Mistress of My Fate (36 page)

I must admit, it took some time for me to grow accustomed to the strangeness of my surroundings. That I should find myself in a brothel, no matter how grand, shocked me to my very core. Never did I think in all my life that I should have cause to enter such a place, and at first I sat uneasily upon my couch, attempting not to gawp as revellers breezed in and out of the ballroom in various states of undress. However, after a spell, my sense of scandal began to abate, as it had with virtually every other lewd and licentious situation into which St. John had thrown me. It may even surprise you to read that I eventually came to enjoy my reign upon the throne that evening. As my fellow guests lifted their masks to address me, I was pleased to see many familiar faces among the sea of strangers. Shortly after our arrival, the Bird of Paradise arrived upon the arm of the old Duke of Queensberry and Sir John and Lady Lade appeared not long after. My condition prevented me entering into the dancing, so I lounged for most of the evening upon my couch, fluttering my enormous fan of peacock feathers and receiving flirtatious looks from a good number of admirers. Only a brave few dared approach me, for the virile Jupiter guarded my throne with the ferocity of Cerberus. As you might imagine, dear reader, jealousy had lately taken root in St. John.

Suspicion is the price for excessive pride. A man who boastfully displays his riches to all the world is soon convinced that he will be robbed of them. And not without reason, I hear you say. Those of you acquainted with the habits of the
demi-monde
know this to be too true.

Although I had dismissed Mrs. Mahon’s earlier attempt to instruct me in the ways of the mistress, she would not be put off so easily.

“I impart these lessons to you for your own benefit, my dear,” she had lectured me one evening as we took a turn, arm in arm, through the Pantheon.

“But why would I need the protection of another gentleman when St. John has displayed such devotion to my happiness and to that of my child?” I sighed, now growing weary of her pestering.

My tutoress rolled her eyes heavenward. “And what if he tires of you?”

“But I am to give him a child. Certainly, he would not tire of the mother of his child.”

At that, Mrs. Mahon let out a yelp of astonishment. “My dear,” said she, “I have given three men four children, and for what? One has paid me an annuity of a hundred pounds per annum. Men are more fickle than women in their desires. They are like bees, forever moving from one flower to the next.”

I feared the truth of her words, though I simply could not see St. John tiring of me, the daughter of his Kitty, his
petit chaton
, the very incarnation of the woman he had lost. And certainly,
certainly
, I assured myself, Allenham would have returned to me by then, for every day I lived in expectation of a letter from him.

The Bird of Paradise gave me a look of exasperation. “Hetty, are you so ignorant of your charms that you cannot see them in the looking glass? Heavens, my girl, you are the Goddess of Beauty herself! Can you not see why St. John wishes to display you?” She wore a look of wonderment as she addressed me, as if I were some feather-brained ninny. “The gentlemen of this town talk of little else beyond your golden hair and round blue eyes. Why, you might play the bee, not the flower. I declare it, St. John has all to fear once you are delivered and freed of your condition,” said she, casting a glance at my belly. “Barrymore. Permit his advances. I shall arrange for an assignation at my lodgings.”

Zounds! If St. John only knew what treachery his trusted friend proposed! After all, it had been he who had suggested that Gertrude Mahon act as my tutoress, my chaperone through this garden of dangers. He believed he had employed an angel, when in truth he had engaged a serpent.

“No.” I spoke firmly. “I do not wish it.”

My friend tossed her head. “Then it is no affair of mine.”

But this was not the end of it. That evening at Mrs. Windsor’s, as I presided over the company, she sat beside me on my couch, again whispering into my ear.

“Just look about you now, Hetty, at the wolves circling this room, smacking their lips while St. John sits not two feet from us. Why, in the time we have sat in conversation, I have seen Lord Grosvenor gaze upon you in the hopes of catching your attention, and Colonel Wheeler there who is dressed as a centurion… see, he looks again…”

Only the approach of Lord Barrymore brought a halt to her scheming. She rose from her seat and made a coy curtsey before drawing him down so she might whisper some mischief into his ear. She glanced back at me as she departed, and flashed me an impish smile.

