My Lady Caroline

by Jill Jones

  Hobhouse and Moore exchanged a wry glance at the man’s ignorance of Byron’s peculiarities. “Because he loved to scandalize people,” Hobhouse replied. “Whether or not his tales were true was immaterial. He loved to shock.” Byron’s childhood friend gave a short laugh. “Me most of all.”

  “I have read the memoirs,” Moore stated, knowing he was the only one in the room to have done so, “and I have found nothing, shall we say, surprising about them. He simply tells the truth about his most complex life, a truth that if it were known by all the world, now or at a future time, might explain his actions in a way that would ease the many nasty smears that now beset his reputation.”

  “How say you that,” Hobhouse wanted to know, “if he indeed describes all that I know he was capable of enjoying? And,” he added, “how can you be sure what he wrote was the truth? We all know Byron had…uh…difficulty discerning…shall we say, fact from fiction.” The room grew quiet at Hobhouse’s allegation. Most of those gathered there knew Byron’s penchant for lying, but still they were reluctant to speak ill of the dead.

  Finally Moore spoke. “Lord Byron may often have…uh…exaggerated his actions, Hobhouse, but I don’t believe he did so here. I think you would find, if you read these,” Moore indicated the stack of papers beside him, “that much of what is being bandied about London Society concerning his personal behavior, however scandalous on the surface, might, when seen through Lord Byron’s eyes, also be forgivable.” He picked up the memoirs and thumbed through the first few pages. “Listen to this, for instance:

  Confusion over women remains the cornerstone of my Infamy, and my Longing its Perpetrator. I have longed to make peace with the Fair Sex, but in Truth, the Fair Sex has always confounded me. Women have worshipped at my very feet, (except my sweet Mother, who hated them) and yet I have never been able to truly love any woman, except my Lady Caroline. Although I have known many intimately and taken pleasure in their arms, I find myself afterwards regarding them with the same horror as I did May Gray, that monstrous Composer of the Dance of Longing and Confusion. What my mother began, May Gray concluded.

  I see her horrid countenance behind closed eyelids even now, that vile Destroyer of Innocence. May Gray, my childhood nurse, who preached to me strict Calvinist doctrine and the wages of Sin by day, then came to me in the darkest hours of the night and awakened my sexual appetite at an age when most boys are barely able to think on such things. I hated May Gray, but I was unable to resist the wicked deeds in which she and her lovers enjoined me. Indeed, I often found myself longing for the pleasures she and her libertines inflicted upon me. It was a painful physical longing that turned to confusion when the light of day returned once more and May Gray beat into me the Wickedness of my Soul.

  The face of May Gray has haunted all affairs with women ever since, rendering impossible a normal union expected between man and woman. I have loved only one of the female sex, the rare and beautiful Lady C.L., for she is the only one with whom I was not required to perform the Depraved Act.

  Moore looked around the room at each man in turn. “However despicable Byron’s actions might have appeared to outside observers,” he said softly, “I believe he had reasons for his behavior few ever suspected or might even understand. But we would be doing him, and history, a grave injustice if we fail to give him the chance to vindicate himself by preserving this, his own account of what transpired in his life.”

  “Lady Byron objects,” Colonel Doyle said, unmoved by what he’d just heard. “She has a strong case that the memoirs belong to her, and she wants them destroyed.”

  “They belong to Augusta,” Horton said, raising his voice.

  “They belong to the world,” Moore returned heatedly.

  “They belong in the fire,” Hobhouse concluded, and the others stared at him, knowing that of them all, John Cam had been the closest to Lord Byron. “And everyone but you, Moore, wants it so.”

  “We’re making a mistake,” Tom Moore said, exasperated. “We should at least have the consensus of all of those whose lives are described in the memoirs. Like Lady Caroline, for instance. There is no one here to represent her. But I know it to be a fact that she has actually read the thing,” he continued hopefully, “and she wrote to me she that she sincerely wished the memoirs to be preserved. It certainly sounds, from what I have just read, that perhaps we might learn more about their curious…relationship from these papers.”

