Chapter Sixteen #4
I’d heard stories my father told, when he thought I wasn’t listening, about how his sister Aunt Philadelphia had had to keep her wits about her as a child when she was apprenticed to a milliner in Covent Garden.
The respectable trade of millinery, he’d said, was often used as a front to hide other reprehensible activities going on in the rooms above.
The fate of the very young and vulnerable, the poorest in society, often desperate for money and food, were all too easily drawn into a world of vice.
Aunt Phila was removed from her situation and London, only to be sent to India to find a husband thanks to G-U-F.
Her personal attractions soon gained her one, yet I am certain it was never a love match, and it could be said she ended up selling her beauty and youth in exchange for what’s deemed a respectable life.
But, it was frightening to think of the alternative that might have been her fate.
I could not begin to imagine what she might have suffered in order to survive.
I started to feel quite ill as I looked at the pictures blurring before my eyes, and thought I would faint. The effects of the spruce beer, far from over, seemed to have gathered in strength and potency.
‘Jane, are you feeling quite well? You are very pale,’ said Thomas.
I began to say I wasn’t feeling my best when we heard the heavy tread of footsteps approaching along the wooden boards beyond in the corridor, and as we waited to see whom it could be, I couldn’t help thinking we might be in trouble.
Had someone discovered we’d taken the key and were here by stealth?
The sound pounded in my ears, getting louder with every step, until I felt myself holding my breath.
When it finally stopped, the tall figure of a gentleman stood in the doorway blocking out the light.
Even so, I recognised him instantly from his painting, and though he looked older than his portrait, he would still be called very handsome. It was the Duke of Dorset!
I felt frozen to the spot, and couldn’t think what to do.
I saw Thomas bow, and the housekeeper curtsey, and when I got my wits back I immediately did the same.
The next moment, the duke crossed the room, his unsmiling expression completely changed, and he was ruffling Thomas’s hair with all the informality of a congenial uncle. He turned to me at last.
‘And what do we have here, a pretty plaything for Master Thomas?’
I looked up to meet his terrible gaze, a look that penetrated my very being. I lowered my eyes, and curtseyed again, but his fingers hooked under my chin and he raised my head so I was forced to look at him.
‘Your Grace, may I present my cousin, Miss Jane Austen of Hampshire,’ said Thomas.
He made me sound so grand, I might ordinarily have been inclined to giggle, but I was caught like a bird in a trap, and could not move, think or act.
‘What a pretty little cousin,’ the duke said. His voice was very soft, as a finger tickled the soft flesh under my jaw. ‘I should guess she is about your age, Thomas, and just about ready to fall in love with you. Ah, such a perfect age, the sweet rewards of youth are unsurpassed.’
I heard him laugh, and say something else to Thomas that I couldn’t hear because his voice was so low. I could not look up any longer and closing my eyes briefly, I felt the duke’s fingers stroke my cheek before he removed his hand, turning once more to the housekeeper.
‘Mrs Edwards, I shall not interrupt you from your tour further,’ he said, and the housekeeper hurried after him out of the room, saying she was sorry she’d not been there to meet him when he arrived.
‘I want to go home, Thomas,’ I said. I couldn’t describe my emotions, but my feelings were completely disordered.
I needed to see my sister, and my parents, and suddenly wished for Steventon, and everything familiar.
I wanted to get away from the suffocating house and its dark interiors with ghosts lurking in every corner and every picture.
I wanted to run away. ‘May we go now, please?’
‘Before we’ve seen the rest of the house? The gardens are very fine, you know. And the duke might like to play cricket with us … I daresay he’d find a cricketing girl very amusing. He clearly likes you.’
‘No!’ I was aware my voice sounded high-pitched, and urgent, but I really didn’t want to stay a moment longer. Thomas looked at me as if he couldn’t make me out, and then his expression softened.
‘You do look a little done for … it must be the heat and the spruce beer.’
Mrs Edwards chose that moment to reappear and say she would have to attend the duke now he’d arrived unexpectedly.
‘Though the Lord knows how long he’ll be here for.
If I know him he’ll be back to Grosvenor Square in a day or two.
Don’t forget me to your grandfather, young Master Thomas, tell him Mary misses him. ’
‘Who is Mary?’ I asked Thomas as we bounded down the great staircase where even the leopards on the newel posts seemed to thrust their shields in our faces, baring their teeth to hasten us away.
‘Oh, that’s Mrs Edwards … she’s always been very fond of my grandfather.’
It was a very confusing world, the one which adults inhabited, I thought. And, once again, I did not think I wished to join it.