My Lady Caroline

by Jill Jones

  Jeremy must have been assigned to keep her “busy” while Hawthorne was doing his dirty work, Alison realized with rising nausea. How she had trusted him! He’d been so tender and caring. He’d said he wanted to be her friend. Not only had she had sex with him, she’d opened her heart to him as well, shed much-needed tears, let down her defenses, all the while feeling safe and protected in his arms.

  Alison thought she was going to be sick.

  “Do you remember the first rose I gave you? The first rose you brought me is still in my possession…Now God bless you—may you be very happy. I love and honour you from my heart…as a sister feels—as your…Augusta feels for you.”

  From Lady Caroline to Lord Byron upon his engagement

  Society spoke of Augusta & I in hushed tones. The rumors flew! But no one knew the absolute truth except Caroline. The sin was too great for even the most debauched to believe. And when Medora was born, the child of our illicit union, no monster emerged to prove our sin, & perversely, I was somewhat disappointed.

  I was listless & out of sorts, writing poorly, worrying about money, drinking excessively, more confused & depressed than ever before. To add to my confusion, the Princess of Parallelograms, Lady Annabella Milbanke, suddenly relented of the cold distance she had maintained between us since rejecting my proposal of marriage the year before. “It is my nature to feel long, deeply & secretly,” she wrote to me. The woman was convinced that I had a noble soul & that she could be my Salvation. Although marriage to any woman was an abomination to me, to wed Annabella would solve a number of problems, or so it seemed at the time. I was beginning to regret having blackened Augusta’s name & reputation, & my betrothal would go far in stopping the gossip I myself had orchestrated. Also, Caroline would be put off by both the marriage & the choice of bride. Finally, & most importantly, Miss Milbankes being quite wealthy, my financial woes would come to an end. These seemed a fair trade for my name.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Alison slept no more that night. In fact, she could scarcely bring herself to get back into the bed she had shared with her treacherous lover. Her senses were numb. Her soul dead. She had encountered conniving men, and women for that matter, who had preyed upon her emotions to get at her wealth. But she’d never been so crassly or coldly used.

  It was a lesson she would never forget.

  She thought about the memoirs and wondered what the ghost would do now. She wouldn’t want to be Jeremy or Hawthorne, if Caro knew they had stolen them. And she felt sorry for the unsuspecting private collector who ended up with them. For Alison had no doubt that the ghost of Lady Caroline would never rest until it had exposed the truth to the world.

  But what was the truth? Alison pondered. The little she’d read had revealed that Caroline had made two copies of the famous poet’s memoirs, and had doctored one set to tell the story the way she wanted to hear it. Had Byron truly loved Caroline? Or had Caroline been so deluded and obsessed and desperate that she’d created a fantasy about her lover that eventually she came to believe to be the truth?

  Is that what I did with Jeremy? she questioned herself ruthlessly. Was I so desperate for love that I failed to see through him? God, what a little fool I am, she wept into the soft feather pillow. I’m a fool for going to séances and chasing ghosts and making bad investments and falling all over Jeremy Ryder. I wanted to prove to the world I can manage my life, but all I’ve done is screw it up.

  As the first rays of dawn began to turn the morning to a lilac hue, Alison gave up trying to sleep. She put on a bathing suit and threw a towel over her shoulder. Maybe a swim would clear her mind, and she could decide what to do next. She padded down the stairs, shivering in the cool morning air. The house seemed empty…and large.

  Huge.

  And lonely.

  Alison heard the clock chime five times as she passed the Great Hall. She turned down the corridor where the ghost had apparently cornered Drew Hawthorne, and the best Alison could guess was that Hawthorne had had to jump out of the window to escape. If he did indeed escape. The ghost was rather…omnipresent. Reaching the swinging doors that led into the pool area, Alison paused, thinking about what had transpired there between her and Jeremy. My God, how could something so good have turned out so bad?

  Suddenly, she heard voices coming from the pool. They didn’t sound at all ghostly. Rather, they sounded young. She pushed open the door and crept inside and watched, amazed, as Kit stood on the side of the pool with a stopwatch, calling out encouragement to his sister, Kate, who was doing the Australian crawl for all her might down the center lane.

