An Independent Woman

CHAPTER ONE

Viscount Dembleby was interred in the family vault on a cold January afternoon, with all due obsequies, sober expressions and the usual lies about ‘what a loss’ and ‘fine fellow’ from people who either barely knew him, or did not much like him.

He did have a few friends, but they could be counted upon the fingers of one hand, and none of them liked any of the others.

The newly widowed Louisa, Lady Dembleby, did not look in deep grief.

In fact, she did not look to be grieving at all.

She sat, her hands folded in her lap, silent, looking out at a grey winter's landscape of empty parkland and sparse, denuded trees.

She would not, she thought, miss the view, or indeed the house, which was old and rambling.

The new Lady Dembleby was welcome to its rattling windowpanes, long passageways and the all-too-frequent presence of the previous chatelaine.

The final lady in the room was the only one who was not, in some shape or form, ‘Lady Dembleby’.

Lady Felmersham was the widow’s mother, and technically there to support her daughter in her ‘time of desolation’.

Since support did not seem to be needed, she felt very much in the way, and her own fear of the Dowager made her sit as far from the fire as possible, despite the cold seeping into her fingers.

The prolonged silence was broken by the opening of the door, and the entrance of Lords Felmersham and Dembleby, both looking suitably sombre.

‘Well?’ The Dowager, ignoring Lord Felmersham, addressed her remaining son.

‘It all passed off very … I mean … it was a good sermon,’ he managed, in a mild voice.

‘I have no interest in the sermon, Dembleby. The parson knows very well what is expected of him, and would not dare deviate from the tone that I instructed him to take. I take it there were no surprises in the will?’

‘Er, no, Mama. The Dower House is yours for your lifetime, of course, and’ – he cast a swift, apologetic glance at his wife – ‘you retain the family jewels.’ The Dowager smiled, almost graciously.

‘My brother made a small bequest to a friend, a memento, and of course Louisa has her third of the income, as long as she remains a widow.’ He looked at his sister-in-law, unsure whether to smile or 10not.

He did not reveal the actual words of the will, which made it clear that his brother only left what the law decreed to his widow with extreme reluctance.

‘The rest passes to me and “my heirs lawfully begotten” as the phrasing goes.’

‘What of Emily?’ asked Louisa, frowning.

‘Um, well, no mention was made of her.’

‘What?’ Louisa got up with a rustle of black silk. ‘He made no provision for his daughter?’

‘No.’

‘Papa?’ She turned to her father.

‘I am sorry, my dear.’

‘So, he ignored her in life, and he does so also in death! Despicable!’ With which she flung from the room, followed by her mother, waving her nervous hands. Lord Felmersham would have looked apologetic, but for the grim smile upon the Dowager’s face.

‘If you will excuse me.’ He bowed, and left the room, following the sounds of his wife’s entreaties.

He found wife and daughter in a small, rather narrow room with dark panelling.

It was really rather claustrophobic. Louisa was walking up and down its length, her hands clenched together in anger rather than some prayerful gesture, and his wife was perched upon the edge of an uncomfortable high-backed chair, making ineffectual soothing noises.

His daughter looked at him as he shut the door behind him.

‘Papa, this is monstrous. It cannot be legal … his only child …’

‘I am sorry, my dear, but the lawyers say there is nothing 11that can be done. Dembleby himself expressed his surprise. Your late husband was of sound mind, and he made provision for you according to the rules. There was no legal requirement for him to do so for Emily.’ Lord Felmersham regarded his daughter with some sympathy.

‘Sound mind? How is it “sound mind” to leave not a penny to his only child as if … as if he cast a slur upon her, and me, even from the grave.’ Her frown deepened.

‘He blamed me for … when I lost the first. When Emily was born and he was told it was a girl he did not come to see her, or me. When he saw me next he told me he would “forgive me”, as though the gender of a child is in the remit of the mother. He attended her christening, for form’s sake only, and I doubt he saw her more than a dozen times thereafter.

He wanted to forget she existed. No, I am wrong.

He wanted to expunge the thought that she had come into being at all.

Whenever he … he told me I was there to bear sons, and a wife who did not do that was no wife at all.

So he cut Emily out of his will as well as his thoughts.

How can I provide for her when she is grown?

Oh!’ She paused suddenly. ‘It may even look as though … as if she is … as if I had … The shame of it! How dared he do this! How I despise and loathe the man.’ The widow’s two pale hands clenched in fists, and she continued to pace up and down.

‘Hush, Louisa. You must not speak ill of the dead.’ Her mother, edging so close to the edge of the chair she was in danger of slipping from it, spoke in a whisper.

‘Then I will never speak of him again, for I have not a good word to say of him.’

12‘You are overwrought.’

‘No, Mama, I am angry beyond belief.’ Louisa stood still at last, her cheeks flushed, and her grey-green eyes flashing. Her dark gold hair, which held hints of red in the sunlight, was accentuated by her blacks.

‘Er …’ Her father cleared his throat. ‘The Dowager has the Dower House for her lifetime. You will have income, of course, but there is no particular estate … no house. You will return home with us and …’

‘It will be like it was before you were married.’ Lady Felmersham smiled, hesitantly, and pleated her handkerchief. ‘Though not quite, with dear Amabel now married. And James may be home at the end of Trinity term, and …’

It could not be said that the widow regarded this with unalloyed pleasure.

In fact, she regarded it without any pleasure whatsoever.

It was, however, not a matter of choice.

Going ‘home’ would mean being treated almost the same as when she was single, without power to order her own life.

Whatever else marriage had given her, and it was not much, she had been mistress of a large house, someone who made decisions, organised things.

Watching her mother dither her way through running Deerswell would be almost impossibly frustrating.

She would become ‘poor Louisa’, little better than an unmarried daughter, excepting that she would not have to depend upon largesse in order to buy the smallest thing.

Perhaps, when she was out of deep mourning, she might find some indigent female relative and set up a modest establishment in Bath.

She would have to keep a close eye upon economy but at least 13she would be ‘free’, and what she saved would be invested to provide little Emily with something in the long-distant future.

She tried to be positive. In her period of deep mourning, her life would be restricted wherever she might reside, whether alone or with her parents, and at least she had Emily.

Whilst her brother-in-law and sister-in-law made vague offers for her to remain as long as she wished, the truth of the matter was that neither she nor they felt comfortable, and the Dowager was so keen that she depart she might almost have offered to pack her bags for her personally, although that might also have been to ensure that nothing that belonged to the Henleys was leaving the property.

That ‘the child’ was going too meant nothing to her.

Having brought two sons into the world, the Dowager took pride in the fact that she had never so blotted her copybook as to have been delivered of a daughter.

She had even voiced this sentiment out loud.

Louisa therefore made preparations to leave with her parents two days after the funeral, accompanied by her maid, the nursemaid and the Honourable Emily Henley, who was most unlikely to see inside the house of her birth ever again.

Since she was but two years old, she was blissfully unaware of all the upheaval.

Lady Felmersham had assumed the infant would travel in the second vehicle, with the maidservants, and was rather surprised to find her sitting beside her mama, and staring at her with big, blue eyes.

Lady Felmersham hoped the child would not prove sickly upon the journey back to 14Berkshire, which would take some three hours.

In fact, she curled up with her head upon her mama’s lap, and slept for almost the entirety, covered with a travelling rug.