Rebel Heiress (30 page)

Lady Marchmont agreed at once, only stipulating that her own letter to her husband must go off first. ‘And we must write, too, to dear Cedric and Sally. Their support will be vital in the first shock of public opinion. And tell me, when does your friend Mr. Brummel return to town? If he will but back us, we can snap our fingers at the rest of them.'

‘I hope you are right,' said Henrietta, ‘but I fear Mr., Brummel's quarrel with the Prince Regent goes deeper than it first seemed. I am anxious for him, to tell truth. I do not think he quite understands how seriously he has affronted the prince. But he is a good friend. He will do what he can for us. If my father will but accept the child, though, that will be half the battle. I wish we could wait to hear from him, but I do not see how that can be contrived.'

‘No,' said Lady Marchmont. ‘It cannot, for part with Caroline again is what I will not do. Oh, Henrietta' — she crossed the room to take her hand — ‘this kindness of yours is more than I deserve. I have been I cannot bear to think how guilty towards you in the past. I can only say I will endeavour to deserve your goodness in the future.' And to Henrietta's embarrassment she burst into tears. Soothing her as best she might, Henrietta thought that indeed they had come a long way from the day when her stepmother had tried to destroy the papers proving her birth. But what was the use of remembering that now? They were to be friends at last, and she was glad of it. She changed the subject.

‘I must write a note to Simon Rivers at once,' she said. ‘May I invite him to dinner tonight? I think he gets but short commons at his lodgings, and Caroline, I know, will welcome him as a friend. She liked him very much better than she did me that day we took her down to Shrovebridge.'

Simon arrived in admirable spirits, but turned grave and shook his head when Henrietta, who had made a point of being
down ahead of Lady Marchmont to receive him, told him what they had planned.

‘I hope you know what you are doing,' he said. ‘Of course, you can count on me to back you up in any story you choose to tell, but I do not like to think what Lord Marchmont, and, for that matter, what Charles will say. It is not at all the kind of thing that he will like, you know. Cannot Lady Marchmont take the responsibility for “discovering” Caroline? After all …' It was the nearest he had come to a reference to Caroline's parentage.

‘That's just it.' Henrietta, too, spoke indirectly. ‘Everyone knows how recently I am come from America … I did ask whether the father —'

‘The father?' He gave her a quick look. ‘And what did Lady Marchmont say?'

‘That it is out of the question. Besides, she loves the child. When you see them together you will understand.'

‘I just hope for your sake, Henrietta, that Charles will. But where is my little friend? Am I not to see her?'

‘Of course you shall.' Henrietta led him upstairs and tapped gently on the door of Lady Marchmont's room where a couple of amazed servants had installed a truckle bed for the child. The maid Fenner opened the door with the look of acid disapproval she had worn all day and admitted them reluctantly.

Lady Marchmont had already completed her toilet and was sitting by the little bed, dressing a doll for Caroline. She stopped and smiled her greeting ‘Come in, Mr. Rivers, and let me thank you.'

But Caroline had already recognised him. She stretched out her arms to him. ‘Rivers,' she said. It was her second word.

Fenner left that same day, more in dudgeon, Henrietta thought, at not being admitted into the secret of Caroline's birth than for her ostensible reason of ‘never staying where there was children'. Lady Marchmont saw her go with relief and confessed to Henrietta that she had long distrusted her and had, indeed, suspected her of making a very good thing of commissions from the various tradespeople she had employed. Henrietta, who remembered various suggestive remarks of Madame Bégué's, thought this all too likely, but worried a little about the harm Fenner might contrive to do to her former mistress. Still, there was no use fretting about that, and she had
enough to think about in drafting her letters to her father and to Charles.

In neither of them did she refer to little Caroline's parentage. Both men she thought, could be relied on to read between the lines where that was concerned. ‘Lady Marchmont has taken an enormous fancy to the child,' was as near as she got ‘It makes her very happy to have her here.' It should be enough, to anyone who knew Lady Marchmont as these two men did. But where she found the letter to her father easy enough, that to Charles proved unexpectedly difficult. She kept hearing Simon's voice, grave, warning: ‘It is not at all the kind of thing that he will like …' After writing and re-writing it, she sent the letter off at last in a spirit more of despair than optimism, and she and Lady Marchmont settled down to await the two men's reactions, and the world's.