  “Go, go, Katie, you can do it! Faster! You’ve almost got it! There!”

  Kate reached the far end of the pool, then grabbed the side and gasped for breath. “Did I make it?”

  “By two seconds, on my watch. I’m telling you, Katie, you’re going to make the team.”

  “Olympics, here we come!” the young athlete burst out in glee. Then she saw Alison standing at the pool’s edge, and her euphoria turned to a look of horrified dismay. “Oh, no,” she groaned. She launched herself up and over the edge and stood up quickly. “I’m truly sorry, m’am. I know we shouldn’t be here. I didn’t think it would harm anything, and it’s too early for us to be on duty yet. I didn’t know we’d wake you…”

  Alison gave the young people a quick, reassuring smile. “You didn’t wake me. And I’m happy for you to practice here. I used to be a swimmer myself. I heard you talk about going to the Olympics. Is it true?”

  Kate smiled in relief and shot a quick glance at her brother. “If my slave driver here has his way, I think I have a chance to make the British women’s team for the summer games.”

  Alison recalled what Gina had told her about Lady Julia allowing the youngsters from the area to use the pool for practice, and suddenly it all made sense. Mrs. Beasley had been a loyal servant, and these two treasures were her grandchildren. “Are there others who need to be practicing right now?”

  “Our whole swim team,” said Kit. “Since Lady Julia died, we haven’t had any place close by to practice. We have to go into London, to the school where our coach teaches. It’s put Kate here very behind in her training. I…I know we shouldn’t have come here without asking. We just didn’t want to bother you after…after all that happened last night. We thought you’d probably be sleeping in this morning.”

  “You may use this pool anytime you need to,” Alison said to their obvious delight. “Just don’t swim alone. And your friends are welcome. In fact, we should set up a practice schedule.” She paused, then added with a grin, “who knows, maybe I’ll even train with you, just for fun. Who’s your coach?”

  “Alistair Scott. He’s the best in the U.K. Teaches at Harrow.”

  “I’d like to meet him sometime. But for now, I’m going to get in a few laps. You’re welcome to stay if you’d like.”

  “Thank you, m’am,” Kate said, picking up her towel, “but we were just finishing. I need to get dressed and ready to start breakfast.”

  Another piece fell into place for Alison. “Start breakfast? Are you the one who has been creating such delicious meals around here?”

  The girl nodded a little self-consciously. “Yes, m’am. With Gran’s help, of course. Kit cooks too. My father owns a pub nearby. We were brought up in his kitchen. He taught us all his tricks.”

  Alison heard the pride and love in her voice, and felt a brief pang of…not jealousy, exactly, but regret that she’d missed out on the kind of family these kids came from. A grandmother who interceded with her employer to gain a place for the young swimmers to practice, a father who’d included his children in his daily schedule. It was what a family should be, and at the moment, she would have given up her millions to be part of a family like that.

  “I’d like to meet him sometime, too,” she smiled and waved as they left the pool. Yes, and she’d like someday, somehow, to be that kind of parent, she thought, but the idea brought her back to the source of
her present depression.

  Jeremy Ryder.

  She glanced at the bench where she had laid her towel the night Jeremy had so unexpectedly joined her in the pool, and her face grew warm when she saw his shirt and jeans dried in pancake shapes on the deck of the pool. Had Kit and Kate seen them? she wondered, embarrassed. And what about her bikini? She’d never bothered to come back for it. By now, it was probably sucked up against one of the filters in the pool. She laid her towel on the bench and dived in the water. Both pieces, as she suspected, were lodged in one of the filter intakes. She plucked them from near doom and swam to the steps, got out of the water, and picked up the now stiff shirt and pants and rolled the whole thing into a bundle.

  How did one do the laundry around here? she thought, and then wondered how she would explain to Mrs. Beasley about having Jeremy’s clothes mixed in with her own.

  And then she remembered with a smile, she didn’t have to explain to Mrs. Beasley.

