By a Lady

by Amanda Elyot

  “I understood Miss Jane had first to pay a call upon an acquaintance. You must excuse her tardiness, Lady Dalrymple. I fear she has been delayed.”

  As if on cue, Collins opened the large double doors to the drawing room.

  “Ah, there she is.” Darlington rose to greet the new arrival, who fairly blew into the room with a palpable energy and poise.

  The slender brunette who appeared to be in her early or midtwenties handed her straw bonnet to the manservant and touched her hand to her dark curls. “Faugh! Open carriages are nasty things. A clean gown has not five minutes’ wear in them. You are splashed getting in and getting out, and the wind takes your hair and your bonnet in every direction.” The young lady grasped the train of her simple muslin frock, pulling it toward her, the better to inspect her hem.

  The earl greeted his cousin and the young woman presented herself to Lady Oliver, receiving an indifferent kiss on the cheek.

  “Allow me to introduce the young ladies, Aunt Augusta. Miss Jane, I should like you to meet Lady Dalrymple’s niece, Lady Cassandra—although she goes by the appellation of Miss Welles. Miss Cassandra Welles, I give you a cousin whom I hold in fondest esteem. Miss Jane Austen.”

  C.J. nearly swooned. Luckily, a fortuitously placed armchair helped restore her equilibrium.

  “Beware of fainting fits,” the newcomer cautioned, retrieving a vinaigrette of smelling salts from her reticule. “Though at the time they may be refreshing and agreeable, if too often repeated and at improper seasons, they may prove destructive to your constitution. Run mad as often as you choose, but do not faint.”

  C.J. was flummoxed. “I beg your pardon. I . . . am . . . truly honored to make your acquaintance,” she stammered, causing Miss Austen to wonder at the effusion of her reception.

  “You are never sure of a good impression being durable,” Jane demurred, as she took C.J.’s trembling hand. “Everybody must sway it. Yet having never met me, you seem quite assured in your opinion, Miss Welles.”

  Her senses at sixes and sevens, C.J. suggested that she and Miss Austen retire to the settee. Jane reached for the teapot, but Lady Dalrymple shot her niece a look that conveyed the inappropriateness of a hostess permitting a guest to serve her own tea. “Let me be ‘mother,’ Miss Austen,” C.J. said, as she prayed to all the gods in heaven to help her correctly pour tea for Jane Austen. “Cream?” she asked. Miss Austen declined, preferring lemon. It was all C.J. could do to contain her giddiness. How impossible not to be able to reveal her genuine excitement!

  Lady Dalrymple politely asked Miss Austen if her prior engagement had been a pleasant one, to which she received an assessment of the young lady’s discourse with her friend Mrs. Smith, who, newly wed to a country squire, was endeavoring to become the perfect wife. “She was doomed to the repeated details of his day’s sport, good or bad: his boast of his dogs, his jealousy of his neighbors, his doubts on their qualifications, and his zeal after poachers.”

  C.J. was fascinated. “But did Mrs. Smith know nothing of her husband’s rather narrow pursuits when she married him?”

  “Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant.” Miss Austen sipped her tea. “To come with a well-informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid.” From the way Miss Austen’s eyes sparkled, C.J. wondered if Jane was having a joke on the lot of them.

  So Darlington had been right about his cousin’s opinion of relationships. “Then, Miss Austen, I have no sense and even less sensibility, for I learned of your cousin’s prejudicial political preferences—which he proclaimed most earnestly—all in the space of a single afternoon’s acquaintance.”

  Darlington’s lips curved into a tiny smile. “Let it be said that Cousin Jane and I disagree on the matter of matrimony where prior knowledge of each other’s faults and foibles is at issue. I believe in fully knowing what one is letting oneself in for, so to speak. The learning should be an enlightening experience in the most positive sense.”

  He turned to Jane. “Call me insensible, cousin, but should I decide to wed Miss Welles, for example, I trust that every day in her company would yield many singular and delightful discoveries, and I should have no difficulty administering to her vanity. Undoubtedly, I should find many occasions to offer an honest compliment.”

