Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The morning of Elijah’s funeral was, cruelly enough, warm and bright.
A fresh wind wafted away the smells of burning coal and other industry, leaving the churchyard smelling like turned earth, hellebore, and the massive yew cradling its branches over one corner of the cemetery.
With no one else to mourn the infant, his mother and Henrietta were allowed to attend the short graveside service.
At Fanny’s funeral in their home parish of Rossendale, mourners had come from three counties to help the Wardley-Hines bury their dead. Elijah returned to his Maker as briefly and quietly as he had come.
Henrietta drove Mary Ann back to the hospital, thinking sadly that her first solo rescue had not been very successful.
In the old guildhall, under the airy space of the high arched ceilings with their hand-carved beams and the light falling through the leaded windows, the residents sat in neat rows at trestle tables, taking their midday meal.
Henrietta was proud to be part of this place, so tidy and serene.
Small sprigs of anemone and spring snowflake from the herb beds brightened the room.
The women and children looked well-dressed, fed, and healthy.
Many of the maids in their white and gray muslin uniforms had come as foundlings or destitute women and stayed for employment, finding their first stable home.
The voices were friendly but subdued, and white armbands had been distributed. Though the Sisters could boast of many supplicants who had come in despair through those heavy doors and left in health and optimism, white and black armbands had their own boxes in the linen closet and saw regular use.
Henrietta walked Mary Ann back to her small, shared room.
All six of the beds were neatly made, straw pillows flush against the wall, the chamber pot tucked beneath a washstand, and a small press held clothes.
Relieved of her chores for the day, Mary Ann slipped off her shoes and lay down on the bed.
Her face looked older, weary with grief.
“What will you do now?” Henrietta asked softly. “You cannot go back to Rushy Green.”
“I thought I might find a place here? I know I’m clumsy, but I’m not afraid of hard work.”
“Of course,” Henrietta said. “The Sisters have put many girls in good positions. One became dresser to a countess. Others marry, and—” She paused as Mary Ann winced and put a hand to her breast. “Are you still— I thought your milk had dried up?”
“Not yet. They feed me good here.”
“Then you could stay as a nurse. You are young, strong, and healthy.”
The girl’s eyes gleamed with tears. “What if I kill someone else’s baby?”
“Oh, child,” Henrietta said. “It was not your doing. God decides these things, not us.” It was no less than what Reverend Dingley had said in his short remarks, but the words sounded hollow, lacking comfort.
Mary Ann sat up and rubbed her face. “I’d best go talk to the matron, then. Nothing gets done by lying about, as my gran says.”
“My Aunt Davinia has a similar motto.” Henrietta nodded, touched by the girl’s resolution.
She wished she could bring Mary Ann to Hines House, but while Clarinda let Henrietta have her head in household management, she would want to choose the wet nurse for her own little stranger, due to arrive soon.
Henrietta, though, knew someone else who might require the services of a wet nurse.
She had resolved she would not press Darien about his situation, not after he had accused her of meddling, but Mary Ann’s weary, baffled face haunted her. James leapt to his feet, straightening his striped coat as Henrietta marched out of the hospital.
“Home then, miss, or a turn through the park for an airing?” he asked, tossing his dice to the sweep boy. James loved when Henrietta tooled through Hyde Park. It was very dashing for a woman to drive her own gig and have a tiger in livery perched behind, and James liked to show off.
“James, I do not wish to ring a peal over you, but isn’t it gambling that put you in the Fleet in the first place?”
“Just throwing the bones, miss. No stakes, eh, my lad?”
“You owe me thruppence!” the boy shouted. “Miserable dwarf!”
“Cheating tallboy!” James shouted back. “Big people,” he muttered as he swung into his seat. “How’d he do in a world made for my size, I’d like to know.”
“Wouldn’t last a day,” Henrietta soothed.
The Duke of Highcastle’s enormous house occupied one entire side of Portman Square. Henrietta had walked past it on her way to Elizabeth Montagu’s bluestocking salons. She tossed the ribbons to James as she hopped down from the vehicle.
“Don’t go far. I expect to be tossed out on my ear with a flea in it.” She held out her card to the stone-faced butler who opened the door. “Lady Celeste, please.”
The man gave Henrietta a cold, measuring look. She wished she had worn something smarter than her riding habit to the funeral services, but she had not anticipated she would be visiting a duke’s household today.
