The Legacy (43 page)

“He took to the road, you say? So they move around the country, they’re not often here?” Her voice was little more than a whisper.

“They’re here a lot of the time. It’s close to both their families, and Dinsdale can get work here and there where his name’s known; mending metalwork and the like. So I fear you will have to get used to them, my dear. They need not trouble you—indeed, if you avoid that area of the grounds, you need not encounter them at all,” Henry concluded, and Caroline knew that the matter was closed. She shut her eyes, but she could feel them. She could sense that they were there—or rather that William was there, not two hundred yards from where she now sat at dinner. If he remained always there to remind her, she knew it would prey upon her, and slowly devour her. She prayed that they would give the child up, or move on, taking the object of her guilt and anguish with them.

W
hen her baby was born, Caroline wept. A little girl, so tiny and perfect that she did not seem real, but wrought of magic instead. The soaring, consuming love that Caroline felt for her daughter only served to show her just how great the ill which she had done to Magpie truly was. The mere
thought
of being separated from this child of hers was painful enough. So Caroline wept, with love and with self-loathing, and nothing that was said could console her. Henry patted her head, at a loss, and did a poor job of hiding his disappointment that he had a daughter, not a son. Estelle and Mrs. Priddy told Caroline, over and over, what a beauty the girl was, and how very well she had done, which brought fresh tears that they ascribed to exhaustion. At night she was beset by dreams of Magpie, her heart in flames, eyes fever-bright, failing, fading, dying of grief; and when she awoke the taint of her crime made her head throb as though it would burst. The baby was dressed in white lace gowns and named Evangeline. For four months Caroline loved her to distraction, and then the tiny girl died, one night in her crib, for no reason that any one of three doctors could ascertain. She flickered out of existence like a snuffed candle, and Caroline was shattered. What little will to go on she had kept since losing Corin now ran out of her like blood from a wound, and there was nothing left that could staunch it.

On a Tuesday, months later, Caroline went down to the kitchen and found Mrs. Priddy and Cass Evans preparing a basket of vegetables from the garden with which to pay Robbie Dinsdale. He was out of sight in the scullery, sharpening the kitchen knives with a stone treadle wheel, sending sparks flying and filling the air with the piercing whine of stressed metal. Caroline would not have sought out the source of the racket if she hadn’t seen guilt in Mrs. Priddy’s eyes; if the woman hadn’t stopped what she was doing so suddenly, with such a start, when her mistress appeared in the room. Cass pressed anxious fingers to her mouth. They all knew how Lady Calcott felt about the Dinsdales, although they did not know why. Caroline strode through to the scullery and interrupted Dinsdale, who looked up at her with soft, amber eyes. Slowly, the wheel ground to a halt. Dinsdale was wearing rough clothing, and his hair was long and greasy, tied at the back of his head with string. His face was quite lovely, as fresh and innocent as a boy’s, but somehow this only made it worse. Caroline’s grief had turned her heart to stone. She knew herself to be punished, forced by fate to suffer the same anguish that she had inflicted upon Magpie, but so great was her pain that she did not accept it—she
could
not. She fought it, and bright anger coursed through her veins.

“Get
out
!” she shouted, her voice vibrant with rage. “Get
out
of this house!” Dinsdale started up from his stool like a jack-in-the-box and fled. Caroline turned on the housekeeper and the chamber maid. “What is the meaning of this? I thought I had made my feelings about that man perfectly clear!”

“Mr. Dinsdale has always done the knives for us, my lady . . . I didn’t think any harm could come—” Mrs. Priddy tried to explain.

“I don’t care about that! I don’t want him in the house—or anywhere near it! And what’s this?” she demanded, gesturing to the basket of vegetables. “Are you stealing from the gardens as well?”

At this Mrs. Priddy swelled, and she pinched her brows together. “I’ve worked here for more than thirty years, my lady, and never once been accused of any such thing! The excess from the kitchen garden has long been used to pay local men for their labor—”

“Well, not any more! Not that man, anyway. Do I make myself clear?” Caroline snapped. She fought to contain her voice. It was wavering, reeling; it threatened to rise to a shriek.

