Chapter 32 #2
“It happens often in the workroom at the Academy,” Nell remarked for lack of anything better to say. “A result of handling needles too cavalierly. You must rinse the wound at the first opportunity. And some carbolic wouldn’t go amiss if you—”
“I have thought of you every day for the last eighteen years,” Lady Belwood whispered.
Nell’s lungs squeezed. For an instant, she couldn’t breathe. She briskly tied off the bandage. Smoothing her skirts, she withdrew back to her chair, grateful to restore the distance between them. “You were afraid, for every one of them, I daresay, lest I reappear and spoil your happy life.”
“I was afraid,” Lady Belwood admitted. “Afraid of being found out. Afraid I had done wrong by you.”
Nell sat down. “One fear necessarily outweighed the other.”
“I was but nineteen,” Lady Belwood said. “The man—your father…We were in love. He had promised to marry me.”
“But he didn’t. Obviously.”
“He died.”
Nell’s blood rushed in her ears. It occurred to her that Lady Belwood may not be the only one of them experiencing some degree of shock. “What?” she asked softly.
“It was typhoid fever,” Lady Belwood said.
“He went so quickly. He never knew I was in trouble. I was left to deal with it on my own, with only my guardian to counsel me—an aged maiden aunt, without an ounce of compassion for my predicament. She made arrangements for you to go to a farmer’s wife in Shropshire.
The woman had a dozen children already. You’d have been a drudge. ”
“Is that why you kept me for a time?” Nell said.
“I couldn’t part with you. Not when—” Lady Belwood stopped. She continued with an effort. “Your father was the love of my life, you see. You must understand what that means to a girl. Yours is a love match, is it not?”
Nell blinked. “How do you—”
“I’ve observed you together,” Lady Belwood said. “You appear to deal with each other with a good deal of tenderness.”
Nell briefly dropped her gaze, thinking of her husband. One wouldn’t know it to look at him, but yes. Miles could be excessively tender. He had been so last night. Rather fiercely so.
“I love you,” he’d said to her.
The memory of it made Nell’s heart contract. “It is,” she acknowledged. “That is…we do.”
“Then you do understand,” Lady Belwood said.
Nell would rather she didn’t. She didn’t want to think of Miles catching a fever and dying. The very idea of it was enough to depress her spirits.
Lady Belwood slowly folded her bloodstained handkerchief. “I thought, if I kept you somewhere…”
“That you could pay me discreet visits until I came of age?”
“I don’t know what I imagined the future would hold for you. I was only a child myself.”
“You were nineteen,” Nell said. “The Academy produces teachers younger than that. I was one of them. At seventeen, I already had charge of dozens of girls.”
“I was not brought up in such a way,” Lady Belwood said. “I was raised to make a suitable marriage. Which became unlikelier by the day after you arrived. I lost my bloom. And there was gossip in the village. My guardian sent me away to London to quell it. It was there I met Sir Walter.”
Nell didn’t need to be told what had happened next. She was already aware of the weight Sir Walter put on his pedigree. The consequence of such an obsession was all too obvious.
“It was not a love match,” Lady Belwood said, “but he was a good man. Respectable.”
“Wealthy.”
“A necessary quality in a husband. He’d never have tolerated an illegitimate child. The very notion would have been abhorrent to him. I was obliged to make a decision. As I say, I was but a young woman.”
“Four-and-twenty by that point. Older than I am now.”
“There was no way to keep you indefinitely. I soon realized I had been stupid to keep you at all. That woman—Miss Corvus—promised a good life for you. You would be fed and housed, and brought up to a respectable trade.” Lady Belwood paused.
“It appears she was right. You have grown into something like a lady. And married, as well. A girl of your birth couldn’t ask for better. ”
“Every girl can ask for better,” Nell said. “And well she should.”
Lady Belwood’s eyes flickered with immediate suspicion. “Is that what this is about? You want something from me? Money, I assume. Or is it an introduction into society like I provided for your friend, Mrs. Royce?”
A flare of anger took Nell unaware. The nerve of the woman! To suggest that Nell was motivated by some base desire, rather than the simple urge to learn the truth about her origins.
