Fool for Love

  Henrietta ended up bathing Josie instead. There’s something tantalizing about a steaming tub of hot water, after all, and once Keyes had swirled rose petal oil in the water, Josie started hopping on one foot and begging to get in.

  She had a sturdy little body with just a hint of a toddler’s tummy. Henrietta tried to wash her, but spent most of the time stemming floods of water as they sloshed over the sides of the tub. Josie talked the entire time, without pausing for breath. She showed Henrietta the scar on her knee from when she fell down the servants’ steps in the back (“Nurse Peeves said it was my own fault because I wasn’t supposed to go down those stairs”). She told her three times that she wanted a mama puppy for her birthday. Henrietta tried and failed to explain the dissonance between mama and puppy.

  At some point, the nursemaid, Millie, appeared, having discovered the whereabouts of her missing charge. Henrietta sent her away with apologies. Josie stayed in the tub until the water was chilly and little bumps formed on her legs. She talked…and talked…and talked.

  Even when Henrietta plucked Josie out of the bath and wrapped her in a piece of toweling, Josie still talked. She told Henrietta about the frog she had seen in the pond at the bottom of the garden last summer, and the ducks that were born there and decided to live in the stable. She told Henrietta all about the Christmas dinner during which her mother apparently threw a serving platter at the vicar. She told Henrietta that Anabel looked like a plucked chicken when she was born, and that her mother had sent the baby to the nursery, and said not to bring her back until she had more hair. Josie loved this story; Henrietta hated it.

  It wasn’t until Josie wound down, exhausted, that Henrietta knew exactly what she had to do. She would drink the blue bottle, because Josie and Anabel needed her. Because she loved them. She had responsibilities, and she couldn’t let herself think about her own baby, she simply couldn’t. There was nothing she could do for that baby.

  Dying in labor wouldn’t keep her child alive. It wouldn’t, it wouldn’t, it wouldn’t. Perhaps if she said it a thousand more times, it would seem real.

  “It’s time to return to the nursery,” she said to Josie, when she finished combing her hair.

  Josie’s lower lip trembled. “I don’t want to.”

  “Anabel will be missing you.”

  “I don’t care!”

  By now, Henrietta knew all the warning signs. Sure enough, within thirty seconds Josie was crying so loudly she could probably be heard two streets over. And her refrain was remarkably consistent: “I’m a poor—” The sob that tore up from her chest stifled the motherless part, but Henrietta knew it was there.

  Suddenly she bent over, picked up Josie and plumped her onto her bed. Enough was enough.

  “Josephine Darby,” she said, hands on her hips, “be quiet and listen to me.” Josie never paid any attention to that sort of command and she didn’t now. Her crying notched up a bit louder.

  “I am your mother.”

  Josie kept wailing.

  “I am your mother!” Henrietta shrieked.

  Josie’s eyes went as round as marbles, and she fell silent.

  “Haven’t you noticed, Josie?” Henrietta demanded. “You have a mother: me.”

  Josie blinked. And stared.

  Henrietta knelt down in front of Josie and pushed her damp hair out of her face. “I love you, Josephine Darby. And I’m going to be your mother, whether you want me to or not.”

  Josie’s pointed little face seemed to be frozen in shock. Henrietta took her hand and started walking toward the door. “I’m your mother, and Simon is going to be your father. You don’t have to call me mama, but that’s how I think of myself.”

  Josie still didn’t say anything, and Henrietta made herself keep walking toward the nursery.

  When they reached the third-floor hallway, Henrietta smelled toasting cheese and Josie suddenly twisted away and dashed into the nursery.

  “Anabel!” she shrieked. “I’ve been downstairs and had a bath!” She ran around the nursery a few times just as if the whole conversation hadn’t happened.

  Henrietta stood in the doorway. What did she expect? That Josie would suddenly call her mama and all would be well? “I hope I didn’t keep her too long, Millie,” she said to the girls’ nurse. “We had a lovely time.”

