The Westerby Inheritance (19 page)

Jane was asked to dance by a singularly ill-favored gallant and, mindful of the rules of assemblies, she accepted. All around her, jewels flashed and blazed, and the floor echoed to the beat of high-heeled feet. It was a typical high-society scene, gross brutality mixed with extreme refinement. The new hope at Court, George, Prince of Wales, he who had championed Jane the year before, was much discussed. His father, Prince Frederick, had died, leaving Prince George heir to the throne.

No one had much mourned Prince Frederick’s passing, especially his father, the King, who had perhaps hated his son more than anyone did—even his late wife, although Queen Caroline when she was alive had been heard to remark of Frederick, “If I was to see him in hell, I should feel no more for him than I should feel for any other rogue that ever went there.”

As the evening progressed, Jane’s feeling of excitement and dread began to ebb. He would not come. She must put him from her mind and pay attention to her court of admirers, which so far appeared to her as a group of uninteresting young men who all looked remarkably alike.

Powder and patch, paint and perfume seemed to dance before her weary eyes. And then she thought, “I no longer need to get married! I am a wealthy woman in my own right.” The ballroom swirled round and settled as she absorbed this stunning new thought.

Faces and personalities began to emerge from the crowd. There were some of Lady Comfrey’s elderly friends among the dowagers. They had outlived her after all. Horrors! There was Fanny Bentley, corseted and painted to her usual perfection, and Mrs. Bentley, darting outraged glances at the successful Hetty, who was keeping her court of admirers in gales of laughter. Although Hetty’s ancestry was well known to the gossips, her coarse manner and behavior fitted in exactly with the fashion of the moment and were taken for sophistication. Hetty was being herself, and her admirers were trying to be Hetty, and they all got along splendidly.

Jane looked back at Fanny over the silk shoulder of her partner and suddenly remembered Fanny with her top hair tied to the back of the sofa and her round stomach bursting like a ripe melon, and an impish grin crossed her face.

And that is how Lord Charles Welbourne saw her.

He had been out of society for quite a few months, finding new pleasure in improving his lands, becoming deeply interested in all the latest ideas in agriculture that were springing up. After some time, he had almost forgotten about Lady Jane. In his mind’s eye, she dwindled to an awkward, ugly little grasping thing who had used him successfully. He had not gambled much since the evening he had won the Marquess of Westerby’s estates. Rather he had not
sought
gambling, although he cheerfully accepted bets proposed to him, and they were many. How could one avoid gambling in an age when men, women, and children gambled on anything and everything—which raindrop would run down the window first, which goose would cross the road ahead of the other, how long the felon on the gibbet would take to die?

Sir Anthony was at his side, wearing what he termed his high-hells, although he cheerfully endured the pain inflicted on him by fashion. If one had to suffer to be beautiful, then Sir Anthony was a martyr. White lead might eat into his ruddy complexion, and tight lacing might impair the breathing of his excellent lungs, but he happily suffered it all.

Sir Anthony quite often fell in love, usually twice a year, but his agonies never lasted long, and a month later he would be hard put to it to remember the name of his former inamorata. He accordingly assumed that Charles Welbourne, if he had felt anything for Lady Jane, had long forgotten it, and, putting up his glass and surveying the ballroom, he cheerfully remarked, “Why, there’s the Westerby girl, I declare.”

Lord Charles stiffened and then followed his glance in time to see Lady Jane grinning over the memory of Fanny’s humiliation.

Jane’s strange tilted eyes seemed larger than ever, and the contrast between her elegant gown and flashing diamonds and the impish smile on her face made her seem more like a fairy than ever, and a heartless one at that.

Jane caught Lord Charles staring at her; the smile left her face, and she quickly turned her attention to her partner. Up till that moment, Lady Jane had seemed a strangely elusive type of girl to the young men who had tried to court her. Now she flirted adorably, using her fan to a nicety and setting one gallant against the other.

Lord Charles watched her and hated. Hated her for her seeming callousness. Hated her for flirting with other men, although he did not know it.

He had always prided himself on being a remarkably easygoing man and one that did not hold grudges or seek revenge. But now he wanted to revenge himself on Lady Jane Lovelace. Suddenly he remembered the contract, which he had not torn up, and gave a slow smile.

