Adele Varens 15

 

Chapter 15

 

My guests stood, shocked, at this display.

“I do beg the pardon of all of you that you should have had to witness that vile man’s spite,” I said. “I… is it too much to hope that you will bear witness when I sue him for defamation? I cannot think but that he would continue to spread such lies.”

“You may rely on me, Miss Varens,” said George, gallantly.

“Thank you,” I said, burying my face in my hands. “Oh! Perhaps it was a mistake to return here, but I was so happy in Thornfield Hall, and I wished to recreate it.  I thought him far enough away, and unlikely to bother with me.”

I was surrounded by friends whose warm arms embraced me, including Victoria and Amelia.

I did feel a little guilty over manipulating them so, but it warmed my heart that for once, my word was believed over His.

Even Mrs. Eshton was looking at me with sympathy, not revulsion.

“I never understood why he said I was flirting, when I was just a little girl,” I said. “He called me ‘wanton’ and I did not even understand what it meant.”

Frances hugged me fiercely.

We had discussed this before, and she had wondered whether he had intended to start using me when Jane was too sick or too tired from pregnancy. Or whether he just conflated me with my mother.

“There is something wrong with the man,” said Mrs. Eshton. “The way he used that poor governess of yours, twisting her round his little finger, and then trying to marry her bigamously… I understand she went back to him?”

“Yes, and I was packed off to school,” I said. “I was happier away from the household. I learned to fear him.”

“Poor child,” said Mrs. Eshton.

I had a partisan group of neighbours; and their views would spread.

 

oOoOo

 

I wrote to Mr. Budge straight away, of course, outlining the event, and asking him to arrange the suit against Mr. Rochester. I pointed out that he had never acknowledged his parentage of me, and therefore could not pass off anything as the privileged remarks of a father’s opinion. He had taken away my character in front of people who were not members of my family, including an eligible young man, with intent to spoil my wedding prospects. I asked Budge not to direct my brother as a barrister, as it was too close to home, and he was insufficiently experienced as yet.

I must hope that I was not called to give evidence to the court on the same day as my brother. If it came to court, which it might not. It was, after all, a perfectly clear case of defamation. The documents showed as much. Rochester would be a fool to fight it.

 

Mr. Budge himself turned up two days later.

“Miss Varens!” he said. “I am glad to see you again, and in such good looks and health. I confess, I have worried many times since I wound up your bequest from your mother what had happened to you, and where you might be. I was glad to start getting letters from you; and thank you for picking Madgewick, Halliday, and Budge as your solicitors, when it seems you might have had your pick of firms in London.”

He kissed the air above my hand in a nice, old-world gesture.

“Oh, Mr. Budge, I have thought kindly of you, many times,” I said. “I appreciate you sticking your neck out for me. I dared not tell you that I had made contact with my brother and his grandmother, in case you felt constrained to tell the law, if Rochester set the law on me. But I did not feel safe in his home.”

“Oh? In what way?” he asked, sharply.

“He… he always accused me of having flirtatious ways, and being wanton,” I said. “Naturally, I did not understand what he meant, at the time. But with his own proclivities, I have wondered if he saw it as a way to have a mistress under the very eye of his wife, someone helpless, who could not protest, and who would not be believed by his wife. I cannot know if this is just a maggot in my head which is unreasonable, but I had the instinct a small child often has of danger, and a desire to flee from him.”

“Indeed; and I read the fear in your eyes, or I might have tried to detain you. Your… Mrs. Rochester directed me to give you what you needed. It seems that she had also seen more than can be told.”

“I had that feeling when she sent me off.  I should like to talk to her, but I don’t know if she is ready for contact.  But if you will send a letter to Rochester, I will be satisfied with a written apology that I can show anyone who heard him miscalling me, so long as it contains a retraction as well,” I said.

He would never do that, of course.

He did not realise that I would drag him through the courts if need be; and he did not realise that I knew enough about the law not to fear dragging him through the courts. Rochester was too fond of himself, and so certain that he was right, that the concept that he was able to be outsmarted by someone he had always despised was beyond him.

“You are determined upon this path?” asked Mr. Budge.

“You know, Mr. Budge,” I said, “If he had treated my governess well, once he married her, even if he refused to acknowledge me, I would have left him alone. But he drove her away with a fit of temper, which I am sure he regrets, but it’s one of his besetting sins, a fit of temper. I know; I inherited it, and my unofficial fiancé talks me out of it, because he is a man of iron will capable of opposing my will when needed. It’s one of the things that makes me love him. But I will not have my friends and my betrothed besmirched by Rochester’s slander of me. He is not just attacking me, he is implying that my schoolfriends must be whores and that our school was outside Covent Garden. He is calling my head preceptress an abbess. He is implying that my betrothed, the younger son of a baronet, is a pimp. I am sure he did not intend this, but actions have consequences, and when you throw a stone into water, it makes ripples.  I need him to know this; because he is a man who does not consider consequences. He has never considered consequences. I have, at times, wondered if he is entirely sane. But he is not mad under the law, so therefore, he is subject to law and litigation.”

“I need every paper you can get your hand on to refute his claims,” said Mr. Budge.

“Certainly,” I said. “I have been collecting the evidence.  I have proof of my family in the adoption of me by Mrs. Sara Deleven, mother of Frances Deleven, herself mother of Edward Deleven Fairfax, since my brother adopted our sire’s middle name as a rebuke. There are entries in a parish register of their births, and my grandmother-by-adoption’s will here. Her most recent statement at the time of her death, written out by Child’s Bank, where she banked. It proves the source of my wealth, since she split the money between us.”