“They ’as extra mouths to feed!” Cass Evans piped up.

“Hush, child!” Mrs. Priddy hissed.

“What?” Caroline said. She stared at the green-eyed girl in incredulous fear.
“What?”
she repeated, but Cass shook her head minutely and did not speak again.

Only Lord Calcott’s intervention kept Mrs. Priddy in her job in the wake of this misdemeanor. He did not understand his wife’s objection to Dinsdale, and he did not try to. He merely silenced her and then took himself to London to avoid her vitriolic mood. The staff began to give Caroline a wide berth, fearing her unpredictable rages, her spells of sudden weeping. Late one night, after retiring, Caroline rose and went down to the kitchens in search of liver salts to calm her stomach. She went on soft feet, her slippers making almost no sound, and paused outside the scullery, hearing the girls still clearing up the dinner plates, and chatting to the stable boy, Davey Hook.

“Well, why else do you think she’s took against them so fierce?” Cass’s village accent was instantly recognizable.

“ ’Cause she’s a nob—they’re all like that! Noses up in the air,” Davey said.

“I think she’s half lost her reason since little Evangeline died, poor mite,” Estelle spoke up.

“I’m telling you, I heard it. There weren’t no mistaking it—I
heard
it. That woman who came in from the station had something hidden under her coat, and then I heard a baby crying up in the mistress’s chamber—I did! And then all of a sudden Robbie Dinsdale finds a lad out in the woods—and we
saw
her go over there, carrying something with her. We saw her.”

“But you never saw what it was she carried, did you?”

“But what else could it have been?”

“Why, anything at all, Cass Evans!” Estelle exclaimed. “Why ever would the mistress take a child out and leave it in the woods?”

“You said yourself she’s lost her reason!” Cass retorted.

“Only since she lost the little ’un, I said.”

“Maybe it’s hers. Maybe that’s her baby—another man’s baby! And she had to keep it hid from the master—how about that, then?” Cass challenged them.

“It’s you ’as gone soft in the head, Cass Evans, not her upstairs! Toffs don’t go about dropping babies like farmers’ daughters!” Davey laughed. “Besides, you’ve seen that bairn the Dinsdales have got—swarthy as a blackamoor, he is! He’s not her boy, he couldn’t be. Not with her so pale. That there’s a gypsy child, through and through. Some other lot probably cast it off, too many mouths to feed, and that’s the beginning and end of it,” the boy said.

“You mustn’t say such things about her ladyship, Cass,” Estelle warned her, softly. “It’ll fetch you nothing but trouble.”

“But I know what I heard. And I know what I saw, and it ain’t right!” Cass stamped her foot. Outside the room, Caroline’s chest was burning. A pent-up breath escaped her in a rush, not quiet enough, and the conversation within halted abruptly.

“Shhh!”
Estelle hissed. Footsteps approached the door. Caroline turned on her toes and fled back to the stairs as silently as she could.

Henry Calcott was not at home when Cass Evans was dismissed. Caroline dealt with Mrs. Priddy, Cass having been sent to her room to pack her meagre possessions.

“The girl’s family is well known to me, my lady. I am certain she is not the thieving kind.” The housekeeper’s face was clouded with concern.

“Nevertheless, I came in to find her rifling through my jewelry box. And now a silver pin is missing,” Caroline replied, marvelling at the dispassion in her voice when inside she was wrought with panic.

“What kind of pin, my lady? Perhaps it has been mislaid and is around the house somewhere?”

“No, it has not been mislaid. I want the girl removed from the house, Mrs. Priddy; and that is all I have to say on the matter,” Caroline snapped. Mrs. Priddy watched her, helplessly, with eyes so sharp that Caroline could not hold her gaze for long. She turned back to the mirror above the mantelpiece and saw no trace of fear, or guilt, or nerves in her own face. Her features were pale, immobile. Like stone.

