “I know nothing of her, but that she made her living as you do…”

  Miss Bradley regarded me, her face now quite intrigued. At that moment, I looked up to see Mrs. Anderson at the open door, and a servant bearing a small pot of tea.

  “I believe her name is Mrs. Kennedy, Mrs. Kitty Kennedy.”

  “Kitty Kennedy?” Mrs. Anderson echoed. She exchanged looks with her sister.

  “The Mrs. Kennedy?” enquired Miss Bradley with a squint.

  “I do not know,” I replied, rather surprised at their response. “My father said only that she was quite well known in her time… a beauty.”

  “Jerusalem!” exclaimed Miss Bradley. “Here sits the daughter of Mrs. Kennedy—”

  “And we might never have known it!” finished her sister. “Oh my dear, Mrs. Kennedy was celebrated in her day, long before we arrived upon the town. It has been some many years since I have heard anything of her. I know only that she retired from the life and made good. Why, I believe she married. She last lived with Mr. John St. John on Park Street. You might go there and enquire after her.”

  The dish of steaming tea, smelling redolent of hot ginger, was handed to me by the maid.

  “For your morning sickness,” explained Miss Bradley. Indeed it now seemed that Mrs. Anderson was aware of my condition, for she had been listening just beyond the door as her sister invited me to join their household.

  I must own, I felt most confused at this. Part of me pulled one way and part another, for the understanding that I had a mother and that she might be so near warmed me at a time when I felt most exposed, but Allenham… it was he I wished to see, it was to him I wished to fly, and all else paled beside this urgent need.

  “I do not think that will be necessary,” said I, straightening my back, “for I intend to call at the house of my fiancé once more today and I am certain he will be home to receive me on this occasion.”

  Mrs. Anderson wore a doubtful expression, as did Miss Bradley.

  “Miss Lightfoot,” said the elder of the two, “do as you will, but pay heed to our advice. Call upon Mr. St. John on Park Street, and afterwards, if you fail to locate Mrs. Kennedy, may I invite you to join our small but happy household of women at any time.”

  I nodded to Mrs. Anderson, for although that which she proposed offended my sensibilities greatly, it was not intended as an insult. I knew a gesture of kindness when it was laid before me.

  And with that, I once more gathered my bundle and set out for Arlington Street.

  Chapter 21

  My erstwhile hostesses were correct, of course. That which I found at Arlington Street did not lift my spirits. Allenham’s butler greeted me in much the same way as he had the time before, and we repeated, almost to the word, the scene that had transpired the previous day. His lordship was not at home and he knew not when he was to return. Oh reader, the tears spilled down my cheeks in rivers at my crushed attempt! So distressed was I that, much to my dishonour and shame, I resorted to begging.

  “Pray, sir,” I cried, “have pity upon me, for I have no means by which to return to my home at Herberton. I am abandoned here with no more than two pennies in my purse. I have no friends. I am certain that if his lordship knew, he should ensure my safe passage back to Orchard Cottage. Pray, sir…” I pleaded.

  His lordship’s servant’s face remained as blank as ever, and how could I fault him? London is bursting with fraudsters. Even I had seen my father’s butler at the house in Berkeley Square turn away many who offered more compelling stories than that which I brought to Allenham’s doorstep.

  “Miss, I care not to dally with beggars and should you return I shall be forced to call the magistrate,” he said grandly before fairly slamming the door upon me.

  What mortification that caused me! How debased I had become, even in the eyes of servants. Oh, my situation was dire indeed, thought I, as I choked on my sobs. I was coming to believe Allenham’s butler; perhaps he did speak the truth in stating that my beloved had been called away. But why and for what purpose I could not begin to comprehend. Had there been some dreadful occurrence of which I knew nothing? Was there some trouble? Was this to do with Lady Catherine or Lord Stavourley? Whatever the reason, I simply could not believe that my devoted Allenham would leave me thus, with no word of his whereabouts or anticipated return, had these been ordinary circumstances.

  My plans now dashed a second time, I recognized that I could not very well wander the streets. It was then that I decided I should do as Mrs. Anderson and Miss Bradley suggested and rap upon the door of Mr. St. John. I had no other recourse.