His lordship remained teetering before me, as drunk as he had been upon the day we first met. He paid his respects to St. John and then waited until my keeper was engaged in conversation, before slithering into the seat beside me. He began to stare at me, though I turned my head from him and waved my frothy fan between us. He moved closer still, keeping one eye fixed always upon St. John.

“Angel,” he breathed, in great sour clouds of wine, “have you no knowledge of your pregnant charms?”

I ignored his taunts.

“A woman round as the Madonna is a great temptation indeed.” He began to laugh wickedly. “You see, dear Miss Lightfoot, a womb filled with another man’s infant betrays no secrets. One can spill as much seed as one likes upon the ground and yet it will never take root.”

My face was growing hot with indignation.

“Do not fret,” said he, sliding nearer to me still, “there is no risk to be had. No one will know I have been inside you, and your large belly will not hinder us. I shall take you from behind, like a true Roman.”

At that I moved quite violently away from him and attempted to catch my protector’s eye, but St. John was too engaged to notice.

“
Tempus fugit
, my dear,” Barrymore murmured, shutting his eyes in imagined bliss. “You will not remain in such a convenient state for long. Make haste.”

At that very instant I was preserved from Barrymore’s advance by the approach of one of his friends.

“My lord,” called the gentleman attired in a vast gold breastplate and helmet. He was short and as broadly built as Mars himself.

“Ah, Quindell!” exclaimed Barrymore. “May I introduce to you Miss Lightfoot?”

“The ox-eyed Juno,” he gushed, quoting from Homer and making a deep, theatrical bow. “Madam, you grace the mortal world with your beauty.”

“Miss Lightfoot will not permit anyone to make love to her, Philly. I have tried and failed.”

But this did not deter Mr. Quindell, who at that moment removed his mask to better feast his wide-set eyes upon me. He wore the dumb expression of a man enchanted.

“You cannot put me off so easily, my lord,” said he, going down upon his knee and taking my hand in his.

“She has eyes for no one but St. John, her keeper.”

Just then, Quindell’s face changed. He looked over at the virile Jupiter, who was rapt in conversation with a gentleman in an orange mask.

“St. John?” He snorted, and then began to chuckle. “Why, John St. John?” he said again, in a louder, more assertive voice.

I knew then that my keeper had heard him, but rather than turning
to Quindell, he leaned nearer to the masked gentleman, as if to hear him over the din.

“St. John owes Quindell a great deal of money,” explained Barrymore with a hiccup. “Why, most of London owes Quindell a great deal of money.”

I looked at Barrymore with a startled expression.

“I know nothing of this,” I muttered in disbelief. “Why? However did this come about?”

“Oh madam, this is no new state of affairs for Mr. St. John,” stated Quindell, raising his voice further. The debtor continued to play deaf. “His losses at the gaming table are quite considerable. He has assured me on many an occasion that he will shortly be in receipt of his income from his nephew, Lord Bolingbroke, but that was near eight months ago. If you would be so kind, Miss Lightfoot, might you have a word with Mr. St. John on my behalf? Remind him, in that way that only an alluring creature can, what he stands to lose.”

I nodded warily, not knowing what to make of this distressing revelation, and thinking all the while of Mrs. Mahon’s cautionary tales.

Gracious heaven! If you had seen St. John’s expression upon our return home… The inside of his coach positively rattled with the sounds of his fury. His eyes shot forth with thunderbolts; his face was as red as a screaming infant’s.

“By God, that man wished to make a fool of me,” he spat. “Never have I been subjected to such an insult! To have one’s debts cried publicly before one’s friends—and upon this night of all nights! What am I to make of this? Dear Lord, I should have called him out! Yes, I shall. I shall do it. There is no other remedy for it…”

I attempted to calm him, to convince him that a duel would not resolve the issue, but he would not have it. He would not hear a single word I said.

“And to think, this… this… sugar merchant’s son holds some of the
greatest families in the land in his debt! Why, who is he? Some… some ingrate Barbadian planter? That this Colonial should speak to me with such disregard—it is an abomination, an affront to all that is right and just, I say!”

Oh, and would that it had ended there.

