My Lady Caroline

by Jill Jones

  My Lady Caroline

  Jill Jones

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1996 by Jill Jones

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com

  First Diversion Books edition October 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-489-9

  More from Jill Jones

  Emily’s Secret

  My Lady Caroline

  The Scottish Rose

  A Scent of Magic

  Circle of the Lily

  The Island

  Bloodline

  Remember Your Lies

  Every Move You Make

  Beneath the Raven’s Moon

  Shadow Haven

  For Jerry

  and for

  Erik, Brad and Brooke,

  who once upon a time were always good for a ghost story.

  This is a work of fiction based upon the historical circumstances surrounding the lives of Lord Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb. Other than the historical figures portrayed here, all characters are entirely fictional, and any resemblance to any persons or actual happenings is purely coincidental. Material for the “memoirs” was based upon fact, but the memoirs are entirely fictional. The poems of both Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb are authentic.

  Acknowledgments

  I wish to express my heartfelt thanks to Mr. Alistair E. Scott, for his incredible hospitality during my trip to England, for the books and materials he lent me, and for the many unusual doors he opened for my research, particularly a door to the past and a remarkable and timeless love affair. It is almost as if he introduced me to Lady Caroline herself.

  My thanks also to Mrs. Margaret Scott, for sharing her home and her wonderful wit.

  Inexpressible thanks go to Virginia Murray, Archivist at John Murray Publishers, London, who so generously shared her knowledge of Byron and the firm’s historical artifacts from the days when her husband’s ancestors published the work of Lord Byron.

  I also wish to thank Kate Thomas, Conference Coordinator, Brocket Hall, for our tour of Caroline Lamb’s favorite residence on the banks of the River Lea in Hertfordshire, and the Canon Fred Green of the Parish Church of St. Mary Magdalene, in Hauknall, near Newstead Abbey, for his kind hospitality as we visited the place where Lord Byron is buried.

  “That beautiful pale face is my destiny.”

  Lady Caroline Lamb, from her journal - 1812

  Prologue

  Eywood Estate, England

  November 1812

  “Stop it! That tickles!”

  “Hold still.” The handsome but pale young man in the steaming bath tub brushed a dampened lock of curling auburn hair from his forehead and resumed his preoccupied examination of the lady’s foot. The water-softened sole of the slender appendage was a maze of lines and creases along which Lord Byron allowed his disturbed imagination to travel. He traced the pattern of interwoven furrows and ridges with his forefinger, lightly at first, then with greater pressure as a strange panic rose in his breast.

  He must find a way out.

  With every passing day, he felt himself ever more deeply ensnared in a frightful, invisible web being woven around him by the beautiful, erotic, but possessive and demanding Lady Caroline. Even when she was far away, as she was at the moment, he seemed unable to free himself of thoughts of her. She stalked his dreams and tormented his daylight hours. She drew him as if she were an enchantress, her fateful spell one that threatened his very being.

  “Whatever are you doing, darling?” Lady Oxford shivered as his touch shifted from gentle to painful.

  Byron scowled, wishing she’d bear up in silence rather than interrupt his concentration. But it was, after all, her foot. His lip curled in a mocking grin. “I’m trying to read the future.”

  “In my foot?”

  “Why not?”

  Lady Oxford gave a short, derisive laugh. “Byron, my Lord, it’s the hands the Gypsies tell fortunes from, not the feet.”

  “I’m not a Gypsy.”

  Distracted, Byron entwined his fingers with the lady’s toes and frowned. There must be a way out. There had to be. But he’d tried everything he could think of to dissuade the lady of her passion, all to no avail. “I suppose I could kill her,” he murmured.

  Lady Oxford pulled her foot away and sat up in the tub abruptly. Her breasts bobbed like pale pink apples just below the waterline, barely visible beneath the layer of bubbles that floated on the surface. Her face was flushed, and her eyes shone with sudden intrigue. “Did you say kill? Kill who?”

  Byron stared at his hands now bereft of their object of meditation. Only he knew the truth behind the rumor that he’d once killed a man in the Orient. He wondered if he could kill someone he knew. “Caro,” he replied in a hollow voice.

  “Oh, that business again. Why do you continue to bother with that insufferable brat?”

  Byron studied the woman whose buttocks he now fondled with his toes. Well into her middle years, Lady Oxford’s legendary beauty was beginning to fade. Age was showing in lines around the pale blue eyes, and her generous mouth was likewise scored. Still, she was a master of the art of love, having taken most of England’s finest to bed with her, and Byron had to admit he’d enjoyed his turn as her latest paramour. But at her words, his full lips twisted into a cynical smile.

  “I thought that ‘insufferable brat’ was your friend,” he said scornfully, knowing that Caroline had valued what she perceived to be Lady Oxford’s kind regard.

  The ease between them Byron had come to enjoy during his stay at Eywood was suddenly shattered, and the wife of Edward Harley, the fifth Earl of Oxford, raised her sumptuous if well-used body to the edge of the tub and reached for a lace-trimmed towel.

