Mistress of My Fate

by Hallie Rubenhold

  It was following this unsuccessful encounter that I began to grow truly despondent. I simply could not stay where I was, wringing my hands, awaiting responses that I feared might not arrive. What if Allenham were lodged near by? What if he might be preparing to depart tomorrow, or even tonight? Such are the thoughts of the distressed. Reason soon gives way to panic.

  I summoned Lucy to me and directed her to call at every hotel and place of resort in Calais, enquiring for his lordship.

  I saw in her eye some hesitation as she curtseyed, but paid no heed to it. It would have been unseemly for a lady to undertake such an endeavour, traversing the streets and byways of an unknown port, visiting all manner of tavern and lodging in search of a gentleman whom she called her husband. Why, no one would have believed my story. But it was to this act that I feared I would be reduced when my maid returned to me late in the evening, bearing an expression stricken with distress.

  “Oh madam,” she began, her face pursed so as to restrain the tears, “I have called at all the hotels upon the lists and… and…” She began to quiver. “I am afraid I speak no French.”

  Poor dear Lucy. I had been wicked in causing her to suffer so.

  I passed a second night at Dessein’s Hotel having made no further progress in my quest. I rose from my bed and under the moonshine paced and wept as might a madwoman. “What am I to do?” I cried. “What am I to do now?” But I knew very well what I must do.

  The next morning, I dressed, as might a modest but wealthy English wife, in a redingote. I wore no jewels, no ornamentation of any sort. I requested that Lucy accompany me on my foray into these foreign and most daunting streets. And so, having had no response from the correspondence that I had dispatched the day before, I set out on foot in what was my final hope of locating Allenham.

  I had understood from the moment of my arrival in this place that I was no longer in England, for the houses, the churches, the very colour of the stone was of a sort I had not before seen. The manner of dress, the vast number of townsfolk without shoes, or who tripped about in clogs, astonished me. But I had viewed this carnival of oddities from within the privacy of a sedan chair, and now, well now, dear friends, I found myself amongst it, carried within this vast stream of peculiarities and unknown menaces. For all that I had learned of France and all that I had read of its literature and its philosophies, this was not how I had imagined it. The great words of Voltaire and Montesquieu had come from this place of squalidness, where monks walked about in sackcloth and thin mongrel dogs ranged freely. This was the land on which Rousseau had roamed. It was sights such as these that had surrounded him and coloured his views of life.

  Lucy kept so near to me that, on several occasions, I felt her hand brush against mine. I do not know what she had seen and encountered when I had so thoughtlessly sent her off into the night, but whatever it might have been, it had caused her to become powerfully suspicious of this place.

  Carts and carriages, the design of which I had never seen, jostled us. Mules were taken through the streets. Songs were sung that I had never heard before.

  With so many distractions, it proved vastly difficult to locate the first of my intended destinations, the Lyon d’Argent, a hotel only slightly smaller in size than Dessein’s. Upon approaching the place, I was met by the proprietor, to whom I made my enquiry. Having admitted to receiving my letter, he rubbed his head and made his apologies, for to his knowledge, he had not played host to any gentleman known as the Baron Allenham.

  It may come as little surprise to you that I was to encounter this response, or one not dissimilar, upon every further enquiry I made. Sometimes the proprietor would be kind enough to ask for news of my beloved among his guests of rank, of whom there seemed to be a good many. From behind closed doors would emerge liveried footmen instructed to deliver messages to their masters or mistresses, who had been living awkwardly from a handful of rooms as they awaited their passages north. None among these people of quality, or even among the well-to-do merchants, or tradesmen travelling with their families from Paris, had heard the name Allenham.

  Certainly, I urged myself, unwilling to let the last strings of hope slide from me, he would appear at the next door; some person would know him at the French Horn, or if not there then at the Golden Arms; but at each inn I met with doubtful looks and shakes of the head. “Je suis désolé,” was forever the response.

  “Perhaps he resided with some local family of note, for there are many châteaux near to Calais, are there not?” I suggested to one.