“May I give her a good reference, at least, my lady? To give her a start elsewhere? She’s a good girl, she works hard—”

“She steals, Mrs. Priddy. If you write a reference, you must include that information within it,” Caroline said quietly. Behind her, she saw Mrs. Priddy’s expression change to incredulity. “That will be all, Mrs. Priddy.”

“Very well, my lady.” The older woman spoke coldly, and walked stiffly away. When the door closed behind her, Caroline sagged, holding the mantel for support. Her stomach churned, and she tasted bile. But she swallowed it down and steadied herself. Cass left via the kitchen door, with tears and highly vocal outrage, an hour or so later. Caroline watched from the upstairs hall window, and when Cass turned to look back at her former home she met Caroline’s guarded gaze with a glare of such fury that it would have scorched a more feeling person.

Lord Calcott merely grunted when the new girl, who was fat and plain, opened the bedroom curtains one morning.

“What happened to that other lass? The brown-haired one?” he asked, idly.

“I had to let her go,” Caroline replied flatly. He said no more on the topic, since it was hardly an inconvenience to himself. Indeed, he was in residence less and less, and spent scant enough time with his wife for a second child to be conceived—the pregnancy was a long time coming. Caroline feared that nothing would ever again feel as wonderful as holding Evangeline for the first time, but the changing of her body brought with it an anticipation of love that was irresistible, and she succumbed to it, turning in on herself, humming softly to the unborn baby, feeling it wedged tightly beneath her ribs, a kernel of warmth and life in the dead husk of her being. But the boy, for boy it was, was born months too soon and had no chance of life. The doctor was all for taking it away with the bloodied sheets, but Caroline demanded to see her child. She studied the tiny, unformed face in wonderment—that she could still feel loss, that her eyes had tears left to shed. But it was the last of the love she possessed poured into that one gaze, that one long look she took at the dead baby’s face. The very last touch of warmth inside her, she passed to him; and then the doctor did indeed take him out with the bloody sheets and all was lost.

Caroline’s recovery was slow, and never complete. By the time she was well enough to receive visits from friends, and Bathilda, they found her slow and dull, her conversation near nonexistent, her movements sluggish and her beauty much diminished. There were hollows at her eyes and cheeks, her hands were as bony as bird claws and there were touches of gray at her temples even though she was not yet near thirty. She seemed ghostly, as if part of her had left for another plane. People shook their heads sadly and thought twice before adding the Calcotts to any invitation list. Left alone, Caroline walked a great deal. Around and around the gardens, as if looking for something. One day she went through the woods, to the clearing where the Dinsdales still camped. They had learnt to give the house a wide berth, and never came again to swap labor for food. Caroline, therefore, had no excuse to argue for their removal, and to be thwarted this way made her ever more bitter toward them.

She waited in the trees, staring at their brightly painted wagon and the patchwork pony tethered nearby. Their home looked so jaunty, pitched there on the green summer grass; so practical, so wholesome. Caroline was reminded of White Cloud’s teepee, and this, like any thought of the ranch, made her vision swim and her mind close up in misery. Just then the Dinsdales returned from the village. Mrs. Dinsdale, whose blonde hair hung in angelic ringlets, had a babe in arms, and holding onto Mr. Dinsdale’s hand was a sturdy boy of about three years, dark colored and round. His steps were sure but they made slow progress, pausing every few steps for the boy to crouch down and examine something on the ground with an endless curiosity. Caroline’s breath caught in her throat. William so resembled Magpie that it was near unbearable to look at him.

She watched them for some time. Mrs. Dinsdale put her baby down to sleep inside the wagon, then sat on the steps and called to William, who came running to her with his arms aloft to be carried. She did not call him William, of course. It was some other name that she used, that Caroline could not entirely hear, but that sounded like
Flag
. Watching them, Caroline was so torn apart with sorrow and envy that she did not know how to contain it. But she was so angry too, that this family of drifters should flourish when her own had been snatched from her, twofold. She stared at William and she hated him. She hated them all.
No more
, she thought,
I can take no more
. The price she had been made to pay was far too high, and though some part of her thought that this injustice must, somehow, be redressed, she knew that it could not be. She sat down in the shadows and cried quietly for Corin, who could not help her.