  “Not at all,” Millie replied. “Miss Josephine is always trying to sneak out and find you. It stood to reason that she would succeed one day.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yes,” the nurse said indulgently. “She runs circles around me, bothering me to death, she does. I want to go see Mama! I want to go see Mama! Oh my, don’t we hear that often!” She managed to catch the tie on Josie’s dress as she ran past. “Now you sit down, young lady, and show your mama that I’m teaching you proper manners.”

  The smile uncurling in Henrietta’s heart was so large that there wasn’t room for it in her body. “I must have my bath now, girls,” she said. “Be good for Millie.”

  Josie looked up from where she was putting on a decent imitation of a proper young lady, seated on a stool before a small table. “Will you come kiss us good night?”

  Henrietta grinned. “I always do.”

  “Story too?”

  “Of course.”

  She went back to her room and rang for another bath. Soaping her arms and legs had a different feeling, now that Simon was her husband. He had kissed this elbow, and he adored her shoulders. She couldn’t run a washcloth over her breasts without thinking about him.

  Henrietta had always prided herself on her logical faculties. She could see to the bottom of a problem. But what was the bottom of this problem? There was something defective with the sheath, that was clear. Would she and Darby never make love again? Should she take the bottle without telling him? That seemed dishonest, not to mention useless. If the sheath didn’t work, she would simply face the same problem again next month. And she could not do that without going mad.

  Or Darby could take a mistress. They would return to the plan to which they originally agreed, in which she would act as a glorified nursemaid and he would take a mistress. Or mistresses. Even the thought of Darby with another woman made her stomach churn.

  Yet a life of celibacy was not for Darby. He wasn’t a man to live without a woman. He would grow to hate me, she thought. A pang of anguish struck her heart.

  He had to take a mistress. He must. Because if he had a mistress, at least she would be able to see him, to live in the same house with him. And those crumbs would be enough—would keep her alive. If he hated her…

  I’d rather die, Henrietta thought, and the thought made all the air disappear from the room.

  It was just as well that she had discovered the sheath’s defective qualities now, since she was about to be introduced to the ton. The season was not truly in full cry, but Darby had explained that London was already crowded, and most everyone would attend a ball being given by the Duchess of Savington this very evening.

  But now Darby would likely want her to stay home. Surely a wife would intrude on his search for a mistress? Given the way he came to her night after night, even (she blushed to think) twice a night, her stepmother had been right. He was a man of fierce desires. He might well take two mistresses.

  She tormented herself for a moment by imagining dainty female hands playing over Darby’s smooth chest, touching—she wrenched her mind away.

  41

  Yet Another Love Letter

  It was presumably a note saying good-bye. Saying good-bye and mentioning that he loved her. That was the problem with an unopened letter: it might say anything or nothing.

  Esme turned it over and over and then took her time opening the envelope. Henrietta had mourned receiving only one love letter in her life—that written by herself. Esme had received many, perhaps even a hundred, and yet this one was the only one that had ever mattered. She had told him to go, yes. But she would treasure his letter until she died.

  But even
wishing can’t slow down the process of opening an envelope. The letter was written on rough foolscap, the kind a gardener might use if he were lucky enough to be able to write. The writing was that of a marquess, confident and bold.

  Esme, it said at the top. Her eyes caught there. No Dear Esme?

  Esme,

  Before I became a gardener, I found it difficult—nay, impossible—to deny a lady’s request. One of the rea sons I never took a mistress was that I scorned my friends: if they submitted to outrageous requests, they were fools. If they did not, they were ungentlemanly. Now that I am no longer known as a marquess, I find this problem much easier to negotiate.

  I am refusing your request, my lady. I shall not willingly leave your employment. I am aware that your reputation is endangered by my presence on your estate. My only excuse is that I have no reputation myself, and I am thereby well aware of its ephemeral value. Reputation is worthless.

