The Misbegotten (3 page)

‘You’re a good boy, Freddie, and I will miss you a great deal. I hope we will visit each other often,’ she told him.

‘I doubt that,’ Eliza chipped in. ‘Bath is so dull and . . . reduced, these days. We shall be travelling more often to Lyme from now on, I should think. And even if we did come to Bath, I dare say we would move in somewhat different circles.’ In her increased unkindness, Rachel read a touch of sorrow in Eliza, too. She feared that Eliza was one of those people who would only ever be able to express themselves through anger, so she found it in herself to cross over to the girl and kiss her cheek.

‘Be happy, Eliza. And try to be kind,’ she said. Eliza scowled furiously, pulling her face away. She stared resolutely out of the window, looking as though she would love nothing more than to throw open the casement and fly away through it, into the world beyond, far from her home with all its walls and doors, its straight lines and straighter rules.

A knock at the door made Rachel turn from the window. Her wedding gown – in truth her only good gown, of pale fawn cotton, short-sleeved and gathered beneath the bust – shifted around her ankles. She felt the failed curls of her hair brush her neck, and wondered if it was too late to do anything about them. It was Eliza who came into the room, not waiting for her knock to be answered.

‘If you’re ready to wed the shopkeeper, Father has brought the barouche to the front for you. I said it was fifty paces to the chapel and easy to walk, but he insists that a carriage is in order for a wedding,’ she said, sounding bored. She was wearing a beautiful dress of cream satin, edged with intricate embroidery, finer than anything Rachel possessed. Rachel thought this a final act of tactlessness from her former charge.

‘Thank you, Eliza. I am ready.’

‘But . . . your hair . . .’

‘My hair will have to do. It’s windy out, anyway. And besides, Mr Weekes will not mind.’

‘He might not, but perhaps you ought. Here, sit down a moment.’ Eliza picked up some discarded pins from the dressing table and set about fixing up some of the stray tresses. ‘You should have had Bessie come and help you,’ she muttered.

‘As you have so often reminded me, Bessie has enough to do without dressing my hair for me.’

‘It’s your
wedding
day, Miss Crofton. And why you refuse to wear a false front of proper curls, I’ll never know. Miss Crofton, Miss Crofton – I thought you might like to hear it a few last times, before you become Mrs
Weekes
.’

‘It’s good of you to attend a wedding you so disapprove of,’ said Rachel, amused.

‘I never said I disapproved. Mr Weekes is . . . well. Right enough for you, I suppose.’ Eliza shrugged.

‘A good and honest man, and one who loves me. Yes, I would call that right enough,’ said Rachel, and in the mirror she saw Eliza blush slightly, her lips thinning as they pressed together. A thought occurred to her then – that Eliza might somehow envy her. She’d caught the girl out, more than once, spying on Richard Weekes from a window. He cut a romantic figure, and he was handsome – more than handsome enough to enchant a fifteen-year-old girl. Rachel knew she shouldn’t let this please her, because Eliza was really just a child; but still, when she rose from the table at last it was with a good deal more resolve.

Down the wide staircase with its sweeping balustrade, along the rich Turkey carpet in the hallway, towards the tall front doors. Rachel’s reflection accompanied her, flitting from one vast mirror to the next like a companionable ghost, and there was something profoundly comforting in this duality. The temptation to see her reflection as a separate person was strong. She didn’t dare turn her head to look, because she knew what she would see – only herself; no companion at her side after all. She would likely never step inside such a grand house again, but Hartford Hall was also cold, and unyielding. There had been little laughter, in spite of the children, and few guests. Rachel had always found it a sad and quiet place, after the warmth and jollity of her childhood home and the constant girlish chatter at boarding school. She pictured the way her father and little brother, Christopher, had wrestled – rolling on the hearthrug, digging at each other’s ribs until laughter rendered them helpless; she tried to picture Sir Arthur behaving that way with Freddie, and couldn’t imagine it. But perhaps she’d brought some of the quietness with her to Hartford, in mourning the loss of her parents; because some measure of herself had died along with them, or so it felt.

Her mother went first, from a seizure; her father three years later, when grief had led him into ruin, and scandal, and the house and all their furniture had been sold to set against bad debt. The doctors had been mystified as to what actually caused his death, but Rachel, who’d seen the look on his face as she kissed him goodnight for the final time, was quite sure her kind and gentle father had died of shame. The thought was too painful, so she tried not to think it. There was the magpie, perched on the gatepost as the carriage rolled her away from the front doors.
One for sorrow.
Rachel raised two fingers to salute him, in spite of all better sense.

