The Price of Deception (3 page)

The complex female body operated mysteriously, and
Robert felt uncomfortable with the term of menstrual blood.
However, he understood the consequences of its occurrence—it meant
no child had been conceived. He collected his thoughts and looked
at his broken wife. Her disappointment mirrored equally his
own.

“I’m sorry.” He choked the words from his hoarse
throat. What more could he say? It would be the same
sorry
he had uttered every month for years—a never-ending disillusionment
that left him cold and empty inside.

Jacquelyn wept silently. She stared at her cup.
Robert knew she needed more than tea. Perhaps a hot bath and tender
care would ease her pain. He stood to his feet and pushed apart the
wood-paneled double doors and headed down the hall. He found Dorcas
and called her aside.

“Your mistress needs pampering, Dorcas. I believe
there are female matters to attend to.”

Dorcas remained silent. She lowered her eyes and
curtsied, understanding exactly what he meant. All the servants
knew of their dilemma. Both staffs in London and Paris had followed
their lives for five long years. His wife’s barrenness had been
spoken of throughout the household, and each cycle the entire staff
waited for word that this would be the month of good news. It never
arrived.

Robert allowed her to assist his wife. She would
remain in bed for a few days while she passed her menses in
depression. Dorcas would do as she always did on a monthly basis
for her mistress. Jacquelyn would be escorted to her bedchamber,
assisted with a warm bath, and then put to bed. Thank God for a
tender lady’s maid, who knew exactly how to deal with such female
matters. Robert could handle no such task, for he too often fell
into a few days of despondency after he heard the news.

He left Dorcas to tend to his wife, turned to the
stairway, and made his way up to his own suite. When he entered, he
saw Giles standing by his armoire unpacking his trunks and hanging
up his clothes. Robert remained silent but instantly spied a full
decanter of brandy on a side table. He needed a strong drink—to
hell with tea and cakes.

Swiftly, he pulled the stopper from the crystal and
dispensed an ample amount. He brought the glass to his parched lips
and downed the liquid in a few gulps; then he poured another. Giles
noticed his rapid consumption and raised his brow over his
employer’s behavior. Robert saw him out of the corner of his
eye.

“I need it, old man, to drown the disappointment once
again.” He looked up at his trusted assistant and waited for words
of solace in return.

“Am I to assume, Duke, that the Duchess has no good
news to bring this month?”

“None,” he bitterly spewed.

He picked up the decanter and poured one more. “There
will never be any good news, Giles. When will she accept it?” He
took another swig from his glass. “When will I accept it for that
matter?” he moaned, as he wiped his mouth with the back of his
hand.

Robert swirled the left-over liquid around the bottom
of the glass and lost his thoughts in the pool of alcohol. He
wished he could drown in a sea of brandy to ease the pain.

“I’m destined to produce no heir,” he said,
emphatically, convinced of his future. “I shall be without a son of
my own. This blasted estate of mine and its fortune will pass to my
cousin, Roger Dawson, the black sheep of the family. The man is a
total ass and unworthy of a Shilling of my family’s
inheritance.”

Robert huffed and pointed his index finger at Giles.
“I shall toss in my grave after I die, knowing that my estate did
not go to my own immediate flesh and blood. It’s a bloody damn
shame!” His voice bellowed through the suite.

“One never knows, my lord, what tomorrow will bring.
I cannot ever encourage you to give up hope. You should always
cling to it for comfort, if nothing else.”

Robert dismissed Giles’ words as rubbish.
Hope?
Hopeless,
he countered bitterly. He had quit counting the
number of times he attempted to impregnate his wife. When he made
love to her, she felt like a cold brick. Her body lay rigid
underneath him, unresponsive and void of passion. He despised it,
but only performed to deposit his seed to produce a child.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he hoped that each child
conceived would bring continual comfort to his burdensome,
duty-filled life, and awful marriage.

Robert finished the glass and set it down on the
silver tray with a
clang
. The alcohol coursed through his
veins, which soon brought relief to his anxiety.

“I need a bath,” he commanded, untying his cravat. He
pulled it from his neck and threw it on the bed. “Ready one for me
and bring me a lit cigar to puff upon while I soak. I’m going to
drink, smoke, bathe, and then sleep. It’s all I care to do at the
moment.”