  I can’t leave you, Esme. Perhaps if you were not with child…but you are. And I am not stupid, Esme. I remember every detail of the night we spent together in Lady Troubridge’s house. You said that you had not yet reconciled with your husband; I took advantage of that fact.

  The child you carry could be mine.

  Were you to send your butler to terminate my employment, I shall build a willow cabin at your gates, as Viola threatens to do in Twelfth Night. That will cause a scandal, no doubt. Perhaps in the aftermath of the scandal you will allow me to whisk you and your baby away. We’ll find Cerces’ island, and live on pomegranates and bananas.

  Your Sebastian

  Esme drew a long breath. If one were to receive only one love letter in a lifetime, surely this was the letter to receive. A tiny smile blossomed in her heart. He refused to leave.

  Sebastian refused to leave her.

  She could hardly force him to return to Italy. I am a weak woman, she thought. Then she read the love letter—her first love letter—again.

  42

  Unwelcome Revelations at Supper

  That evening Keyes put her in a chemise as light as a spiderweb, trimmed with lace so fine that it tore with a fingernail. Henrietta wore no corset. Darby had thrown out all her corsets. Over her chemise went a white satin petticoat, made quite short and embroidered all around the bottom with silver spangles. The bodice was of figured silk adorned with the same spangles. Finally, she wore a robe of white lace on top that fell in easy folds to the ground, quite like a Grecian gown. The costume was exceedingly graceful. Everything that Henrietta wasn’t. Even given her limp, the lace floated about her in such a way that she seemed to glide rather than walk.

  Henrietta watched numbly as Keyes’s nimble fingers gathered up all her hair. Rather than harnessing it to the top of her head, the way that Henrietta normally did, Keyes shaped it into a glittering stream down her back, held back from her face with a silver ornament that matched her spangles.

  “Are you quite certain?” Henrietta asked dubiously, straining to see over her shoulder. “I thought that the current fashion was to tie up one’s hair, leaving just one curl to the side.”

  “Madam has such lovely hair that she should ignore fashion.”

  Henrietta frowned at her reflection. To her mind, she looked like a puffy marigold.

  Keyes leaned forward. “Your husband always ignores fashion when it comes to his lace, madam.”

  “Oh, all right then,” Henrietta said, although she didn’t really see that as a justification for marigold hair. But what did it matter anyway? She still couldn’t imagine that Darby would want to display his limping wife to the public, given a pressing necessity to find a mistress. From now on, she would be little more than a nursemaid, after all. As he had said.

  Recognizing that she was being childish didn’t help. She could feel the pull of an overwhelming black mood, such as she hadn’t experienced since she was a girl, and the reality of her situation became clear.

  Darby preferred his butler, Fanning, to leave the room during the second course. After Fanning had taken a last eagle-eyed look at the table and left, Henrietta took a large swallow of claret. It was a far stronger wine than she usually drank and made her head swim. But tonight it gave her courage.

  A black mood was pulling her into its embrace. There were days when she was a young girl when she raged against her fate all day long. When she could not tolerate the idea of an existence dictated by an error of nature. It was even more embittering now, when she knew what a delight it was to lie in Darby’s arms.

  “I need to tell you something,” she said.

  He was looking particularly handsome. The candles on the table between them emphasized the lean hollows in his cheeks and made him look rakish, almost Eastern, not like a fine upstanding English gentleman at all. He raised an eyebrow.

  She loathed the fact that she could feel his gaze on her, as if he were the sun and she a violet. She took a deep breath. And another swallow of claret.

  “I have been wanting to tell you something too, Henrietta. Last night you said you loved me.”

  In the cold morning’s light, she wished she had kept that fact to herself. She needn’t have stripped herself of every bit of dignity.

  “I don’t know very much about love. I doubt I love anyone, to be honest. I simply wasn’t brought up to the emotion. But I do want you to know how very much I honor your feelings for me. How—how pleased I am by your affection.”