  Murray went to stand by the fire, putting his back to the others. “I hesitate to disagree with you, Sir,” he said, turning at last to face Moore, “but I…uh…received a letter from her quite recently expressing just the opposite. She insisted they be destroyed.”

  “Humph,” grunted Moore. “She must have decided that day she didn’t love him after all.”

  The men shared a laugh at Caroline’s expense, although it was a rather short and sad expression of tasteless humor. All in the room thought Caroline Lamb was mad, and that her feelings for Lord Byron vacillated, not by the day, but by the hour, even by the minute, depending upon how much cognac she had consumed.

  “Caroline is Caroline. She could, and would, vote both views,” Moore admitted at last. “I am loath to do this, but we must resolve this issue once and for all. Today. We shall put it to a vote. How say ye, Doyle?”

  “Destroy the blasted thing and be done with it.” He cleared his throat. “That is not necessarily my opinion, by the way. It was a direct quote from Lady Annabella.”

  “And you, Wilmot?”

  He shrugged as if it didn’t matter much to him one way or the other. “Augusta says destroy.”

  “Murray?”

  The publisher who had so faithfully brought all of Byron’s early poems to the hungry reading public in London and who stood to make a small fortune when the content of the memoirs hit the street stood strangely firm on his position. “I agree. We must destroy them. The poems themselves must speak of the poet. We do not need to drag his sordid personal affairs down into history.”

  “Sordid affairs! If we destroy these memoirs, we will only imply they were disgraceful and obscene and will be throwing a stigma upon the work which it does not deserve!” Moore was almost beside himself in desperation to save the precious papers. He wished now he had not been so magnanimous in granting the others a vote in the matter. He should have placed them in a vault himself. But now it was too late. “Hobhouse?” he said, his shoulders slumping, acknowledging his defeat in advance.

  “Burn them.” The words were barely audible.

  “I beg your pardon? Speak up, man, unless you know the words you speak are a betrayal of your late friend Lord Byron.” Moore could suppress his anger no longer.

  Hobhouse glared at Moore, then moved to stand by the window, looking down onto the busy street below. “My late friend,” he said, louder than before but still in a hushed tone, “once told me never to take seriously anything he wrote. And certainly never to take his Lordship seriously. That is why, Mr. Moore, I must cast my vote to destroy the memoirs. They are very likely not serious, even though you believe they speak the truth. Don’t you see, it would be like him to play the last, really big joke upon us all? In our fervor to sustain his reign as the finest poet of the day, we would be giving the world a sham, a version of his life that might not be true, but written so that Byron might, from the grave, continue to manipulate us all.”

  The room grew silent as even Tom Moore recognized that Hobhouse’s suspicion was a possibility. At any rate, he was completely at odds with the rest, and he knew he’d lost. “Let’s be done with it then.”

  Murray picked up the papers in both hands, giving half to Doyle and half to Horton. “Tear them into small enough pieces that they might go more easily into the flame,” he said. Then he took the iron poker from its hook and stirred the fire, adding several lumps of coal for good measure.

  Moore could scarcely stand by and watch the representatives of Augusta and Annabella destroy the memoirs, but he couldn’t blame the wo
men for wanting to protect their own vulnerable reputations. He felt sick, sensing he was watching an historical mistake, monumental in size, but like a witness to a murder, he could not take his eyes from the proceedings. At last, the shreds began to be consigned to the fire, and he stared wide-eyed into the flames.

  From across the room, Colonel Doyle addressed Hobhouse, who continued to survey morosely the gathering gloom of the encroaching night. “Mr. Hobhouse, since you were in agreement that these should be destroyed, I would like to share with you the honor of executing their demise.”

  Slowly, the portly figure of the man who had loved Lord Byron perhaps more than anyone on earth turned to face Doyle. His eyes shone with unshed tears.

  “No. No, thank you,” he said quietly. “No.”

