Louise Allen - Regency Surrender - Passion And Rebellion

It probably helped that she stalked into the building, still hurt and angry at her husband, and ready to take it out on whoever happened to cross her next. Susan did her part, too, making up the bed in the best chamber with sheets Mrs Brownlow had provided, with such disdain for the hotel’s bedding that all the staff treated Mary as though she was a duchess. But all the bowing and scraping from the landlord and his minions could not quite compensate Mary for the knowledge that when her husband had travelled with her, he’d hired a well-sprung, comfy little post-chaise, rather than put up with the antiquated, lumbering carriage that Gilbey had unearthed from somewhere. When she’d travelled with him, she hadn’t ended up aching all over and feeling so sick and dizzy that she would have cheerfully curled up on the rug in front of the fire, just as long as she could get her head down.

And then, of course, thoughts of spending nights on hearthrugs in front of fires had churned her insides up so much that she could have been offered the finest, softest feather bed, and it would still have felt like an instrument of torture.

* * *

It was past noon by the time Mary reached London the following day. She heaved a sigh of relief when she finally alighted outside one of the largest, most imposing mansions she had ever seen.

Gilbey, and the horrid carriage, disappeared round the side of the house at once. Taking the precious horses to the warmth of their luxurious stables, she supposed. Susan, carrying Mary’s bag, mounted the steps ahead of her and knocked on the glossily painted, black front door.

‘Lady Havelock, you say?’ The butler who opened the door raised one eyebrow in a way that implied he very much doubted it. ‘We received no notice of your intention to take up residence.’

This was a problem Mary hadn’t anticipated, though perhaps she should have done. It was just like her husband to have forgotten to inform the most relevant people involved.

‘Well, I’m not spending another night in a hotel,’ she snapped. One had been more than enough. And she was blowed if she was going to write to him and tell him his servants wouldn’t let her into the house he’d promised she could treat as her own. She’d come to London in part to prove that she could stand on her own two feet. Survive without him. She wasn’t going to crumble, and beg for his help, at the very first sign of trouble.

‘What’s to do, Mr Simmons?’

A stern-looking, grey-haired lady came up behind the butler, who was obstinately barring the way into the house, and peered over his shoulder.

‘There is a person claiming to be Lady Havelock,’ said the butler disapprovingly.

‘Well, the notice was in the Gazette, so I dare say his lordship has married somebody.’

While the butler and the woman she assumed was the housekeeper discussed the likelihood of her being an impostor, Mary’s temper, which had been on a low simmer all the way to London, came rapidly to a boil.

She’d had enough of people talking about her as if she wasn’t there. Of making decisions for her, and about her, and packing her off to London in ramshackle coaches to houses where nobody either expected or welcomed her.

‘It’s all very well thinking it is your duty to guard my husband’s property from impostors,’ she pointed out in accents that were as freezing as the rain that had just started to fall. ‘But if you value your positions at all...’

‘That’s ’er, right enough,’ a third voice piped up, preventing her from saying exactly how she would exact retribution. ‘Leastaways,’ said a small boy, who pushed his way between the butler and the housekeeper, ‘she’s the one wot was wiv ’is lordship when he saved me from the nubbing cheat.’

‘Indeed?’ The butler’s expression underwent a most satisfying change. At about the same moment she recognised the little boy. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been dressed in rags and her husband had been dragging him out of Westminster Abbey by the scruff of his neck.

‘My goodness, but you’ve changed,’ said Mary to the boy. He’d not only filled out, but seemed to have grown taller, too. Of course that might have been an illusion, caused by the fact that he wasn’t cowering. Or wearing filthy, ill-fitting clothes. And the fact that his hair was clean, and neatly brushed.

‘That’s wot plenty of grub and a reg’lar bob ken’ll do fer yer,’ said the former pickpocket, with a grin.

‘He means,’ put in the butler, having swiped the lad round the back of the head, ‘that he is grateful to his lordship for saving him from the threat of the hangman’s noose, taking him in and giving him a clean home where he has regular meals. And though we oblige him to wash regularly, I am sad to say that we are still teaching young Jem to speak the King’s English, rather than the dreadful language he acquired in the gutter that spawned him.’

The hangman’s noose...

Mary’s mind went into a sort of dizzy spin, during which time several apparently random items fell rather more neatly into place. Her husband’s assurance to his sister that he’d made sure she was kind-hearted, her inability to work out how he could have done so, the lad’s pleading for mercy from Mr Morgan and the verger...

And the clincher—this lad’s total lack of fear, even when surrounded by his accusers, threatening him with gaol.

‘No real fear of the noose though, was there, Jem?’ she said acidly. ‘It was just a prank Lord Havelock put you up to, wasn’t it?’

The urchin’s grin widened. ‘No putting anything past you, is there, missus?’

The butler swatted him again. ‘It is your ladyship, not missus,’ he corrected the boy.

It might have been something in Mary’s expression as she realised what a fool her husband had made of her, time after time, or the lad’s vouching for her character, or her own veiled threat—but for whatever reason, the housekeeper was beginning to look rather alarmed.

‘Your ladyship,’ she said, pushing both butler and boy to one side. ‘Please come in out of the rain. We are so sorry you have caught us all unawares.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said the butler, wresting his attention from the boy to his new mistress and permitting Mary to finally step inside Durant House.

The hall was massive. And dark. So dark she couldn’t see to the far end of it. That was due in part to the shoulder-high wainscoting, which seemed to suck up what little light filtered in through the few windows that hadn’t been shuttered. She couldn’t see the ceiling either, no matter how far she craned her neck. But from the echo to the butler’s and housekeeper’s voices, she judged it was very, very high. On either side of the hall was a dark and ornately carved staircase, which ran by several stages, interspersed with half landings, up under a series of grimly glowering portraits until all disappeared into the murk above a gallery landing.

She wasn’t surprised her husband had likened it to a mausoleum.

‘We do not, just at present, even have anywhere for you to sit and take tea while we make your room ready,’ said the housekeeper nervously. ‘Everything is under holland covers.’

Mary wondered how the housekeeper would react if she simply went down to the kitchens and made herself a pot of tea?

But the poor woman had probably sustained enough shocks for one day.

‘I dare say you have your very own sitting room,’ said Mary. ‘Which I’m sure you keep comfortable enough for my needs, for now.’

‘Oh, yes, well, I do. Of course I do, your ladyship,’ said the housekeeper, torn between relief that her mistress wasn’t going to demand another room be made ready at once and consternation at having her invade her territory. ‘It’s this way,’ she said, pragmatism winning.