“Faith, Satan is planning something!” cried a lady as she floated past Jane. Jane glanced nervously at Lord Charles and caught the smile. She hoped it was nothing to do with her.

She dreaded his approaching her and at the same time longed for it. But as the long hours of the night danced past, he did not once come near her, and Jane began to weary of flirting and dancing.

At last she managed to persuade Hetty to go home—a Hetty flushed with success and accepting invitations from all and sundry.

“Odds fish!” cried Hetty, kicking off her shoes in the carriage and scratching her head vigorously. “That was the bestest fun I ever did have. Think on’t. I’ve been all of a tremble over my manners, and that there Duchess is worser than me. Much worser! Oh, Jane. I will be able to present Sally and then Betty at Court. Me! I must write and tell your pa. Don’t you think your pa a little—well, odd, Jane?”

“He is very well, I think, Hetty,” said Jane in a tired voice. She did not want to wrestle with this new worry. “He has an odd manner at times, as if his wits were not about him, but I think he will come about.”

“Well, at least he ain’t yet ready for Bedlam,” said Hetty with a heartless roar of laughter. But her sensitivity began to pick up something in the atmosphere, and she stopped her exuberant comments and tried to catch the expression of Jane’s face as the carriage rolled under the flickering light of a parish lamp.

“He was there,” said Hetty cautiously.

“Who?”

“Lord Charles Welbourne.”

“Oh,” said Jane in a stifled voice.

“I asked the Duchess to point him out. He kept watching you in an evil kind of way, Jane, like he hated you. I know you told me he won back the estates ’cause you asked him a favor, and how you had a
tendre
for him but got over it. Now I looked at that there Lord Charles, and I thought to meself, that one don’t do nothing for nothing, if you take my gist. You didn’t promise him no favors?”

“No, Hetty,” lied Jane firmly. Why tell the shameful truth and upset Hetty? The contract was finished, over, forgotten.

“Don’t keep peering at me, Hetty,” snapped Jane. “It’s unnerving!”

“Oh, very well,” sighed Hetty. “Hey! I heard some rare stories to frizzle your hair. Did you hear the one about the Duke of Dunsert and his horse?”

“No, Hetty, and I don’t want to.”

“Well, maybe you’re right. It was the warmest yarn I’ve ever heard,” said Hetty, ending in a cavernous yawn.

“Do you think I should thank Lord Charles? I know your pa wrote him a letter,” added Hetty as the carriage rumbled to a halt in Huggets Square.

“
No!
” said Jane, and then in a quieter voice, “No, Hetty. Papa wrote an extremely fine letter. I think Lord Charles has been thanked enough.”

“Really!” said Hetty as the footman let down the step. “That one had the look of a man who considered he had not been thanked enough!”

Jane allowed herself to be helped down to the pavement by the footman. She shivered in the chill dawn air. A blackbird began to sing its heart out among the sooty bushes of the gardens, and Jane suddenly stood very still as each liquid note trembled out into the still square.

“Why, Jane!” cried Hetty. “Your face is all wet. You’re tired, that’s what it is, and I’ve been making your poor little head ache with all my chatter. Come, and I shall get Bella to make you a posset. Come along, Hetty’s your mama now. Come along, child. Hetty will fight all your dragons.”

Murmuring nonsense as one does to a hurt child, Hetty put her arm round Jane’s waist and drew her in to the house.

Next day the rain drummed down in steady monotony from a lowering dark-brown sky. At noon all the candles had to be lit, and Hetty stalked up and down in a fever of disappointment. The Duchess of Ruthfords had invited her to go walking in Kensington Gardens that very afternoon. “And how am I to go now?” wailed Hetty. “It’s a great thing for me, this invitation. King George is uncommon fond o’ the Duchess, and she could maybe get my gels presented at Court. Oh, a
pox
on the weather! To think I even considered marrying my Sally to that Plumb fellow, since you wouldn’t have him. But I never thought I could rise so high. I can’t take the disappointment.”

And Hetty hitched up her skirts and fell back into an armchair and cried with noisy gusto.

“Her Grace will perhaps suggest something else.”

“No, she won’t,” cried Hetty and would not be comforted.

But a splendid liveried footman knocked at the street door, and a moment later Hetty was eagerly scanning a crested letter.

