Lady Jane (13 page)

She took her leave, nodding amiably to Nurse Watkyn. Crews, still hovering uncertainly in the hallway, showed her to the door, receiving an amiable nod in his turn.

From that day on she arrived promptly at eleven-thirty each morning, watched the baby being fed, caressed Jane’s arm, spoke to her briefly, and took her leave. Nurse at first had hoped the visits might succeed in drawing m’lady out of her fit of melancholy and made no objection, though she could not like the woman coming always while the baby was being fed. This had not been the way of Quality in any of the great houses where she had been in charge of the nursery. After the first week, when it became obvious that m’lady got no good from the visits, Nurse became more and more uneasy about the situation.

Today the feeling was stronger. Miss Gilbert had come and gone, the baby had slept and wakened, crying sharply, demandingly, for attention.

“Well now, your little lordship, I can see what’s troubling you, and if you’ll stop crying and kicking I’ll fix it for you. Oh dear, oh
dear
!
Well, it’ll all be better in a trice. There now—how’s that then? Oh, you like that do you? Like your blessed papa, you are. Just the same, he was, always liked to be clean and dry. Poor little mite, it’s little enough else you get, but never you fear, Nurse is here now and will take care of you, even if there’s others that won’t.”

This breathy monologue, delivered sotto voce, was audible to Jane as she lay in her bed staring unseeingly out the window at the tangle of bare, black branches against the cold, gray of the December sky. The meaning of the words, however, did not penetrate her consciousness, any more than the presence of Miss Gilbert had. She existed, as she had in the weeks since Sebastian’s death, in a state of apathy bordering on the catatonic. She only roused herself when the baby was put into her arms to be nursed. One of the few words she had spoken had been an emphatic “No” to the suggestion that a wet nurse be found. She would bare her milk-swollen breast and sit staring gravely down at the tiny face without movement or comment. Clinton Brede Atherton Payton, Seventh Baron Larkley, stared solemnly back, minute mouth working away industriously, tiny fist punching and kneading away at his mother’s soft flesh. Finally his eyes would slowly close and the downy head would fall back on Jane’s arm, the milky mouth slightly open. Nurse, hovering in the background, would come forward to take him and Jane would resume her contemplation of the window. Nurse would invariably “Tsk, tsk” to see it, but it had no more effect on Jane than her monologues.

Today, Nurse Watkyn made up her mind, something must be done.

It was all very well to grieve. She herself had shed a great many tears when she’d heard of dear Master Sebastian’s death, but there was the baby now who must have attention, and there was this odd, dried up old stick of a vicar’s daughter, sitting there day after day staring at m’lady’s bare bosom in that strange way. ’Twasn’t proper, that wasn’t, and she didn’t care who heard her say it and something must be done to put a stop to it Accordingly, when she had tucked the baby back into his crib, she said, “I must just step along to the kitchen for them clean napkins, your ladyship. Won’t be but a minute. That Dorrie! I can’t think where she’s got herself to. I sent her for those napkins a quarter of an hour ago.”

She marched firmly away to the kitchen in search of Crews, where she found him taking his dinner with Mrs. Crews, elevated now to housekeeper since Mrs. Plummer’s departure. The two deaths had taken the heart out of her, Mrs. Plummer had told Lady Stanier, and she would retire to spend her remaining years with her daughter. Lady Stanier had taken her up in her own carriage when she left for London, to drop her with the daughter in Barnet. Lady Stanier had felt quite sanguine about leaving with Betty Crews waiting to step into Mrs. Plummer’s shoes, Nurse Watkyn installed with the baby, and Dorrie on hand to assist her.

Betty Crews smiled up at Nurse and cordially invited her to sit down and join them for a meal.

“I thank you, Mrs. Crews, but I’ll take my dinner later. I’ve come about something serious. In my opinion something has got to be done about her ladyship. Just lying there staring out the winder and never saying a word. It ain’t natural. And another thing ain’t natural neither! That Gilbert woman coming into m’lady’s boudoir every day and staring. Fair makes my flesh crawl, it does, and I won’t have it It’s not a healthy atmosphere for a newborn babe.”