The world, for once, was kind. Henrietta and Lady Marchmont had planned little Caroline's introduction to society almost as if it was a military campaign, and it succeeded as if it had Lord Wellington in command. Henrietta had fired the opening gun by telling Mr. Brummel their agreed version of the story when she met him at a dress party on the night of the child's arrival.

He had looked at her with his wise and worldly eyes, taken snuff, and thought for a moment. ‘Hmm,' he said at last. ‘You might even get away with it, Miss Marchmont. Always provided that Lady Caroline Lamb continues to provide a diversion with her rumpuses … and, of course, that the child does not look too much like anybody.'

Henrietta opened wide eyes. ‘Look like anybody? But why should she, Mr. Brummel?'

He laughed. ‘Why indeed? It would be most inconsiderate of her, would it not? But I am your friend, and dumb, Miss Marchmont. Only, perhaps, I might suggest that Lady Marchmont should discourage the child from calling her “Mamma” too publicly.'

‘Good heavens, Mr. Brummel. Had you then heard of it already?'

‘Of course I had. What do you think Lady Marchmont's maid has been doing since she left her but spreading the most damaging kind of slanders about her late mistress? Truly, I think you two conspirators have much to thank her for. Society does not like a talebearer, particularly not one in the lower
walk of life. I think you will find she has done you more good than harm with her libels.'

The Miss Giddys, calling early the next morning, proved the soundness of this conjecture. They had come, according to the eldest, ‘to see the dear little girl'.

‘So romantic,' sighed Miss Patricia.

‘So generous,' said Miss Letitia.

‘So like our dear impulsive Miss Marchmont,' said Miss Giddy.

‘And to think that the little dear is quite a daughter to you already.' Miss Letitia was addressing Lady Marchmont now. ‘It seems like the hand of providence, does it not, now when my lord is so sadly and unavoidably absent. And when poor dear Miss Marchmont, too, has so little to interest her in life. How pleased dear Lord Marchmont and dear, dear Mr. Rivers must be to think you have found yourselves so interesting an occupation.'

Receiving no answer to this all too pertinent hint, she changed the subject. ‘But we must tell you, dear Lady Marchmont, of the strangest imposition to which we were subjected yesterday.'

‘Yes.' Miss Giddy took up the tale. ‘Only to think of your woman Fenner —'

‘Having the effrontery to come to see us,' chimed in Miss Patricia.

‘With the most amazing tale of a cock and a bull,' said Miss Giddy. ‘Which we will not sully your ears by repeating,' summed up Miss Giddy, much to Henrietta's relief.

‘We soon sent her about her business, I can tell you.' It was Miss Letitia again.

‘And with a flea in her ear, too,' added Miss Patricia.

‘I hope it will be some time before she goes around uttering such libels again,' said Miss Giddy.

‘And as for finding her a place,' said Miss Letitia, ‘I hope we knew better than that. She will find that she has spoiled her market with a vengeance.'

‘It's a foolish bird that fouls its own nest,' said Miss Patricia.

‘As she will find to her cost,' added Miss Giddy.

They were interrupted in their diatribe by the arrival of Rose with little Caroline and spent the rest of their visit in enthusiastic cooings over the child. Luckily, she had already added ‘Hetta' to her small store of words which made it seem
slightly less odd that she continued to address Lady Marchmont as ‘Mamma.'

‘She takes you for her lost mother.' Miss Giddy gave the cue to her sisters.

‘Most remarkable,' said Miss Patricia.

‘Most touching,' said Miss Letitia.

And they turned to a serious discussion of the child's probable age, in which Lady Marchmont and Henrietta took part with the best composure they could muster. Rising, at last, to go, they gave the adoption their final blessing.

‘We are going now to dear Lady Melbourne's,' said Miss Giddy.

‘We shall tell her how happy we found you,' said Miss Letitia.

‘And all about the little stranger,' concluded Miss Patricia.

And they took their leave in a perfect whirlwind of kisses and congratulations. Lady Marchmont smiled at Henrietta over little Caroline's fair head. ‘So much for the world,' she said.