“This all seems very clear,” said Budge. “I don’t see any need for the parish records, after all, why should anyone question who your adoptive grandmother was? She existed and left you money, and as I understand it, the burden of Rochester’s accusation was that you could not have money without gaining it as immoral earnings. Indeed, showing the will and the accounting to any judge is quite sufficient to refute his claim.”

“I expect he will try to claim that my grandmother must have been a whore as well,” I said.

“Even if she was, that is hardly the point, as you have been reared gently and in school save when you were nursing her,” he said.

“He will claim perhaps that she expected me to be a courtesan,” I said.

“A slander without proof.”

“I believe my grandmother kept a genteel gaming house,” I said. “Immoral earnings of sorts, but not of the same kind, and moreover, she did not stay in the business. She received a few large sums in the last years of her life, which I suspect were rents from whoever took over, or some quid pro quo which I was unaware of. But that should not touch me.”

“Indeed, it should not,” he said. “After all, how many people who inherit money can swear that all of it came from entirely legitimate sources?”

“Quite so,” I said.

 

After he had left, I wrote to Tony. I asked if I could extend an invitation to his parents. He was over twenty-one, and had reached his majority, so his father could not ban him from marrying, but I wanted to have them on my side, so I told him about Rochester, and asked him to explain to them, and to beg their support whilst I was under attack by a most unpleasant man.  Tony knew how to handle things.

 

Mr. Budge sent me a copy of the letter he sent to my father. It was a good form letter, in the sort of dry solicitor language which still constitutes a slap across the wrist.

I will not trouble the reader with such dry accusatory language.  I am sure you get the idea.  Rochester would have got the same letter, requesting and requiring him to write an abject apology and retraction of his lies regarding the source of the wealth of the complainant, to whit, Adele Varens.

There was also the claim for damages for breaking and entering, which would come before the local magistrate, and was irrefutable. 

 

 

And how did my dear father answer this letter? Not by writing a retraction. He rode up, as intemperate as before.

“I am not at home unless Mr. Rochester has an apology to give me,” I said to my butler, Porkins.  I also summoned several footmen. He did not make the mistake of trying to push his way in, this time, but he decried me as a coward as well as a whore, and Porkins, bless him, said, “Now then! You cannot call a young girl a coward for not wanting to be in the same room as a crazy man who is acting like a drunkard, and who looks as if he wants to use his fists on her as well as slandering her.”

“I’ve every right to chastise her, she’s my daughter,” he snarled. “And I can call her what I choose.”

“Indeed, sir? And yet, as I understand it, you’ve always denied that the lady is your daughter, so it is a little late to be selectively changing your mind,” said Porkins.

He was going to get a bonus in his wage-packet for that.

“Well, of course she’s my daughter,” snarled Rochester. “Why would I take the child of a whore into my household if she was not my daughter?”

“Charity has been known to exist,” said Porkins. “But my mistress has told me that you have never acknowledged her throughout her childhood, so one may assume this desire to be a father starts and ends with a recent desire to cause her harm. And that, sir, is not a fatherly emotion at all. Please take a step back so I may close the door.”

Rochester went away, cursing.

 

The next arrival was a carriage. This disgorged a gentleman in his middle years, portly, bespectacled, bald, and jolly-looking, and his equally comfortably-covered wife. They were helped by Tony – and how my heart leaped to see him! – and Luke.

I had prepared rooms, in hopes that they would come. A valet and a maid accompanied them, and went round the back with the baggage.

And Porkins announced,

“Sir Geoffrey Rawlins, Lady Rawlins, Mr. Rawlins, and Mr. Bissett.

Tony came forward.

“My dove! You look strained!”

“Tony! Oh, thank God you are here to support me! Sir, Ma’am…. Mr. Bisset!” I cried. “Oh, he came again when my solicitor wrote to him, wanting to browbeat me!”

“Eh, lass, Tony told us all about it,” said Sir Geoffrey, as I tenderly installed his lady on a day bed, and asked the gentlemen to be seated.

Lady Rawlins drew me into her ample embrace.

“Our son has told us all about you; and you need parents to help you in this time of need.”

I burst into tears on her.

They were honest tears, too, no artifice. This good woman had accepted her son’s assessment of the woman he loved, and had decided to be motherly.

“I, uh, I told my parents everything about you,” said Tony. “I don’t lie to my pater, and… and he considers you intrepid and enterprising.”

Oh!

“And you have still come to support me?” I gasped.

I burst into tears anew.

They knew the worst of me, and still trusted Tony’s choice.

I introduced them to my friends and chaperone when I had my voice back; my parents-in-law-to-be greeted them all with natural grace and manners, and rapidly assimilated that my friends were not as fully cognisant with my past as they were.

“Your brother is settling in well as one of my men of affairs,” said Sir Geoffrey.

“I am most grateful to you for giving him such a chance, sir,” I said.

“None of this; you must call us Papa and Mama,” said Sir Geoffrey.

“Oh, but Tony has not formally proposed yet,” I said.

“Then he’s a clunch,” said Sir Geoffrey.

“I wanted to get the right ring,” said Tony. He went on one knee. “Adele, will you do me the honour to become my wife?”

“With all my heart, Tony, even if it was a curtain ring,” I said.

“I can do better than that,” he said, and slid a ring onto my finger. It was a solitaire diamond, of exquisite cut and fire. “It burned in the tray in the jeweller’s shop, and reminded me of all your fire and verve and élan, in a stone which is cold as ice when not lit up in the right company.”

“You romantic, you!” I sighed, happily.