With This Curse: A Novel of Victorian Romantic Suspense (5 page)

I was so moved that I could not speak for a time. Something had changed. Sometimes in the past I had harbored doubts about the earnestness of Richard’s feelings toward me; did he see as merely a flirtation the attachment that I felt so passionately? Today, for the first time, I knew. In words and deeds, Richard had shown me that he loved me. Let the world whisper about my foolishness, as I knew some of the other maids whispered. Let them giggle about how I was deceiving myself in mistaking his attentions for serious regard. Richard cherished me. I knew it now.

“You’re very quiet,” he observed, as the sun descended in the sky. He was once more sitting with his back against the rough stonework, and I nestled close within the circle of his arms, my head against his chest. “Are you happy?”

“Yes,” I said, beaming up at him. “Happier than I’ve ever been. Thank you, Richard. You’ve given me the most perfect day of my life.”

At that, he had to kiss me again, and consequently I was rather tardy returning to the house. I was scolded for truancy and sent to help the scullery maid wash dishes—an assignment intended to punish me, but I did not feel the sting of it because my thoughts were so full of Richard.

The next day the blow fell.

I was changing the linens in one of the family bedrooms when one of the parlormaids appeared at my side, her eyes wide with alarm or excitement. “You’re wanted in the morning room,” she whispered.

“By my mother?”

“By her ladyship.”

I froze for a moment, then set aside the heap of bedclothes. “Thank you,” I said with an effort, and set off for the morning room with what I hoped looked like jaunty unconcern. Perhaps her ladyship merely wanted me for some domestic chore, or to fetch her something. But why would she have sent for me specifically? This felt ominous to me.

When I reached the closed door, I took a moment to smooth down my apron and assure myself that my cap was straight. I took a deep breath in an effort to quiet my heartbeat, and rapped briskly.

“Enter,” came the clear voice of Lady Telford. I pushed the door open and stepped inside, taking care to shut it behind me in case any of the other servants were about and of a mind to eavesdrop.

Lady Telford was seated behind the polished cherry wood desk where I knew she conferred with Cook and my mother on matters of the household. Her morning gown was sky blue festooned with ecru lace, and her lace cap with the pink rosebuds should have made her look sweet and harmless, but I knew that she was far from that. Her pale blue eyes, as pale as her sons’, observed me coolly, and her small hands were folded on the desk blotter. She was not spoken of in the servants’ hall as a kind or indulgent mistress but as a just if exacting one, and I knew my mother approved of these qualities; indeed, she did her best to emulate them.

A movement to the side caught my eye, and to my astonishment I beheld my mother herself, standing stock-still except for her hands, which fidgeted with the chain of her chatelaine. The ring containing the household keys—her charge as housekeeper—swung slightly, like a pendulum, and it seemed to me a kind of portent. My mother’s face betrayed no sign of the business at hand, but I knew from her restless hands that she was worried. Evidently the matter that had brought me here was a mystery to her as well.

“Clara.” The sharpness of Lady Telford’s voice made me start and bring my gaze back to her. Her eyes had narrowed. “Do you know why I have summoned you?”

“No, ma’am,” I said, casting my eyes down in what I hoped would appear to be a suitable meekness.

“Truly? You cannot imagine that you could comport yourself with such inappropriate familiarity with my son without its coming to my attention?”

My stomach seemed to plummet to my feet. I swallowed a sudden nausea and kept my eyes trained on the carpet.

“Clara, is this true?” my mother demanded. “Answer Lady Telford.”

The anger in her voice was clear, but I heard an undercurrent that might be fear as well, and abruptly I recalled what had been all too convenient to forget before: that my behavior at Gravesend reflected on her as well as on me. My missteps would tarnish her standing in this most important post a woman could hold in a great manor house.

The nausea threatened to choke me, but I endeavored to speak steadily. “If my friendship with Mr. Richard was misconstrued—”

“Friendship!” Lady Telford exclaimed. “As if any such thing could exist between my son and you.”

I risked a glance at her. She sat ramrod straight, and in each cheek an angry red patch was burning. “No impropriety has taken place,” I ventured, but at this my mother flung up her hands in a passionate gesture.

“No impropriety, the girl says. Clara, don’t you see that
any
familiarity between you and a son of this house is improper!”

I flinched. She had never scolded me before others, and that alone would have told me how deeply I had distressed her. She put a hand to her heart as if to still it.

“Tell me,” she said, this time in a low, controlled voice. “Tell
us.
Are you with child?”

Heat rushed to my face. “Mother!”