Foggy November wore into cold December and still they had had no answer to their letters to Lord Marchmont and to Charles Rivers. The posts to Spain were always erratic in the winter months and according to the latest despatches Lord Wellington had now forced the French lines between Bayonne and the Pyrenees. The guns had fired on a cold November afternoon to celebrate this, and again when news came of the Allies' capture of Dresden. Rivers was doubtless fighting his way into France with Wellington, Lord Marchmont busy maintaining concord among the Allied sovereigns. At home, there was nothing to do but play with little Caroline and wait.

Marchmont House was a different place these days. The servants, dubious at first about the child, had been quick to take their cue from society and welcome her as a member of the family. The maids all spoiled her, and the footmen rode her
pig-a-back round the servants' hall and caught her at the bottom when she slid down the banisters of the front stairs. And every day added its group of new words to her vocabulary. She had names for everyone in the household by now and was welcomed wherever she went, but still her fondest love was reserved for Lady Marchmont and for Simon Rivers, who was a frequent visitor these days, bringing always some entertaining story of city life for Lady Marchmont and Henrietta, and a new toy, made by his own clever hands, for Caroline.

It was evident from everything he said that he had thrown himself enthusiastically into his new life as a man of business and Henrietta thought that he was just as certainly making a success of it. He seemed to be a frequent and welcome visitor at the Gurneys' house in the Strand and Henrietta felt an odd qualm of — what was it? — when on several occasions she met him riding in the park with the Miss Gurneys. But then, she told herself, her anxiety for him was natural enough. He should look higher for a wife than one of the plain Miss Gurneys, however well dowered they might be.

She suspected, too, that he was still hankering after a political career, and indeed, he told her that he had gone with Matt Gurney to several meetings of the London Hampden Club, had heard Sir Francis Burdett speak, and had even tried his hand, on more than one informal occasion, at speaking himself. Henrietta sympathised too deeply with his passionate desire for an improvement in the lot of the working classes to remind him that he had once told her his coming out as a Whig might kill his grandfather. Fortunately, Lord and Lady Queensmere had been in Scotland all autumn so she hoped there was no need for them to know of their grandson's activities.

Christmas came, and with it, at last, letters from Lord Marchmont in answer to those he had received from his wife and Henrietta about the child. He had justified Henrietta's confidence in him. She never knew what he had said to his wife; only that Lady Marchmont stayed in her room all afternoon and appeared at last with red eyes to embrace Henrietta and vow that she would do her utmost to be worthy of so much goodness.

There was a letter, too, from Charles for Henrietta, who opened it with a shaking hand, only to realise, from the date, that he could not possibly have received hers about Caroline when he wrote. She read his protestations of undying love with
an odd sensation of doom postponed, and turned with relief to his news of the war. ‘We have them on the run now, sweetheart,' he wrote. ‘It is but a question of time.' Her father, too, wrote hopefully, and London was full of rumours of peace. The Miss Giddys hurried in, a few days before Christmas, with the news that Princess Charlotte was engaged at last to the Prince of Orange. ‘Young Frog they call him,' said Miss Letitia, ‘I hope it will do.' They had more important news too: positive information, they said, that Bonaparte had accepted the Allies' terms. Even Simon, reporting that consols had risen to seventy, was hopeful for a day or two. But nothing came of it; there was still no answer from Charles; and December ended in a cold fog that combined with her continuing anxiety to reduce Henrietta's spirits to a nadir. A prey to unreasoning gloom, she could hardly rouse herself to share little Caroline's amazed delight at her New Year's presents.

And the weather grew worse and worse. As January wore into February, the fog lifted at last, but the cold remained intense. The Thames froze over, and enterprising businessmen built stalls on it and sold savoury pies, gin and gingerbread to the warmly dressed crowds who danced there to the music of the Pandean pipes. But Henrietta huddled at home over the fire, sick with cold and an undefined apprehension. She was roused at last by a visit from Simon, just returned from escorting his grandparents back from Scotland. He brought bad news. The cold had struck even sooner and more fiercely in the North. Lord Queensmere had caught a chill riding about his estates and had grown rapidly worse on the journey back to London, which he had refused to postpone.