The Regency (19 page)

‘My lady?’

Docwra had come for her, stood in the doorway hesi
tantly. Lucy turned her head, hardly seeing her through the
tears, made an inarticulate sound, and Docwra was across the
room, kneeling beside her mistress, holding her. Lucy's hands
stretched out, still clutching the shoes, and now sobs tore at her throat, a terrible, deranged, ugly sound. She was beyond
restraint; she was unaware of anything but the terrible pain
of loss.

‘Go get Mr Parslow,' Docwra said urgently to the frightened
housemaid who had alerted her. 'And tell Mr Hicks to send
for the physician. Run!’

The maid disappeared, and Docwra, knowing there was
nothing else to do, held the thin, rigid body of her mistress as
it heaved and jerked, and the tears flowed in an unstaunch
able flood. She said nothing, made no sounds of sympathy,
knowing they would not help. This was beyond her to under
stand or heal. When Parslow came, hurrying in from the
stables, she handed Lucy over to him. She was as rigid and
unwieldy as a wooden doll, but she went to Parslow's arms
with an inarticulate, childlike cry, and he picked her up and
carried her downstairs to her room. There he would have put
her down, but she would not let him go, so he sat on a chair
with her on his lap, while she wept and wept against his chest.
She cried as though she were bleeding to death, and Docwra
stood by, twisting her fingers in anxiety, fearing that the tears
would never stop.

But nothing goes on for ever. In the end, she stopped from
sheer exhaustion, and Parslow laid her down on the bed, and
sat holding her hand quietly until the doctor came, and gave
her a draught. After a time she began to be drowsy, and
Parslow tried to withdraw his hand to leave her to sleep, but
her fingers tightened on his, and she murmured, 'Don't go.’

He sat again, her small, calloused hand engulfed in his
large, leathery one. The depth and tenderness of his feelings
for her made it impossible for him to speak, even had there
been anything he could conceivably say. He hoped she would
fall asleep. At last she drew a long, hitching breath and
opened her drowned eyes, and said, 'Thank you.’

He shook his head, meaning, there's no need.

‘
It's over now,' she said. Something in her had broken in
that terrible paroxysm of grief. She would never feel like that
or cry like that again.

‘
Yes, my lady,' said Parslow. He wanted to say more, but
only squeezed her hand. They were very close at this
moment; but she was his mistress, and the wrong words
would destroy their unspoken and improbable friendship.

‘
What am Ito do?' she asked after a while, in a small voice,
near the edge of sleep. 'Where do I go now?'

‘
The way you were going, my lady. That was right. But it'll
be easier now,' he said.

‘Will it?'

‘
Oh yes. You were swimming upstream. Now you'll go with
the current.'

‘
But what shall I do?' she asked again. Her eyes were
closed, but her hand was still alive in his; she was listening.
He searched his mind frantically for the right answer; but
when he spoke, it was not from intellect but from an animal
sense of rightness.

‘
P'raps you should bring the little boy home, my lady. The
Captain's son.'

‘
The Captain's son,' Lucy repeated, and though her eyes
were closed and sleep was fast overtaking her, she smiled, and
to Parslow that smile seemed the most beautiful thing he had
ever seen. 'How nice that sounds. The Captain's son —' She
was asleep.

Parslow withdrew his hand carefully and got, a little stiffly,
to his feet. At the door Docwra was waiting, looking enquiringly at him. Parslow looked down at his broad hands with
the broken fingernails, the palms calloused from a lifetime of handling leather; at his leather breeches and coarse stockings,
and his stable shoes to which a thread of dirty straw still
adhered; and then he looked up at the lady's maid again.

‘You're right, Bessie,' he said. 'It isn't my job.’

Tears jumped to her eyes, and she put out a hand and
touched his arm. 'No, John, I wasn't thinking that.'

‘Only I love her, you see,' he said. They were words open to
misinterpretation, spoken only because of the depth to
which his emotions had been stirred; but Docwra, who had
lived closely with both of them for twelve years now,
understood.

‘I know,' she said. 'She loves you too. You did right, John.'

‘
Ah,' he said. He looked down at his hands again and
sighed. 'I've got four horses to strap and bed down. That's
where I'll be, if you want me.’

*

Miss Rosedale looked like a young woman, though a second,
closer look revealed that she was well past the first flush of
youth. Her face was smooth, open, cheerful, her eyes merry,
her mouth curving upwards at the corners, as though she kept
it in readiness for smiling; but there was a mesh of fine lines
about her eyes, and one or two silver hairs caught the light
amongst the brown when she turned her head. She might be
five- or six-and-thirty, Héloïse decided; it was the brightness
of her brown eyes that made her look younger.

