have I ever mentioned how much I hate and despise Windows 11? I swear I spend more time working around what it does than I do writing.
Chapter 22
It was Colonel Dent who brought us the news, riding up to the house a couple of days later; and of course I was happy to receive him, though not in my favourite salon.
“Colonel, welcome,” I said. “I am sorry we are still a bit smoky in flavour; but things are being cleaned up. Can I get you a drink?”
“No, I won’t be staying,” he said. “On the other hand, I think I’ll change my mind; coffee would be welcome on a cold morning, if you drink it?”
“Me, I drink coffee and tea with equal pleasure,” I said. “But I am English enough to want my first cup of the day to be tea.”
He laughed a little self-consciously.
“You should ask your fiancée in as well, to support you,” he said.
“Mon Dieu!” I said. “Now I am most concerned.”
I rang for coffee for three, and to ask for Tony to come in, which he did, readily. He has always been scrupulous about not seeming to barge in on my affairs, but he likes to be a part of my life.
He came round the desk and dropped a kiss on the top of my head, and stood behind me, his hands on my shoulders.
This, I suspected, was more to be ready to restrain me if the colonel made me lose my temper than if I was upset; but I appreciated it anyway. Tony stops me from doing something I might regret.
The colonel stared into his hat, which he was holding between his hands, as if he could pull out a sentence of coherent speech after the fashion street performers produce flowers, or small animals.
The funniest one I ever saw was the one who had hot chestnuts in the false bottom of his hat, and they burned their way out of the bottom while he was still giving his patter.
Colonel Dent seemed to be lost for finding the catch to his hat’s false bottom, and fumbled, biting his lip.
“Just spit it out, man,” snapped Tony. “Is that vile beast trying to bring a counter-suit against kidnap by suing Adele for escaping?”
“I… no, not in the least,” said Colonel Dent. “I have to tell you that he is dead.”
“Dead?” I said. “He was in perfect health when he manhandled me into that brothel.”
“It appears that he drowned,” said the colonel. “There was a letter in his pocket written with a stub of pencil. I… I have it here.”
“You mean he committed suicide?” I gasped. “Mon Dieu! As if his soul was not in enough peril already.”
“What does the note say?” asked Tony, rubbing my shoulders.
The colonel cleared his throat and read.
“How can I have been in so much error? I was so certain that the child had inherited her mother’s wanton ways. I thought she had only left home to satisfy the itch of her sexuality, as to be without sex is to live a half-life, but for a woman this itch must be trammelled and kept only for her husband. And if she is a virgin, then neither has she corrupted Jane, who did not leave to join her. What have I done? What have I done?”
“Suicide whilst the balance of his mind was disturbed, plainly,” said Tony.
I was numb. I was staring at Colonel Dent fixedly; and to this day I remember that he had picked up a piece of trailing vegetation in his coat collar, which peeped coyly out of the folded back collar like a self-willed buttonhole, avoiding the buttonhole itself in an act of wilful disobedience. I could think of nothing else; I could not bring myself to think of my father’s final sin.
“Well, then,” said Tony. “Thank you for letting us know; it saves Her Majesty the cost of a court case and a length of rope, or thirty years of feeding a prisoner, and Adele will no longer have to look over her shoulder for fear of being attacked, burned, abducted or insulted.”
“I… he was her father,” said Colonel Dent.
“He was never my father,” I said. “He may have provided the seed which quickened within my mother, but he did not know how to be a father. I am, however, glad to know that the scrutiny to which he subjected me was not an unnatural desire, but a fear for my moral fibre, and at that, a reflection of his own lack of continence. They say a cheat is the first to call loaded dice, and a thief ready to see theft in something mislaid. Rochester was a lecher, and saw lechery in the hearts of everyone else. As evidenced by his horrible comment about the jury. As Tony says, I no longer have to live in fear. Will you please go, now?”
Colonel Dent rose, bowed, and took his leave.
I turned my face into Tony and sobbed.
I fear my tears made a mess of his waistcoat; when I lifted my face, the colours had run.
“Oh, Tony, I am sorry,” I said. “I have spoiled your waistcoat.”
He looked down.
“Well, damn! I shall return that to my tailor,” he said. “It does not matter.”
“Why did I cry, so?” I asked him, bewildered. “I hate Rochester; why should I weep so bitterly for him?”