  “Madame, were an English gentleman of title to come within sight of Calais, there is but one man who would know of it: Monsieur Dessein,” came the disheartening response.

  When at last that fateful moment arrived, when I had been turned from the Prince of Orange, the final establishment upon my list, without having acquired knowledge of my beloved, I had no choice but to accept the certainty of my failure. This was not a truth I wished to apprehend, but there it lay before me, so hideous that I refused to open my eyes to it. I chose instead to feel and see nothing. I stepped out on to the cobbles, slick with straw and muck, and simply stood. After several moments, Lucy lightly laid her fingers upon my arm.

  “Madam,” she whispered, “what will you do?”

  I could not provide her with an answer. I felt my heart beating steadily within my ribs, my breast rising and falling with the air, but my head, my once determined mind, had ceased to move. My ears took in the sounds of fishermen calling out in their guttural rural French,the scream of gulls, the clack of clogs upon the road. My eyesfilled with shop signs I did not know and faces that looked dark and alien.

  “What am I to do?” I asked beneath my breath. “What… what…” My chest now began to heave and pant.

  I called out to a man in a blue woollen coat, wearing a tricolore cockade in his hat. He seemed to me to be some town authority.

  “Monsieur,” I breathed in desperation. “Monsieur, I am searching for an English gentleman, my husband… my husband, the Baron Allenham… he was here and I cannot find him.”

  Although I addressed him in his own language, he recoiled from me and looked at Lucy, who bore a frightened expression.

  “I am afraid I cannot help you, madame, but you may take your complaint to the police or the Governor,” he replied, touching his hat and backing away.

  Now I felt I could not breathe. I grabbed my head as the street swirled about me. I began to walk swiftly, madly.

  “Madam!” cried Lucy, chasing after me. “Madam!”

  But I would not hear her and strode on ahead, though to where I could not say. I searched this way and that, surveying every foreign feature of this landscape: the girls in their striped skirts; the long skeins of sausage and dried fish hanging from the windows; the gabled roofs; the painted shutters; the men in bonnets rouges.

  “He must be here! He must be! Oh my dear love, you could not have abandoned me!” I muttered in a frenzy.

  I rested my hand upon the cold grey stone of a wall, before turning my gaze upward. It was a church. As I had never before, I wished at that moment to enter it, to feel the comfort of its embrace.

  Lucy found me upon its steps.

  “Leave me!” I cried in despair. “Let me be!”

  I stumbled into its darkened fold; its air still hung with the richness of frankincense. This was the first time I had ever entered a preserve of Popery. “Havens of superstition,” I had heard my father once call them.

  I recall how very quiet it was, and how this stillness seemed to seep into me. A handful of candles fluttered beside the altar, which lay bathed in a rainbow of colours flooding from the window above.

  There was in this sacred place all the imagery one associates with the Roman Church: the paintings of weeping Magdalenes and bleeding saints, the suffering of martyrs, the unhappiness, the sorrow.

  Oh, how the tears flowed from me; and there, before the altar, I fell to my knees in despair.

  For a great spell of t
ime, I bowed my head and wept. As I did so, I plundered my memory and drew forth questionable decisions I had made. No sooner had I permitted my mind to begin to stray, to pick over regrettable incidents, to admonish myself for my follies, than my sister’s image assembled itself once more from the darkness. Her face took shape suddenly and startled me. I gasped and opened my eyes, but still my head was filled with her. “No,” I commanded. “No!” I did not wish to believe in her. I knew her to be a figment of my mind. I had convinced myself absolutely of it. “You are not real,” I insisted. “You cannot haunt me.” At that moment, something I cannot rightly explain caused me to raise my head.