“Hooray!” she screamed with delight. She had carried the letter to the window to get a better light and now stood cheerfully mopping her wet cheeks with the window curtain. “The Duchess says how as I’ve to go round to her house and bring the girls, ’cause they can have some sweets left over from the assembly.” She threw down the letter and rushed from the room, calling loudly for her daughters and screaming for Bella to “do the best
těte
that ever was.”

Jane would not have dreamt of reading anyone else’s correspondence, and therefore she did not know that the Duchess had added a postscript saying it had been the very good idea of my Lord Charles Welbourne.

A bare half-hour later, Hetty erupted into the morning room, hauling Sally and Betty with her. She kissed Jane on the cheek and then paused, “Oh, Jane, aren’t you coming with us? I forgot to ask.”

“I shall stay home and read,” smiled Jane. “And if I get lonely, then I shall go out and take Bella with me as chaperon.”

Hetty paused only for a minute to look at her stepdaughter doubtfully. But what could happen to Jane safely at home, surrounded with an army of servants? She waved her hand and swept Sally and Betty before her from the room. Jane crossed to the window and waved as the carriage moved off, with Sally looked as excited as her mother and little Betty looking half-frightened.

Jane turned from the window and picked up the first volume of a novel. It was plentifully supplied with fair maidens and evil villains and gothic castles. She curled herself up on the window seat, still in her nightgown, wrapper, and cap, gave a happy sigh, and began to read, while the rainwater roared down outside and the day grew darker.

She was so absorbed in her novel that she was only dimly aware of a carriage pulling up outside.

After a short time, Sanders, the butler, entered. “Hem. Hem. My lady. Lord Charles Welbourne has called. I ’ave put ’is lordship in the drawing room.”

Jane leapt to her feet, the book falling from her hands. “Oh, dear. I am in my undress! Tell him—tell him I will be with him presently. Oh, and tell Bella to attend me.”

“Bella has stepped out, my lady, for to buy new powder.”

“Oh, then, let me see, you had better tell Miss Armitage to attend me in the drawing room in—let me see—half an hour.”

“Hem,” said Sanders. “Miss Armitage ’as gone to visit ’er mother, Lady Hetty saying as how the girls didn’t need their schooling today.”

“Very well, Sanders. I will see his lordship without a chaperon. Remember to leave the door ajar.”

Jane ran upstairs to her room and stared anxiously in the glass. Traces of pomatum and powder still clung to her hair. There was no time to wash it, a long and laborious process. She brushed it as hard as she could, but it still looked a grayish and tangled mess. She compromised by screwing it up under a pretty lace cap. She scrambled into a green and yellow silk gown and fastened a heavy collar of rubies around her neck, the ostentation of wearing the jewels giving her some courage. She flicked the hare’s foot over her face, pressed a black patch from her patch box hurriedly over one cheekbone, and, gathering up her skirts, made her way downstairs.

Sanders announced her, bowed, and withdrew.

Lord Charles turned and faced her, his face grim. He had been riding and was wearing a blue wool coat, breeches, and tall boots with silver spurs.

She curtsied low and, as she rose, her eyes flew to the folded document he held in his hand.

The contract!

“I have come to claim my share of the bargain,” he said, his eyes glittering oddly in his face.

Too young and unsophisticated to cope with such a frightful situation, Jane gave a shrill laugh, which sounded terrible in her own ears, and tried to treat the matter lightly.

“La!” she cried, fanning herself vigorously. “How you frighten me! You must remember, my lord, you wrote to me and told me that you did not wish to touch me, or something of that nature.”

“I have changed my mind,” he said in a soft, mocking voice. “It is not only a woman’s privilege to do so.”

Jane put her hands behind her back and stuck out her chin, trying to look proud and defiant and succeeding only in looking like a stubborn schoolgirl.

“I will not do it,” she said.

“I think you will,” he said quietly. “An you do not, I shall take you to court, as you threatened to do me. Your future and reputation would be ruined.”

“I do not care,” said Jane. “I have decided not to marry. You would look a fool.”

“Oh, no,” he replied. “It is the woman who offers her body in a business contract who looks the fool. And you would not only ruin your own reputation—think of that of your stepsisters. Think of your father.”