  The shrill ringing of the phone awakened Jeremy from a fitful, dream-haunted sleep. He groped for the receiver, trying to clear his head. The sun was already over the windowsill, and he realized he had overslept.

  “Hello.”

  “Ryder, old chap! You’ve returned from the hinterlands!” The bright cheery voice of Malcomb McTighe made Jeremy wince.

  “Hatfield is hardly the hinterlands. What’s up?”

  “I’ve been working on that lock of hair you found, or rather I should say those few strands. I know you were hoping they’d turn out to be from the fair head of Lady Caroline Lamb. Sorry, but they’re not.”

  Jeremy was disappointed. “Well, it was worth a shot,” he replied, taking the cordless phone to the bathroom and splashing water over his face while he talked. “I thought since I found them in an old copy, a first edition maybe, of Childe Harold, inscribed from Byron to Caroline, it was possibly her hair.”

  “Well, it’s not hers, but it is his.”

  “His? You mean Byron’s?”

  McTighe laughed. “Is that so surprising? I mean, in those days they used to cut off locks of hair right and left as a pledge of love. It would make sense that Byron sent a lock of his hair to Caroline, along with the book. That’s why I went ahead and checked it out.”

  Jeremy dried his face. “Yes, it does make sense. Except that on the envelope, somebody, Caroline I assume, had written ‘To Lord Chillingcote.’ Why would she be giving him a lock of Byron’s hair? You’d think she’d want to keep that, of all things.”

  “Who knows? Caroline was crazy, you know.” Another laugh. “You’ve heard about the lock of hair she sent Byron, I suppose?”

  “You mean the one from her…”

  “Oh, yes. She clipped that little curling lock, and sent it to Byron and asked that he return her one in kind. I don’t think he ever did though. She was outrageous, that woman,” he finished with a hearty guffaw. “Any man, even Byron, would have had his hands full with her. Well, I’ll let you get about your day. I have the hair samples here at the lab. Stop by, and I’ll buy you lunch.”

  “It’s I who will buy you lunch, my friend. Thanks for the sleuthing.” Jeremy hung up the phone, considering what his friend had just said. Lady Caroline Lamb had been outrageous, and she apparently still was. He’d been trying for the past three days, since his return from Dewhurst Manor, to deal with all that he’d seen of the ghostly version of her.

  With Caro’s ghost, and her look-alike in the flesh, Alison Cunningham, Lady of Dewhurst.

  He’d left Dewhurst Manor with mixed emotions. A part of him conceded that he had fallen in love with Alison and was reluctant to leave her, even if she had expressly told him she wanted to work out her life on her own. She was inexperienced and, Jeremy felt, vulnerable to the likes Drew Hawthorne. But how could he help her if she didn’t want any help? He probably should have left her a note, or at least phoned to explain his hasty departure, but he was afraid if he had any contact with her, even by long distance, just the sound of her voice would undo his resolve to give her the time she needed to work things out for herself. He could imagine she would be hurt and then angry to find he had left without a word. But in the long run, he believed it was for the best.

  For both of them.

  Once he was out of the sight and sound and taste and feel and smell of Alison Cunningham, however, he had begun to recover his senses. When he returned to the familiar comfort of his townhouse on Hill Street in London’s Mayfair, with the city street noises reminding him that this was home, not that gloomy ghost-ridden manor, the other part of him, the one that insisted he remain detached from any committed relationship, took over.

  The whole incident at Dewhurst Manor was entirely too bizarre for his taste. Although the memoirs were intriguing, and if she asked, he would do his best to put Alison in touch with the experts she’d need to prove their authenticity, he would do so, he’d decided, from a distance. As enchanted as he was with her, Alison was too unsettled in her own life, carried too much unresolved baggage for him. He had a planned and orderly life and lived it in a proper, civilized manner. He had his thriving business to occupy his days, his gentleman’s club two nights a week, and a respectably full social calendar. He’d been dazzled by Alison’s beauty and passion, but he’d get over it.

  Or so he’d thought.

  But for three days, he found to his distress that she was with him in his mind’s eye every waking hour, and she slept with him in his dreams. He couldn’t quit thinking of her, or of the uncanny ghostly encounters he’d witnessed at Dewhurst Manor.