“Of course, I shall draw it immediately.”

Robert took off his suit coat and unbuttoned his
white linen shirt. With each button that slipped through the
eyelet, he wrestled with his disappointment.

“I came.”

The words echoed in his mind. His thoughts wandered
into a mire of gloominess. For five years, he heard the same two
words—he damned their existence.

The fact that Jacquelyn could not conceive posed a
conundrum. The unanswered question remained—who was to blame? Women
were delicate creatures, with workings that only a physician
understood. His doctor explained the various reasons why wives
often did not conceive, or if they did, the grounds behind
miscarriages and stillbirths.

He knew that syphilis could be one reason, but he had
checked and received a clean bill of health. The risks of infection
were prevalent in Paris. He had been assured that the prostitutes
in the brothels he frequented for aristocrats, received
examinations every 15 days. Robert knew that men became infected
regardless of how careful they were in their sexual exploits.
Luckily, he had been spared in spite of his risky behavior.

Convinced that no disease prevented him from
impregnating his wife, it had to be Jacquelyn’s body that refused
his seed. Why?

Although he wasn’t a religious man by any means,
Heaven had closed his wife’s womb for some reason. Occasionally, a
rare prayer would escape from his lips to entreat his creator for
the gift of a child. He’d confess his sins of his earlier days, in
an attempt to appease God for his prior reckless behavior. It
mattered not. His prayer went unanswered.

He finished his contemplation, after liberating his
body of clothes, and stood naked and ready for his bath. While
Giles discreetly averted his eyes, he climbed into the water.
Robert reclined in a comfortable position and took the lit cigar
from his assistant’s hand.

“Pour me another drink, Giles, and bring it to
me.”

He puffed the cigar and blew smoke rings into the air
above him. Giles returned with the alcohol, and Robert continued to
anesthetize his disappointment.

What a damnable situation
, he thought. He had
no solution for the quandary.

* * * *

“Now, now, Lady Jacquelyn, you must control your
weeping. You shall make yourself ill.”

“I don’t care,” she wailed harder. “I’m already ill.
Can you not see by the blood in my bloomers?”

Jacquelyn glared at Dorcas, who took a deep breath
for fortitude. Her lady’s maid had been with her since she came of
age at 16. She cared for her needs in her father’s house and
followed her to the Holland estate upon marriage. Though Jacquelyn
maintained strict lines between mistress and servant, she knew
Dorcas to be an empathetic woman. She could release her frustration
and despair without danger of condemnation.

While Dorcas took off her mistress’s clothes,
Jacquelyn’s body shook with sobs. Her fingers quickly unbuttoned
her dress, then shoved it down off her shoulders. When it pooled at
Jacquelyn’s feet, she stepped out of the circle of fabric. Dorcas
slipped the strings of her corset through the eyelets to free her
from the soiled undergarments.

Jacquelyn flinched when she saw the bloody stain on
her bloomers. As she glanced at her feet on the carpeted floor, it
felt like she stood upon the edge of a precipice. One wrong move,
and she would tumble into a pit of everlasting shame. She’d be
branded with an eternal mark of disgrace. Any wife who failed to
produce children bore dishonor, especially one with the title of
Duchess.

Dorcas pulled her chemise over her head and gently
pulled her bloomers down. Jacquelyn tilted her gaze and beheld the
trickle of red crimson that made a pathway down her inner leg
toward her knee.

“Your bath is drawn, my lady. Freshen up from your
trip and then I will prepare the rags for this month’s flow while
you relax.”

Jacquelyn took her hand and followed her maid
obediently to the bath chamber. Tears of grief flowed silently down
her flushed cheeks.

She approached the claw-foot tub that held comforting
warm water and dipped her toe into the pool of liquid. After
sliding into the bathwater, she observed the trickle of blood on
her leg dissipate. Her heavy flow would begin in the morning as it
always did.

“Lavender, Lady Jacquelyn, or do you prefer
primrose?”

“Pardon?”

“Your bath fragrance. Shall I put in lavender or
primrose?”

Numb with emotional pain, it mattered not to
Jacquelyn. “You chose for me, Dorcas. I do not care.”