“Your mother’s question is quite reasonable, given the circumstances.” Lady Telford’s eyes were like two chips of ice. “Well, girl? Or is it too early to say?”

I stared from one to the other now, as if they might see reason and relent. “It isn’t even a possibility,” I stammered. “Nothing untoward—nothing of that nature—has happened.”

Lady Telford sighed and closed her eyes briefly, as if my response had exhausted her. “Mrs. Crofton, is your daughter truly so ignorant of the details of basic husbandry? Or is she lying?”

“I am
not
lying!”

“I asked your mother a question, child. Don’t interrupt your betters.”

My mother’s face was pale, and her dark eyes were haunted. However humiliating this interview was for me, for her it was equally bad. “I brought my daughter up to be truthful,” she said, still in that terrible low voice. “And I endeavored to instill virtue in her as well. But with her father dead, and no man to provide the discipline she needs, I fear she’s wilder than she should be.” She looked at me now as if I were a stranger. “I shall always regret that my attention to my duties prevented me from keeping a more watchful eye on her.”

But I’m
not
wild, I wanted to say, and then realized I wasn’t certain whether it was true. Had I become a wicked woman? I didn’t think I had, but I felt the memory of his lips imprinted on the skin beneath my collarbone and dropped my eyes, wishing I could hide from the two accusing countenances. It was true I had not surrendered myself entirely to him. But I had permitted more liberties than were strictly in accordance with feminine propriety, and the memory made me unable to meet their eyes steadily and with conviction. I must have looked the picture of guilt, for Lady Telford clicked her tongue.

“It seems all too likely that the girl is
enceinte.
How vexing. Where may she be sent, Mrs. Crofton? Do you have family who can take her in?”

I was to be sent away from Richard? My heart gave a painful thud. “I don’t want to leave Gravesend,” I begged, but my mother gave me a hard look.

“What you want is of no issue. Lady Telford, I regret to say I don’t have any connections to call upon.” What she meant was that none of her family would receive either of us; they had cast her out when she married my father. That she should treat me so unjustly when she herself had been punished for loving a man of a different class outraged me.

“You can’t send me away,” I flared. “I’ve done nothing wrong. Ask Mr. Richard.” My voice faltered there; if his mother did question him and he admitted that he loved me, would he too be cast off? I could not bear to be the cause of his ruin.

But it seemed that this was not to be my lot. “I’ll not subject my son to such an indignity,” said Lady Telford briskly. “He might produce some gallant lie to protect you, or, worse yet, decide to marry you to spite us all. He’s quite impetuous enough to do it. No, my son shall not be dragged into this sordid business.” She opened a drawer of the desk, removed a small pouch, and drew from it a few guineas. These she held out to me. “Take it,” she told me, giving a little shake to her hand, so that the lace flounce on her sleeve fluttered. “This should more than pay for your remaining wages, with enough over for fare to London, I fancy.”

“London,” I repeated uncomprehendingly, as I stretched out numb fingers for the coins. “What am I to do in London?”

“That is not my concern. Your mother may be able to guide you.”

If my mother had been pale before, now she looked little ruddier than a corpse. “Am I to accompany Clara?” she asked faintly.

For a moment our employer seemed to consider. “I think not,” she said at length. “I’m far too busy now to set about seeking a new housekeeper. The house shall be discommoded quite enough by the loss of a chambermaid, and you shall need to set about finding a replacement and training her. I shall not discharge you, Mrs. Crofton, but your wages will be withheld this quarter. The morals of the female servants are your domain, as you well know, and I consider that you have let me down shamefully.”

My mother bent her head in acknowledgment. “I apologize most sincerely, my lady. I shall see to it that nothing of this nature happens again.”

“I should most certainly hope it doesn’t.” And with a whisk of her blue silk skirts Lady Telford rose from her seat behind the desk and left the room, not even deigning to look at me as she passed.

As soon as the door shut I turned to my mother. “It isn’t fair,” I protested. “It isn’t true, what Lady Telford thinks. I’m not what she thinks I am.”

But the expression she turned on me was grave and cool, and my protests died on my lips. “Don’t you see, Clara,” she said, and her voice shocked me with its weariness, “it does not matter. You have left yourself open to the suspicion, and that is enough.” She sighed. “Was I so remiss in your education? How could I have let this happen?”

She had been too busy keeping a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs. As hard as she worked, little wonder that she had been unable to monitor all of my activities. And I had taken advantage of that. Tears blurred my vision, and my throat tightened painfully. “I’m sorry, Mother.”
But I did nothing wrong.