  It was all totally irrational…the harpsichord concert at midnight that had led him to kiss Alison in the first place, the vision of Alison-Cunningham-who-wasn’t-Alison-Cunningham dressed in the provocative low-cut gown that had so aroused him he had been unable to think of anything at dinner but kissing her again. The spectral push into the pool which had landed him quite literally in Alison’s arms where he’d experienced the most incredible lovemaking of his life.

  Lovemaking.

  It was different from sex.

  And he knew that with Alison, he had made love for the first time.

  Jeremy sat down heavily on the bed, visualizing what Alison would look like there, dreamy-eyed and fresh from sleep. He felt his body respond to the ever-present desire he seemed to carry in his soul for her. What was wrong with him? Had he gone mad?

  But he knew he had not. He’d only fallen in love.

  And he didn’t have a clue what to do about it.

  “After all, we must end in marriage; & I can conceive nothing more delightful than such a state in the country, reading the county newspaper, etc., & kissing one’s wife’s maid.”

  Lord Byron

  I expected the worst from Caroline when she heard of my engagement to her cousin Annabella. Even though I had heard little from her & not seen her since she left my bed—not desiring to be my “sister”—I knew she loved me still, & I fully believed I would be subjected to another of her famous tantrums. But such was not the case, although I did blame one unfortunate incident on her which I later learned was not her fault—The very day after Annabella & I had announced our engagement, the Morning Chronicle printed an article denying this was the case. This smacked very much of a Caroline prank, for no one else had the motive or the malignity to be so petty. Later, I found I had falsely accused her. But Caroline was so…Carolinish & was famous for such activities. But this time, Caro was the very opposite. She wrote, congratulating me warmly & wishing us every good future. I must admit, my Vanity was somewhat piqued that she should take it all in such good nature, even sending a wedding present! Where was the wrath & fire of a woman scorned?! Where was the Caro who had told John Murray that she would kill herself should I decide to marry? I rather liked that Caro better.

  Our marriage took place on 2 January 1815, & it was a Catastrophe from the outset. I could not find it in my heart to attempt to love the dowdy-looking woman, & I admit I was a beast as the wedding day approached. We were
married & left for our “treacle-moon”—there being no “honey” in our relationship—at Halnaby Hall in Yorkshire without further ado, & we argued the entire trip. Although I managed to consummate the marriage on the sofa before dinner, it was my wish that my bride not join me in bed after, for I have always had an aversion to actually sleeping with women. However, I gave the new Lady B. her choice, & she climbed into bed by my side. It was bitterly cold outside, but a roaring fire in the room kept us warm as we lay on the four-poster which was surrounded by a curtain of crimson. Annabella had openly stated that she wanted to reform me, so it seemed reasonable that first she must know the depravity & wickedness of which I was capable. I taught her that night, & to my astonishment found she actually enjoyed the lascivious acts which I perpetrated upon her. It was only in the morning, when I awoke thinking the red drape was a curtain of flame & cried out, “My God, I think I am in Hell!” that she seemed put off by my behavior.

  Scarcely one year later, my wife appeared to have forgotten the pleasure she had obviously taken from the sexual arts we practiced on our wedding night & used the charge of sodomy—indicted me privately to her lawyers only—to achieve a separation from me. But Annabella, if ever you lay eyes upon this Memoir, remember—remember, & acknowledge your pleasure, for to Lie is to Sin, & no one would ever call you a Sinner!

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The day was prettier than it deserved to be, considering Alison’s mood. She sat on a grassy knoll by the river, tossing pebbles into the water. Overhead, the last May sun burned warm and golden, but deep within, her heart was as cold and frozen as if it were the dead of winter.

  Would the loneliness never end?

  Everything, and everybody, was gone.

  Alison had searched everywhere for the missing memoirs to no avail. The ghost had been lying low, if indeed it was still at Dewhurst. Drew Hawthorne seemed to have disappeared off the face of the planet…likely with the memoirs in hand and Caro in hot pursuit.