  I had not noticed her when I entered the church, not even when I fell to my knees before the altar. She sat in an alcove to my right: a pretty statue of the Madonna; her hair was the colour of straw, her eyes two close-set blue gems. The resemblance to Lady Catherine was uncanny. A chill gripped me, but began to subside the longer I beheld her kind and placid features. There in her face lived no fury, no jealousynor anger, only benevolence and forgiveness. I shut my eyes and thought of Gertrude Mahon’s parting words: “I remember you with fondness,” I said, my voice resonating through the cold church. “I remember you with love.” The echo reverberated from wall to wall, and then, like the ghost that had plagued me, faded away for ever.

  I warned you that there would be much in this tale of mine that would not be to your liking. Here you must prepare yourself to read one more such thing.

  Ah, I see you now, shaking your head and tutting, “So here she repents, so here she renounces her sins.” You think, “Ah, so it is true, she gave herself over to the Catholics.” I can confirm, dear reader, I did nothing of the sort. While I may have harboured some regrets, I had nothing of which to repent.

  No, my friends, instead I shut my eyes and prayed, just as I had on that day at St. Mary’s Melmouth, when I was not quite nine years old. I prayed for that which I had prayed for as a girl: I prayed for love. I prayed that I might know it again.

  I cannot say how long I remained there. The light that fell through the window had begun to dim. The toll of bells calling worshippers to evening Mass rang out. That was when I rose to my feet and departed.

  The sky had filled with cloud and a summer storm had blown in from the sea. As I walked solemnly back to Dessein’s Hotel, my head hung down like that of a penitent monk. My face stung with grief.

  My rooms lay in shadow when I entered them. Though Lucy was not to be found, there was evidence that she had returned. My disordered belongings had been straightened and a gown had been brushed down. It was then that I noticed something peculiar: a book left open upon a pier table at the far side of the room. It lay on its front with its spine to the air. I would not have been so careless, and so I approached it, piqued with curiosity. But once I saw its title I stopped quite abruptly. My skin prickled. In gold letters I read the name “Goethe” embossed upon it. Cautiously, I turned it over, my hands trembling.

  “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” I breathed.

  Then a warm, rich voice came from behind me and cited the very passage which lay open before me.

  “ ‘Once more I am a wanderer, a pilgrim, through the world. But what else are you?’ ”

  For a moment I stood entirely still, incapable of making any motion at all. My eyes remained locked upon the sentence before me. I could scarcely draw breath. That which I had heard, I dared not believe. For all my attempts to flee that had come to nothing, for my struggle to free myself from Quindell, for the hardships endured during my crossing, for the disappointments I had met with upon arriving in Calais—tell me, dear friends, what human breast could suffer such defeats and live to hope once more? I could not bring myself to turn, to confirm with my own eyes that he was indeed real, for I feared too much that he would not be.

  I remained there, composed, my quaking hands steadied upon the open pages of Goethe’s work. I felt the smooth, dry leaves of paper—these were real. The stiffness of the binding below them, resting against the table… this too was real, affirmed my rational mind. This was no dream, no projection from my head. I was finished with fantastical imaginings, I had laid the last of those to rest. I pressed my palm firmly against the page. No, it was real—so he must be.

  Gently, cautiously, I began to turn, still doubting, still fearing all the while that I should find myself mistaken, that he should prove nothing but another shadow.

  “George…” I murmured.

  I could not look at him, even when he stepped towards me. I could not lift my head. Even when he drew me into an embrace, even when I inhaled the warm familiarity of him, the faint scents of lavender and citron, the heat of his person, glowing through his silk waistcoat and his linen shirt. Even when I felt him against me, solid and strong. Even withstanding these indisputable proofs, I dared not gaze at him.

  He moved his cheek upon mine, and when at last our lips met, my eyes had already been closed for some time.

  Oh reader, I blush to recall those kisses, their honesty and urgency. How we embraced and caressed—as if they were the first kisses, as if we were in the closet at Herberton, amid the gems and treasures. It was only after that, when I understood this to be no dream, that I opened my lids and beheld him.

  His luminescent eyes, bright azure and rimmed with tears, gazed back at me.