  “I suppose she told you that,” she replied laconically. Then she laughed, and it was a short, bitter sound that rang of the sort of hypocrisy Byron loathed. “I suppose she actually thought that,” Lady Oxford mused, “although our correspondence was more to her benefit than mine. I found it amusing, however,” she added, “that she so quickly adopted my ideas. But then she is so…young.”

  Byron watched his mistress-of-the-moment run the towel sensually down her long leg. How could Caro ever have believed her to be a friend? Even though he wanted desperately to rid himself of Lady Caroline’s dangerous attention, he felt sorry that she had entrusted her friendship to this woman. He never ceased to marvel at the deceitful nature of the female gender. The sex simply could not be trusted.

  “Young, but a determined bitch,” Byron replied. “Maybe I should depart for the Continent before she returns from Ireland.”

  Lady Oxford laughed contemptuously. “Do you really think that would solve your problem?”

  Byron stared at her. “What do you mean?”

  “You cannot run away from Caroline. She would pursue you across land and sea. She seems not to care what people say, or that she is a married woman.”

  The truth in her words slammed into him, and Byron slunk down further into the tub of now-lukewarm water.

  “I must make her hate me then,” he growled.

  “What, love?” The naked, full-figured woman slipped a petticoat over her head, unmindful of his open observation. There was no reason to mind. T
hey had lain together as lovers for weeks, despite the fact that he was almost young enough to be her son.

  “Hate me. I must make her hate me.” Byron stood up, dripping from head to toe and shivering slightly in the cool room. He felt the eyes of his experienced mistress travel down his body, which he always believed to be on the verge of corpulence, and he covered himself hastily with a thick towel.

  “Why do you bother?” Lady Oxford poured a rich brandy into two crystal glasses which waited on a small nearby table and brought one to Byron.

  “If she hates me,” Byron replied, slipping into a Turkish dressing robe before taking the proffered glass, “then she will leave me alone. I simply cannot bear another scene on my doorstep like the last.”

  Lady Oxford laughed. “Caro will never hate you. She is many things, but hateful she is not. It is not in her nature.”

  It was Byron’s turn to scoff. He glanced at his inamorata, a bitter smirk on his full lips. “Everyone hates, my dear,” he said. “It is human nature.”

  The couple, having sated their sexual appetites previous to the bath, now retired to the dining room for tea. The pale late afternoon sunlight strained through the tall windows in a vain attempt to dispel the gloom in the darkly-paneled room. “Let us not speak of that which poisons our peace,” Lady Oxford said soothingly, drawing him into the chair next to hers at the head of the long, highly-polished table. “Tell me, my dear Byron,” she spoke in a quiet, intimate voice as she traced a nail across the top of his hand, “have we not passed our last month like the gods of Lucretius?”

  Byron found he could not disagree. His time spent with the voluptuous Lady Oxford at her husband’s country house had indeed been an oasis of calm amidst the turbulence of his existence since he had returned from the Continent. This belle dame demanded little and gave much when it came to his pleasure. Besides, among her “Harleian Miscellany,” the flock of children sired on her by various liberal leaders in England’s House of Lords, were several beautiful young daughters whose charms and open flirtations were not lost on Byron.

  “That we have, my dear, but our Olympian pleasure notwithstanding, I must attend to the matter of Lady Caroline. I fear that sweet William will be unable to restrain her for long, and that she will escape from her enforced vacation in Ireland and land back in my lap.” He kissed her fingertips, counting on the lady’s innately devious nature to help him out. He gave her hand an encouraging squeeze. “You corresponded with her intimately. You know her ways. If she won’t hate me, what then, pray tell, will it take to get the woman out of my life once and for all?”

  Lady Oxford sighed and withdrew her long, slender fingers from his grasp. She leaned back against the rich damask of her chair, studying him. “It would seem to me, Lord Byron, that your efforts to rid her from your life are predestined to fail.”

  “Why? What are you saying?”

  She shrugged lightly. “I’m saying that I do not believe you really want to be rid of her.”

  “You’re insane! The woman is nothing but a thorn beneath my hide.”

  “I believe you are still in love with her.”

  Byron felt his blood beginning to boil. “Nonsense!” he shouted, bolting from the chair and throwing his napkin onto the floor. “Whatever would fill your mind with such rubbish?”

  Unruffled, Lady Oxford continued. “I have come to know you well in these last weeks,” she said at last. “Although you feign affection for me, your thoughts have never been far from Caroline.”

  “That’s preposterous,” Byron thundered.

  “Is it?” Lady Oxford twisted her napkin as her lips lifted into a mirthless smile. “Then why must I suffer day and night from your mumblings and rumblings about her?”

  Byron was about to deny her allegation again, but stopped abruptly, caught suddenly by the notion that the lady spoke the truth. Not that he was in love with Caroline, but that he was consumed by thoughts of her. Mostly thoughts of how to avoid her, but if he were honest, also thoughts about how her slender, boyish body aroused his passion and how her soft, lisp-laden words managed to slip beyond his normal guard, easing with liquid enchantment into his insecure, love-starved heart.

