Chapter One
Lizzie
10 March 1912, London, ENGLAND
Lizzie Faulkner stepped with trepidation into her employer’s old-fashioned study. The heavy furnishings, fussy Victoriana knick-knacks and blazing fire in the grate made the high-ceilinged room unnaturally oppressive. The silent condemnation of the straight back woman standing at the window only served to intensify the atmosphere.
Lizzie tried to draw in a deep breath to calm her jittery nerves, but she had cinched her swan bill corset so tightly that morning that she had barely enough lung capacity for shallow breaths. Dizziness and panic threatened to overwhelm her.
‘Ah, Miss Faulkner, I am glad you have seen fit to join me at last. Are you feeling a little better?’ The words were polite enough, even compassionate, but they were delivered in a tone of such icy disdain as to make a mockery of any warmer feelings.
Mrs Peabody was a woman in her mid-forties, but her extreme thinness and tightly pinched features made her look ten years older. Her dark hair, liberally streaked with grey, was scraped painfully back from her face and bound in a netted bun at the back of her head. Her fashionable, pencil-thin morning dress was made from expensive fabric, but the puce colour clashed badly with her complexion and only added to her unattractive appearance. It was almost as if she went out of her way to look as hard and unappealing as possible.
‘Yes thank you, Madam,’ she whispered, ashamed of her own temerity. Where had the courageous bluestocking gone who had set her sights on scaling the peaks of male-dominated arenas? And who was this craven ninny who seemed unable to put more than two words together without whimpering? Life had torn away her childish confidence and left her only too aware of her weakness and vulnerability.
‘I have received troubling information from below stairs,’ Mrs Peabody went on, her tone just as stony cold as before. ‘Would you care to make a conjecture about the nature of that information, Miss Faulkner?’
‘Ah, no, Madam, I have no idea,’ she lied unconvincingly.
‘Then you are a liar as well as a fallen woman, Miss Faulkner. I have it on very good authority that you are with child, and as there is no ring upon your finger and I have heard of no husband mentioned in the past, I can only assume that this child you carry is illegitimate. Do you deny it?’
Lizzie felt the room begin to spin and she reached out to grab the edge of the desk to steady her.
When Jessie, the upstairs maid, had brought a jug of hot water to her room that morning, she had inadvertently seen Lizzie in her smalls before she had time to don her corset. The girl’s eyes nearly bulged out of her head from the sight and she’d turned tail and run, slopping water out of the jug as she went.
With stays, she had been able to disguise her five-month pregnancy, but without them, the gentle rounding of her girth was apparent, as was the increased size of her breasts. Jessie was an ignorant girl but she was wise about the ways of nature. The girl had known exactly what she was looking at and been in a hurry to share her titillating secret about the uppity governess with the rest of the household.
‘I was taken against my will, Madam. It was not my fault.’
‘Hah! As if every girl in your condition does not claim the very same thing. Even if that were the case, you are still at fault for placing yourself in a position where such an attack could take place.’
‘Place myself in a position? Do you think I was walking the streets at night? I was in my own bed here in this house, and I had to stay quiet so that I did not frighten your daughters in the next room.’
‘Oh, Miss Faulkner, surely you can be more imaginative than that. Are you suggesting a man broke into our home for the single purpose of having his way with you and that you did not struggle or tell of it the next day? Please, you think me a fool with such a story.’
‘No one broke in. And no one would have believed me if I had told them the next day. I could barely believe it myself, though it happened to me.’
‘Are you claiming one of the servants attacked you?’ demanded the enraged woman, puffing out like a furious rooster.
‘Not a servant, Madam. It was the master.’
The deathly silence that filled the room for a few long minutes was suffocating. Then, after several deep, calming breaths, Mrs Peabody drew herself to her full height and said, ‘How dare you!’
The words were as effective as a slap in the face, and Lizzie jerked back trembling. However, her resolve, now that she had finally voiced her complaint, began to harden.
‘I dare because I have no alternative but to dare, and I know that it is not the first time such has happened to a young woman in this house. Two maids have been sent away because of their condition in the last few years, and I never believed the rumours circulating below stairs concerning the master until it happened to me.’ Lizzie was proud to hear her voice was louder now, even if it was also tinged with hysteria.