Roberta's Mr Firth had found her in only a few days,
through diligent enquiry. He had followed a trail which began
with Roberta's father, Colonel Taske, led him through a
number of military families of his acquaintance, and ended
only just around the corner in Audley Street. Here in a
decent, dignified, old-fashioned house, Colonel Barclay had
lived for twenty years with his large and happy family; and
for sixteen of those years, Miss Rosedale had been governess
to his children.

Héloïse met her one morning in the Barclay's breakfast
parlour, in the company of Mrs Colonel Barclay, and Miss
Albinia Barclay, the last of her charges. At the table, which
was covered in cards, boxes, straw, string and paper, Mrs
Barclay and a maid were engaged in unpacking wedding gifts.

‘
You won't mind, I hope, Lady Morland, if we carry on
with this while we talk? But there is so much to do, and so
little time to do it, with the wedding on Friday.’

She smiled at her daughter, and Albinia blushed a little
and looked conscious. Héloïse said what was polite.

‘
Quite a whirlwind romance it has been too!' Mrs Barclay
went on. 'Married at sixteen! Not but what she has known
young Glaisford practically since they were in their cots, but
we never had any more idea that they would get married! And
then they up and fall in love with each other, and since he is
to go overseas at any moment with his regiment — well, you
know what young people are! They would not wait, and as I
said to the Colonel, 'My dear,' I said, 'as I remember, you and
I were just as eager when we were their age!' You would be
quite shocked, Lady Morland, if I were to tell you how little
time elapsed between my dancing with the Colonel for the
first time, and his asking me to marry him! Not that he was a
colonel then, of course, only an ensign; but I always loved a
red coat! We are all the same at heart, we women, aren't we?'

‘
Oh Mama!' Miss Albinia exclaimed in embarrassment.
Her mother looked at her fondly.

‘
Why, love, you are blushing! She is all sensibility, Lady
Morland, as you see, and that is all because of her education, for I tell you frankly that I had none! My Papa was a military man, too, you know, and he did not believe in too much educ
ation for females. But times have changed, and I am all for
keeping up with the world, and I said to the Colonel when our first daughter — that was Sophy, who is now Mrs Andrews —
was born, 'My dear,' I said, 'what was good enough for me
may not be good enough for our girls'. And the Colonel
agreed with me. So we got a governess — that was Miss
Atkins — for Sophy, and for Mary and Jane when they came
along. Then when Miss Atkins left to start a school of her own
in Salisbury, along with her mother, because her mother had
just come into a little fortune — such a charming woman, and
she had the smallest feet I've ever seen! — well, then we
found Miss Rosedale, and she has been with us ever since, and
taken care of all our girls. We had six, you know.'

‘
Indeed, ma'am,' Héloïse said, noting out of the corner of
her eye the affectionate amusement with which Miss Rosedale
listened to the stream of inconsequence.

‘
Oh yes. Well, they are all gone now, all married, and Albinia
is the last; and I always say it was the best day's work we
ever did, employing Miss Rosedale, for every one of our girls
has turned out just as we would have wished.'

‘
You are very kind to say so, ma'am,' Miss Rosedale said
with a quirk of her lips.

‘
It's no more than the truth, my dear. I don't know what we should have done without you, and that's a fact! And I
shall be very sorry to see you leave, but if it is a case of bettering
yourself — and then, now that Albinia is to be married,
there will be nothing for you to do, and I know how you like
to keep occupied. She is such a worker, Lady Morland! I
never knew her take her ease, for when she had finished her own duties, she would come to me and say, 'Mrs Barclay, is
there anything I can do for you?' Well, I keep servants to do servants' work, and as I always said to the Colonel, we pay a governess to take care of the children, not to run about doing
errands for me, so I can tell you, Lady Morland, that there
was none of
that
sort of thing in this house, such as you see
even in some of the best families! And besides, dear Miss
Rosedale is quite one of the family. I'm sure I shall miss her as
much as I miss the dear girls.' A tear brightened her eye, and
was carefully dabbed away. 'But then, they have all married
so well! And all because of dear Miss Rosedale's influence,
and the excellent way she taught them. She is kind enough to
say that I set them a good example, and so I hope I do, but it
is a fact that though I can read and write with the best of
them, I take no pleasure from it; and as to all the other
things, like geography and history and French, they are like
foreign languages to me.'

‘Oh, Mama!' Miss Albinia said again.

Mrs Barclay nodded to Héloïse. 'You will find she has all
the accomplishments, too, Lady Morland, not just book-
learning. Needlework and singing and sketching and so forth.