“Ah, my sweet, you cry for what might have been, if he had been a father to little Adele as well as a husband to Jane; if you had been allowed to be a sister to your half-siblings, as a proper family, you would have had the father you craved. And you weep for little Adele, and perhaps as well for the madman who lost the chance to be a father to a fine, brave, clever girl.”
I was not sure if he was right, but something made me weep, and that was as good an explanation as any.
Tony bought a licence, and wrote to his parents; and Geoffrey and Marianne joined us within the week, and we were to be married as soon as the funeral was over.
His brother, George, came as well, a very proper young man, who did not need spectacles, and who resembled his mother where Tony resembled his father. He was quite as tongue-tied as Tony, however, but also just as amiable.
There was a rocky moment when he asked if he was going to meet my brother, but his father stepped in.
“George, I am sorry, I sent Ned Fairfax to look into some things for me,” he said.
We should have to do something about my double life. I spoke to Geoffrey.
“I’ll have my man find a coach crash, and arrange to have Ned Fairfax named as one of the dead,” he said. “A coffin can be sent, and a double funeral arranged with your father.”
I have to say, Geoffrey is very efficient, and I had to wonder what exactly he did in the Foreign Office that led to him not turning a hair at my background, and with the ability to arrange spurious deaths.
I had a strong suspicion that, once he was my father-in-law, he might find uses for a woman who could also climb in and out of places.
It should make life quite interesting.
I received a black-edged envelope, which was a letter of condolence from the Duke of Wellington, no less. It was very kindly and praised my brother warmly to me, and I dissolved into tears. I was able to let loose all the unexpected grief I felt for my father flow out over my spurious brother.
There would be a double funeral; it made perfect sense.
We all attended, of course, and Marianne drew Jane to her, and I drew Jenny to me, and nodded to Ned, who was now known as Eddie. Eddie now wore spectacles.
He shook my hand, and Tony’s.
“Jenny and I don’t really know him,” he said. “But what memories I have are not good ones.”
“I am only glad he did not hit you hard enough to cause you permanent headaches,” I said.
“I did wonder if he had, when Mama asked me about it, but it turned out only to be poor eyesight,” he told me.
I did not say, but I thought, that being hit around the back of the head too much might have damaged his sight. I don’t know how, but I know that there was a child who was virtually blind in Mrs. Bridges’ care, who had been hit on the back of the head with a skillet, and they say that Rochester was hit on the back of the head by a falling beam. What an irony, if he had inflicted a disability on his son which was one he himself hating having. And one unlikely to heal, for the systematic blows.
My little brother read what I was thinking, and pushed his glasses up with one finger.
“I can still be anything I want,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “You can. And you will come to us for Christmas, and New Year, and we shall be a jolly family at last.”
He nodded gravely; he was a serious little boy. I hoped he would learn to have fun at school. I suppressed a smile as I realised that he was but a mirror of myself at the same age. He would work out just fine with a big brother like Tony. Jane’s cousins had come, and promised to join us for Christmas with such of their charges as had been left over the holiday.
“How many is it likely to be and what ages?” I asked. “I will want to buy gifts to put under the tree.”
“You would be so kind? Bless you!” said Diana.
“I was an unwanted orphan, too,” I said.
“We will probably have two; Amelia-Ann, a child of thirteen who is crippled with infantile paralysis, and Clara, a little one of nine, who does not speak.”
“She is not deaf?”
“No, just traumatised,” said Diana.
“The child with infantile paralysis, does she like to read, or sew?” I asked.
“Both. But I fancy what she wants most is a doll; she was not permitted to bring her doll, which was to go to her sister, as she was held too old for it,” said Diana.
“She will have her doll,” I said.
So would Emmie, who talks in her sleep. But Emmie would have a fine rag doll that can be hugged, but would not set her aside from the other servants and make her subject to jealousy. Amelia-Anne should have a doll with a china head. Clara… Clara would have a musical box.
Neither Jane nor I cried at the funeral, though we had veils of course to hide our faces. It was a strange day.
Jane and her children – my siblings – came home with us. They would need Christmas gifts, too, but I had time to find out what they would like.
But first, I was going to get married, to let Tony look after me. Or at least, make him think he was looking after me. He is my rock, and my partner, but a man likes to feel he is the senior partner, and it was no skin off my nose to let him feel so. He, after all, relies on me as much as I rely on him.
