True Born (17 page)

I am addressing this letter to you, who with
a harder and more rational heart might try to keep it from her, and
if you do, I shall have to accept it. I do not have a lot of time
and I know that soon pain and wretchedness will overcome even this
small measure of humanity in me.

If you think that she should see this, then
show it to her, and say that she has nothing to fear from me. She
has battled this disease and won. I never interfered with your care
of her at Halford, because I was deeply ashamed that I had left her
behind. I shall not interfere with you as I die.

You may find it strange, but I can accept,
now, that she shall be with you when I am gone. I think it justice,
because she has always wished it, and she should have her wish. I
think you will be getting a better bargain than her, because I know
her worth, and yet never fully understood yours.

This is a letter from an enemy begging a
favor, and that is why you should trust it.

Hugh Alexander James Stowe

Earl of Halford, Viscount Montrose, Baron
Layne"

John was a better man -- or a more foolish
one -- than he knew, for he had not kept Hugh's letter from
Georgiana, though at first he thought he might.

She, of course, had immediately resolved to
go to London, but she saw John's misery in his face.

"There is no danger to me," she had assured
him.

"I have turned superstitious," he had said,
with a frown so deep that it looked as though it had been carved on
his forehead. "You have avoided death twice, and now you go to the
unknown again, instead of remaining safe by my side."

"You showed me this letter because you are
kinder than you want anyone to know, and Hugh also suspects it,
because he wrote to you."

"I regret it, now that I see you ready to
go."

"You don't. You love me for what I am, or you
would not have loved me through so many troubles. You knew I would
go, and you know it is the right thing to do. I have also wrong
Hugh, marrying him for money when I could never love him. I must
also beg his forgiveness."

His eyes had still been troubled. "I thought
we had taken a vow to be rats together."

"In our next life..." she had smiled.

He had insisted on going to London with her,
and she had begged him to stay. The farm would be lost if he were
not there, now that the unhappy Hester was gone, and she had asked
him to bring Cecily and Dotty to him, so that they would all be
together when she returned from London.

"Even though we would be able to marry, I
hope you forgive me for wishing that Hugh does not die," she had
told him as she prepared to board the post-chaise. "He is still a
young man, and there is not as much evil as you think in him."

"I cannot wish for one thing or another," he
had told her. "I want us to be married, and happy – but Hugh is my
brother. I think of my father, knowing that his son is in
agony."

They had parted, and Georgiana had sped
through the country to London.

She made it to Halford House at nightfall,
but she did not stop to rest. She went immediately to Hugh's room
and found him lying in bed, attended by nurses and a doctor. He was
a mess of blistering sores, and his raucous breathing could be
heard in the corridor.

She sat by his side and took his hand, as he
was blinded by pustules, and could not see her.

"Hugh!"

Upon hearing her voice his head turned
slightly towards her.

"You have come?" There was a brief laugh,
like a rattle, coming from his chest. "Georgiana, has no one told
you that your heart is too soft?"

"Hugh, you must be in terrible pain!" she
said, hardly able to caress him.

"Not in more pain than you, when I left you
behind," he replied. He swallowed for a second and said, "Ned is
also ill."

"Oh, no!" Georgiana cried.

"I only asked to see you because I knew there
would be no danger to you," he continued. "And the irony is that
now I cannot see you."

"Hush..."

"Georgiana," he said, as his hand wrapped
around hers in spite of the pain. "I have kept them from giving me
laudanum until you arrived, but I shall soon need it. I do not know
what I wanted to say anymore, except this..."

His blind eyes sought hers, and she let him
hold her hand without pressing it, as she knew the pain to him
would be great.

"... I have loved you. I wanted you to know
this from my own lips, and not from people who repeat such things
after others are gone. They might come to you and say, 'Your
husband is dead, but he did love you...' No!" he said almost
fiercely. "I want to say it myself. You will think it a lesser love
than John's because he braved everything to be by your side, while
I ran away and left you to die. But it is the love that I was
capable of..."

He moved his hand to grasp hers better. "I
wanted you because you were beautiful, and I wanted to take you
away from John because I felt he had taken everything away from me
– but Georgiana, I loved you. I thought that I would save you and
your sisters, and that in time you would come to know me, and love
me. But as soon as I touched you..."

It was the first time he let the words trail.
She could not squeeze his hand, but she was weeping now, and he
heard it in her voice when she said, "There are things we cannot
help. I couldn't help loving John. I was at fault for marrying you
while knowing it."

There was a moment of silence, and she looked
into his face, to see if he were still there.

"I understand," he said softly. "I could not
love Bess, no matter how much she tried – and I think she did love
me, and it was not only the money. It is the greatest tragedy of
life, to love and not be loved..."

She thought about Hester, cold and white in
her coffin. "Yes..."

Hugh drew a long, labored breath, "And the
greatest happiness," he continued, "is to love and be loved. I hope
you will now be happy, Georgiana, now that I can no longer see it
and feel jealousy."

Georgiana did not say anything. She knew that
her husband was dying, and that he had brought her here not so much
to be forgiven, as to give her his blessing, though he did not
mention John again.

Hugh died in the morning, and Georgiana wept
at his wasted life as his body was covered by a shroud. There would
be a funeral almost immediately because of the danger of contagion,
but first she needed to see Ned.

She arrived by his bedside by six o'clock,
and could not help a small tearful laugh as she took his hand, "Oh,
but you are not doing badly at all!"

Ned smiled, his face covered with pustules
but none near his eyes. His hand was able to grasp hers gratefully.
"What joy it is to see you, Giana. I thought you a goner for a
while," he said with the artless sincerity of a boy.