St. John’s pride was vast, but it was not robust. He did not forget an insult easily. He brooded upon the matter all the next day and the one after that. Indeed, nothing seemed to lift his mood from the dark space where it lay. I crept around on quiet toes as he stewed in his study, emptying the contents of his cellar into his wine glass. On several occasions I rapped upon his door, but he only groaned.

“It is I, your
petit chaton
.”

“Leave me,” he growled. And so I did.

I confess, my keeper’s melancholic behaviour troubled me greatly. I had never seen a man so glum, nor did I know when this storm was likely to blow itself out. Happily, his proposed challenge to Quindell came to nothing: he had not the resolve to fight a duel. In fact, little could stir him from where he sat, wallowing in his sorrows. Little, I say, but his unquenchable thirst for that proverbial medicine which dulls all men’s pains.

I suppose this was what drew him down the back stairs to the kitchen. There is no other explanation for why he would have been making use of the servants’ passage. He must have been very drunk indeed to decide to fetch a bottle from the cellar rather than to ring for it. In any case, it was here, quite late at night, that he came upon Mary, the girl who tended me. He found her with a candle in one hand and a letter and packet in the other.

“Who sends a message at this hour?” grumbled St. John, ripping the parcel from her. Mary was powerless to resist, she later claimed to me. Her ill-tempered master had it from her so quickly that she had no time to protest.

Perhaps you have already guessed from whom this secret dispatch
came. Barrymore, of course. He had paid Mary a guinea to bring the gift to me without St. John’s notice.

The first and, dare I say, the last I knew of this was when St. John threw open my dressing-room door.

“And now, madam,” he shouted, “the truth of the matter is known!”

Goodness! I very nearly jumped from my skin.

“Dearest Jack,” I pleaded, greatly confused, “whatever do you mean by this?”

Truly, I have never seen an expression so twisted with fury as his. He reached into his pocket and drew forth a rumpled letter.

“ ‘Fly away with me,’ ” he read in a cold voice. Then he turned his sharp eyes upon me. “It is from Barrymore, but I expect you knew that.”

“Dear Lord, sir!” I exclaimed, rising to my feet at his accusation. “You cannot think I would have courted his notice! Why, I have rebuffed his attentions upon every occasion since our first acquaintance! You yourself have witnessed this…”

St. John would not be moved by my words. Instead, he felt inside his waistcoat pocket and pulled from it a little object tied up in a piece of white silk. Angrily, he unpicked the knot and then slowly removed the item. There before me was a small gold watch, its pretty face painted with roses and the phrase “
Tempus Fugit
.” He dangled it from his fingers like a mouse held by its tail, as a sneer of disgust settled on to his lips.

“ ‘
Tempus Fugit
,’ indeed,” he snarled before dropping the object upon the floor. With a heavy foot, he then pounded his heel upon it and crushed it mercilessly into pieces.

Chapter 27

And that, dear friends, brought about an end to my period of peace beneath St. John’s roof.

It must be said that my keeper was no Othello. I have known some ladies to suffer greatly by the back hand of their lovers and husbands. The slightest hint of suspicion or a flirtatious look results in a bruise or a fall down the stairs. But fortunately, this was not the way with St. John. No, he contained his passions behind his pride, while fury and suspicion ate through his insides like a tapeworm. His expression may have appeared calm and sanguine, but beneath it, his vengeful heart raged.

After his eruption, there was no further mention of “the affair of the watch.” St. John broke with Lord Barrymore, whom he decried as a “scheming rascal,” a man “incapable of loyalty” and “bent upon ruining the happiness of his friends.” He was banned absolutely from paying me any address whatsoever. And that was that, or so I believed.

“The world is composed of schemers,” he muttered one evening as we sat alone at dinner. St. John would have no one round our table until he had licked his wounds completely clean. “Plotters and dissemblers and frauds,” said he, examining me over the edge of his crystal wine glass. “Hmm, madam? What say you to that assertion?”

I swallowed with some difficulty and studied my plate.

“I believe you see enemies in every shadow, sir.”

St. John puffed out a laugh.

“I have good cause for it, have I not? Are you not a schemer and a conspirator?”

I was indeed, and a far worse one than he could have imagined. Unthinkingly, I folded my hands across my broad belly.