Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Stillroom Maid

As the Cavendish carriage conveyed me steadily towards Bakewell, I reflected upon the nature of The Adventuress’s career. Its broad outlines were known to me, as they must be to anyone who has lived in the world.

Lady Elizabeth Foster is approaching the age of fifty. She was married when still quite young to an Irishman whose violent temper and habit of seducing his wife’s maids had early estranged her affections. Divorced by Mr. Foster after only a few years of marriage, she was deprived of her two sons, then in their infancy, and forced to live on a pittance. Her father, Lord Bristol — one of the more bizarre of the Hervey clan — then threw off Lady Elizabeth and her sister, whose marriage had also failed; and the two ladies moved forlornly about the watering-places of Europe, presuming upon the privileges of birth, and clinging to a threadbare decency. It was then that Lady Elizabeth fell in with the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire — childless, not long married, and not entirely able to suit one another.

She lived with the pair for over twenty years, acknowledged as the Duchess’s dearest friend and the Duke’s principal mistress. The perfect delight of the three in each other was not unmarred by comment; in the salons of the Great, eyebrows and questions were raised regarding the Duke’s behaviour, and rather more gossip concerning the Devonshire progeny. Georgiana’s daughters were deemed above suspicion; but Georgiana had also condescended to rescue several “orphans” from war-torn Europe, and had raised them as her own in the Devonshire nurseries. The Duchess, moreover, had gone so far as the Continent to produce her son and heir, Lord Hartington — accompanied by none other than Lady Elizabeth. The Vicious in Society wondered aloud whether Lord Hartington was Georgiana’s son — or a Hervey bastard, exchanged for an unwelcome daughter at birth. [7] Although the Duke of Devonshire had not yet acknowledged his paternity of Lady Elizabeth Foster’s children by 1806, he was to do so several years later. Lady Elizabeth bore the duke a daughter, named Caroline St. Jules, in 1785, and a son, named Augustus William Clifford, in 1788. The Cavendish family has always maintained, however, that William Cavendish, born 1790 and here referred to as the Marquess of Hartington, was indeed Georgiana’s son. — Editor’s note .

Lady Elizabeth’s continuance in the Chatsworth household after Georgiana’s death must be perceived as awkward, both by intimates of the Cavendish family and by those more hostile to their circumstances. Convention held that Lady Harriot should assume the duties of her father’s household, her elder sister being already several years married; and yet there was Lady Elizabeth — senior to Lady Harriot, clearly held in preference by the Duke, and determined to wrest at last some acknowledgement of her claims and position from the Great World.

She would continue to make life painful for Lady Harriot until the girl fled the Devonshire ménage for a suitable household of her own. Was it this that Lord Harold had meant, when he advised Hary-O not to exchange one misery for another? Could any young woman, raised in so divided a household, regard marriage as a form of salvation?

Lord Harold would not allow Georgiana’s daughter to fall prey to a man who had brutally despatched his own maid. But which did he fear most: the easy charm of Andrew Danforth, or the subtle warmth of his brother, Charles?

As we descended the Baslow road towards Bakewell, my thoughts turned from Lady Elizabeth to the scene that had preceded her entrance. Whatever had been her principal object in engrossing all our attention, Lady Elizabeth had certainly succeeded in diverting us from the Marquess. Young Lord Hartington had behaved in a most extraordinary manner; but I suspected that such was often the case. He had the look of a boy tormented: by grief, by the deafness his family seemed determined to ignore, by the rumours that had dogged his birth. He must often be flying alone on horseback through the fields of his father’s estate.

I’d hoped the witch had died in agony!

Disturbing sentiments to voice aloud, even in the company of one’s friends. It must be impossible that Lord Hartington would expose himself in such a way, were Tess Arnold a complete stranger to him. The bitterness of the pronouncement — his rejoicing at the maid’s death — suggested rather that the boy harboured some deep grievance towards the woman that found satisfaction in her gruesome murder. What could possibly inspire so profound a hate?

Madness. Madness born of grief and despair, madness born of unrequited love. Which had stirred in the Marquess’s breast with those final, fatal words?

A madman is loose in the hills . And Lord Harold, it seemed, was afraid that the madman was the Duke of Devonshire’s heir. It was for this he had begged me to observe the household; not for Lord Harold the unhappy duty of naming Georgiana’s son a murderer. He would leave that to strangers.

I sighed in exasperation. Impossible, to consider any part of the whole with clarity. I was too much unsettled in my mind — too little familiar with the habits of Whigs — too greatly troubled by the secret Lord Harold’s countenance had lately betrayed. The Gentleman Rogue was in love with his oldest friend’s daughter . Did he find Georgiana’s bewitching charms revived once more in Lady Harriot?

And what did she think of him?

Or say rather — what did Lady Harriot think of any man?

Charles Danforth was marked in his reserve; yet there had been meaning in all his words to Hary-O. He had told her, in effect, that his will was hers to command. But so much dignity and suffering — such a weight of years and loves already outworn — might well terrify a girl of one-and-twenty. Andrew Danforth — the maid’s seducer — had no such reserve; his back was unbowed by sorrow, he had charm and looks enough. He was ambitious in the field of politics, which Hary-O’s entire world had taught her to admire. Andrew sought the Duke’s patronage, and he desired the Duke’s daughter. It would be a brilliant match for the younger son of an un titled family, however respectable. He would gain everything — a formidable Whig hostess, practised in Parliament and Society; a considerable fortune; and the sponsorship of one of the greatest Powers in the land. She would escape from the misery of living under Lady Elizabeth’s reign, and acquire a gentleman with pleasing manners, an air of affection, and the best humour in the world.

But Tess Arnold had stood, quite possibly, in the way of it all—

By the time the carriage achieved The Rutland Arms, I was in the grip of a severe head-ache.

“AND SO YOU HAVE RENEWED YOUR ACQUAINTANCE with the Countess of Swithin, Jane,” my mother observed as I entered the parlour. “And how did you find her? Wasting away from a life of dissipation and vice?”

“Indeed not, ma’am. Lady Swithin is presently increasing,” I remarked, as I removed my hat and spencer. “She was in excellent looks, I assure you, and begged to be remembered most fondly to yourself and my sister.”

“Increasing! And so she gets on, does she, with her scoundrel of a husband?”

“As to that, I cannot say. The Earl did not put in his appearance.”

“He leads her a merry dance, I’ve no doubt,” observed my mother in satisfaction. “It is some comfort to reflect, Jane, that however sad your situation in being as yet unmarried, you have not chosen a man solely to disoblige your family. It is a great thing, now I am in my failing years, to find you are not the mother of ten children, and all ill-provided for.”

“And Lord Harold?” enquired Cassandra, as though the word scoundrel had given rise to an idea of that gentleman. “He is well, I trust?”