  Nicki steered the convertible through the traffic on Florida’s Turnpike with the ease of a racing car driver. They were headed north, to a small town outside of Orlando, to a psychic and a séance.

  A séance, for God’s sake. Alison’s cheeks burned a little at the thought. It was crazy. But then, Nicki had always been a little on the crazy side. It was what Alison liked about her. That, and the fact that her father hadn’t liked Nicki. He’d believed she was the daughter of a Mafioso, but Alison had never seen anyone in her friend’s family who even remotely resembled the Godfather. They were just another family with a lot of money and a big house in Palm Beach.

  Sort of like the Kennedys.

  “So how much is your allowance?” Nicki asked offhandedly.

  Alison flinched. She hated the word “allowance.” Only children got allowances.

  Children. And the very spoiled, very immature grown-up children of the very rich.

  Trust fund children.

  “Three hundred grand a year.” It was a sizeable sum. Her father had been generous, if you could call withholding her total inheritance generous. Generous, especially in light of the fact that she had no expenses or obligations other than to pay any bills she incurred.

  “Not bad,” Nicki commented. “You can make it on that. You’ll just have to be a little careful.”

  Alison stared at the flat landscape streaking by, wondering if she should tell Nicki the rest. Nicki, who knew how to spend money as well, if not better, than Alison. The two had been best friends since they’d met at boarding school as teenagers, and some of their capers had not exactly been…frugal. She wondered if Nicki’s reaction to her news would include plans for a major, and likely ill-advised, spending spree.

  But they’d never kept secrets from each other, and now was no time to start.

  “Well, actually, there’s more,” Alison said.

  Nicki honked her horn as she sped around an elderly couple barely driving the minimum speed limit. “Gotta watch them,” she said. “They’re as dangerous as people like me. What more?”

  “An insurance policy. Hawthorne told me my folks were heavily insured.” Alison’s throat tightened. “Double indemnity in case of an accident.”

  “How much?” Nicki never minced words.

  Alison paused a moment, considering the bizarre turn of events. It had been her mother, Hawthorne had recounted to her utter amazement, who had insisted on the insurance policy. Her mother, who had always commanded admiration and respect, but from a distance. Who had never been one to hold or cuddle or show any real affection for her daughter, certainly never one to make any special provisions for her. But apparently, her mother and father had not exactly agreed on setting up the trust, and her mother, Hawthorne had assured her, wanted to make sure Alison would have “liquid funds” available to her in case they were no longer there to see to her needs.

  “Four million.”

  Without a flicker of surprise in her expression, Nicki draped one arm casually over the steering wheel. “Four million. Four million dollars?”

  “We’re not talking pesos.”

  Nicki gave a short laugh. “And I was beginning to feel sorry for you. What’re we doing this séance thing for anyway? With that kind of bread, who needs your father’s advice?”

  Alison bristled. “This was your idea, not mine, remember? And it’s probably a stupid one, too. Let’s turn around now and go home.”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Nicki said, tousling Alison’s short, russet hair like the big sister Alison had never had. “So you’re rich. Maybe you need to ask Daddy what to do with the money.”

  Alison swallowed hard. It was exactly what she needed. Hawthorne was after her to put the money in the trust, where it would be safe, for her, and for future generations, as he’d put it.

  Although, at the moment, it didn’t appear there would be any future generations. There was no man in her life, certainly no one with whom she would consider entering into a serious relationship. Except for occasional friendships, she had never cared much for the fast playboys who ran with her crowd of richer-than-rich young people. For the most part, they’d seemed shallow, superficial, self-absorbed.

  Just like me, Alison thought with a cringe.

  She’d been attracted to a few other men, including one professor whom she had fancied herself in love with. But once they’d learned her background, each had seemed suddenly more interested in her money than in her. More than once, she’d been dealt a cruel blow by this realization, and over time she gave up on having a relationship with a man. She’d sometimes wished she could run away and change her name, just so she could be like normal people. Being rich had its downside.

