True Born (8 page)

Lascia ch'io pianga

Mia cruda sorte,
E che sospiri la libertà
！

Let me weep for my cruel fate, and sigh after
freedom!

John had needed to possess Georgiana, to
secure the happiness she would bring to him, but now he longed to
devote himself to her until joy returned to her eyes, and her
sadness  was entirely gone -- a sadness that yet made her
irresistible.

She is preparing herself to let her life
go to waste, 
he thought
, just so that others may
thrive.

I won't let it happen! 
He had had
enough of being a shadow, and left the box, starting to make his
way to the exit. He would not follow her like some helpless thing,
he would give her happiness and security, and her sisters too --
enough of the useless longing!

Just as he turned a corner with a scowl of
determination on his face, he found himself face to face with
Cecily and Dorothea.

Both girls gasped and stared at him in
horror.

"No!" Dotty cried, like a child who was about
to be hurt.

His face showed  grief at the fright he
was causing them. Cecily must have seen his distress, as she
touched his sleeve and asked, "Oh, John, why?"

He realized that Georgiana would scarcely
have told them what had happened afterwards. They could not know
the immensity of his repentance, or the intensity of his love.

"I am sorry, Cecily. I lost my head. I asked
her forgiveness, and she has given it!"

Cecily's eyes were soft, as she knew that
John could not, at times, control his rage, and that losing
Georgiana to Hugh would have driven him half mad. It was a story of
impossible love, one that awakened her deepest sympathy, and made
her suffer with them.

But Dotty was looking at him with a terrible
frown, and tears in her eyes.

"You don't forgive me, Dotty?" John
asked.

"She has the kindest heart in the world, how
could you? How could you?"

John reached out slowly, as if trying to
touch a wild deer, and pinched Dotty's earlobe with tenderness, as
he used to do when they had known each other before. The tears
spilled out of her eyes, tears of stubbornness, pity for her
sister, and love for John.

"If you only knew!" the girl said.

"What?" he asked sharply. "If I knew
what?"

But the girls were looking beyond him now. He
turned to find the fourth occupant of their box, a woman about
twenty-four years old, whose dress and hair were too simple for the
theater. She had a serious face with a long nose, but she was
beautiful. There was a fierceness in her gaze which was not anger,
but something else. She never took her eyes off his as she came
forward, holding her hand out.

"I am your cousin, Hester Stowe," she said in
a low voice.

It took a moment for John to shake her hand,
for there was something powerful and strange about her. And, it
seemed, she did not mind owning him as a cousin, though he was
a bastard. Yet she was probably making a show of her genteel
poverty, because he knew that Georgiana would have offered her
better clothes, and anything she needed.

A woman who wants no finery
, John
thought. 
God save us from them, even more than from the
ones who want too much of it.

Then, fearing that Georgiana might soon come
out after them, he said to the girls, "Don't tell your sister I was
here. It will only make everything worse."

Cecily nodded in understanding, and Dotty
suddenly stepped forward and made him bend so she could kiss his
cheek.

"I will make up for what I did -- I promise
you, darling," he whispered with grateful affection.

John went down the stairs as quickly as he
could, but found, upon looking up, that the strange young woman who
now lived with Georgiana had come to the banisters to watch him
leave.

In her husband’s magnificent London home,
Georgiana could not stop thinking of John, as she had known she
would not have been able to once he returned.

It was even worse now, when she finally
understood what physical love was meant to be like. She longed for
him day and night, and the insult and betrayal of having her sister
live under her roof as her husband's mistress was mitigated by the
relief she felt in not having to be in Hugh's bed.

She hoped she would never have to sleep with
Hugh again. It made her nauseous to think of it, whereas before
John had returned she had come to accept it and bear it like many
other obligations in her life. 

It had been worse at the beginning, when Hugh
had been so overwhelmed by her that he hadn't been able to stop
touching her and asking to see her naked. The things he had said to
her then had seemed abominable, though they might be things that
two people in love would say to each other.

Then he had started to come to her drunk,
after meals, his eyes bleary and his hands moist. He would
sometimes insult her, or fight with her, telling her that she did
not act like a wife, that she did not love him.

John had said nothing at all; everything had
been in his eyes, in the way he touched her. Georgiana pressed a
hand over her breast, to feel as it had felt when it had been his
hand, she kissed and nuzzled her own shoulder as he had done, but
nothing could compare to being with him for those few hours. She
felt as if every pulse in her body beat for him.

Why did they have to be honorable, when Hugh
and Bess were not, when they flaunted their affair in her face? She
asked herself that sometimes, then she remembered the danger that
she might conceive, and thought of the scandal for the poor
innocent, and John's grief in doing to his own child what had been
done to him.

And there was that other terrible reality,
that she might be destitute, and her sisters too. She would go to
John, were she alone – she would not be frightened that he might
fail her, or die; she would believe in him, and in her own
strength. She would work alongside him.

But how could she do that when her sisters
might also end up poor and unmarriageable? She could not. Life was
much harder than anyone of them had known, when their father had
been finding the money to keep them safe and well. Life could be
terribly cruel to women.

Yet passionate love made people selfish, and
many times Georgiana wanted to walk through Halford House tearing
out her earrings, bracelets, necklace, her hair piece, her ribbons,
her dress, her stays and her high heeled shoes until she was quite
bare. She would then run through the streets on her naked feet, to
find John as she had found him before, to be in his bed again, and
feel his wildness and his love.

Instead she looked out the window as her
sisters played music and stared at the rain, knowing that she would
do nothing at all except sit at luncheon or dinner and pretend that
all was well, that Bess and her husband were not lovers, that she
liked that strange silent girl, Hester, and that she was happy, so
that Cecily and Dotty would not be vexed.