“What would you have me do, Mrs. Watkyn? She just marches in as though she owns the place and—”

“You must write to Lady Stanier.”

“But I can’t do that!” Crews protested, aghast.

“You must You must tell her she must come back as soon as may be and speak to her ladyship and stop that woman from coming into the bedroom. Lady Stanier’s the only one who can attend to it proper.”

“Well now, I don’t know that I—” Crews began doubtfully.

“She’s right, Fred,” said Betty positively. “I’ve been that worrit myself, only I couldn’t just think of what was best to be done.”

“But I don’t know that I’ve the right to—”

“Then you must talk to Lady Jane yourself,” Betty declared.

“Me!?”

“You’re her old friend and the one as should do it if you won’t write to Lady Stanier.”

Crews looked dismayed at such a choice. He had decided, when he’d made up his mind to come here, that Jane, whatever may have been her previous station in life, was now within the ranks of Quality and would always be treated as such by him. During this past year in her service he had succeeded in maintaining an attitude of deferential respect that had put them both at ease. To have it suggested that he now approach his mistress in the role of old friend outraged his sense of what was proper. Not that he wouldn’t do anything possible to help her, but this he felt was beyond him.

“Besides, I wouldn’t know what to say to her. What if I said the wrong thing?” he finally managed to protest.

“Exactly! That’s why it would be best to write to Lady Stanier,” replied Betty calmly.

He was finally persuaded and the letter laboriously written and dispatched, and came at last to lie on top of the pile of post deposited on Lady Stanier’s bed along with her morning chocolate. Lady Stanier, sleepily sipping her morning drink, ignored her mail, content to watch Ames, her dresser, as she moved quietly about the room, unpacking the boxes and portmanteaus and putting things away. She was happy to be back in her own bed at last, after weeks of jauntering about the countryside, attending deathbeds and birthing couches. But presently her eye was caught by the inelegancy of the unfamiliar handwriting on the top letter and she reached a reluctant hand for it, sensing that there would be something in it to distress her. She turned it over, and there, sure enough, was confirmation of her fear, for the seal was Sebastian’s, which meant it was from a servant at Larkwoods. She broke it and read the letter and her hand finally dropped limply, resignedly, onto the coverlet.

“Ames,” she said quietly, “pack them up.”

Ames turned with a bright smile. “Bless you, m’lady, but I am unpacking.”

“No. I said pack them up again.”

Ames looked at her as though her mind had become unhinged. “Pack them, m’lady?”

“Yes, and order the carriage brought round in an hour,” replied Lady Stanier decisively.

“But surely you can’t mean—”

“I’m afraid I do, Ames. We must leave for Larkwoods at once.”

13

Lady Stanier, having
broken her journey in Maidstone, emerged from her elegant travelling carriage before the front entrance of Larkwoods shortly before midday, looking excessively fresh and smart in a stone-coloured pelisse with a chinchilla cape, a large chinchilla muff, and a most becoming Capote bonnet in dark gray velvet.

Crews goggled appreciatively for a moment before he could recover his dignity and bow profoundly. “M’lady! I had not expected you so quickly. We are all most grateful to you for coming and I hope you will forgive me if I have been overforward in writing to you.”

“If the situation is as bad as you intimated in your letter, Crews, then it is I who am in
your
debt. Has anything changed?”

“No, m’lady. Lady Jane is just as she has been since Lord Payton’s death, and Miss Gilbert still comes each day. In fact—she is in there at this moment. She arrived only a few moments ago.”

Lady Stanier’s lips tightened. “Did she, indeed. Very well, Crews. Would you be good enough to remain here to—er—show her out. In approximately one moment!” Shoulders back, a distinctly militant gleam in her eye, she marched across the hall and disappeared. Crews grinned delightedly.

