II Three Ladies
Cecily Dacres
Beatrice Lockwood
Elizabeth [Lily] Hendry
“Don’t make such a fuss, Cecy!” snapped Mrs. Dacres. “It’ll soon be over. Then he’ll stop wanting you and you’ll be free to marry if you want. You can take a little knife into the marriage bed to make a small cut under your hair to simulate losing your maidenhead.”
“But I... I don’t want to sleep with Lord Ashdowne!” said Cecily. “And even if anyone did want to marry me afterwards, I would know! I would be sullied!”
“What a lot of fuss over nothing!” said Mrs. Dacres. “Men are disgusting, all of them, and you just have to put up with the bedroom side of matters from time to time. Once you’ve had a child you can deny a husband your bed and he’ll go find a mistress. Honestly!”
“Does Papa know you feel like this? Does he know you are trying to sell my virtue to Lord Ashdowne?” spat out Cecily.
“Oh, honestly, Cecy! Of course Papa knows; he suggested I should have a little talk to you, to bring you to heel, so that Lord Ashdowne does not forclose on the loans he made to Papa. He’s willing to write them off to lie with you.”
“Well, if it’s such a little thing, why don’t you lie with him?” asked Cecily.
“Don’t be silly, child! He wants to take your virginity and enjoy teaching you about how many ways he can humiliate you; I already know, so I would not be amusing to him.”
“I want to hear Papa say that this is what he wants,” said Cecily, shocked.
Mrs. Dacres sighed with relief.
“Of course, my sweet,” she said. “I knew you would see sense. I’ll ask Papa to come to you.”
Cecily sat on her bed, shocked beyond measure. She looked up when her father came in.
“Cecy, you cannot imagine how relieved I am that you are prepared to be practical,” said Mr. Dacres.
“You want me to give my virtue to Lord Ashdowne, because you owe him money; is that right?” asked Cecily.
“He has been buying up all my vowels, I had no idea how deep I was with gambling; but he will write them all off, just to have you to himself for a week,” said Mr. Dacres. “And then we can start the New Year fresh and free from debt, and able to be happy again.”
“And am I supposed to be happy again when I have been... used... by that disgusting old man?” asked Cecily.
“Oh, Cecy, it’s a woman’s lot in life; just shut your eyes and put up with it, and then it will be all over.”
“Why don’t you let him use you, like you said men like Lord Byron do?” retorted Cecily.
“It’s not the same at all,” snapped Dacres. “Please don’t tell me you are going to be difficult about this.”
“Do I have a choice?” asked Cecily, bitterly.
“No, my dear, I’m afraid not,” said her father.
“Leave me alone, please,” said Cecily.
“Of course, my dear. You need time to come to terms with it. I will call upon Lord Ashdowne tomorrow, and tell him that you will comply.”
He withdrew from Cecily’s room.
He did remember to lock the door.
oOoOo
Beatrice Lockwood dragged her life packed into a travelling trunk into the Angel Inn, in Westgate Street, one of the cheaper inns, and dating back, it was said, to 1611 and with a resident ghost, named Alice. Beatrice wondered if the ghost was lonely, and whether she would welcome a companion; for surely if she committed suicide, she would be denied Heaven, and must wander as a ghost. And Beatrice had reached the point where she wondered if joining Alice would be preferable to her inevitable descent into prostitution, the only option for a destitute woman without a reference.
She was totally shamed. Could anything be worse?
Beatrice thought over the events of the last few days over and over in her mind. Last week, she had been a preceptress at a young ladies’ academy on Queens Square, a well-paid job, thirty guineas a year and her keep, and the option to stay on free during the long holidays and help the servants do a thorough clean. Beatrice had been there for nearly three years; and then Amelia Spottiswode came as a pupil. Amelia Spottiswode, a spoilt, selfish child, who bullied those she thought she could push around, demanded what she wanted, and did not take discipline. Beatrice had disciplined her for impudence by banning puddings for a week, and when Amelia grabbed the puddings of other girls, Beatrice had dragged her to the punishment table where what Amelia was fed could be watched.
