The Westerby Inheritance (18 page)

London! She lay back in her chair and closed her eyes. She could almost smell the bitter smoke-filled air of autumn, hear the orchestra at Ranelagh and the liquid voices of the Italian singers at the opera.

But then she thought of the Bentleys. They would probably insist on coming too, since they seemed to enjoy spending the Westerby money rather than their own, and yet she had not the courage to turn them out of doors. Her father considered it his Christian duty to look after them, which he was able to do with ease, being hardly ever at home, spending more time on his lay preaching than he ever did drinking. And Hetty! Poor Hetty, who was turning into a lady and killing herself in the process. If only there was a means to take her stepfamily to London and leave the Bentleys behind.

The maid came to Jane’s rooms before supper to frizzle her hair and help her into her gown.

“It’s that old grumbletonian!” burst out Bella, seizing brush and comb.

“Who, Bella?”

“Why, that Mrs. Bentley, to be sure. Who are
you
?’ she says, says she. So I told her, and she asks me for to do her
těte
. So I says, says I, ‘If it please you, madam, you has a lady’s maid of your own.’ ‘You are impident,’ says she to me. ‘My lady’s maid does not do a good
těte
.’ Now I know she is being awkward, for her Nancy dresses a head of hair as good as what I does. ‘I will consult, my lady,’ says I, and she says, ‘I am the senior lady of this ’ere household and my wishes is first.’ Well, you could have knocked me down with a—with a—well, with
things
. Sauce! So I runs away, and here I am.”

“Bella,” remonstrated Jane when the lady’s maid paused for breath. “No, do not take out your temper on my poor head! The atmosphere in this house is strained, to say the least, so I would advise you to be a little more diplomatic when it comes to the Bentleys.”

“Why you put up with ’em putting up with you is more’n I can say, my lady,” muttered Bella
sotto voce
.

Jane pretended not to hear. All she could do was to try to speak to her father again. She felt too young to assert herself with Mrs. Bentley, for Mrs. Bentley still patronized her and made her feel guilty for the death of Mr. Bentley.

But her little stepsisters precipitated a crisis that very evening. Mr. Jennings had come down from London to call on Fanny Bentley. Sally and even timid Betty were heartily sick of the Bentley girls’ furtive sneers and gibes. Before Mr. Jennings had been ushered into the drawing room after supper—he had stayed to talk to the Marquess while the ladies retired—Sally had crept up silently behind Fanny, who was whispering to Frederica on the sofa.

Deftly and quietly she tied the topknot of Fanny’s hair—which both girls were sure was false—to the back of the sofa. Then Betty produced a long razor-sharp kitchen knife, and Sally edged it cautiously through the vase splats and, drawing it silently as a whisper down Fanny’s gown, opened it up to the stays. Holding her breath, Sally slit the ribbons of the stays, the sharp knife sliding into them like butter. She cunningly did not cut them all the way through, but left a few threads which just held the corset together.

Then both girls crept away.

Just in time.

Mr. Jennings entered with the Marquess. The Marquess’s now round face beamed with bland good humor. He did not remark on the absence of his wife or seem to notice anyone in the room in particular, merely sinking down into a comfortable armchair, smiling vaguely, and communing with his own private angels.

Mrs. Bentley fluttered to her feet. She certainly hoped to look higher for a husband for Fanny but, as she had told her eldest daughter, Mr. Jennings was good enough to
practice
on. “Ah, my dear Mr. Jennings,” she cried. “Fanny is prepared to sing to you. I am sure you would like that above all things!”

Mr. Jennings gave a polite mumble, and Fanny leapt to her feet with more alacrity than grace. And then screamed and screamed.

Her top hair was indeed false, and it swung from imprisoning strings on the back of the sofa. Her gown fell forward on her shoulders, while her stays rattled to the floor and her round, full stomach, released from its moorings, sprang forward, turning a sylph into a Buddha.

Mr. Jennings had not the wit to cover his eyes, but stared and stared. Sally fell on the floor, laughing and kicking her red heels up in the air. Jane began to laugh helplessly as well. Frederica pretended to faint and made a very bad job of it. Little Betty crept back behind the sofa and crouched down on the floor in fear of retribution.

Mrs. Bentley took two quick paces forward and bent down and struck Sally full across the face, her own face contorted with rage and her poise gone. “
Daughter of a whore!
” she screamed. “Common slut!”