  They drove in silence for a long while, listening to old rock songs on satellite radio. Outside of Orlando, Nicki left the toll way and headed north on I-4, passing up the Magic Kingdom, Universal Studios, and all the other garish tourist attractions, slipping easily through the traffic in Orlando, until they’d once again reached rural Florida.

  “How’d you find out about this place?” Alison wanted to know, her misgivings about their little adventure growing with each passing mile. “You been here before?”

  “Well, no. But I’ve heard some stories. The place is supposed to be real spooky.” A few miles further on, Nicki wheeled the convertible into the exit lane, around a corner and down a deserted road. Almost instantly, it seemed as if they were in another world.

  “Wow!” Alison peered out at the huge moss-draped oak trees that enshrouded the lonely landscape. “You’d never dream you were close to civilization, would you?”

  Nicki slowed the car, turned off the radio, and put a CD in the player as she steered up the narrow winding roadway.

  “What’s that music?” Alison asked, finding her friend’s taste a little macabre. It sounded like something right out of a graveyard scene in a horror movie.

  “Isn’t it great? The guy at the music store recommended it. Gives a little atmosphere to the thing.”

  Alison shivered, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. It was so…so Nicki. She always made the most of their escapades. “Are you sure about this, Nicki? I mean, it’s ridiculous.”

  “It may be. It may not be,” her friend returned. “All I know is that my friend from Miami, Angela Marie, and some of her buddies came here, and this psychic revealed things about her family that no one could have known.”

  “I suppose her dead relatives told all,” Alison replied sarcastically.

  “They did! She said it was the damnedest thing. She didn’t understand everything so she took the tape of the reading home and played it for her mother, and her mother started crying because it was about things she’d kept secret from Angela Marie all these years.”

  Alison considered that a moment. “What things?”

  But before Nicki could continue, they topped a hill and saw the first signs of the little town. “I think we’re here,” Nicki said in a hushed, dramatic voice.

  “Here” appeared to be not much of anywhere. There was a small bookstore on the left hand side of the road, and a green wooden structure across the street that looked like it must have been built in the 1930s. “Spiritualist Camp,” Alison read the sign out loud. �
��What’s that?”

  “Dunno.”

  Across the street was a large faded pink structure with the word HOTEL barely distinguishable over the front door. It looked distinctly haunted. “We’re not staying there, are we?” Alison asked Nicki.

  “Why not? When in Rome…”

  “This is definitely not Rome. I bet they don’t even have a pool.”

  Not listening to her complaining friend, Nicki pulled into a parking space in front of the hotel and looked up, laughing. “Get that!”

  Alison saw the sign her friend was giggling at and relaxed a little. If this place was haunted, at least somebody had a sense of humor about it. The sign was blue, with a white illustration on it that looked like Casper the Friendly Ghost. It read, “Ghost Parking.”

  “Maybe you’d better find another parking space,” she suggested, laughing but still irritated that she’d allowed herself to be talked into this. “What time is our appointment?”

  “Appointment? I didn’t make one.”

  Alison groaned. “Then let’s split. I mean, this is so…”

  But Nicki was out of the car and shouldering her designer backpack, headed for the hotel. Alison sighed and looked at her watch. It was almost three o’clock. It had taken over four hours to drive here. Wasted a day. No, two days by the time they got home tomorrow.

  Suddenly the crazy caprices she’d shared with Nicki and the others no longer held the appeal they once had. This didn’t seem like a very adult way of handling things, and she was sorry she’d agreed to come. Maybe there wouldn’t be a psychic available and they could turn around and go home, she thought hopefully. She was willing to drive the full trip if she had to.

  But shortly after dark, she and Nicki entered a cramped room in an apartment above a small grocery store. Lit by a bare light bulb, the tiny space appeared to have been furnished from local garage sales.

  “You sure this is the place?” Alison had expected red velvet fleurs-de-lys wallpaper and red satin draped on the table. A crystal ball here and there. A crone in full Gypsy regalia.