The Dressmaker’s Secret

by Charlotte Betts

  ‘Did you ever attend any dinners as elegant as this on your travels in Italy?’ said Dolly, just as if he hadn’t noticed.

  ‘I stayed in some very grand houses.’

  ‘But how unfortunate for you that you were there in your capacity of dressmaker rather than as a guest.’

  I sipped my wine and smiled blandly at him. Dolly was amusing and outwardly friendly, but I would take care never to turn my back on him, I decided.

  ‘Your father told me you were living with the Princess of Wales,’ he continued.

  ‘I’m surprised he mentioned that,’ I said, ‘since he forbade me to talk of it.’

  Dolly smiled guilelessly. ‘But this is all in the family, isn’t it? Tell me, how did you find her? Is she as frightful as the Prince Regent says?’

  ‘Not at all!’ I said, indignant that he should think so. ‘She has her foibles, of course…’

  ‘You mean she never washes, flirts outrageously, and lives as man and wife with a so-called Italian noble fifteen years younger than herself, who is no more than her servant?’

  ‘If you’d been to Pesaro,’ I said, ‘you’d know it isn’t like that.’

  ‘Ah, but I haven’t been to Pesaro,’ said Dolly. ‘Can’t abide foreign travel.’ He shuddered. ‘Bugs in the bed, garlic in the food, and all that sort of nonsense.’

  I paused while I decided how to describe her. ‘The Princess of Wales dresses inappropriately sometimes but there’s no meanness or pretence about her. Perhaps she grows restless too easily, like a child. I was surprised by how much she dislikes formality, to the extent that she confided in me her distress when she discovered, quite by accident, that her daughter had died. Can you believe the Prince Regent didn’t trouble himself to send her the news?’

  ‘I believe he vowed some years ago never again to communicate with his wife.’

  ‘In my opinion, he’s behaved badly towards her.’

  ‘In Sir Frederick’s household,’ said Dolly, ‘I’d advise you to keep that opinion to yourself. Your father is vociferous in his condemnation of the Princess, if only to demonstrate his support of the Prince of Wales.’

  ‘Residing in the Princess of Wales’s household for several months has brought me to an entirely different, and possibly more informed, judgement of her character,’ I said.

  ‘Your father, however, has no patience with any view that doesn’t support his own,’ said Dolly. ‘I heard that the Princess has taken her entourage to Marseilles to overwinter incognito in a small hotel.’

  ‘Marseilles?’ This was news to me. ‘I expected her to arrive in London soon.’

  ‘The talk in the coffee houses is that she’s merely waiting for better weather to sail back to Pesaro.’

  I sipped my wine while I reflected on this. So Alessandro was probably in Marseilles. I wondered if Lady Hamilton had travelled to Marseilles, too, and if he had received my letter yet.

  The footmen carried in a succession of dishes: roasted goose, venison, a baron of beef, innumerable capons and pheasants decoratively dressed with their tail feathers, and several beautifully ornate Christmas pies.

  ‘I can’t eat another thing!’ declared Aunt Maude some while later.

  The guests raised a cheer as two footmen circled the table, holding aloft a flaming Christmas pudding, while the musicians played a lively march. I recalled Sarah had made an English Christmas pudding one year but I’d found it too rich and preferred panettone.

  After we’d finished the pudding, bowls of grapes, slices of fresh pineapple, candied apricots and marchpane sweets were placed at intervals along the table. Glasses of dessert wine were poured and then Father rose to his feet and tapped his glass with a spoon.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I wish you all a Merry Christmas and I’m delighted you could be here to share our festive feast today. As you know, this is a very special Christmas since my beloved daughter has been returned to me.’ Father looked straight at me. ‘Please raise your glasses with me in a toast to Emilia.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ said Dolly.

  I blushed as the entire company toasted me, chorusing my name. I pictured Alessandro’s face for a moment and heartache and longing washed over me.

  Chapter 17

  After breakfast on Boxing Day, a dozen ancient widows and several of the deserving poor of Upper Langdon village shuffled into the hall to collect their annual parcels of surplus food and clothing. Once they had given their grateful thanks, Father and I distributed the Christmas boxes to the servants, who were then granted the rest of the day as a holiday.

  Father, Dolly and two other male house guests went off to join the local hunt, leaving Aunt Maude and myself to entertain the wives. We took a turn around the garden and exclaimed how invigorating the fresh air was after the rich food of the previous day, before returning to the comfort of the library fire.

  ‘I remember your mother,’ said Mrs Digby, the wife of Father’s solicitor. ‘You are very like her with the same pale skin, fine features and red hair.’

  ‘I can’t picture her at all,’ I said. ‘I’d hoped coming to Langdon Hall might bring back the memories.’

  ‘And it didn’t?’ Her hazel eyes were sympathetic.

  I shook my head. I only remembered Sarah, who had defended me from her husband’s cruelty and been my companion for most of my life.

  ‘Grief over the loss of a baby sometimes makes a woman lose her reason,’ said Mrs Digby. ‘I was greatly shocked by the news of your mother’s death, though.’ She shook her head. ‘Rose Langdon always had her feet so firmly on the ground.’