Or had she? Her heart had been tugging her toward this child since she’d first heard of its plight. And Darien had asked for her help, hadn’t he? In a way?
“Lady Celeste,” the butler said, pushing the door shut, “is not at home.”
Henrietta stuck the toe of her half-boot in the threshold. “Then may I speak with someone who attends Lady Celeste?” She presented a second card, and the butler’s dark brows drew together.
“Turn her off, Hemsworth,” came a commanding voice.
“I am in the process of doing so, Your Grace,” said the butler. He glared pointedly at Henrietta’s shoe.
The duchess appeared. She was just the sort of woman, elegant and intimidating, who made Henrietta’s knees quake with envy. Her hooped train swept across the polished parquet floor, she wore a full panoply of jewels, and her towering wig bristled with fruit and feathers.
“My daughter,” the duchess said with cold hauteur, “is not at home.”
“My card, Your Grace.” Henrietta held it out. “If you please.”
The duchess’s thin nostrils narrowed. “We have had quite enough of your kind making rude inquiries,” she hissed. “You’re like jackals! You can’t wait to profit from our misfortune.”
“I do not wish to profit, Your Grace,” Henrietta said.
Hemsworth pushed at the door without appearing to do so.
She put her elbow in the closing gap. “I only wished to make you aware of this establishment—oof—in the event that someone—ouch—in your household—really!—might be in need of such accommodations.”
“I cannot imagine why you think anyone in my household would stand in need of such accommodations,” the duchess snapped. “Good day. Hemsworth!”
The portal swung toward her nose, and Henrietta found herself routed, an unusual outcome for her. She fell back against the unexpected form of a person. An arm in a fancy embroidered sleeve with a fall of lace at the cuff shot out and caught the door.
“I say, Hemsworth!” said a male voice. “This how my mother receives callers now?”
The door opened to the butler’s livid gaze. “Alfred,” said the duchess, glaring at her son with black eyes, “Hemsworth was dispatching a peddler. I don’t know why they don’t use the tradesmen’s entrance in the back.”
“Tradesman!” said the astonished young man, who was not, despite her first befuddled thought, Darien.
He set Henrietta on her feet and indicated for her to precede him through the door.
“This is Charley’s sister. Sir Charleton Wardley-Hines now,” he added, as if the title would sway his mother.
“Was in the Bullingdon Club with me up at Oxford.”
Having set foot in the grand marbled foyer, Henrietta faced him with a quizzical look. Lord Alfred Highcastle had no business knowing who she was. The young man gave her an abashed grin.
“Asked the dwarf out there whose the sweet goers were,” he confessed. “Don’t suppose you’d be interested in selling?”
“Lord Alfred. I am here to call on your sister,” Henrietta said with a curtsy, hoping this enterprise wouldn’t cost her the Titans.
She’d come to adore her father’s gift, and it would crush James to lose them.
Especially to one of Charley’s rackety companions, of whom Henrietta had heard a great deal.
The duchess glared. “Celeste is indisposed.”
The young man’s face darkened with wrath. He was handsome and well-dressed, though on him, the touches that Darien carried off with style looked a touch overdone.
“Indisposed! I’ll say.” Freddy grabbed Henrietta’s hand in a grip firm enough to be painful. “You come talk to her. Maybe she’ll tell the truth to another woman. Haven’t been able to get a word out of her m’self.”
“Me! Why should I— That is, I am not certain Lady Celeste will confide in me,” Henrietta said, struggling with the sweeping skirts of her habit as Freddy dragged her up the stairs. “When she has refused Lord Darien—”
“Daring!” Freddy barked. “He’s the villain, then?”
The stairs went on, floor after floor, until finally they reached the top of the vast mansion.
Freddy tugged Henrietta into a small bedroom where a young woman sat in a chair beneath a window that had been covered over with a dark curtain.
She wore a dainty, ruffled nightgown in rose pink and sewed a baby cap, a seraphic expression on her face.
“Lady Celeste.” Henrietta curtsied.
“What do you want?” came a sharp voice from the other side of the room. “Who are you?”
Henrietta’s face bloomed with color as another young woman rose from the chamber pot and moved toward them. A tight belly, low and ripe, preceded her across the room.
Henrietta gulped down a sense of panic. She’d circulated at her ease among her father’s powerful friends of the north, and titles held by various Daughters of Minerva held no awe for her. But this was her first encounter with a ducal household, and she was aware it was going badly.