‘If this were true why did you remain in our employ? Surely, you would fear that it would happen again. I am assuming it was only once you claim this attack occurred?’
‘He… he sat on my bed after… after it happened and cried. He said I had tempted him and he had been unable to withstand my siren’s call. But he swore it would not happen again if I did not tell you. He said he would take care of me if I were to…’
‘Enough! I will hear no more. You girls come to me with your unfounded claims and expect me to believe my loyal and faithful husband, who has no interest in such unseemly activities except for the procreation of children, would force himself on you and then cry? No, I say.’ Her voice rose in pitch and volume to override her victim’s.
‘Because one girl made that claim you all think you can make it? No, I will not have it! Pack your belongings, Miss Faulkner, and leave this house immediately.’ Mrs Peabody drew in several deep breaths in an attempt to calm herself. It must have succeeded, because when she went on a long minute later her voice was cold and calm once more.
‘Out of the kindness of my heart, I will pay you one month’s wages in lieu of notice, but that is only if you promise to keep your filthy lies to yourself and make no further claim on this family. If you do not so promise, I will pay you nothing, nor provide you with a reference.’
Lizzie felt a fatalistic calm come over her. This was how she had expected this encounter to end. After more than a year in the Peabody’s household, she knew the woman before her very well. For all her seeming strength of will, her employer hid her head in the sand about every matter that concerned her husband or her daughters.
Those two girls were rude, ignorant and unwilling to take guidance. They had been the cause of the resignations of two governesses before Lizzie. However, for all the evidence to the contrary, Mrs Peabody continued to claim it was never her girls’ fault. They were simply high spirited or unjustly blamed for other’s actions. Her daughters were angels.
Nor was her husband’s drunkenness, gambling or philandering, it now transpired, his fault. Someone else was always to blame. Such denial was so deeply entrenched; Lizzie doubted the woman would believe it, even if she walked into a room where her husband was holding down a screaming girl and having his violent way with her.
So Lizzie would take her reference and her month’s wages in advance because there was no other choice. Even if she had the strength, she could not hope to wage the kind of war required to right this wrong. She must make the best of it, which was all that was left for her to do.
‘I make such a promise and will leave immediately,’ she said in defeat.
The harsh features softened slightly now that Mrs Peabody had been reassured her world was safe once more. ‘See that you do then. I will have your reference sent on to you, and Manning will have your wages at the door when you leave. I am disappointed in you, Miss Faulkner. You came to us highly recommended. It is a pity that your character is so flawed because your mind is very acute.’
Magnanimously, Mrs Peabody drew a letter from her pocket and threw it on
to the desktop. ‘That came in the post for you this morning. It is from the Americas. I hope for your sake that it is good news. You are dismissed.’
Frowning cautiously, Lizzie took the letter up and turned it over to see the sender’s name. Her heart lifted for the first time that terrible day. Bertie! It was a letter from Bertie!
Lizzie hadn’t heard from her brother for years, not since he left home when she was fifteen to take passage to America. There had been bad blood between her father and Bertie back then, which explained the silence. However, she had expected to hear from her only sibling when the news of her parent’s death reached him.
That death was more than a year gone and she had just about given up on ever hearing from her brother again. Now, when her need was at its greatest, a letter had arrived. She couldn’t wait to open it.
Hastily, she made her exit and hurried up to her tiny bedroom on the second floor. No bigger than a cupboard and containing just a small cot and set of drawers, it had been her only refuge during the terrible year that she had spent with the Peabody’s. Not that all of her misery was their fault, she acknowledged. She prided herself on being fair. No, the bulk of her misery, especially in the early months, was the grief over the death of her parents. And, as the pain of that loss passed slowly, the disappointment at her lost education had replaced it. Only then did the master’s unwanted attentions begin to terrify her and drive out all other distress.
She had been at Girton College at Cambridge just into her second year when the terrible news of the train crash in Yorkshire had changed her life. The tragic accident had taken place on Christmas Eve 1910 as her parents were making their way back from Carlisle in time to spend Christmas with her. They never arrived, and while she drowned in the grief, more bad news had followed fast on its heels. Her parents were in debt, so their solicitor told her. It would take the sale of all their holdings and chattels to clear that debt. There would be nothing left for her upkeep or her continued education. She would be forced to seek employment to support herself.