Nerves. Nothing more.
Life was about to change for ever, after all. She could be forgiven for feeling anxious, especially since she was alone in all her decisions, with no recourse to advice from a parent or older sibling.
Perhaps I am only in want of a second opinion.
She had come to know and trust Richard, but their courtship had been swift. Sometimes when he smiled it seemed that other, more serious thoughts hovered behind his eyes; and sometimes when he was serious, his eyes danced in silent merriment. Sometimes she looked up to find him watching her with an expression that she didn’t recognise and couldn’t decipher.
Such things are learnt in time. I will learn to read him, and he will learn to read me.
But he told her that he loved her, over and over again, and swore his devotion to her. And she’d
seen
the effect she’d had on him, when they first met. Still, her heart was thumping as she made her solitary walk down the aisle to join him in front of the altar. She had no male relative to accompany her – long before her mother died, her brother Christopher had been carried off by a fever, at the age of nine; Sir Arthur drew the line at taking on this familial duty himself. The bride’s side of the chapel was populated almost exclusively with absent people, but she pictured them there as she made her way past, and she pictured them glad, and approving of her choice. She held herself straight, and walked with measured steps.

Richard was wearing his best blue coat and a crisp white neck tie, with his hair combed back and his jaw clean-shaven. He was strikingly lovely; his eyes were clear and apprehensive as he watched her approach. He stood close enough to her for their arms to press together as the parson gave the welcome. There seemed a promise in the touch – that soon there would be nothing, not even cloth, between their two skins. Rachel felt anxious at the thought. The sunlight through the chapel window was warm. She could smell Richard’s shaving soap, a slight aroma of camphor from his coat, and the vital, masculine smell of new sweat. She cast her eyes sideways as the clergyman spoke on, and saw Richard staring fixedly at the effigy of Christ on the cross that hung above the altar. Small knots were working at the corners of his jaw, but when he was called upon to speak, and make his vows, he turned towards her and couldn’t keep from smiling. Try as she might to be calm as she spoke her part, Rachel’s voice was so quiet and strangled that the parson struggled to hear it. When it was done, Richard raised her hand to his lips and shut his eyes, bowing before her.

‘Mrs Weekes. You have made me the happiest man alive,’ he whispered, and then laughed delightedly, as though he couldn’t keep it in.

Starling blew angrily at a lock of her reddish hair that kept falling into her eyes. Her hands were sticky with onion juice, so she didn’t want to brush it back; the smell of food and cookery lingered on her long enough as it was. In spite of the chunk of stale bread impaled on the point of her knife – a safeguard that Bridget had sworn by – her eyes were stinging from the fumes, and just then her nose began to itch as well, so her teeth were already clenched in irritation before Dorcas came sidling up to her. Dorcas smoothed her apron repeatedly with the flats of her hands, and smiled a quick, thin smile. She hovered there, in the corner of Starling’s eye, like some insect looking for a place to land. Starling took a deep breath, put down the knife and raised her eyebrows. Dorcas’s smile became a scowl, and Starling could see how much she loathed asking a favour of a lowly kitchen maid.

The sun had only just set and the lamps not yet been lit, so the fire sent shadows capering up the walls like devils.

‘Will you do it today, Starling? You know how bad he was yesterday,’ Dorcas burst out. The skinny housemaid, with her horse’s teeth and her narrow, lashless eyes, was sweating, though whether that was from discomfort or the heat of the cook fires, Starling couldn’t tell.

‘Is that anyway to talk about the master?’ Starling was too cross to make it easy for Dorcas.
Let her beg me
, she thought.

‘Don’t play me the high and mighty, Starling. You know what I’m talking about,’ said Dorcas. Starling studied her, and saw real fear in the girl’s eyes. She hardened her heart against it.

‘What I
don’t
know is why you expect me to do your work for you, Dorcas Winthrop. I don’t see you down here chopping endless onions for the soup.’ Dorcas’s nostrils flared in distaste.

‘I’m upper housemaid. I don’t do kitchen work.’

‘You’re the
only
housemaid, so go do your own work and leave me be.’ Starling turned back to the onions, feeling the other girl’s impotent rage as she backed away.