Her hand alighted briefly on my hair, a comforting touch that was gone almost before I felt it. “Let’s get your things packed, and I’ll have a groom take you to the station. There will be a train to London before the day is out.”

I stared, aghast. “I’m to leave this very day?” How would I find a way to let Richard know—to say farewell until we could find a way to be together again?

My mother’s nod was absent, her brow drawing into furrows. Her mind was already on the future. “I’m afraid so. I’ll write some letters—Mrs. Laughton on Frances Street should still be taking lodgers and may have a room for you. But as for a situation… I shall have to put my mind to that.”

The rest of the afternoon was a miserable confusion: collecting my belongings, setting aside my uniforms, which belonged to the Blackwoods; packing up the very few fittings of my shared room that belonged to me. My mother sat writing letters for me to carry to the few of her acquaintance who might be able to find me employment or take me in. Only once did I see her put a hand to her eyes and have to compose herself. Nor did she permit me any privacy in which I might have written a letter of my own. To be forced to leave in this manner, without seeing Richard once more or even sending a message to tell him where I was going, seemed the worst injustice of all. The sting of it grew until at last I was reduced to pleading with my mother to send word to him.

“He’d not want me to go without saying goodbye,” I told her when she stood waiting with me at the servants’ entrance for the groom who would bring the pony and trap to take me and my pathetically small bundle to the train station.

But she stood firm. “Has this sad business taught you nothing? Such impropriety is exactly what has been your undoing.”

“If I
am
undone, then I ought to be able to pass a simple message to my partner in iniquity without further harm,” I said, with a spark of rebellion.

Strangely, that made her laugh. It was a sad, low sound, but a laugh all the same. “My Clara,” she said. “I shall miss you.” A quick, fierce embrace, and she whispered, “Be better than you have been, and be safe.” Then there was time for no more words, as the pony and trap drew up before us, with Sam, the groom, a study in curiosity. As we drove away, I twisted around to watch my mother as we drew farther and farther away from her. She raised her hand just once, perhaps conferring a blessing on me, and then swiftly turned and disappeared into the house.

The years between my ignominious departure from Gravesend and my finding employment with Sibyl Ingram and her theatrical troupe were dark ones, and I did not linger long over their memory. There was the period of some eighteen months working for a martinet of a modiste, who dismissed me in a torrent of abuse. The even shorter period serving as parlormaid to the young couple who found me displeasing (the wife) and all too pleasing (the husband). The disastrous two months behind a piece goods counter, which ended in my dismissal for impertinence. And finally the garment factory, which made all before it look in comparison like an idyllic dream.

The curse seemed to have stored up all its malice to lash out on the occasion of my perceived fall from virtue. I was cast out of Gravesend, parted from Richard, and thrust into a nightmarish life of drudgery. At the time, though, the heartbreak of losing Richard felt like the worst thing that life had dealt or ever could deal to me.

Then word of his death came.

He had been restless, my mother hinted in her letter—she sent the news to me herself, a kindness I would not have expected. He and his brother had been on the point of departing for a tour of the Continent when Richard unexpectedly changed his plans. He wanted to see the fighting in the Crimea, he said, and had persuaded his father to purchase a commission for him. Within months of leaving Cornwall, he was dead. The curse had fulfilled itself: Lord and Lady Telford had lost what they most loved—their treasured whole son.

The shock, so I heard, nearly killed Lady Telford. It certainly left her in a weakened condition, so that when a wave of typhus swept through that corner of Cornwall, she was among the first at Gravesend to succumb. My mother held on for longer; she was among the last to die. I had only a last hastily written letter from her describing the inroads the illness was making at Gravesend, and then nothing. Finally I learned that she was gone. The curse had blotted out not just the person I most loved, but
all
those I loved.

It had not occurred to me then to wonder about Atlas, the son of the Blackwood line whom no one regarded.

I continued to put him from my mind as I set about looking for a new position. Marriage to Atlas was out of the question. But over the following days, which I spent walking from one modiste’s establishment to another, seeking employment and finding none, I began almost to feel as if somehow he were working to force me to that exigency. I slogged from one establishment to another in the cold January rain, only to be met with refusals ranging from mere lack of interest to outright hostility. I could not understand it. I knew my manner was not as gentle and pleasing as that of many women, but I was civil, respectable, and well-spoken, with excellent credentials. Each night when I arrived at the theater, cold and discouraged, with my shoes caked in mud and the hem of my skirt and cloak soaked in rain, I felt a dart of fear that I might soon be bereft of options.