Lizzie had not even turned twenty when she found herself alone and destitute. And like her favourite heroine, Jane Eyre, she had been determined to make her way in the harsh world unaided. Like her heroine, she had advertised for a position as a governess and found such a position with the Peabody household quickly. However, fact was not as uplifting as fiction, and Mr Peabody was no Mr Rochester. And instead of finding love and a happy-ever-after, she found fear, pain and humiliation. Furthermore, as an unmarried mother, she could only expect worse to come.
She sat down on her neatly made bed and, with shaking hands, began to open the letter. The big, elongated script she knew well greeted her like an old friend. With the first words, she felt a smile lift her tightly drawn lips.
21/332 175th Street,
Queens, New York, NY
March 2, 1912.
My dearest Sis,
I have just received a message from our parents’ solicitors advising me of their death and the dissolution of their estate. They have made me aware of your dire circumstances, and it grieves me to know that you have been forced to go through so much pain alone and unsupported.
It has taken them over a year to track me down and for that alone I beg your forgiveness. My wife Catherine often informs me that I am a selfish sort and it is in moments like this I realise she is correct. I must admit to having not given you or our parents much more than a passing thought in the six years since I left home. My life has been full and not always congenial, so I have been occupied with those matters close to home over these years. I never thought to contact you or mother and let you know where I was, or that I was even alive.
You will be pleased to know, I hope, that I have a family of my own now. Catherine gave birth to a daughter, Mary Louise, on January 20 of this year. Both mother and child are doing well. I manage Catherine’s father’s large general store here in Queens, and I am kept busy with the demands of work and family.
We would like to invite you to join us here in New York, Sis. I cannot hope to make up for the last year you have spent alone, but I will try to right my wrongs. Come and live with us. Catherine is in need of feminine companionship, as her own dear mother died when she was very young and she has no sisters or close female relatives. You can continue your education if that is your wish. You were always much brighter than I, as I was constantly reminded by our father. However, what I lack in wit, I have made up for with hard work, and I am well pleased with the life I have carved out for myself here.
I have taken the liberty of wiring to the Western Union Office in London the sum of one hundred dollars, which should provide you with sufficient funds for a second class berth on a steamer to New York, as well as extras for the journey. Please let me know of your arrangements and I will be at the docks to meet you.
I cannot say often enough how sorry I am for my part in your travail in the last year. To be so young, destitute and alone during your time of grief is more than I can bear to think about. However, if you join us here, Catherine, Mary and I will be your family and you will never be alone again.
Your loving brother
Bertie
Lizzie wasn’t aware that she was crying until she felt the cold drops fall onto her hands. It was a dream-come-true. Bertie wanted her to come to New York and live with him and his new family. She would be able to continue her education after all.
Then the awful reality of her situation hit her anew. She was with child. She was unmarried and with child. There would be no further education for her. In the coming months, all her time would be occupied by the demands of motherhood. And even if she were to finish her degree, working was frowned on for those who held the important role of mother.
What would her brother think when he found out she was a fallen woman? Would he renege on his offer because her moral character would infect his females? If Bertie had been like their father, he would react in exactly that way. However, Bertie had always been rebellious and a free thinker. That was why America had seemed such a perfect place for him to go. Maybe that freethinking would extend to acceptance of a dishonoured sister.
Or, maybe not.
What if she were to write and tell him she was a widow? She could claim to have married a young man who subsequently died. But her brother named her as Elizabeth Faulkner with her employer’s address on the envelope of his letter. How could she then tell him such a tale if her parent’s solicitors had told him different?
Even so, the more she thought about it, the more determined she was that possessing a dead husband was the only way that she would be able to navigate her new circumstances. The idea of lying to her brother was repellent, but the idea of him rejecting her was even more repellent. And in America, there would be no one to say she had lied. She could start afresh as a young widow doubly weighed down by the grief at the loss of parents and husband.
A hundred dollars awaited her at the Western Union. That was about twenty pounds, if she calculated rightly. That would be more than enough for a second class ticket and the cost of accommodation in a nice place for the time it took to get a suitable steamer berth. For the first time in more than a year, Lizzie felt as if her life was finally looking up.