  Lovely, Henrietta thought. At least she didn’t have to worry about her husband feeling heartbroken once she could no longer act as his partner in bed. He could find affection elsewhere. It was she who would wait out the nights of her life in an empty bed. The black well in her heart grew and spilled into anger.

  “I’m carrying a child,” she said bluntly.

  He was fingering his wineglass and watching her with an impenetrable expression on his dark face, almost as if he were waiting for her to say something shocking—but not that.

  “What?”

  She spelled it out. “I have not experienced a flux since we married.”

  “We’ve been married three weeks.”

  “Four weeks tomorrow. And I am very regular in that respect.”

  There was a pause, then: “God damn it to hell.”

  That seemed to sum it up from Henrietta’s point of view as well.

  Darby stood up, walked the sideboard, and retrieved the bottle of claret. Then he poured them both another glass.

  Henrietta’s hand shook as she reached for her wineglass.

  “Where is the remedy that I gave you?” Darby said. His voice was even, seemingly untouched by the news she had offered. The brief flash of rage he displayed was gone as if it had never been.

  “On the mantel in my bedchamber.”

  He met her eyes and she was surprised at the deep sympathy she saw there. “I’m sorry, Henrietta. Given your love of children, this must be a hellish thought for you.”

  “I have no choice,” she said fiercely, trying to make it sound real to her own ears. “I have made a commitment to Josie and Anabel. And isn’t it a hellish thought for you as well?”

  He blinked. “I dislike the idea of your distress, naturally.”

  “It’s your child!” she said shrilly.

  “I am not—” he stopped. “Henrietta, I have never pretended to be a family man. But I am well aware how much you wish to have a child. Why don’t we visit a doctor before we make any decisions? Perhaps someone from the Royal College of Physicians. London has the best medical doctors in the world, or so they say.”

  “I have seen doctors,” she spat. “They pried at my hip, and shook their heads. They heard the story of my mother’s death, and they looked at me—with death in their eyes.” Her voice was alarmingly shaky, so she stopped speaking.

  He pushed away the plate before him. “Then I suggest we become foxed and skip the ball.” The obvious subtext was that little blue bottle.

  “No!” Hysteria rose in her chest. “I cannot drink an herb that would take away
a child’s life. I cannot do it. I would rather die myself. I have wanted this baby my entire life!”

  “I will not—” He stopped and started again. “Perhaps we should discuss this in the morning.”

  “There are things we must discuss now.”

  He looked at her calmly. To Henrietta, losing her baby and never sleeping with Darby were mixed up together. The pain felt as if a tiger was tearing at her heart. But her husband looked unperturbed. Truly, men were a different species than women. “The sheath apparently provides inadequate protection,” she stated.

  “Your conclusion seems warranted by the circumstances.”

  “What are we going to do?” The question was wrung from her heart.

  He was silent.

  “Simon, what are we going to do?”

  “I’m thinking.” His tone was brusque.

  A gentleman with as high a standard for mannerly behavior as Darby would dislike informing his wife that she was relegated to nursemaid status. “I don’t think we have many choices to consider,” she said. Her voice was high and rang as sharply as broken glass. “Obviously, we must immediately cease all activities that lead to procreation.”

  He swallowed a mouthful of wine. Still there was no hint on his face of emotion.

  “You must avail yourself of a mistress,” she said savagely.

  “I could suggest other—”

  But she cut him off. “I forced you into this marriage.”

  “I accepted the marriage with a clear understanding of its limitations,” Darby said.

  “You don’t understand,” she snapped. “I wrote that letter—” She stopped. Telling the truth was too awful. Even if he didn’t love her, and merely honored her affection for him. What good would the truth do? If he wanted a mistress, he’d take one.

  “I know that,” he said patiently. “Believe me, Henrietta, I was well aware of the risks of marrying you when I did it.”