And the child had calmly got up to grab someone else’s pudding! Beatrice had struck it from her hands and sent the child to bed; indeed, had marched the child up to her bedroom.
And then, there had been the accusation of theft, and Amelia’s bracelet found in Beatrice’s room.
“I know you didn’t take it, Beatrice,” said Mrs. Spenlowe, the head preceptress, “But if I don’t fire you, that wretched child will have her parents send to Bow Street. I cannot afford the bad publicity, nor the shame, and you would end up in prison, hanged for the value of that bauble, or transported at least, and what good would that do? You cannot prove she put it there, and nor can I. It is better if I let you go, and hope that associating with nicer girls will have an impact on Miss. Spotiswode.”
“And if she decides to do the same thing to you, Mrs. Spenlowe, to get her own way in something?” asked Beatrice.
“I am sure she would not go that far,” said Mrs. Spenlowe, comfortably. “I cannot, of course, give you a reference, but I can give you a couple of letters of introduction, and write privately to those I’ve given you notes for. Mrs. Fenchurch is one of my old girls, who has a full nursery herself, now, and finds them hard to control, and Miss Williams is a former preceptress here, who set up her own school and finds it hard to keep staff.”
“Sour milk and cabbages!” cried Beatrice, who remembered Miss Williams from her own days as a pupil, when there was some trust money left to educate her to be a governess.
“Dear me, that is what the pupils used to call her,” said Mrs. Spenlowe. “She is a trifle... nipcheese... but it is a place to start over and move on to better things.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Spenlowe,” said Beatrice, tonelessly.
“It will all soon blow over,” said Mrs. Spenlowe.
No, it will never blow over, thought Beatrice. I will always be ‘the governess who was sacked for suspected stealing; no smoke without fire. But she said nothing. What was there to say?
And now, she had to choose between Mrs. Fenchurch and her doubtless ill-conditioned children, because that would be Amy Durrel, whose wedding had been a matter of gossip in the school, and Amy had spoiled her pet pug to the point where the poor creature died crying of dropsy. Beatrice could imagine her children, fat, white slugs of children, as lazy and self-indulgent as their mother.
Beatrice sighed, lay her aching head on the thin pillow in this cheap room, and sobbed herself to sleep.
oOoOo
“Now you’ve turned one-and-twenty, Lily, here’s something you need to sign,” said Mr. Hendry, pushing a document into his daughter’s hand. Elizabeth, known as Lily, Hendry read it through, and pushed it away from her.
“Papa, that’s ridiculous! That paper says that I sign over my legacy from Great-Uncle Paul to Annabelle, in its entirety.”
“Well, yes, that’s the general idea,” said Hendry. “You won’t need a dowry; you’re the plain one, so you won’t be getting married, and doubling Annabelle’s dowry gives her a better chance of getting married, and then you can go to her as nursemaid and governess for her children, so you’ll be taken care of for life.”
“And what makes you think I want to be an unpaid skivvy to Annabelle and be governess to her children, Papa?” said Lily.
“Don’t be tiresome, Lily,” snapped Mr. Hendry. “Annabelle is our golden girl, and you know you’ve been raised always to do your duty to her; this is a continuation of that duty.”
“With two hundred a year from the funds, I intended to move out, and live quietly with a companion in an apartment, and never see you or Annabelle again,” said Lily.
“How could you be so selfish! You don’t deserve a legacy; Uncle Paul never knew what a tiresome child you were, and how much training you would need to learn your place,” added her mother. “There are ways of making you sign, you know; if you are kept hungry and thirsty for a few days, you will soon sign.”
Elizabeth Hendry pulled the parchment back towards herself, smiled, and her parents relaxed.
“There’s a good girl. You do come round when you’ve had your little rebellions,” said her mother.
Lily’s little rebellions involved asking why Annabelle had treats, and she did not, and asking for ice-cream when Annabelle had some, or asking for a new bonnet or new gown.