  As I stanched my tears upon my well-worn handkerchief and trod the steps back from
St. James’s to Park Street, I was overcome by a sense that my life, which for a short time I believed to be my own, was in fact not. Indeed, there seemed to be some sort of mechanism at work, something that pushed me this way and that, but towards what end I could not even guess. I found this vastly troubling, and the insights I was gaining too large for my heart and mind to fathom. I had no sense of what to expect from a meeting with my mother. Apart from Lady Stavourley’s cold ministrations, I had thin experience of the affection that is meant to exist between a woman and a child in her care. I wondered what my mother would think of me. I wondered if she would have any love in her heart for an infant she had sent away so many years before. Indeed, had the situation been different, I would have been overjoyed at the prospect of locating my true mother, though, in truth, if the situation had been different, it is unlikely I would have sought her out in the first place! As you well know, until recent events, I had not been in the habit of associating with women of pleasure.

  When I arrived at Park Street, I enquired as to the address of Mr. John St. John and was directed to the door of a very handsome house, not quite so large as my father’s in Berkeley Square, but of a substantial width and made of Portland stone. I do confess that after my humiliating encounter with Allenham’s butler, I was quite hesitant to try the knocker for fear of the reception I might meet. When the door was opened, I asked in a timid voice if Mr. John St. John was at home to callers. His butler examined my appearance and, seeing that I wore fur and carried myself in a manner befitting a gentlewoman, did not hesitate to show me into the drawing room.

  It took all my courage to remain composed. As I sat in the shadowy room, I anticipated that the door could fly open at any moment and there would stand the mysterious figure of the woman who had ushered me into this world. But this was not what happened. Instead, after a short while, the tall, angular figure of a gentleman stepped over the threshold and stopped quite suddenly, almost too startled to greet me. His eyes fixed to me like tacks, his mouth parted.

  “Miss… Miss Lightfoot,” he stammered, “how… how may I be of assistance to you? Please, please, do sit down,” he added as he felt uneasily for the chair behind him.

  “Sir,” I began anxiously, “if you will forgive my uninvited visit, I have been informed by some friends that I should meet with Mrs. Kennedy at this address.” I swallowed.

  St. John’s eyes remained upon me.

  “I regret to say that your friends have been misinformed,” he stated. “Mrs. Byram, as she was known, has not lived here for some time. She died nearly ten years ago of the consumption.”

  Something within my stomach hardened as he spoke those words. My hope of meeting my mother had died stillborn, hardly hours after its inception. It took me a moment to digest this news, and the unexpected sadness that accompanied it. I sat in silence, St. John opposite me, like two mourners at a funeral.

  “Her loss is felt greatly,” he said after a time, his attention creeping towards a portrait which hung above the mantel.

  Although half cast in shadow, I knew whose face must lie beneath it. She sat against a billowing backdrop of red drapery, with her hair piled upon her head in the fashion of twenty years earlier. I studied the image. It was one of those dramatic pictures painted with a flourish by Mr. Reynolds, but I could see very little of the subject’s expression or features.

  “What… what has brought you to look for her?” asked St. John, observing me take in the portrait. His question held an almost rhetorical tone, as if he had already formulated the answer and was merely testing it.

  I hesitated, my gaze now transfixed by the picture of my mother. “I have been led to believe that I am… her daughter.”

  I regarded him, and he me.

  “Of that, I am most certain,” he stated. “I knew it from the moment I first set eyes upon you. You are a picture of her in miniature.” A smile flashed across his mouth, as quick as lightning. His brow trembled. “But tell me, who is your father? Lord Robert Spencer? That devil Byram? Carlisle? Or Stavourley?” I watched his hands tighten around the gilt-edged arms of his seat. “Or me?”

  “I am the daughter of Lord Stavourley,” I replied, an imperious hint of Lady Catherine’s voice within my own. “I… I am the one Mrs. Byram gave up when she married.”

  “Ah yes!” St. John exclaimed with apparent relief, his taut face now softening. “You are the girl Stavourley took with him to raise in his nursery. Mrs. Byram pined for you on occasion… but it was to be a clean break, you see. It had to be so. Mr. Byram would not have you in his house after he married her, for you would have reminded him too much of his wife’s disreputable past. He wished to make an honest woman of her,” St. John snorted.

  So the story my father had told me had been the entire truth of the matter. I looked again at the portrait.