“Very well, my lady.”

She poured a generous amount of lavender into the
water. The mixture filled Jacquelyn’s nostrils with a relaxing
scent. Dorcas left to prepare her pads. Jacquelyn slipped deeper
into the waters, and then laid her head back upon the rim of the
tub.

Her eyes fixated on the ornate plaster treatment
above with its swirling decorations. She followed the lines and
decorative curves and made a conclusion it had been silly to
decorate a bath chamber ceiling. Jacquelyn understood such ornate
treatment in a bed chamber or parlor, but not here.
What a waste
of the architect’s efforts
, she thought,
such unneeded
Parisian opulence.

For quite some time, she stared blankly at the
pattern. Jacquelyn waited for the emotional pain to drain from her
pores into the tub of water. No matter how long she looked at the
ceiling, the ache in her heart would not leave. When she realized
how pointless her little exercise had been, her emotions
exploded.

“How stupid can you be?” she blurted out over her
silly thoughts. “You lay here judging useless ceiling decorations
when it is you who are useless. A barren nobody unable to conceive
life.”

Rage burst from her soul. Jacquelyn balled both hands
into a fist and pounded the water in the tub where she lay.
Splash, splash, splash.
The water sloshed back and forth in
the midst of her tidal wave of anger.

“Stupid! You’re nothing but stupid and useless!”

The water recoiled from the invasion of fists. Waves
breached the sides of the tub and spilled onto the floor. Tears of
frustration and self-loathing poured down her face. She glanced
down into the water and noticed a bloody clot had released between
her legs. Terror spewed from her mouth.

“Dorcas, get me out! Get me out!”

Dorcas dropped the clothes in her hands and ran to
the door. Quickly, she slipped her arms underneath Jacquelyn and
lifted her up out of the water.

“Now, now, Lady Jacquelyn, it will be all right. Calm
down. I’ll have you in bed shortly.”

She wrapped her mistress tight in a fluffy towel and
took the liberty to put her arms around her sobbing body. Jacquelyn
took no offense over her maid’s intimate response. After all,
Robert’s nonattendance created a void in her life. Why shouldn’t
she rely upon a servant to show an ounce of sympathy?

Hastily, Dorcas dried her body, clothed her in a
nightgown, and prepared her undergarments with clean menstrual rags
to catch the flow. She helped Jacquelyn crawl between the sheets
and covered her with the blanket.

“There, now get some rest, my lady. You’ll feel
better in the morning.”

The next few days Dorcas would wait upon her in the
privacy of Jacquelyn’s quarters. After her emotions settled back
into semi-normalcy and the menses subsided, she would emerge from
confinement and return to her duties. Then, as she had done for
years past, she would proceed to beseech Robert to visit her bed
and try again.

* * * *

Jacquelyn’s quiet seclusion afforded Robert time to
spend with his usual male comrades at the Jockey Club de Paris,
located at 2 rue Rabelai. Originally established as a society for
the encouragement of the improvement of horse breeding in France,
it had evolved into a rather exclusive club of aristocrats and men
of the bourgeoisie. When Robert visited, he enjoyed intelligent
conversation with fellow peers of similar background and title.

Along with the dialogue, of course, came the candid
banter about the finest in alcohol, cigars, women, and the brothels
in town. Although five years had passed since he darkened the door
of the Chabanais, Madame Laurent’s popularity had not waned in her
ability to offer the best of prostitutes. Her competition, Rue des
Moulins, had been given rave reviews too by a few of Robert’s
acquaintances. He had tasted its treats on one other occasion in
Paris and found a welcome partner that filled his need for an
unbridled romp between the sheets.

After a few days, he had caught up with old friends
and turned his attention back to Jacquelyn. When she had left her
chamber from her morose depression and monthly illness, as
Victorian women often termed those times, he knew that soon she
would begin her shopping for the latest fashions. He, however, had
another idea that he thought might brighten her spirits.

The weather had been perfect since their arrival,
with comfortable temperatures and no rain. He felt the urge to take
her on a stroll in the nearby Parisian gardens. Many locals
promenaded in their parks, which seemed a sensible pastime. To that
end, he suggested his idea over breakfast.