  But did this mean he loved her?

  Impossible! Women were a sex he could not love.

  Cold perspiration dampened his skin, and he turned to his lover. “I must escape her. I must!” Byron went to the window and peered into the manicured gardens below. The elegant order that met his eye only heightened his rage. The world did not deserve to be orderly and beautiful when he himself existed in such a state of confused torment. He turned a harsh glare on Lady Oxford. “Think what you will,” he snarled, “but I vow to you, I do not, nay never have I, loved Lady Caroline Lamb. And I will be damned if I let her continue to haunt my every waking hour. I will find a way out, if I have to strangle her with these two hands…”

  “That…won’t be necessary.” Lady Oxford’s voice echoed with cold authority into the dark corners of the room, reminding Byron of his mother. He shuddered and moved to stand behind her chair, wanting to avoid those maternal eyes, but waiting eagerly to hear the jealous woman’s solution.

  “There is more than one way to kill someone,” she said at last, steepling her fingertips. “And what I propose is far less messy than murder.”

  Byron’s heart began to pound in his chest. Intrigued, he ran his fingers down the lady’s throat and pressed them into the soft flesh of her bosom. “Go on.”

  Lady Oxford stretched and took one of his hands, drawing him to where she could see his face. She smiled with malevolent satisfaction. “I even believe you will find it amusing, my darling. I daresay I will. It will be like a game, or like playing with a fish on a line…”

  Chapter 1

  Boston, Massachusetts

  March, Present Day

  A bell tolled solemnly from somewhere high above, its metallic tone reverberating off the cold stone walls of the Gothic cathedral. It sounded unreal and very far away to Alison Crawford Cunningham, daughter of the Crawford Cunninghams of Boston, Mass.

  Except the Crawford Cunninghams were dead.

  And Alison sat with a spine of steel on the first pew, staring dry-eyed, unbelieving, at the two ornate caskets on the bier in front of her. It seemed impossible. Only last week she had been sunning on the beaches of Cannes. Today, she shivered in the hollow coldness of Trinity Church, listening to the minister conclude the funeral services for her parents. She would never see them again, even in death, for their caskets were closed. The funeral director had said it was best. It had been a horrible crash, with only shards of the small private plane recognizable on the Vermont mountainside.

  Not possible, Alison thought, her stomach knotting. This isn’t happening to me. Mother and Dad are home, or in Palm Beach, and I’m having a nightmare.

  Although Alison had never been close to her family, had never thought she ranked very high on their priority list, she’d always held out hope that one day, maybe just once, her father would say, “I love you.” Now, she realized with a jolt, that would never, ever happen. She suppressed a dry sob and sighed deeply.

  It probably never, ever would have happened anyway.

  She felt a hand at her elbow and turned bleakly to the family’s attorney, Benjamin Pierce, who indicated that it was time to stand for the closing prayer. Grateful for his quiet support, she managed to rise, but her knees threatened to collapse at any moment.

  Afterwards, mourners shuffled quietly toward the rear of the church, speaking in hushed voices. Alison forced a tight smile for the few who came up to her to offer their condolences. They were strangers for the most part. Business acquaintances of her father. Prominent figures in Boston society who comprised her mother’s circle of friends. Names she vaguely recognized, but people she didn’t know.

  There were no family members, because there was no family left.

  Only herself.

  An unfamiliar ache sliced through her, and Alison feared she migh
t cry. Not that crying was so unusual or out of place at a funeral. But Alison knew that any tears she shed at the moment would not be tears of mourning for her parents, but rather tears of gross self-pity. She wanted to cry for the love she’d craved but never known. She wanted to cry because suddenly she was so alone. And because, whether he loved her or not, her father was no longer there to take care of her every want and need. She had never had to be self-sufficient in her life, and the thought terrified her.

  Summoning strength she didn’t feel, she veiled her tears and remained outwardly calm, determined not to let anyone see the frightened child she was inside.

  Outside in Copley Square, a pale springtime morning greeted them and a late March wind brushed against her cheeks. Scattered clouds skimmed overhead, and a fat-breasted robin hopped among the first crocuses that peeped out at the winter-weary world. It all seemed out of place on this day of death, and Alison wished suddenly and perversely that it was raining.

  Gradually, she became aware of the others around her, a sea of black, it seemed, carrion crows standing in small groups, talking quietly, with an occasional nod in her direction. A television crew pointed a camera at her, and she turned away, only to encounter an eager-faced couple, the man and woman who had been seated on the other side of Benjamin inside the church.

  “Alison,” she heard Benjamin say, “I want you to meet my daughter, Cecelia, and her husband, Drew Hawthorne.”

  The woman was tall and gaunt, with too-red lips and hollow cheeks. An elegant black woolen cape swirled about her shoulders, topping an expensive black suit. She smiled, but her attempted expression of sympathy stopped somewhere behind cold, marble-gray eyes. The man was shorter than his wife, paunchy, with a ruddy complexion and faded blue eyes. His stiffly-moussed brown hair moved as a single mass in the light breeze.