Miss Ingram, as I had expected, was so thoroughly occupied with her own arrangements that she did not seem to be aware of my endeavors; indeed, in addition to planning her relocation and wedding, she had a thousand details to attend to relating to her retirement and departure from the theater troupe. We scarcely saw each other now except when I assisted her during costume changes in her final performances, and we had little enough time on those occasions for conversation. “You look quite disheveled, Graves,” she informed me one evening about a week after I had begun seeking employment. “Have you been standing under a gutter spout?”

“Not exactly, Miss Ingram.” Even though I had money enough for a hansom cab, I had chosen to conduct my search on foot, knowing that with the future so uncertain I should save as much as I could of the little sum I had put by. But perhaps the reason I had found no success to this point was that my rain-drenched appearance was counting against me.

I received only two letters in response to my advertisement. One was from a new modiste just setting up her establishment and offering me a position if I could defer my wages for the first twelve months while the business found its footing; and the other was from Atlas. “The advertisement of a Miss Crofton seeking employment caught my eye,” it read. I had decided to abandon my spurious widow’s alias. “I am concerned that, if the notice was yours, it signals that your circumstances have altered, and not for the better. I hope you will consider again my proposal—”

I crumpled the letter in my hand and threw it into the fire in something close to panic. I could not marry Atlas. I simply couldn’t. There had to be some other future for me.

The next day I humbled myself. I dressed myself with care and conquered my curls with a severely respectable coiffure, making certain that I looked at my most modest and proper. Then I hired a hansom cab to take me to the establishment of Mrs. Hill—the modiste for whom I had worked those miserable eighteen months, which ended when she had thrown me out. My sense of justice as well as my pride smarted at asking anything of this woman, but the time was past for such luxuries as pride.

Mrs. Hill had prospered in the years since we had parted, I found. An assistant answered my ring and showed me into a large, elegant fitting room furnished with large mirrors and comfortable divans. Mrs. Hill herself, who suffered me to wait a full half hour before she graced me with her presence, was impressively gowned in a silk rep day dress of rose trimmed in fawn soutache. Just as she had during our former acquaintance, she also sported a false front of glossy brown curls in the style of decades before. Her narrowed eyes and tight, mean little smile showed that she remembered exactly who I was.

“Why, Miss Crofton,” she said in saccharine tones. “Such a surprise! I never thought to see you again.”

I swallowed hard and forced a conciliatory note into my voice. “Indeed, I had not anticipated this pleasure myself until a recent turn of events.”

She settled herself onto a divan opposite me, observing me at length, no doubt gauging the value of my gown and shoes. “You have done well for yourself,” she said. “Personal modiste for the famous Miss Sybil Ingram, if you please! I am astonished that so important a personage as you have become would stoop to call on someone as obscure as myself.”

My smile did not, I hope, look as stiff as it felt. “You flatter me, Mrs. Hill. I don’t think of myself in such terms.”

“No more should you,” she said, an iron edge coming into her voice. I remembered that tone, and suddenly I was seventeen years old again, burning with helpless humiliation as she dressed me down before the other girls and lambasted me for faults both real and imagined. “It’s clear that your good fortune has deserted you, or else you’d not have the gall to show your face here.”

I tried not to let my smile falter. “I hope that the circumstances of our parting will not count against me,” I said, forcing the words out even though they turned my stomach.

“Circumstances!” she spat out, all pretense of politeness gone. “You dare speak to me of circumstances! Don’t think I’ve forgotten you, miss, with your insolent tongue and headstrong ways. It was only my soft heart that made me tolerate you for as long as I did!”

Soft heart? Hard business head, more like.
Don’t let her anger you. Be composed.
“I trust that in the years since our parting I have learned to comport myself in a more—”

A shrill laugh cut my words short. “Pretty manners don’t fool me, Miss Crofton. I shan’t be taken in by you again. You should have been thanking me on your knees every day for a situation with me, and instead you treated me with such insolence—and before a customer, yet!—that I had no choice but to dismiss you.”

“I remember it differently,” I said shortly. My transgression had been pointing out to the customer that the peau de soie she had requested had been replaced with cheap cotton sateen. This had been Mrs. Hill’s method of maximizing profits: switch cheaper fabrics for those the customer had selected—and if the customer noticed the substitution, blame one of the seamstresses. By scolding us in front of the customer for our supposed deception, she often earned the client’s respect… and future custom. I took a deep breath and strove to prevent my anger from showing. “You said that I had cheated the customer, and I defended myself against that misapprehension”—
lie,
I longed to say—“as any wronged party would.”