  Lady Oliver, appalled by her nephew’s merest mention of the notion of marriage to Lady Dalrymple’s oddly attired and altogether too unreserved poor relation, sought to change the topic of conversation. “Percy—,” she began to rebuke, but was checked by Miss Austen, who was quite keen to learn how C.J. had come to Bath. C.J. found wisdom enough to hold her tongue and let Lady Dalrymple, who was eager to entertain, deliver a highly edited rendition of her niece’s travails.

  Jane expressed the hope that despite her early tribulations, Miss Welles would grow to enjoy Bath and furthered the wish with the desire that they should become fast friends. She enumerated the pleasures which they might savor together: the social whirl of the Pump Room, the Assembly Dances, the shopping—for Jane admitted she could not pass a milliner’s without stepping inside—and of course the delights of the theatrical season. C.J. could scarcely believe her good fortune.

  “Speaking as you had been, Percy, of Shakespeare, Mrs. Siddons is to play Lady Macbeth this month,” Lady Dalrymple interjected swiftly. “Right here in town.”

  Without thinking, C.J. jumped in. “I hear her performance is quite . . . modern . . . so they say.”

  “It is quite the object, Miss Welles. She does the most extraordinary thing in the sleepwalking scene.” Darlington rose to his feet and crossed over to the doors. “She enters from a grand staircase with a lighted candle,” he began, offering his own dramatic interpretation of Siddons’s somnambulance. “Then . . . she puts her candle down! And she wrings her hands, thusly,” he demonstrated, “as though to wash Duncan’s blood away!”

  “Simplicity, indeed, is beyond the reach of almost every actress by profession,” Miss Austen interjected, whereupon C.J. allowed that she should like to trod the boards and perhaps assay Lady Macbeth herself one day. This elicited a horrified gasp from Lady Oliver, and Lady Dalrymple began to wonder if Miss Welles was not somehow related indeed. Jane studied her teacup thoughtfully. “I have no wish to be distinguished, and I have every reason to hope I never shall. Thank heaven I cannot be forced into genius and eloquence.” C.J. bit her lip, for she knew that Miss Austen’s secret passion for “scribbling” would one day place her in the pantheon of English novelists.

  Darlington addressed the countess. “Lady Dalrymple, with your kind permission, I should like to escort Miss Welles to the theatre to witness Mrs. Siddons’s extraordinary performance for herself.”

  Jane laughed merrily. “See! Shakespeare gets one acquainted without knowing how. It is part of an Englishman’s constitution. His thoughts and beauties are so spread abroad that one touches them everywhere, one is intimate with him by instinct.”

  Lady Dalrymple was about to offer her consent to the proposed excursion, when she was briskly interrupted by Lady Oliver. “Highly inappropriate, Percy. Highly inappropriate. To bring a young lady to the theatre unchaperoned.”

  “Then perhaps Cousin Jane will accompany Miss Welles,” Darlington offered.

  Jane nodded her head. “I should be only too glad. I am an indifferent card player and I much prefer the theatre to a dreaded evening of whist.”

  “The theatre,” Lady Oliver continued dismissively, addressing her nephew directly. “As if the theatre had not brought you enough ruin in your lifetime. And to the family of Miss Welles too. Euphoria, is it not true that your niece is too embarrassed to be known by her proper name, and to use the title which she should be accorded, because of her father’s theatrical connections?”

  Miss Austen fixed her gaze on Lady Oliver, then regarded C.J. with tremendous sympathy. “There is someone in most families privileged by superior abilities of spirits
to say anything.”

  Lady Dalrymple and C.J. exchanged a look. “To be sure, Augusta. Of course, Percy, Macbeth is notorious for being an accursed play. All that pagan mumbo jumbo. Although I am rather fond of the tragedy myself—”

  The countess received a sharp reproof from her steely contemporary. “Highly inappropriate, Euphoria. For my nev-you to escort Miss Welles to the theatre, regardless of the performance. I will not allow it.”

  Is he not a grown man? C.J. wondered. Why does he not rebuke the old bat?

  “Ah, well.” Darlington accepted his defeat with equanimity. “The theatre is sure to be crowded and warm, and there are scores of people who enjoy perfectly fulfilled lives without ever deriving the pleasure of watching Mrs. Siddons play Lady Macbeth. Are you fond of dancing, then, Miss Welles?”