Lady Stanier quietly opened the door to Jane’s boudoir and stood silently taking in the scene before her. Nurse Watkyn, her back to the door, was folding impossibly small clothing in one corner. Jane, in a shaft of pale, wintry sunshine, sat up against her pillows in the canopied bed, nursing her child. Angela Gilbert sat beside the bed. Lady Stanier drew back with distaste as she noted the hand sensuously caressing Jane’s bare forearm, the bulging green eyes fastened shamelessly on Jane’s bare breasts.

Lady Stanier advanced soundlessly across the pale blue and yellow Aubusson carpet. “Miss Gilbert!”

Miss Gilbert’s head jerked up, she stared incomprehensibly at Lady Stanier for an instant, then rose so suddenly her chair toppled over, as the colour drained from her face. Nurse started around at the sound of Lady Stanier’s voice, her eyes lighting up.

“L-l-lady Stanier!” stammered Miss Gilbert. “What—why—I mean—you have taken me so by surprise I—I—”

“Evidently,” replied Lady Stanier succinctly, a wealth of meaning expressed in the one word.

“I was only—I felt it was my duty—” Miss Gilbert faltered, the colour rushing back into her face at Lady Stanier’s tone.

“Very good of you, but we won’t presume on you any further. Good day, Miss Gilbert.”

There was so much finality in her words that even Miss Gilbert realised there was nothing further to be said. She gathered up the tatters of her dignity, bowed frostily, and left the room.

Throughout this encounter Jane remained seemingly oblivious of what was going forward, never lifting her eyes from her contemplation of Clinton’s face. Nurse Watkyn however, hurried forward with the closing of the door to drop a respectful curtsy.

“M’lady! Never was I happier to see anyone in all my days! It were a rare treat to see you put that old stick to rout so neatlike.”

Lady Stanier reached out to pat Nurses shoulder. “That was the easy part, from the looks of things.”

Nurse followed her significant glance at the bed. “Yes, madam, I take your meaning. There’s deep doin’s there, right enough, and I’m blessed if I know what to make of it. Hardly a word has she spoke these two weeks now. Fair makes my skin crawl to see it, it does.” Lady Stanier did not allow even a flicker of impatience to show as she waited through this loquaciousness, realizing that Nurse Watkyn was only relieving her long held-in anxiety, now hopeful that help was at hand. When she had finished, Lady Stanier patted her shoulder again and smiled. “Not to worry, Nurse, we’ll all come about, you’ll see.” They moved instinctively to the bedside. “Lord Payton has dined well from the looks of him,” she said. They stood for a moment smiling down fondly at young Clinton, who, glutted at last, slept profoundly, a trickle of milk escaping from his greedy, half-open mouth, his dark lashes fanning across his fat, rosy little cheeks. Lady Stanier bent to pick him up, cuddling him in her arms happily for a moment before handing him over. “Perhaps you could put him down to sleep elsewhere for a while, Nurse.”

“Certainly, m’lady. I’ll take him down to the kitchen and Betty Crews will rock him by the fire while I have a bite to eat. She’s that wild to get her hands on the babe.”

When she was gone Lady Stanier removed her bonnet and gloves and sat down on the side of Jane’s bed, taking the limp hands into her own.

“This will never do, child,” she chided Jane gently. She waited, but there was no response. She put her hand to Jane’s cheek and turned her face to look into her eyes. “Jane, my dear, won’t you speak to your Aunt Stanier? Try to tell me what is wrong.”

Jane’s sherry-brown eyes gazed blankly back, registering no emotion whatsoever. Lady Stanier felt a cold chill of horror pass over her at the bleak impersonality of Jane’s regard. “Dearest girl! What has happened to you?” she gasped. She shook Jane’s face slightly with no result “Jane!
Jane
!”

