Chapter Five
UMPH. Jane woke with a start. Bright light shafted through the curtains she had left slightly apart after watching the Marquess’s carriage sweep around the corner of Harley Street.
This morning, her small writing desk with its neat piles of fresh paper, quills, ink, and her prized nib pen didn’t draw her hasty steps. Instead she lay staring at the muslin bed canopy above, reliving the wonders of the ball.
She always enjoyed dancing but it had never before filled her with the wonderment of new emotions.
Not like last night... as she danced with Dalton.
She could feel the fine texture of his coat beneath her fingers, smell his crisp scent, hear his deep, mellow voice and see his teasing smile with its accompanying crinkles at the corner of his eyes.
Jane reveled in her nostalgia for a few minutes more before stretching languorously. Aaagh. Today was the deadline for the draft of her latest pamphlet, and it wasn’t finished. She threw back the covers and scrambled out of bed, quickly washing and pulling on an old morning dress.
Jane wrote her concluding paragraphs about education suitable for girls who were to take up their rightful places as men’s equals. She lay down her pen and reread her words.
Realization hit her. A wash of disappointment hollowed her stomach. This attraction to Dalton was pointless. It couldn’t possibly come to anything. He needed a conventional wife, urgently, to provide him with a hostess and an heir or two. And she was never going to marry.
Jane relived the last hours of her mother’s life as if it were yesterday rather than eight years ago.
She stood in the darkened room that was her mother’s bedchamber.
The brocade curtains covered the windows in the middle of the day because the sunlight hurt her mother’s eyes.
A fitful breeze forced its way into the room, only partially relieving its stuffiness.
Tiredness from her unrelieved care of her mother weighted Jane’s limbs with lead. Her hair hung in braids because there was no time to put it up during her life of ceaseless nursing over the last few months.
Jane lifted her mother gently to place another pillow beneath her head and shoulders. She didn’t trouble her with words requiring an answer, just told her what she was doing. The exertion forced her mother to gasp for breath.
Jane waited for her mother to return from her black world of suffering.
It took a few moments for the pain to subside and for her eyes to open again.
Dr. Logan said it was her mother’s heart—made weak by a dozen pregnancies and confinements over the last twenty years.
Not to mention the anguish of the deaths of three of those babies, leaving nine surviving offspring and all the work raising them entailed.
“Promise me that you will take care of the children, Jane. And your father,” her mother rasped.
“I will, Mama,” Jane promised again.
Dr. Logan had been and gone this morning, telling her and her father that this was the end.
Three of Jane’s brothers were in the army and navy, overseas fighting the French.
There was no way to call them home. Her second-eldest brother, Francis, was on his way from Oxford where he was studying. Jane hoped he would arrive in time.
A tenuous knock sounded, and Jane quickly opened the door.
She beckoned her three younger sisters and her youngest brother into the room and arranged chairs for them close to their mother’s bed.
Aged from thirteen to four years old, they were used to their mother being unwell, but they looked bewildered by her appearance.
They must have found it hard to believe that she was leaving them forever. Jane did.
Jane urged them to speak to their mama for the last time. “Tell her you love her and will do all you can to make her proud of you as you grow up.”
One by one they knelt at her bedside and took her cold hand in theirs and whispered their farewells. The youngest, Kit, threw himself onto his mother’s bed to hug her. Their tears were hard for Jane to bear. Exhaustion made the moment more raw and emotional than she could have predicted.
As each sister dissolved into tears, Jane hugged her hard and kissed her, telling her, “Mama will remember you. She will be at peace soon.”
As Kit resumed his seat, their father entered the room.
Reverend Brody was approaching sixty, gray haired, with kindly eyes and a smile that lit his face.
He was not smiling now. He looked gaunt as he hurried to the bedside, knelt on the floor, and grasped his wife’s pale hands, immediately overcome by emotion. Tears slid down his face.
Seeing their father’s grief, fresh sobs burst from the children.
“Let’s give Father time to say goodbye alone,” Jane told her siblings. She gathered them and led them from the room to leave their parents in peace for a final farewell and spare them the anguish of that scene.
Her siblings looked stunned, probably finally understanding that their beloved mother, who had been unwell for so long, was actually leaving them for good.
Jane shepherded them upstairs to the schoolroom, calling for their nursemaid.
She tasked her with taking them out to the park for a walk in the fresh air.
Once Jane had waved them on their way from the front door, she returned to her mother’s room and let herself in quietly. Her father knelt as she had left him. She approached and heard him whisper, “How will I cope without you, my love?”
He had turned to her, tears drenching his haggard face. Her mother was gone. Her gentle father had looked haunted by his grief. He still did.
The loss had hit her like a wrecking ball striking her chest. She crumpled to the floor. Tears flooded down her cheeks. She was powerless to stop them.
Slowly, she had regained control of herself. She levered herself from the floor using a chair for support. “Help me with her, Papa. There are things we need to do now.” She firmly repeated her request, and he had roused from his daze. Together they cared for her mother in death.
She had recalled her mother’s frequent smile and cheerful nature.
Jane saw her reading to her brothers and herself when they were children and chasing them in the garden on a sunny day.
It all seemed such a long time ago, but the years had not obliterated those happy memories.
From now on I must replace my mother. She had gasped for breath.
She might suffocate under the burden of responsibility.
By the time Jane had completed a clean copy of her essay an hour later, she had talked to herself sternly and returned to reality. She dusted the document with sand, rolled it up, and slid it into her reticule for delivery. It must await completion of the day’s household tasks.