Mistress of My Fate (30 page)

I fear I no longer bear the right to make any requests of you, but I beg of you to permit me at least one. Please, my dearest creature, do as I shall, and forever look forward to the moment of our happy reunion. You must live for this and do whatever you ought in order to ensure the safe arrival of that day. My brave, courageous love, remember always my words to you: that you have a strong mind. Let your reason be your guide, as well as the wisdom of your heart. Think of Monsieur Rousseau. Forgive yourself for any measure you may take that permits you to live and thrive. I shall never reproach you for any deed committed which has
kept you safe and alive
. In your dark moments, remember G & H upon the hearth. Remember your passionate Werther. Remember always the true pledges of love I spoke to you. Believe me, my dearest, most cherished Henrietta, you are the owner of my heart and, as such, it shall always be with you.

Until that blessed day when I take you in my arms, I am and will for ever be your adoring,

Allenham

My tears had begun to flow long before I had read the final sentence. Gracious heavens! I thought I might fall dead at that very instant, for my beloved’s letter had delivered to me what I believed to be my mortal blow. Never could I have imagined that such injury might be inflicted by a mere sheet of folded writing paper. It entered my soul with the sharp force of a stiletto and I dropped upon the floor as if I had breathed my last.

No, I did not collapse into a faint like the heroine of some romantic tale. Those who have known true anguish understand that shock and pain course through the human body like currents of electricity.
There is nothing genteel to behold about suffering. It is not done upon a couch. The victim does not lie angelically in a swoon. Instead, the limbs convulse and curl in pulses of agony. The body writhes and sobs uncontrollably. The nose streams, the eyes swell, air can hardly be drawn into the lungs. The moans and wails are incapable of being stifled.

Shall we leave this scene of distress? It does me no good to dwell here.

Over the years, I have put many remembrances out of my head. Beyond the sentiments relayed to me in his letter and its immediate and painful effect, I can recall very little. All is a blank. I kept to that bedchamber for most of the day and dismissed the gentle knocking of the maids who enquired after me. I was ill and wished to be left alone.

I must own that, for a short time, I prayed for death, much as I had before when I first learned we were to be separated. I called up to Fate, and begged he would take me as swiftly as he had Lady Catherine.

One of us three must die!
“It should have been me!” I cried.

What poxy, foolish thoughts these were, but nevertheless, I savoured them a good while before they floated away.

It was the incessant discomfort of my churning stomach that eventually roused me from my black musings. It reminded me that I would not be ending one life, but two. I placed my hand over my belly and wept some more at the thought of what lay inside it.

Within me swam a most miraculous creation: Allenham and my form blended as one, swirling together, eternally joined as a single being. Oh, the sweet calm this knowledge bestowed upon me, though how sad indeed that he should not know of it! I would keep this child, this product of its parents’ purest love, as close to me as I could. A rush of determination passed through me, that I should bring Allenham’s child into the world and try with all my might to ensure that it grew and thrived. I stroked the spot where I believed the homunculus might lie. I was, dear readers, a good deal frightened; I was frightened and delighted all at once, and so dreadfully lonely.

Through my stinging eyes, I took in his missive several times more, and bawled like an infant at each reading. I wept because I knew not what to do. Allenham instructed me to live for the day of our reunion and to take whatever measures necessary to ensure it,
but I did not know how
!

I walked about the room, the letter enfolded in my damp palm, and gazed for a time through the window. My mother’s comfortable and well-furnished bedchamber lay at the side of the house and, as such, provided a north view down the length of Park Street. I looked out at the row of attic windows where linen-capped maids moved about, and down upon the straw-strewn road where a beggar sat with a bowl in the melting snow, where two filthy children chased a dog, where a girl selling thread walked beside a man on a stick leg peddling needles. As I observed the trafficking to and fro, I saw how many possessed bandaged hands and torn skirts, ragged coats and thin capes. I thought of Miss Bradley’s words, her warnings to me. How indeed would I earn a crust? I had no means of making my way in the world. Privilege had rendered my hands too soft for work, my sensibilities too weak. With an infant in my belly and without friends to recommend me, I could never expect to serve as a governess or a companion. Should St. John choose to throw me out, it would be I who trod the street in rags and torn stockings. It would be I who slept, like those despairing souls I had spied upon my entrance to this city, beneath the bulks of shop fronts, or curled like cats in doorways. It would be I who picked through the wilted radish greens beneath the market stalls, the rotten offal in the shambles gutter. Into what squalid corner would my child be born?