  Later, the men returned, full of loud bonhomie and boastful stories of how they’d outwitted the fox. Hunting had sharpened their appetites and they fell on the cold collation laid out for us in the Great Hall.

  After dinner, the house guests sent for their carriages and Dolly came to say goodbye, too.

  ‘I understand from your father,’ he said, ‘that Aunt Maude will be grooming you for your presentation at Court.’

  ‘Mmm,’ I said. ‘Father believes it’s necessary.’

  Dolly raised his finely arched eyebrows. ‘Why so gloomy? I thought all girls liked to have new clothes and go to balls?’

  ‘He’s hoping to find me a suitable husband.’

  ‘Don’t you want a husband?’

  ‘Eventually,’ I said, ‘but I’m not sure about balls and routs.’

  He smiled at me down his long nose. ‘I shall be on hand to escort you.’ He brushed an imaginary speck of dust off his beautifully tailored sleeve. ‘I anticipate your return to Grosvenor Street with great pleasure,’ he said, bowing.

  Once the guests had left, I wasted no time in cornering Father. ‘Will you show me my mother’s portrait now?’ I asked.

  He sighed. ‘It’s upstairs.’

  Lighting a candle, he led me up a back staircase to the attics and opened a small door. ‘Wait here,’ he said.

  I peered over his shoulder into a windowless storage room tucked under the eaves. By the wavering light of his candle I caught sight of various discarded pieces of furniture, a broken lamp and assorted trunks. ‘Is that a cradle just behind you?’ I asked.

  ‘It was yours and then your brother’s,’ he said. ‘I put it away after Piers died, so it wouldn’t further distress your mother.’ He lifted his candle and pulled back the corner of a dust sheet. ‘Here,’ he said. Tucking the picture under his arm, he came out of the store, brushing dust off his hands. He carried the portrait to the landing window.

  My heart thudded and my mouth was dry as I gazed upon my mother’s likeness. Her blue eyes seemed to be looking at me and I couldn’t look away. There was a hint of a smile around her full mouth and I touched her painted cheek as if I could bring her to life again.

  Father watched me without smiling.

  After a moment I sighed. ‘Mrs Digby was right. I see a likeness, except that Mother’s hair is redder than mine.’ There was a hollow ache in my breast, as if I’d been crying f
or so long that, even when the tears stopped, intense sadness remained. ‘I do so wish I could remember her,’ I said.

  Father looked at the portrait, his face expressionless. ‘Some things are best forgotten,’ he said.

  ‘May I have the portrait in my room?’ Mother’s painted face was so lifelike it made me shiver with longing to feel the warmth of her flesh. ‘She has such a gentle expression, doesn’t she?’ I whispered.

  Father passed one hand across his face and shielded his eyes for a moment . ‘Emilia,’ he said, ‘it’s time I told you what really happened.’

  Something in his tone broke the spell cast by the portrait and I stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Not here,’ he said. ‘Come to my study.’ He set off down the stairs and I followed him, carrying the portrait carefully in my arms.

  In the study he closed the door behind us and lit the candles. Then he took the portrait from me and turned it to face the wall. ‘I don’t want to look at it,’ he said. He sat at his desk, pulled a bottle of brandy out of the drawer and slopped a generous measure into two glasses. He drank deeply from one and then pushed the other towards me.

  Tentatively, I sipped it.

  ‘Over the ten or fifteen years before Piers died, there had been a series of notable thefts,’ Father began, staring into the candle flame. ‘Priceless paintings had been stolen from the homes of the rich and famous and it was assumed the thief was either a member of the aristocracy or had a well-connected accomplice who fed him information.’

  ‘Were those the art thefts you mentioned before?’

  He nodded.

  ‘What have they to do with my brother’s death?’ I asked.

  ‘His birth was difficult,’ said Father, ‘and Rose was slow to recover. Piers cried a great deal, colic the nurse said, and your mother couldn’t love the baby as she should. She spent a great deal of time lying in a darkened room, weeping. Aunt Maude will tell you that. And then one day, Rose found Piers dead in his cradle.’ Father drained his brandy glass. ‘It may have been a sad but natural event. Or perhaps she saw an opportunity to release herself from her guilt for not loving her son enough.’

  I gasped. ‘Surely not?’

  He shrugged. ‘In the light of what happened later I’ve wondered about that, but we’ll never know. Anyway, Rose grieved terribly but then, over the following year, she began to improve. She started to meet her friends again. Sometimes I even heard her laugh. But she became cold towards me.’ He sipped his brandy. ‘So cold, in fact, that I suspected she was having an affair.’

  Shock and distaste rippled through me. That wasn’t at all what I’d expected, or wanted, to hear.

  ‘And then one night in Grosvenor Street, I was woken by a noise in the hall. I crept out of my dressing room and went downstairs. The front door was ajar and there was a light in the drawing room. A man was lifting one of my paintings down from the wall.’

  ‘What a shock!’