After a moment Lady Stanier rose and began to pace back and forth across the carpet, ending finally at the window where she paused for a few moments in thought. She swung around finally to study Jane’s vacant face, then marched purposefully back to the bed, turned the unresisting face toward herself and without hesitation, for fear that she would lose her resolution, slapped Jane’s cheek resoundingly. Jane cried out and threw herself back against her pillows, her eyes wide with shock, her hand flying to her cheek where the imprint of Lady Stanier’s hand was coming up quite clearly in bright red. Then her face crumpled and she began to cry, the tears, childlike, spurting from her eyes. Lady Stanier, with a sympathetic little moan, sat down on the bed and pulled Jane into her arms. The sobs increased their intensity, racking the slim young body painfully. Lady Stanier’s own eyes filled and she rocked Jane back and forth, crooning softly to her for quite fifteen minutes before there was any diminution in the flow of tears.

Then Lady Stanier held her away to look into her eyes. She smoothed the damp, tangled curls away from the tear-wet face and with her own handkerchief began to dry it. “Jane, my little love, look at me now,” she commanded.

Jane raised her swimming eyes, but now in place of the blankness there appeared so much pain and despair that Lady Stanier cried out involuntarily, “Oh no, darling, you must not grieve so!”

“I cannot bear it,” Jane said starkly.

“But of course you can. I know it seems impossible, but we must all learn to bear it when we lose those we love. I have known that pain myself, believe me.”

“Did you also know the guilt?”

“Guilt?”

“Yes. It was me, you see. It was my fault they both died. I killed them.”

“Nonsense, child, I can’t think what on earth—”

“He would have lived years more if he had never met me. I took those years away from him. And his mother, also. His illness was too much for her weak heart. I killed them both,” she reiterated flatly.

Lady Stanier stared at her before she spoke. “How very godlike you are, Jane. You quite frighten me with such power. You give life and you take it away.”

“Ah—don’t laugh at me!”

“Laugh? I have never been less amused in my life! Astonished, even awed by your claim, would be a more accurate description of my feelings at this moment! Until now it has always been my belief that such powers as you profess to hold were to be found only in the hands of God!”

“But I caused them to die! You know—”

“I know nothing of the sort! You must be all about in your head, my girl. Let me set the record straight for you. My nephew, poor soul, lived entombed for twenty years on one side of this house, while dear Lelia endured the same sort of existence on the other. Neither of them seeing anyone or living the sort of life to which their fortune and station in life entitled them, not to speak of enjoying the simple pleasures that are given to make the most ordinary life endurable. Do you think, given the choice, either of them would have exchanged the past two years for five or even ten years more of—of—living death?” Jane opened her mouth to protest, but Lady Stanier raised her hand. “No! Let me go on now that I’ve the bit well between my teeth. Sebastian had with you the only happiness he has known as an adult, and there isn’t the least doubt in my mind that God
meant
this marriage to be. He kept both of them alive beyond any expectation of mine until you could come into their lives—it was nothing less than miraculous! Now you may take the credit for giving them that happiness, as I certainly believe belongs solely to you, but always remember you were
His
instrument, as we all are. There now! I have had my say, and you may speak.”

Jane, however, sat unmoving and silent, her eyes cast down, for so long that Lady Stanier began to fear uneasily that she had accomplished nothing and that Jane had retreated into her mind once more. But presently, Jane sighed and spoke. “It seemed so clear to me, you see. They gave me everything. I took all of it. And then they were gone, as though I had—had depleted them. I felt quite—deadly. It seemed that where I loved, I destroyed and it would be best for me not to be even tempted to do so again, especially with little Clinton, so tiny and fragile, so—” she was unable to repress a little sob, “inexpressibly dear to me. All that was left, you see, of my other dear ones. I thought if I loved him too much—or even at all—I might cause his death also. So I tried to cut myself off from everything, even thinking, so that I would not be tempted to love.”