Sally leapt to her feet. She looked wild and gypsyish and remarkably like her mother. She drove her hard fist full into Mrs. Bentley’s stomacher and sent her reeling.

Jane stopped laughing as abruptly as she had begun and stood staring at her father.

He was still smiling vaguely and tapping his fingers on the arm of his chair to some tune in his head.

“Father!” she cried.

“Heh!” said the Marquess, blinking. “What’s to do?”

Jane shook her head sadly. Her father had left some of his wits in his last bottle and now was little more than a happy child.

She had never felt more alone in her life. Betty was sobbing quietly. Fanny had fled the room, and Mrs. Bentley and Sally were standing facing each other, Sally with her hands defiantly on her hips and Mrs. Bentley with her face a mask of hatred.

Bella came bustling in. “I never heard such commotions,” she panted. “Who’s dead?”

Jane wearily explained the girls’ prank.

“Well, now,” said Bella, interposing her large bulk between Mrs. Bentley and Sally. “Wasn’t I just saying to myself, I was saying, ‘This house is a regular hen coops of unmarried females, and that do make for twittiness,’ and I was thinking them gels, Lady Betty and Lady Sally and Miss Frederica, arc uncommon young for the altar, but there’s you, my lady, and that Miss Fanny, ought to be preparing for a Season in London.”

“But—” began Jane.

“And,” went on Bella firmly, “you’re athinking, my lady, that you’ll have all these… females in London too. But if you, my lady, was to take Number Ten, and Mrs. Bentley, the Westerby place in town, ’cause she knows it, so to speak, then that might make for peace o’ mind.”

“Remember your place, my good woman,” snapped Mrs. Bentley, but Bella’s chatter had done much to lower the tension in the room.

Jane held up her hand. “I think that is an excellent idea, Bella,” she said. “Unless, of course, Mrs. Bentley prefers to remain here?”

Mrs. Bentley’s face was a study. She would have loved to remain and play mistress at the Chase. On the other hand, free accommodation in town was not to be sneered at, and a husband must be found for Fanny.

“Very well,” she said, pinning her curved smile back on her face.

Jane ran upstairs to find Hetty and tell her the news. Mrs. Bentley went in search of Mr. Jennings.

But the only report of that gentleman was from the head groom. Mr. Jennings, he said, had screamed for his horse and then had ridden off down the drive as if the hounds of hell were after him.

Mrs. Bentley bit her lip and shrugged. There were more fish in the Season than ever came out of it!

Jane sat in the old familiar morning room of Number Ten, Huggets Square and stared out at the sooty trees in the gardens. It was one of those soft gray days so peculiar to the English climate. Everything seemed washed in gray color, and even the cat prowling through the bushes of the square was silver-gray.

Although she had arrived in London but two days before, cards were already beginning to arrive, and the door knocker banged all day as one liveried footman after another delivered invitations.

Any news about money travels fast in society, and by now most of polite London knew that Lady Jane Lovelace was possessed of an extremely handsome fortune.

Jane had accepted an invitation to an assembly at the Duke of Ruthfords that evening and had persuaded Hetty to act as chaperon, although it was plain that poor Hetty was frightened to death.

Jane sighed, thinking of the old Hetty swaggering down the country lanes with her fowling piece over her shoulder, afraid of neither man nor beast. The Marquess had elected to stay at home at the Chase. For all his attacks of childishness, he was still a conscientious landlord and took great pleasure in his tenants’ welfare, which is more than could be said of many estate owners who had all their wits about them. Jane felt she had aged a great deal. Although her father saw to the land, she had been supervising the running of the Chase itself, since Mrs. Bentley in that position would have been nigh intolerable and poor Hetty was unfit to pick up the reins.

Jane had managed to put the image of Lord Charles firmly from her mind for most of the day. But as evening approached and the sun went down somewhere behind the thick gray London sky and the flambeaux were lit in their iron brackets in Mr. Osborne’s house opposite, Jane began to feel the first stirrings of unease mixed with excitement. The Duke and Duchess of Ruthfords were accounted leaders of the
ton
. He would perhaps be there, and she would see him again.