Oh you, you of birth and breeding, you happy bourgeoisie, you bankers and money-lenders, you ship-owners and sugar-traders, you who have never before opened the door to find the wolf’s hot eyes upon you, you gentlefolk who have known no other life than one of ease, you may not comprehend the decision I made next, nor could you ever. Some of you, my fine readers, may think of hardship as too little
coal for your fire, or being forced to remake your own gown for yet another season. You could never understand what I did at that perilous moment, when two lives dangled precariously between comfort and want, between life and a beckoning death. From the position in which I stood, the choice, dear friends, though repugnant to my tender heart, seemed most obvious.
Survive
, my beloved had written to me,
survive!

Dinner had been called when I emerged from my rooms. I had rung for the maid to dress me. My linens had been laundered and both my gowns, the striped silk
robe anglaise
as well as my pewter-coloured riding habit, had been brushed down and pressed. I chose to wear the former, made from the blue, buff and grey striped silk my beloved had presented to me. I stood at my mother’s dressing table and had the maid put fresh curls into my hair and smooth it with pomade. My neck and ears were bare without jewels. I feared I appeared plain; my face was so haggard and swollen from my distress that I resorted to applying paint, something I had never before ventured. I had not the first idea as to how to prepare it, but took some of the little hardened brick of carmine and rubbed it into my cheeks and on to my lips. I suspect it succeeded only in making me appear more sallow—and ill. Thus prepared and smelling sweetly of orange flower water, I proceeded below.

I was directed into the drawing room where St. John, looking most relieved at my appearance, rose to his feet immediately.

“Dear little girl!” he exclaimed. “I cannot tell you what a fright you gave me! When I heard you had taken ill, I was simply beside myself. But you look most recovered now…”

“I am indeed recovered,” I responded quietly.

St. John examined me, and then, like an uncertain suitor, suddenly pulled his eyes away.

“Miss Lightfoot,” he began, “I should not like to think that you feel in any way… awkward here, that there is anything which might cause you unease…”

I recognized that St. John, in his discomfited way, was attempting
to learn if his failed attempt to enter my bedchamber last night had been the reason for my distress.

“Why no,” said I demurely. “Mr. St. John, I apologize if I appear in any way ungrateful for your hospitality, for I can assure you… I… owe you… much…”

What magic my words performed. It was quite miraculous to behold, for all at once the lines of St. John’s face relaxed. Light filled his eyes and his mouth broadened into a gracious smile.

“Well, my dear… well, no, it is I who is most grateful, most grateful for your company, madam.” He then turned to a side table upon which sat a large, flat case. “You had mentioned to me the loss of your jewels upon your arrival in London and I wished to make amends for this,” he said, humbly presenting me with the box.

I looked up at him, his towering height, his sharp, pointed features and slightly weathered countenance, with uncertainty.

“Go on then, you must open it.”

Inside lay a pair of pearls nearly as large as the tip of my thumb, set as eardrops on mounts of gold and diamonds. Surrounding them sat a fat double collar of the same.

“They belonged to your mamma,” said St. John with pride. “She wears them in her portrait.”

I peeled my eyes from the exquisite jewels and gazed at the woman whose face I had never before clearly seen. She sat almost in profile, an eardrop resting against the edge of her cheek. Her fair head was tilted and her pearl-embellished neck turned as she leaned dreamily towards her right shoulder. Her red, heart-shaped lips were softly parted, her dark grey eyes cast into the distance. In her I saw the shade of myself, many years older and wiser, a veteran of the dissipated world. Her features were as round as mine, her mouth as full, her nose as small and straight. To see the reflection of one’s own face in an object other than a mirror is an odd thing indeed. I was dumbstruck by this image of my own visage on another.