  Jane smiled slyly at C.J. and whispered over her teacup. “I have often observed that resignation is never so perfect as when the blessing denied begins to lose somewhat of its value in our eyes. And fine dancing, I believe, like virtue, must be its own reward.”

  “Oh yes, I love dancing,” C.J. responded enthusiastically—and perhaps a bit too energetically. She had to keep reminding herself that, as Shakespeare said, a low voice is “an excellent thing in woman.” Lady Oliver looked up from her tea and narrowed her slate-gray eyes.

  The earl leaned toward C.J., the better to speak more intimately to her. “Then when I see you at the Assembly Rooms, I hope you will save a dance for me.”

  “To be fond of dancing is a certain step towards falling in love,” Jane added with a wink at her cousin.

  “Percy?” his aunt quizzed sharply. “What are you discussing with Miss Welles?”

  “Miss Welles has promised to honor me with a dance at the Upper Rooms on Thursday, Aunt Augusta.”

  Aunt Augusta wasted no time in indicating her immediate disapproval of the revised proposition. “Percy,” she sneered, “you will not be seen in public with someone dressed like a scullery on Sundays.”

  “Nonsense, Aunt Augusta,” her nephew deftly countered. “I am sure that Miss Welles possesses everything she requires. No doubt she did not wish to call attention to her wealth when traveling, and deliberately dressed in a humble and appropriately modest gown.”

  If only that were true. Then it struck C.J. that the gentleman sitting opposite her—an earl—did not care two figs what she wore, or so it seemed. How refreshing! Not only that, after a full afternoon’s discourse he still evinced no recognition of having seen her before. C.J. smiled to herself, immensely relieved.

  Lady Oliver placed her teacup on the ebony tray and rose to her feet. “Come, Percy. I must stop at Travers’s to inspect a new bonnet before we reach home, and the hour grows late.” She bestowed a kiss on Lady Dalrymple’s cheek and donned her dove-gray gloves before offering her hand to C.J. “It has been an enlightening experience to meet you, Miss Welles. Percy, you will join me now. Miss Jane, are you accompanying us? My carriage will drive you home.”

  Jane set down her cup. “The sooner every party breaks up the better,” she responded, the irony lost on Lady Oliver.

  Lady Dalrymple rang for Collins.

  The earl was appraising Lady Dalrymple’s relation. Quite a lovely and charming creature, he thought to himself, and uncommonly—delightfully—intelligent. Truly an original. Particularly her interest in politics. Highly unusual for any female. Bluestockings never irked him the way they did other gentlemen of his ilk. Darlington allowed that he was looking forward to the next opportunity to enjoy the young woman’s company. His hope was that he would not have to wait too long. He bowed to Cassandra and with a gloved hand brought her own hand to his lips and kissed it.

  “Percy! You have the manners of a Turk!” His aunt was aghast. “What the deuce can you be thinking to kiss that girl’s hand? Ungloved and unmarried! And not the hint of an understanding between you.”

  The earl ignored her. “I outrank her,” he whispered to Cassandra with a twinkle in his eye. He leaned down to Lady Dalrymple and kissed her rouged cheek. After all, he had known the countess practically all his life, so his aunt had no cause to carp at any lack of propriety in that connection.

  “I am honored to have met you, Lady Oliver. And your lordship,” C.J. said as Darlington bent down to kiss her hand once more, if only to further appall his aunt. “And to have had the extreme pleasure of meeting you,” she emphasized, bidding Miss Austen good-bye.

  Such an intimate exchange did not pass undetected by that most astute of observers. Jane clasped C.J.’s hand in hers and drew closer, tipping a conspiratorial wink in the direction of her handsome cousin. “With men he can be rational and unaffected,” she whispered, “but when he has ladies to please, every feature works.”

  IT WAS STILL DAYLIGHT when their visitors departed, and C.J. persuaded Lady Dalrymple to permit her to take an unchaperoned constitutional. She embraced her benefactress as tightly as the older woman’s girth would allow, an expression of thanks that even Euphoria found excessive. What the dowager did not know was that C.J. had every reason to believe that they might never see each other again. Her ladyship had been remarkably munificent in rescuing her from what might have been a lifetime of misery with Lady Wickham; but delightful as the afternoon had been, C.J. had resolved to somehow find the way back to the twenty-first century.