This time was enough.
She rose in one fluid movement, and thrust the document into the fire, grabbing the poker to push it right into the blaze.
Her father slapped her so hard, she fell over, and was hard pressed not to fall into the fire herself.
“Bedroom!” he shouted. “And no food or drink until there’s another document to sign!”
“Then I will probably be dead before it can be signed, and, as I recall, the legacy reverts to an orphan asylum if either of us die intestate and unwed,” said Lily.
“You had better be ready to sign the next copy; I had to pay to have that drawn up, the blasted bank would not do so without you calling on them,” said her father.
Lily filed away that interesting fact, and took herself meekly to the bedroom at the top of the house next to the chamber-maid, a far cry from the pretty and luxurious bedroom of her younger sister, Annabelle. Annabelle pinched her as she went past her.
“You’re mean to me, Lily; stop being so selfish,” she said. “With four hundred pounds a year, I can have a decent life, and it’s not as if you’re fit for anything but to be a governess or superior sort of servant anyway.”
“Why?” asked Lily, swinging round. “Why is Annabelle the golden girl, and why am I not fit to be a proper daughter to you?”
“You’ve always been trouble,” snapped her mother. “I was ill all through my pregnancy with you, and you were a sickly child, and always causing trouble by being ill. And look at you! Straight ginger hair, freckles, green eyes like a witch, and you’ve always watched us, it’s uncanny.”
“Maybe because I was watching for a sign of when I was in trouble and trying to guess why,” said Lily.
“You’re always in trouble, because you exist,” said Mrs. Hendry. “Now, go up to your room; there are worse things than being a governess for your sister’s children, you could be put away.”
Lily retreated. That was a frightening threat. Though they would have to have her signature before doing so. She knew she would not have any food that night, and was resigned to it, but at least Ella, the chambermaid, was sympathetic and might manage to sneak her a bit of bread.
Knowing that her parents and sister would not be leaving the warmth of the parlour fire, and would probably loudly discuss her shortcomings for a while, Lily did something she had done at times, to be able to buy street food when she was hungry, and went into her sister’s, and then parents’ bedrooms to search through reticules and pockets for loose change. Her sister and parents were careless about loose change, and never knew exactly how much they had, and Lily was able to abstract two pounds eighteen shillings, which would feed her for almost three months, if she was frugal. A plate of meat or fish and potatoes was eightpence in a cheap eating-house, she could drink from horse troughs and most eating houses provided piped water free. Tea and coffee were much dearer. A meal a day if she stayed at home, because Lily knew ways of getting out of her locked room. Or, she could stay in a cheap inn, when her expenses would rise to around three shillings a day, giving her a little under three weeks.
But she was of age, now, and could visit her bank.
She got up to her own attic room just before her father came up to lock her in.
“We’ll feed you, but don’t expect to eat like family,” he said.
“I’ve long since realised that you are relatives, not family,” said Lily.
This was risky, as he might take his belt to her, but he merely slammed the door, making spiders fall from the rafters, and locked the door.
Ella slipped in with a thick ‘doorstep’ of bread-and-dripping, and a carafe of water, unlocking the door with another house key; all the locks were the same, as was common.
“Hide the carafe in the ewer, same as always,” she said.
“Bless you, Ella,” said Lily. “This is goodbye; I’m leaving.”
“Ooh, miss, do take care,” said Ella. “If you can send for me, I’d take board and lodging to serve you, not them.”
Lily embraced her.
“I’d take you with me, but I’m not sure where I’m going, or if I can get somewhere safe,” she said. “But they’re threatening me with Bedlam, and I can’t take that.”
“No, miss, I should think not!” said Ella.
“They get the Morning Post from London; I can put an advertisement in that from anywhere, and I’ll say something about a Lily flower and Cinderella,” said Lily.
“Ooh, just like a novel!” said Ella, happily, able to read fluently enough to find that in advertisements.
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