That brought her to her feet. “The only wronged party, miss high-and-mighty, was me! And you may be sure that I let all the other modistes in London know it. Oh, yes, you imagined you could simply knock on any door and be welcomed with open arms for your association with the great Miss Ingram, did you? Well, I’ll wager you’ve found your reception to be quite different!”

“What do you mean?” I asked, a premonitory chill creeping across my neck. “Have you been prejudicing the other dressmakers against me?”

“Warning them, my girl, as was my duty!” The false curls trembled with self-righteous indignation. “I couldn’t let any of my sister modistes be taken in by you. ‘Don’t expect loyalty from that one!’ I told them. ‘She’ll steal from you, mark my words, and will lie to your very face if you tax her with it!’ Oh, they were most grateful for the warning, I can tell you. And I’ve been cautioning all of my customers as well. Word has no doubt spread as far as the Hebrides by now.” Her self-satisfied smile made my hands itch to shake her. “I saw your advertisement, Miss Crofton. My memory is not so poor that I had forgotten you. You may be certain that I wasted no time in notifying everyone that they should be on their guard against you!”

“You poisoned everyone’s mind against me,” I exclaimed. It made sense now, the fact that every door had been closed to me. The absence of responses to my advertisement. “After all these years, to think you could be so spiteful!”

“Insolence and ingratitude will always reap their due punishment,” she snapped, planting her hands on her hips. “You’d do well to learn that, girl—and learn some humility as well. And I fancy that’s just what’s in store for you! Now, leave my establishment at once, and don’t set foot on my doorstep again.”

I rose from the divan. I had the advantage in height, and sudden uncertainty flashed into her eyes when I glared down at her. She must have expected retaliation, but at that moment I realized that I had none. She had won. It was as simple as that.

I turned and walked out. A kind of hollowness had taken the place of the anger and dread. She had walled up every door for me, and there was nothing I could do to change that.

For a time I walked aimlessly, trying to awaken my numbed brain. The blow Mrs. Hill had dealt me seemed to have stunned all thought.
What now?
I asked myself again and again, but no answer came.

I walked until there was scarcely any feeling left in my feet. When the sun began to dip toward the horizon, I came to myself to find that I was in a shabby, congested area of the city that I remembered well from ten years ago. Without conscious intention, my feet had found the way back to the district in which lay the garment factory where I had once worked.

The racket of the machines was audible from a block away. It made my head throb and set my teeth on edge, and as I unwillingly drew nearer to the source, it stirred the beginnings of nausea in my stomach. I paused for a moment by the door of an apothecary to gather my courage.
You can do this,
I told myself.
You must. You have no choice.
Memories clogged my brain: the way my legs had trembled when I stood after working the treadle for long hours. My eyes burning from straining them and my throat burning from breathing the lint in the air. The ache in my neck and shoulders from bending over my work for hour after hour, day after day. And always the anxiety lest some unexpected problem prevent me from reaching my quota and reduce even further the pittance I earned.

Some men at the alehouse across the street called something to me, and I was thankful that I did not catch the words. Behind me, a bell jingled, and automatically I moved away from the doorway to permit whoever was exiting to pass. Then a woman’s voice said, “Clara? Is it you?”

It took me a handful of moments to recognize my old friend, so changed was she. “Martha?” I exclaimed, my tone too astonished for courtesy, but she smiled. She had lost a front tooth, which gave her expression an air of gruesome whimsy.

“It’s me, right enough,” she said. Her voice was loud, and I wondered if she had lost some of her hearing, as so many workers did over time at the factory. “I’d have known you anywhere. You don’t look a day older than when I last saw you.”

I could not say the same, sadly. Martha looked as if she had aged more than twenty years for my ten. She was dangerously thin, with spots of rouge on her sunken cheeks, and her hair was tinted a garish red. A certain fixed brightness in her eyes made me wonder uneasily what she had been purchasing at the apothecary’s.

“How wonderful to see you,” I said. It was a lie, for I hated to see her in this condition, but I would lie from one end of London to the other rather than hurt her feelings. “You’re still at the factory, then?”

Her laugh was bitter. “No, they had no use for me after—well, have a look yourself.” She stripped the worn cotton glove from her right hand, and I smothered a cry as I saw that her thumb was gone.

“What happened?” I exclaimed. “Did you injure it sewing?” From time to time an unlucky girl would run the needle into her finger, and I had heard of at least one case in which the wound became so infected that the entire finger had to be removed.