  ‘It all happened so quickly. He dropped the painting and came at me with a cudgel. I thought my head had split in two when he hit me. I saw him run out of the front door and then I passed out. When I regained consciousness your mother was leaning over me. She’d come out of her room and seen the thief attack me. He had the painting tucked under his arm. She said he barely broke stride, struck me then ran outside.’

  ‘Was he ever caught?’

  ‘No,’ said Father. ‘The thing was,’ he poured himself another brandy, ‘when the thief attacked me, the painting was still on the drawing-room carpet, not under the thief’s arm.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

  ‘Neither did I, at first,’ he said. ‘It was the next day that I realised something wasn’t right about your mother’s story. I went to her room and questioned her. She laughed and said I was imagining things but she kept glancing towards her wardrobe. I threw open the door and rummaged through the contents but there was nothing there. When I climbed onto her dressing-table chair to reach the top of the wardrobe, she stopped laughing.’

  My stomach turned over as I realised what he was going to say. ‘The picture?’ I said.

  ‘Wrapped in one of her shawls.’ Father looked at me, his face taut. ‘She was defiant. She said she despised me and the thief was her lover. She’d intended to take the painting and run away to Paris with him. I didn’t know what to do. The scandal would have been terrible. So I locked her in her room.’

  Suddenly I felt like crying. My mother looked so lovely in her portrait and it hurt to know that her sweet smile was merely assumed. I remembered Sarah had told me Mother intended to go to Paris to stay with friends. ‘Sarah never mentioned the theft,’ I said.

  ‘Of course she didn’t!’ said Father. ‘It was a small but valuable painting and easy to transport. I hung it back on the wall so no one ever realised it had been removed. I begged Rose to tell me who the thief, her lover, was but she set her mouth in a mulish line and refused. It angered me and I told her she’d stay locked up until she did tell me.’

  ‘Was it was someone you knew?’

  Father rested his head in his hands for a moment. ‘I’ve tormented myself with that thought for years. But he never tried to contact Rose and she never revealed his identity. She grew pale and thin but remained obstinate.’

  ‘Were there more thefts after that?’

  ‘Not for a couple of years but then they began again so I assumed he’d returned to London and perhaps found another accomplice.’ Father looked directly at me. ‘I still lie awake at night sometimes, wondering if it’s someone I know, one of my friends. It’s unnerving to imagine he’s been laughing at me all this time.’

  ‘And he used Mother and then abandoned her.’

  ‘If you’d heard the things she said to me,’ said Father, his voice bleak, ‘things a daughter should never hear, you’d know she was no innocent party.’

  I swallowed, sick with the thought of what he had suffered. Mother had used Sarah, too, and it had ruined her life.

  ‘And then,’ said Father, ‘I came home early from my club one night and I heard Rose’s bedroom door close as I came up the stairs. I checked my pocket but I still had my key. I assumed the housekeeper had been careless but, when I tried the handle, the door was still locked. When I unlocked it with my key, I found Rose in her travelling clothes. I realised then that she’d been attempting to escape when she heard me come in and had returned to her room.’

  ‘Sarah made a copy of the housekeeper’s key,’ I said.

  ‘I was so angry,’ Father told me. ‘I shouted at Rose and she screamed back at me and then began to laugh so hard she couldn’t stop. I had to slap her.’ He sat with his head bowed and his fists clenching and unclenching on the desktop.

  ‘What happened then?’ I asked.

  He heaved a sigh. ‘She mocked me and said I couldn’t keep her locked up forever. Her lover was waiting for her at Dover. I asked her how she thought she’d survive without money. She taunted me, saying her lover had given her Lord Beaufort’s miniatures for safe keeping and they were in her travelling bags, along with her jewels.’ He looked up at me. ‘Sarah had already gone on ahead with the luggage, you see. Rose and her lover intended to sell the miniatures and live off the proceeds.’

  ‘Miniatures?’

  Father opened his desk drawer and took out a wooden box. He lifted out a number of newspaper clippings, yellowed with age. ‘These relate to some of the paintings stolen over the past thirty years, mostly in England but also in France and Italy. The press called the culprit the Picture Frame Thief because he usually left a sketch of an empty picture frame in place of the item he stole.’

  ‘How cruel to mock the owner of the painting so!’ I said.

  ‘Indeed.’ Father picked out one of the clippings. ‘This set of three miniatures had been stolen from Lord Beaufort, an acquaintance of mine. We’d been his house guests a couple of weeks before they were stolen and your mother must have fed information back to the thief. As you see, th
ey were extremely valuable.’

  I took the clipping from him and read that the three miniatures were of the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, the daughter of King Philip II of Spain and his wife, Elisabeth of Valois. They were painted in 1598 by Sofonisba Anguissola, one of the first female court painters, on the occasion of the Infanta’s betrothal to her cousin, Archduke Albert of Austria VII. Shocked, I placed the clipping back on Father’s desk.

  ‘Emilia,’ he said, leaning forward to look closely into my eyes, ‘did you ever see those miniatures?’

  ‘Never!’ I said.

  He sighed and leaned back. ‘They were in the baggage Sarah took away. I hoped you might know what became of them. It’s been a terrible burden, knowing that Rose was involved in their theft. I want to return them to Beaufort.’