Georgiana smiled through her tears, "No, Ned,
I am still here."

"The world is better for it, I swear!" he
said. "Poor Hugh, but it was bad form of him to leave you!"

She caressed Ned's hair. "It's all right,
Ned. People do not mean the worst things they do."

"Don't they?" he wondered.

She took over the sick room, because he was
not as far gone as his brother, and she did for him everything that
John and Dr. Hopkins had done for her. She opened windows, cooled
his fever with cold cloths and, when he was better, she sat dabbing
honey at his sores.

Hugh had been buried in the meantime, and she
had been at the funeral alone, as there was no other family to be
there with her, and friends and acquaintances wanted to stay far
away from any signs of the disease.

Though Georgiana did not want to wear black
by Ned's bedside, he did not seem to mind. He got better under her
care, and within a week she was feeding him beef broth.

"Giana," he said, having long before adopted
the nickname her younger sisters had for her. "You are an angel,
you know."

She laughed at the way he said it, almost
with nonchalance.

"Those things only live in heaven," she
teased him.

"No, you are one. And now that poor Hugh is
gone, I can be friends with Jack."

She put the spoon down and smiled at him.
"Have you always wanted to be his friend?"

"Oh, yes, I miss him mountains – but he was
so angry that I hardly wanted to be beaten by going to him, or
screamed at by Hugh for trying. But now you can go between us, and
tell him so, and he can help me too.”

Georgiana wondered at this boy, who was
opening his mouth and expecting more broth, which she fed to him.
When he had finished eating, and the tray was taken away he added,
"John will have the money from the inheritance. Papa wanted him to,
and it will not make me very poor. Besides, you have had such a
passion for him, and you will be able to be together and not
starve."

"Oh, Ned," Georgiana said, tears in her eyes.
"It is two years too late, and yet it is welcome."

"Don't cry, Giana!" the boy said. "I am Earl
and head of the family now, and everything will be all right. Well,
whatever I can help, anyway!"

Ned did not mind when Georgiana, seeing that
he was out of danger, asked to return to John; he understood it. He
was able to get up and shuffle to Hugh's room, where he looked
through a drawer in his desk and found a sealed letter. It was from
John's father to him. Ned held it up, "You must take it to John.
Again, he will be angry – the temper on him! But tell him I could
hardly help the things Hugh used to do. Make sure you tell him that
I miss him!"

Georgiana put the letter in her reticule,
kissed Ned, and gave strict instructions to the servants as to the
next steps in his recovery, though with youthful resilience he told
her she was exaggerating. Then, in her mourning dress, she went
outside to find a carriage waiting for her.

"You must drive towards Woodbridge," she
instructed the coachman. "I shall tell you where to turn."

On the way Georgiana managed not to think of
all the people who had died in the last two years, of all the
sorrow. She managed, with a heart full of hope, to think of the
future, and to see brightness in it, for she believed that there
had been so much grief that there could be no more.

When, hours later, she saw the fields that
belonged to John she knocked on the ceiling of the carriage for the
coachman to stop, flung the door open and jumped down with the
swiftness of a girl.

She began running towards John, because the
day was blue and fine, and she had the same generosity in accepting
good things as in desiring them for others. She remembered her
wish, months ago, that she could be rid of everything, that she
could just go to him. She took his father's letter out of her
reticule, which she dropped, and put it inside her stays. As she
kept running, she started to take off the bracelets that were
always on her wrists, and her rings. She took off her wedding ring,
her fur cloak, her hair pins.

With her locks falling down her back she ran
and ran, and she removed her black dress too, because she did not
want mourning anywhere near them anymore. She ran in her stays, her
white under gown and petticoats, and when she saw the light in
John's window she started to laugh, and to run faster.

Halford -- April 4th, 1760

My dearest son,

I write these three words meaning every one
of them: you are mine, you are so very dear, and you are my
son.

As I write, I hope with a father's heart
that you are safe. Your mother, with that fearless spirit of hers,
says she knows you are, and that you will soon return. I hope also
you have been spared the worst that a man can see in a war.

John, I told you that you were my true born
son, because you were born out of love, and not out of a marriage
of duty. I would like to think you are true born also because you
can choose your destiny.

I do not know what exact part birth plays in
a man's character: certainly there are bad people born high and low
alike. But I have seen in my life that the existence of a nobleman
is a constrained thing: it seems that all is set and decided for
us, before we are even on Earth.

Why did I marry, at twenty-three, a woman
with whom I had nothing in common, and hardly knew? Why did I meet
the woman I would love to this day three years later, and was not
able to marry her?

We are like prize animals, kept in cages and
well fed, who must yet perform as needed, and show ourselves to
have the necessary pedigree. The license and abuse with which the
high-born at times conduct themselves probably come from a material
ease, an excess of things, but also from an impatient need to
express something other than this constraint.

You are true born because you may write your
life, and this terrible thing that I did, to have a son and not
give him the privilege of the law or of my name, may yet prove to
be the key to your freedom -- though it may anger you to read this,
and you may only see the injury of it now.

Of all the men in the world who might have
freedom, I wish it for you, because you are kind and honorable, and
you will use it well.

There is a girl, John, who comes to see me
often. She reads me your letters to her, and sometimes stops quite
short, and blushes, skips paragraphs and turns the page, and you
cannot know how much she makes me smile, and how I love the
affection that exists between the two of you.

Again with a father's heart I wish you
and this girl to be together in the light of day, without shame, as
your mother and I ought to have been.

I am leaving you 20,000 pounds. You will
think it too great a sum, though I think it not enough, but it will
set you up in whatever you want to do and be. Above all, John, it's
a sum that will allow you to protect this girl.