The kitchen of the house on Lansdown Crescent, in Bath, had a vaulted ceiling and tall windows to compensate for being below street level. The windows looked out onto a narrow, shadowed courtyard, and let in little light. It was a space nestled amongst the foundations of the building, carved into the ground, supporting the house above in more ways than one. Starling sometimes thought of it as like an animal den, a warren through which the servants moved, day in, day out, with grime under their nails and dried sweat in their clothes, blinking at the light of day. The cook, Sol Bradbury, chuckled as Dorcas finally slunk reluctantly up the stairs.

‘You’re wicked, you are, Starling. It’ll end with you going up, and you know that.’

‘Perhaps. But she nips at me like a flea, that one. I can’t find the will to make it easy on her,’ Starling replied.

The gentleman of the house, Mr Jonathan Alleyn, had indeed been worse than usual in the past few days, for which Starling felt gratified. It was her doing, after all. He was ruled by his moods and dreams and the pains in his head; the disarray in his dark and cluttered rooms reflected the disorder in his mind. Starling had many ways to goad him. Earlier in the week she’d learnt, from an old soldier drinking in the Moor’s Head, the exact tattoo of French marching drums. She’d beat out this rhythm on the hearth as she swept it, ostensibly to knock the ashes from the shovel and brush. When she’d finished, Jonathan Alleyn had been sitting with his eyes tight shut and his nostrils white, his whole body wrought hard with stress, so tightly that it shook.
No more than you deserve
, Starling had thought, pleased at this result, and that he went downhill the rest of the week. Yesterday, Dorcas had been pale and goggle-eyed when she finished in his rooms. Starling curled her lip at the memory. The girl was as gutless as a rabbit. She tucked the offending strands of hair more firmly under her cap and went back to the onions. Sol beat the batter for a plum cake, quietly singing a bawdy song.

In minutes Dorcas was back, tears streaking through smudges of soot on her cheeks.

‘He’s gone mad! This time he’s gone quite mad!’ she cried, all shrill and staccato. Starling couldn’t help but chuckle. ‘Don’t you dare laugh at me, Starling! No decent person should have to go into those rooms! It’s worse than anything the devil could devise! And he’s like a demon himself . . . I think his soul must be black as tar! As black as tar!’ Dorcas clamoured.

‘What is all this now?’ It was Mrs Hatton who spoke – the housekeeper; a small, brisk woman with iron-grey hair and a careworn face. The three women in the kitchen stood up straighter, and buttoned their lips. ‘Well? Out with it, one of you.’

‘It’s Mr Alleyn, ma’am. He . . . he . . . I went to set up the room for the night and he . . .’ Dorcas dissolved into tears again, stretching her mouth into a wide, upturned crescent.

‘Saints preserve us. There now, Dorcas! I’m sure he didn’t mean you any harm.’ The housekeeper fetched out her handkerchief and handed it to the housemaid.

‘But I’m sure he did, ma’am! I think he has gone mad this time! He snatched up the smuts bucket and
threw
it at me! If I hadn’t ha’ dodged it might ha’ knocked all my teeth out . . .’

‘Perhaps no bad thing,’ Starling muttered. Dorcas shot her a look of pure venom.

‘Starling, nobody asked you to speak,’ said Mrs Hatton, exasperated. Dorcas wept on.

‘And . . . and he called me such
names
! I shouldn’t have to hear such things. And I did nothing to deserve it!’

‘That’s enough. Now, calm down. You have work to do, and—’

‘No! I won’t go up there again! Not now and not tomorrow neither! It’s not
natural
, what he gets up to!
He’s
not natural, and no decent person should be expected to . . . to . . . have to see him, or serve him! And I won’t, even if it means I’m dismissed!’ With this Dorcas ran from the kitchen. Sol Bradbury and Starling exchanged a look, and Starling fought hard not to smile.

‘Lord, not another one running out,’ Mrs Hatton muttered; for a second, her shoulders sagged in exhaustion. ‘Starling, stop smirking. Go up to Mr Alleyn, if you please, and make his rooms for him. You’ll need to bank the fire well, there’s a nip in the air tonight. He’ll ask for wine but I have it from the mistress that he’s not to have any – the pains in his head have been bad this week, poor soul. Any one of us would be as volatile, had we to live with such suffering. Now, please, Starling – I don’t want to hear any argument.’ She raised one finger in warning, and then walked out in pursuit of Dorcas.