  “I did not think it possible…” he whispered against my temple, my cheeks now streaming with tears of delight. “I did not at first believe it when I heard the news: my wife had arrived at Dessein’s?” he said, in mocking disbelief. Then, all at once, he collapsed into laughter. It came as a roar of pure joy, a cry of the fullest relief. Within an instant, I too was overcome with mirth. We laughed and wept and kissed, and tumbled upon the sofa, until his kisses were replaced by soft strokes of my face, and his laughter faded into solemnity.

  We lay together in silence for some time. His face was a picture of adoration, and mine a mirror of his. Speech had left us, for neither of us understood what might be said, nor how to pose the questions we wished to ask, for fear of tainting our reunion. There were demons I could not bear to release into this happy scene.

  “That you should come here…” he began uneasily. “The comte de Lavert, he revealed to you my whereabouts…”

  “I could not have remained in London when I learned…”

  “Yes, yes, my love,” said he with an anguished smile, “it is because you are brave… so very courageous, and because you know not what…” He sighed and looked away. “It is far too dangerous here and I have taken a great risk in coming to you—in so much as sending de Lavert to find you, I have imperilled myself…” he said in a low voice.

  “I do not understand.”

  “There is no need to understand. There are many things I cannot reveal to you at present,” Allenham whispered. “Understand only that I did not choose to quit England or to be apart from you. It was not my choice. It would never have been my choice.”

  “But who… but why, then…”

  He hushed me and then stopped my mouth with kisses. “I do what I am required to do—for the greater good. For England as well as for France.”

  My eyes narrowed in question. At that moment I could not entirely comprehend his meaning; I was too overwhelmed by his presence to consider the subtleties of what he was disclosing to me, but with time it came to make perfect sense.

  “But you’re here now… you’re here!” He beamed.

  “Yes.” I nodded and smiled proudly. “I willed it to be. I made it so. You bade me to survive, to live for our reunion, you wrote as much in your letter… and so I did. I lived as you directed me, my beloved…” I paused, for even saying that much brought to mind the compromises I had made to ensure the arrival of this day. It drew from me the memory of those deceits, those actions in which I had engaged, deeds of which he would not have believed me capable. “But I care not for censure,” I whispered.

  He took my face into his hands and fixed his eyes on mine. �
��No,” he said resolutely. “Nor do I. I care not for scorn, nor remorse, nor regret, nor pain…”

  “Nor errors, transgressions, deceptions, shame…” I added.

  “Nor those either.” He smiled as he smoothed my ruffled hair. “I care not for those things… and never shall. I care only for you, my dearest, truest love.”

  “And I am eternally yours,” I pledged.

  “And I yours, as no institution of man can ever bind us.”

  “And we shall wander together…”

  “And live by our hearts, and think not of what tomorrow brings,” said he.

  “Nor of yesterday.”

  “Nor of any other matter, my love,” he muttered as he kissed me. “Not until morning. Not until then.”

  Author’s Note:

  Historical Fact vs. Historical Fiction

  What we don’t know about the past is sometimes as intriguing as what we do know, especially for the historian who is given free rein to write fiction. Being allowed to speculate and invent has been wonderfully liberating, but my exercise in creating historical “faction” is bound to raise a few questions among readers.

  Henrietta and her entire family, including the Earl of Stavourley, are products of my imagination, as are Lord Allenham and Philip Quindell. Their characters are drawn from the real-life experiences of a composite of historical figures—fallen women, aristocratic Whigs, wealthy colonials, and young noblemen swept up in the fervour of the Romantic era. Their personalities and views of the world grew out of the many eighteenth-century diaries, memoirs, letters and autobiographies I have read over the years.

  Then there is everyone else. The majority of the other characters featured in Mistress of My Fate, including John St. John, Kitty Kennedy, Lady Lade, Gertrude Mahon, and all the “Avians,” Lord Barrymore and his cohort, George Selwyn, Mrs. Jordan, John Philip Kemble and his wife, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, are real. Some of these people we know a great deal about, while others are more mysterious, but in this book they’ve all been subjected to a bit of artistic licence.