“Also, I expect, it made the grief more bearable,” said Lady Stanier shrewdly. “But I fear there is no escape from that, my love. Sooner or later grief must have its way. Tears must be shed. Much the healthiest way to shed them at once.”

She tilted her head interrogatively at Jane, and in her eyes was a clear invitation. Jane didn’t hesitate for a moment to accept it, but threw herself back into those comforting arms in a fresh outburst of tears, though these tears were as healing to the spirit as the rain to a parched field.

Before the day was over Lady Stanier had overseen the transformation of Sebastian’s bedroom into a temporary nursery. She forebore to suggest that the child might perfectly well occupy the nursery in the other part of the house where generations of infant Payton’s, including Sebastian himself, had spent their first years. She knew Jane could never be persuaded to remove to that part of the house herself to take up her proper place as mistress of Larkwoods in the state apartments. At least not for the present. She was even somewhat resistant to the idea of having her child removed from her own boudoir, but Lady Stanier managed to convince her that everyone would benefit by the separation, and finally Nurse was allowed to carry Clinton away.

Mrs. McKirk was consulted and a light dinner was ordered, after which Lady Stanier set out to entice Jane from her bed.

“Oh—I’m not sure I—” Jane looked quite frightened at the suggestion she might like to dress and come join Lady Stanier for dinner.

“I really must insist on your company, child. I dislike dining alone above all things, and it will do you good to leave that bed. You are not really ill, and lying in bed when one is in perfectly good health can be most debilitating, I assure you.”

Lady Stanier’s calm, good-natured, down-to-earth attitude did its work, and Betty was sent for to dress Jane and arrange the tumble of dark curls. After the long weeks of illness and mourning, the house assumed again the agreeable stir and bustle of activity it had known, alas all too briefly during the past years, and although it did not resemble in any way the rejoicing of those two years of Jane and Sebastian’s marriage, at least the shroud of gloom was dispelled.

The table had been laid before the fire in Sebastian’s study, where the couple had been accustomed to take their meals when the elder Lady Payton had not been in residence, and Jane felt a weak quaking when she entered the study and saw the familiar setting of so many happy hours. But Lady Stanier, sensing that she would feel so, came forward to lead her to a comfortable chair at the table, and without any appearance of strain, began to speak quite openly of Sebastian, telling her of some of his exploits as a small child, and then passing on quite naturally to speak of herself and Lady Payton when they were girls. Jane managed to eat a respectable portion of the simelles of carp, broiled fowl with mushrooms, and Savoy cake placed before her, and even to laugh aloud once at one of Lady Stanier’s stories.

When Crews had removed their plates and withdrawn, they remained comfortably relaxed in their chairs, sipping the last of their wine, a contented silence between them.

Lady Stanier was pondering the strange workings of Providence, which had brought this young girl into their lives less than two years ago. A frightened, bruised little Cockney girl, who yet managed to project spirit and courage in her eagerness to begin again in a place totally foreign to her. Now, still months short of her seventeenth birthday, the little backstairs maid had become a mother, a widow, an heiress to a staggering portion of the Payton fortune and the guardian of an even larger amount held in her son’s name, and the bearer of the tide of Baroness Larkley, one of the oldest and most prestigious in England.

A real-life fairy story, Lady Stanier mused, with Jane as Cinderella, or Beauty and the Beast, although, of course, Sebastian had not been beastly in any way. Actually quite good-looking except for his lack of inches, which most people tended to think of as freakish, and the dourness of his manner really overlaid the original sweetness of his nature. She well-remembered the loving, happy little boy he had been before that dreadful accident. It was that nature that had been allowed to surface again in the warmth of Jane’s sunny disposition. They had all, in fact, basked in it and grown to love and depend on her so much that not only were they not shocked by the misalliance but eager to promote it Honesty compelled Lady Stanier to admit that beauty and sunny nature notwithstanding, such a marriage could not have come about in the ordinary course of things, however that had nothing to say to anything since there had
been
nothing in the least ordinary in the course of things.