But that’s what Lady Belwood was, wasn’t she? A person driven by her own desires. The desire for wealth, comfort, respectability, even at the cost of her own child. Naturally, she would assume that Nell was the same.
“I want nothing from you,” Nell said.
“You mean to punish me,” Lady Belwood concluded. “To plague me with the threat of exposure.”
“Don’t be absurd. I have no desire to expose you.”
“No? Tell me, then. Who else knows who you are? Mrs. Royce? If she does, then my secret will never be safe. That woman is a—”
“Mrs. Royce doesn’t know. No one does, excepting myself, Miss Corvus, and my husband.”
“Your husband?” Lady Belwood’s pale face flushed with outrage. “And you call that no one? Your husband publishes the city’s most widely read gossip column. If that isn’t a threat—”
“When I threaten you, ma’am, you’ll know it,” Nell said sharply. “And I shan’t require my husband or anyone else to execute that threat.”
Lady Belwood gaped at her.
Nell moderated her tone. “I meant it when I said I want nothing from you. All I required was knowledge of my own circumstances.”
“I’ve told you all I can,” Lady Belwood said. “Any further discussion on the subject would risk a scandal.”
Before Nell could make her reply, the door swung open and Lady Upshott swept into the room.
“What’s this about a scandal?” she asked.
Nell and Lady Belwood stared at her with varying degrees of dismay. Good gracious. How much had the old woman overheard?
Lady Upshott gave an amused snort. “Amstead won’t thank you for dredging all that up again.” She came to join them, with a spryness that belied her age. A lace morning cap was arranged over her silver hair. “His sister is a sore subject with him.”
Lady Belwood opened her mouth to disabuse Lady Upshott of her misapprehensions.
Nell didn’t allow her to. The misunderstanding was too fortuitous not to exploit. This was why Nell had come here. Not to confront her mother or to hold her to account, but to find out what had led to Mr. Cowgill’s murder. It was that which was important at the moment. Her past would have to wait.
Setting her feelings about Lady Belwood aside, Nell addressed Lady Upshott. “We meant no offense, ma’am,” she said. “Still…one can’t help but wonder about poor Miss Fawn-Purvis’s fate.”
“The same fate as meets many a silly lass.” Lady Upshott sat down on the morning room settee. Like Nell and Lady Belwood, she had brought her workbag with her. “Surprising, I’ll allow, but not extraordinary.”
“Why surprising?” Nell asked.
Lady Upshott withdrew her needlework from her bag. “I thought her too sensible to be taken in by a man. She was a young gal but not a stupid one. Used to have the running of the place when the old baron was ill.”
“Some gentlemen can be very persuasive,” Nell said.
“Expect he was.” Lady Upshott gave another snort. “I never met him. No one did. Jane Fawn-Purvis kept her secrets close. I’d have said she was a confirmed spinster right up until the day she eloped with the fella.”
“An elopement,” Lady Belwood murmured. “That is a scandal, indeed.”
Nell deliberately avoided looking at her. Their conversation had left her emotions too raw. Too confused. She couldn’t afford to be distracted. “Not an insurmountable one, surely,” she said.
“It is if the man’s a wrong ’un,” Lady Upshott replied. “Not one of our class, according to Amstead. Some rogue in London with no money or prospects. Miss Fawn-Purvis cast her lot with him, and ruined her good name in the bargain. Amstead was obliged to wash his hands of her.”
“A sad tale,” Nell said. “Was Lord Amstead the one who told it to you?”
Lady Upshott commenced her sewing. “Miss Fawn-Purvis could hardly do so. She’d up and went, hadn’t she? Less than a fortnight after her father died. And without a word to anyone, the sly cat.”
Nell collected her own needle and sampler to resume her work. Her mouth curved in a pensive frown. Could it be that this was the significance of the second date in Mr. Cowgill’s notebook? That it was the date of Miss Fawn-Purvis’s infamous elopement?
But they had only Lord Amstead’s word that it was an elopement.
What it if hadn’t been? What if it had, in fact, been something far more sinister?