St. John approached me, delicately lifted the collar from the case and fastened it around my neck, his fingers pressing into my exposed skin. Carefully, he pushed the eardrops into place, running his hand across my cheek as he did so.

“How beautiful,” he breathed. “You are as radiant as she ever was.”

I knew what was expected of me. I knew that if I were to remain here, in this haven of peace and warmth, where I should be fed and clothed and protected, that St. John would demand something in return. Nothing goes for nothing in this world. Between my taste of life at the Bull and my introduction to the manners of London, I had learned this lesson quite quickly. I dread to think what might have become of me had I been dim-witted. No, I would give St. John what he desired, but I too would exact a price, and it would be one that my self-satisfied host did not even know he paid.

And so I went to my bed that night prepared for St. John to renew his attempt to visit me. I left both doors unlocked and unbarred, but before I did, I also took a precautionary measure.

As St. John believed me to have my virgin’s honour, it was beholden upon me to play my part, and to play it well. Should I shrink from this task, all would be overturned. I cast around my mother’s dressing table for some inspiration. At first I alighted upon the scissors, and intended that I should make a small cut along my inner thigh, near enough to my privy parts that St. John should think he drew the maiden’s blood from me, but stopped when my eyes fell on the hardened brick of carmine. Was this not a pigment like any I had mixed on my artist’s palette? And had artists from time in memoriam not replicated the precise sanguinary colour upon their canvases? I paused in thought for a moment, and then rang for a servant to bring me a glass of port wine.

With some skill, I mixed a paste of reds, which I then took on my finger and pushed deep inside me. When St. John fired his attack, I figured all would come loose, and my honour would be preserved.

I shall tell you, reader, this entire charade, this duplicitous and
immoral act did not please me, not for one moment. What worsened it still was the thought that this deception was intended to secure yet another, larger falsehood. As I returned to my bed and extinguished the light, I lay perfectly still. I gently pressed my thighs together, fearing that my maidenhead might fall away before my seducer claimed it. My heart thumped very loudly indeed as I listened for his inevitable approach.

There were many things I had considered before I had gone down to dinner that night. I had resolved that if St. John was to have me, he should also have my child. He should believe it was his own. He should never know of its true father, no matter how I pined for Allenham, no matter how determined I remained in my heart that we should be reunited. And oh, dear friends, I can assure you, this scheme disgusted me with the horror that you now suffer on my part! I recoiled at what I was forced to become—forced, yes, forced, I say, for you tell me, you disdainful censors, what other choice had I? Before you hurl this book across the room and condemn me with all the accusing disgust of Lord Dennington and his friends, I beg you to consider that I did it not to gratify some malicious urge within my breast but to secure the life of an innocent unborn. Were it in her power, no mother would willingly see her child brought into a life of poverty and illness. I would be a dullard indeed to let St. John exact his pleasure from me without seizing the moment to place a cuckoo’s egg in his richly adorned nest. Should my plan come to fruition, my child would enjoy all the gifts and protection of St. John’s wealth until the return of its true and adoring father. If not this, then what, dear reproachful reader, would you have done? Sent your infant on to the streets? To the foundling hospital? Orif they would not have it, would you hand it over to some slatternly nurse, who would allow it to starve? Have pity, my friends, have pity.

Just as I had predicted, my intruder tried the handle of my door shortly after my candle had been snuffed. I shut my eyes tightly at the sound of his feet, for it was all I could do to contain my horror at what I knew must come to pass.

“Henrietta, dear…” he whispered, “I fear I heard you cry out. Are you well?”

“Quite well, thank you,” I murmured against my pillow. My face was turned from him, and a good thing it was, for his excuse to gain access to my bedchamber was so uninventive as to be laughable.

My answer did not satisfy him, and how could it have? He came for one purpose alone. He lingered and then placed himself upon the edge of my bed.