Reader, it felt right that Jane was at my wedding as well as Marianne and Geoffrey. Jenny was my flower girl, which is to say, she had a bouquet made up with honesty, its silvery seed heads a foil for the dark green holly with its berries, and trails of ivy, and mistletoe, which I climbed up to pick myself, because I did not trust anyone else to manage it. I went up very early in the morning, with Tony at the bottom of the tree as my talisman and safety guard. Mary, Frances, Nelly, and Ruth were my attendants with sprays of the same; and in dark green velvet, which was not unfortunate on anyone, and looked especially fetching on Nelly. I? I copied our queen, of course, in having a white wedding gown, also in velvet, and with a muslin gown underneath as well as my petticoats and a pair of Tony’s knit drawers which I filched. I wanted to be beautiful, not blue and with goose bumps.
Jane shuddered a little when we went into the church; it must have brought back memories of her first, abortive wedding ceremony. I was, I confess, a little on tenter-hooks until after the vicar had called for any just cause or impediment.
I could not think what impediment there might be, but half of my thoughts were haunted by the idea of my father’s ghost appearing, covered in green slime from the river, declaring that he would not permit it.
But it went smoothly, and I was safely married to my Tony, his ring upon my finger, and my name written in the parish register, Adele Rawlins.
Reader, if you think I am going to take you into my marriage bed, you are sadly mistaken. But suffice it to say that a lot of tension was released as Tony and I discovered each other, and replaced all the recent upsets, and all the years of uncertainty and hardship with joy in each other, and joining the intellectual and emotional closeness we had held for each other for many years with a physical bond which was eminently satisfying.
And I left Marianne, Jane, and Miss Thwaite to entertain the rest of our guests, whilst we revelled in each other for several days, until we were both curious to find out how things were going.
Tony was a natural big brother to Eddie and Jenny, and we had riotous fun decorating the Hall with greenery, and like the Queen, and like Queen Charlotte before her, we had a pine tree brought inside and decorated it with tinsel strands, and nuts and candied fruit on strings, and painted pine cones; and using metal foil[1], I came up with the idea of making Christmas bells shaped on a lemon squeezer, which, with loops on, made the tree flash in the fire light. The bits cut from the edges of the bells were not wasted, as twisted around twine, they also glittered, but Jenny must not touch as the edges were sharp and might cut unwary little fingers.
Mary and Diana Rivers brought their two charges, and we involved them in the Christmas festivities as well. Both were very quiet, which was hardly surprising, but we let them say as much or as little as they chose. Amelia-Ann came out of her shell when it became clear that we chose to include her without pity, and expected her to pull her weight with those things she might do; and she produced some beautiful watercolour paintings on fine paper, to paint with olive oil to make it translucent, and put on the windows. Clara was content to lean against Miss Mary Rivers, sucking her thumb, with her own rag doll clutched to her. Jenny was already working on bringing her out.
Such things take time.
But the look on her face to have a musical box, with a dancing fairy on it was wonderful to see.
“We’ll have them both for all their holidays,” I told the Rivers sisters as we came home from church.
Jane’s children had enjoyed their gifts from their brother and sister too; Eddie had a fine kite and a tin whistle, and Jenny had a set of coloured players for a toy theatre Jane had told me the children shared; and ‘The Children of the New Forest,’ a fine and adventurous new tale by Captain Marryat, telling the tale of four Royalist children in hiding.
It was nearly the bedtime of the youngest on Christmas day when Clara climbed onto my lap.
“My box plays the tune Mama used to sing,” she said.
“Oh, I am glad I got it right,” I said, not making any comment about this being the first thing she had said, according to the sisters, for more than a year.
She nodded, solemnly.
“Papa hit mama until she didn’t get up any more,” she said. “Then he smacked me for crying and told me that I mustn’t tell anyone or say anything. But you are an angel sent by Jesus with a message from my mama, so I can tell you.”
I held that little girl so tight. I had picked one of several possible musical boxes; perhaps Le Bon Dieu or His mother guided my choice. Why not? I said a silent prayer of thanks for the aid to help her.
Her evidence was inadmissible, but her father had apparently abandoned her, and had stopped paying her fees; so he did not want her.
I looked at Tony.
He nodded.
We were going to get a little daughter for Christmas.
Oh! And Amelia-Ann did not put her dolly down all day; and nor did Emmie.
Reader, it was the best Christmas ever.
[1] The actual tin foil, invented in the 1820s revolutionised cooking and was superseded by aluminium foil in the 20th century; and is the reason we still call it ‘tin foil’.
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