She had thought of him so much during the preceding months that now she could not bring his image clearly to mind. Added to that, she felt, in the gathering dusk, that Lady Comfrey was sure to appear. It seemed strange now that she was dead and Jane would never again hear the rap of her cane on the floors of Number Ten. Her lawyers had arrived hard on Bella’s heels to apprise Lady Jane of her good fortune.

Soon she was ready to depart, attired in a penniered gown of white silk with gold satin bows and cascades of gold lace at the neck and elbows. Her hair was powdered and threaded with Lady Comfrey’s diamonds, and the Comfrey diamond necklace blazed at her neck.

The Westerby jewels had been wrested from Mrs. Bentley’s avaricious claws, and a fine set of emeralds blazed on Hetty’s brown neck.

Hetty was vastly fine in purple satin and Watteau pleats, although her eyes held the trapped and hunted look of a snared animal. She was anxious to please Jane and had not resorted to liquor. Sally and Betty were to stay behind in the care of Bella and their governess, Miss Armitage, a colorless young lady of impeccable manners, impeccable lineage, but a dreary creature withal. Hetty had hired the first applicant, in her usual slapdash way.

Bella stood with her hands folded over her plump stomach, staring sympathetically at the sad-looking Marchioness of Westerby.

“It puts me in mind—” began Bella, but she was firmly silenced by Jane.

“Enough, Bella,” she said firmly. “Come, Mama.”

“You ha’n’t called me that before,” said Hetty wonderingly.

“Well, I am now. You look so grand, Hetty, and then I do think of you as my mother. I really do.”

Jane did not in the slightest think of Hetty as her mother, but the compliment brought the ghost of her old buccaneering smile to Hetty’s thin face, and she held herself somewhat more erect as they walked out to their carriage.

Once again Jane sensed the tensed-up, neurotic air of London by night. A London of poverty, crime, riots, and violence, where men, women, and children drank and gambled to keep at bay the ever-present specter of death. Death could come in so many forms and so violently: in the form of the quick slash of the knife or sword, the blow from the cudgel, starvation or typhoid, smallpox, cholera, or the dreadful ravages of influenza, which had nearly decimated the population of London the winter before. The air hummed with the strung-up atmosphere engendered by five and a half million people eating, drinking, and making merry, for tomorrow it was more than likely they would surely die.

They waited patiently for an hour in the crush of carriages outside the Duke’s home, until they were able to alight. Hetty paused, trembling, on the threshold. “I
can’t
” she whispered desperately. “Not me! They’ll laugh and sneer.”

But Jane had become obsessed with the idea of seeing Lord Charles Welbourne again and would not retreat. Hetty must chaperon her.

Hetty mounted the stairs to where the Duke and Duchess of Ruthfords stood at the top to receive their guests. She felt her legs trembling and prayed she would not faint.

The Duke and his Duchess looked remarkably alike, both being small and round, with florid faces and small twinkling eyes.

Jane curtsied and murmured her good evenings, and Hety stood awkwardly behind her and stared at the floor.

“Hey!” cried the Duchess suddenly. “Westerby. Hey. You the second wife?” Hetty nodded miserably.

“’Fore George, I’ve heard some tales of you!” exclaimed the Duchess gleefully. “I take the gun out meself on occasion, and I can tell ye, I am a better shot and have a better eye than any of those sons of whores who call themselves fine shots.”

Jane had been too absorbed in her contract with Lord Charles Welbourne to take in on her previous visit the fact that coarseness was fashionable among certain ladies of the
ton
, and blushed at the Duchess’s broad speaking.

“I am pretty good myself,” said Hetty eagerly, while Jane inwardly groaned. “Can knock the pips out o’ a playing card. Can bag anythin’ that flies or runs, and cook it too.”

“Can you?” cried the Duchess, chortling with delight, oblivious to the press of guests behind Hetty, waiting to be received.

“I bain’t a liar,” said Hetty, now standing up straight, her eyes flashing with their old spirit.

“Never said you was,” said the Duchess. “Stap me! If you ain’t the mostest interestingest person at this curst drum. We shall have a glass later.”

A transformed Hetty swept into the ballroom with all her old gypsy swagger. There was a lot to be said for London folks, thought Hetty with relief. They talked like normal people and weren’t so mealy-mouthed as the gentry in the country.

The Duchess was as good as her word, and soon her plump figure could be seen sitting at a table in the refreshment room, eagerly talking to Hetty, both of them surrounded by a crowd of admirers.