  “Robert Byram was the sort of man who wished to make his own fortune in life. When he married your mother, one might have thought he had reformed himself of his adventuring. He had played a few good hands at the table and made some prudent investments, and he wished to settle with a wife and a house in Marylebone. That lasted six years. He was in the Fleet prison by the end of it and Mrs. Byram was left without any means.” He looked at me, disquiet in his eye. “She was ill; dropsical at first and then the coughing fits began and she grew wasted and thin. She applied to me for assistance and I took her in. I would not leave her to rot with Byram in the liberty of the Fleet. I nursed her until she died, in my own house.”

  True love, when it fills the features of one under its power, is most apparent to the naked eye. It warbles in the voice; it causes a tremor in the face and a glow in the eyes. It became obvious to me that St. John was a man possessed by it still, by love, and regret, for I heard between the lines of his story that he wished it had been within his power to have married my mother and saved her from the miseries visited upon her by Byram.

  “And pray tell me,” St. John continued, his voice now lively and intrigued, “however did you arrive here? Does Lord Stavourley know you have come?”

  I shook my head. As I did, I felt another lie form within my mouth. I knew I must spit it out.

  “Please, sir,” I began, “I fear I am in a great deal of trouble. Lady Stavourley… she has turned me out.”

  St. John’s eyes widened, though with amusement or scandal, I could not say. His expression begged me to continue.

  It is a difficult thing, to hold the gaze of the recipient of a falsehood, and so mine wandered all about the room as I spoke.

  “For many years she believed me to be the daughter of Lord Stavourley’s brother, who died at sea. Until just these few days gone, she knew me as her niece… but…” I paused, not knowing where my tale was to lead me. “But… there was some scandal below stairs… some story was put about of my true parentage…” Much to my surprise, the tears that had begun to form came entirely of their own accord and soon I was overcome with weeping.

  “And what of Stavourley, what of your father in all this? Surely he would not turn his daughter out of his home?”

  I recognized that I was a terrible liar. I was saved only by my tears and my inability to speak further on the matter.

  “Oh sir… I flew…” were the only words I could manage. It was not entirely untrue, was it?

  My patient host could see that my face was now awash with agony. I pressed my rag of a handkerchief to my eyes and attempted to catch my breath.

  “I am afraid, sir, it was a most imprudent decision…” I hiccuped “… for I have no means and no friends. What little I possessed, a pearl necklace and eardrops, I was robbed of, right off the mail.”

  “And you came here, to London, because you wished to find your true mamma.” He spoke in a sort of low purring.

  “Nmmmm,” I moaned in agreement, “and now you tell me she is no more… and I… I…” I fell into sorrows once more.

  To this day, I am sceptical as to whether St. John believed all of my tale. When I think back upon it
, to one more experienced in life, my fibs would have seemed as flaw-ridden and transparent as a sheet of glass.

  “There, there, dear poppet,” he said, obviously quite unaccustomed to comforting young ladies in distress, “what sort of brute would I be were I to turn a helpless, motherless creature such as yourself loose on to the streets? You are my dear Kitty’s own flesh and blood and she would roll over in her blessed grave were I to inflict such a cruelty upon you.”

  I do believe St. John was truly in shock, but I sensed that his disbelief was more on account of his sudden good fortune, rather than at my appearance alone, for how often do comely young girls at the bloom of womanhood arrive upon the step of a roué in his forty-fourth year?

  “Why, never in my life did I think I would live to see this day!” he exclaimed, his gratitude thinly veiled. “My dear, dear girl, you must make your home with me, for as long as you see fit… I positively insist on it…” he commanded. “You are my Kitty’s daughter, and that association demands that I protect you as I did her. I shall be devoted to serving you, Miss Lightfoot. Your every need and whim shall become my business. You may depend upon it.”

  After such a gallant speech, I might well have believed him, had I not spied a certain glint in his eye which reminded me too much of that other gentleman into whose care I naively went: Mr. Fortune. I do not doubt that St. John meant what he promised, but I also understood that in this contract there would be clauses of which I was not yet aware. It is always the way with gentlemen such as these. I did not like this proposition one bit, and vowed to myself to quit this place as soon as I had received word of Allenham and his whereabouts. Until that hour arrived, I would accept what hospitality my host offered me, as cautiously as Persephone partook of Pluto’s company.