  This would be her first opportunity to return to the Theatre Royal since her Easter Sunday arrival in Bath. During her weeks of servitude on Laura Place, she had never been left alone. Even in the dead of night, she could not have left her bedchamber without waking Mary. And perhaps, too, there was a part of her that had been unwilling to abandon the girl, feeling acutely responsible for her welfare.

  C.J. regretted leaving those who had shown her kindness—and forgoing the pleasure of making the further acquaintance of the Earl of Darlington, not to mention relinquishing the opportunity to befriend Jane Austen. But she needed to return to the life she had been leading more than two hundred years ahead. There lay the possibility of the perfect job—everything for which she’d studied, sacrificed, and strived for years to attain. How ironic that what lay ahead of her was what she had so unexpectedly—and perhaps irrevocably—left behind.

  C.J. returned to the blue room, unlocked the highboy, and re-donned her yellow muslin, using her palms to press out the wrinkles and smooth away the smudges as best she could. Extricating herself from Saunders’s gown was mercifully simpler than putting it on. Grabbing the dilapidated red shawl, her bonnet, gloves, and reticule, she locked the door to the blue room and placed the key inside the little purse. She left Lady Dalrymple’s gleaming white town house and began the descent toward the Theatre Royal on Orchard Street. If she’d found herself in the middle of its stage upon her bizarre arrival in 1801, perhaps she could somehow return the same way. It was certainly worth a shot. What had she to lose in the effort?

  She managed to slip in through the theatre’s side door—the one that opened onto the alleyway. Hearing voices coming from the stage, she hid in the wings behind a heavy black curtain.

  A handsome woman in elaborate medieval costume was waiting backstage to make an entrance; and from the extravagance of her gown, it was no doubt the play’s leading lady who was standing atop the huge staircase descending from the upstage wing. C.J. clapped her hand to her mouth to stifle her excitement. Good God! She was looking at the great tragedienne herself. Tonight, Siddons was back in De Montfort, the same production that had been on the bill the day of C.J.’s supernatural appearance.

  C.J. peered around the velvet curtain to see what was happening onstage. Crowds of supernumeraries dressed in long cloaks milled about, creating atmosphere. A young boy dressed as a page addressed one of the actresses onstage.

  “Madam, there is a lady in your hall who begs to be admitted to your presence.”

  “Is it not one of our invited friends?” the actress replied.

  The page shook his head. “No, far unlike to them. It is a stranger.”


  “How looks her countenance?” the actress onstage questioned the boy.

  C.J. sidled along the curtain like a crab, trying to get closer to the stage.

  “Is she young or old?” the lady asked the page.

  “Neither, if I right guess,” came the reply. “But she is fair. For Time has laid his hand so gently on her, as he too had been awed.”

  C.J. watched the actors clad as servants crossing the stage as the conversation progressed and looked about for a spare costume that she could simply slip over her head.

  “What is her garb?” asked the lady of the young boy.

  “I cannot well describe the fashion of it. She is not deck’d in any gallant trim, but seems to me clad in the usual weeds of high habitual state.”

  C.J. nearly snickered, since Mrs. Siddons was dressed in a garment that must have cost a king’s ransom. No “gallant trim” indeed! A supernumerary rushed past C.J.’s hiding place, dropping a robe and a silken cord at her feet as she dashed off to don another costume. Nearly invisible amid the hubbub in the dark, C.J. stooped to retrieve the saffron-colored shift. It was a simple garment, almost like a cassock, constructed of two pieces of cloth with an opening for the head and long, dolman-style sleeves. It slipped easily over her own yellow muslin, covering both it and the red shawl completely. She hid the bonnet under the robe and secured it with the cord.

  It was now or never. Wishing to draw as little attention as possible, she stepped into the light, and—although she yearned to revel in the experience—scuttled across the stage like a golden beetle.

  “Thine eyes deceive thee, boy. It is an apparition thou has seen,” the lady declaimed.

  C.J. slipped through an architecturally resplendent medieval archway into the blackness, the reverberations of a man’s resonant voice echoing behind her. “It is an apparition he has seen, or it is Jane de Montfort.”

  The last thing C.J. remembered hearing was the thunderous ovation that greeted the entrance of the great Sarah Siddons.