She would then say goodnight to everyone and
go to her room, knowing that Hugh would not come. He hated her too
much now, though he still liked to show her off; better, she
imagined, than he would have liked to parade Bess.

Georgiana was the prize horse, the
thoroughbred, and Bess the everyday mare. What would happen if Bess
had a bastard, after she had used that name for John so often with
venom?  Poor Bess, how foolish she was. She wondered if Hugh
would marry her, even if she died, and didn't think so.

With her impatience and her need to be first
and foremost, Bess had sold herself short. She did not understand
what needed to happen in the house of a nobleman. She did not
understand that Hugh would not break the rules a second time by
marrying another poor commoner, and one whose body he had already
enjoyed.

Georgiana would go to her room, alone, and
she would lie on her bed longing so much for John that she thought
she might forget everything, she might go to him, she might go to
him 
now
, and he wouldn't be able to refuse her.

But she wouldn't get up from her tortured
bed, and the next morning the thought that she might do it was
gone. She sat, motionless, as her maids dressed her in her
undergarments, her stays, her bodice and skirt; as they put lace,
furs and jewels on her; as they teased her hair, powdered it and
placed ribbons on it. She waited until she was unrecognizable to
herself, until she was the Countess of Halford and no longer
Georgiana.

Then the day would begin, a day with nothing
in it for her to do, except think of John again.

Wig stealing was a profitable business for
thieves who didn't expect to retire on their earnings.

A good wig of horse hair was expensive -- and
sought after, as the middle classes were determined to wear them so
as to resemble the nobility as much as possible. Therefore thieves
could sell the wigs they stole to seemingly respectable traders,
who would then sell them to eager prospects looking to save a
little.

A wig of human hair would, of course, be much
more expensive, and an elaborate puffy wig could cost 800 shilling;
but these would hardly ever be seen walking down the street, and a
thief would have to be fast and cunning to snatch them from noble
heads as they entered Parliament or the theater.

London streets had become treacherous to
navigate if one were wearing a wig, or if one didn't take enough
care. Pickpockets tended to avoid tall strong men like John, who
might catch them and give them a good beating before having them
thrown into jail, but the poor round-bellied sot strolling in front
of him in his sky blue satin trousers and coat, his high heels and
walking stick was just the sort to call the attention of London's
merciless underworld.

Right now the man in blue satin was passing
some street ragamuffins who were laughing unabashedly at him. One
boy kept running ahead of him to turn around and put his hands to
his face, pretend his knees were buckling and his heart was beating
fast, as if he were dying of love at the sight of the popinjay.

The man frowned and pushed the boys aside
with his stick, and when clear of them put his nose in the air to
continue walking with dignity, but the boy would appear again, and
again start his pantomime.

At one point the boy simply ran at the man
and jumped in his arms, pretending to kiss him. The man tried to
get rid of him, but the boy took his fashionable hat and put it on
his own head, and pursed his lips to be kissed.

The man in satin did not notice, with the boy
in his arms, that his wig was rising from his head as if it were a
bird flying off. John could not help laughing with the rest of the
street as the hairy thing with its rows like sausages rose higher
and higher in the air.

Looking up, John saw that there was a thread
pulling it, and could even make the stick that was being used to
reel the wig in, as if it were a fish caught in a hook.

A face topped by natural fair hair showed
itself for a second over the banister of the public building where
the wig was going, and John would have recognized it anywhere.

He smiled and leapt around the building and
up the stairs, to the hidden spot at the top of the columns where
the thief was fishing, and found himself behind his friend,
Lieutenant Marcus Brennan.

"You're caught sir!"

Marcus almost threw himself out of the
building, thinking the law had really caught up with him, but John
stopped him by grabbing the back of his coat.

"Oh, you goddamned ass!" Marcus exclaimed, a
hand over his heart, when he saw it was John. He did not forget to
secure the wig and tuck it inside his coat.

John was still laughing. "I like a thief who
never loses his head!"

Marcus smiled with his usual charm. "Let's
get out of here, it's very important that I shouldn't be at the
scene of the crime! Look how the creature is squealing!"

Indeed, the man in his satin suit was
shouting, his hand to his head, and calling for the police, as he
pointed fingers at everyone in the street.

"Where are you meeting your accomplice,
then?" John asked as they moved away together.

"You made him out, did ye?"

"It doesn't take genius to see the ploy. I
hope you use variations of it."

Marcus shrugged, "Well, it has worked so far,
and everyone in the street only wants to see the fops get
stiffed!"

"A man with a plan, I see," John scoffed.

They were going through back streets and
alleyways, and John was not surprised when they arrived at a public
house, The Midday Cup.

"Apt name," John said with a smile, as Marcus
liked to start drinking early, and it was not even noon.

"Ah, abandon that irony and let us drink to
the success of my business!"

Marcus was none other than the lieutenant who
had acted as John's second, and served under him in India. He had
managed to be honorably discharged by making much of an eye injury
sustained in battle, which presumably made him see double and put
his fellow officers in danger. He liked to say that it was only
time he was
"honorably anythinged”.

He had ordered two pints of ale and came back
to set one before John. He drank deeply from his own glass and
smiled, "Ah! All is right with the world."

"How bad is it?" John asked, after taking a
sip of his ale.

"What?"

"Your situation."

"Ah, you know! I make do with my wig
business!"

John looked at Marcus' threadbare clothes and
scruffy appearance." I can smell you from here!"

"Put your nose in your ale glass and you
won't smell me anymore!"