The Exploits & Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy (2 page)

“I took this chaise as far as Butley, like you wanted,” Figgins said. “I told him we're changing there to the mail, going north.”

“Laying a false trail,” Alethea said, wrapping her cloak more closely about her. It was chilly in the chaise.

“We've places on the stage goes past at seven. When do you think they'll find you've gone and set up a hue and cry for you?”

Alethea yawned. “Not till later than that. He'll sleep for hours yet, and I slipped some laudanum into the milk my maid brought me last thing—she always finishes up what I don't drink. She won't be up and about at her usual early hour.”

“Greedy creature, and more a wardress than a maid; serve her right if she never wakes up.”

Alethea closed her eyes, seeing images of the household she had left behind. Scenes flashed in and out of her tired mind, tired because she hadn't slept a wink that night, nor for many nights before, and tired from the aching months of unhappiness.

How much she wished she could roll back time, undo those same months, and be as she was before her marriage, Miss Alethea Darcy, single and fancy free. Carefree.

Except that she hadn't been fancy free, that was the trouble. That was the reason for her precipitous rush into the married state. Marry in haste and repent at leisure, wasn't that how the saying went? How true, how very true, in her case. Why had she done it? How could she have been so foolhardy? Even in the depths of her anguish, she might have known that Norris Napier was no fitting husband for her.

But then, she had felt that no man on earth would do, other than the one man she could not wed. And her pride, her cursed pride, had persuaded her that a marriage—any marriage—was the only way to deflect the pity and false sympathy and relish, even, of the polite world.

She didn't want to think about those dreadful days after the announcement of Penrose's engagement to Miss Gray, yet the memories would intrude: the nightmare journey back to her cousins' house in Aubrey Square, the exquisite relief of reaching the privacy of her bedchamber, of lying wracked and exhausted across her bed, of Dawson, Lady Fanny's maid, coming in with brisk exhortations that belied the sympathy in her eyes and giving her a draught that sent her into a troubled, unhappy sleep.

The house in Aubrey Square was that of the Fitzwilliams, cousins on her father's side of the family. Alethea and her four sisters had stayed with Mr. Fitzwilliam and his wife, Lady Fanny, when they first came to London, and Lady Fanny, who was fond of Alethea, had been delighted to have her to stay during the season.

Mr. Fitzwilliam, tight-lipped, disapproving of her having so openly shown affection for Penrose, yet angry with the Youdalls for treating a member of his family in such a way.

Fanny, kind, understanding, sitting beside her and telling her of her own agonies as a girl when she wasn't allowed to marry the man she loved—“He was so handsome and dashing, but he was poor and of no consequence or position, and I was an earl's daughter and had to remember my duty to my family and rank, and make what they called a good marriage. I was wretched for weeks, and yet in the end I came back into my senses and began to enjoy life again, and then, when I met my dear Mr. Fitzwilliam, I forgot all about that first love.”

Was that a consolation, that she might meet a man like Mr. Fitzwilliam? Heaven forbid, and how could Fanny suggest that one would think for a moment of a Fitzwilliam when one was in love with Penrose.

“She's such a squab of a girl,” she exclaimed.

“Diana Gray? I don't care for her myself, and certainly in comparison to you—however, that is not what this marriage is about. It is about money and property and what an imperious mother thinks is best for her son. And do you know, my dear, it is a weakness in Penrose that he should submit to his mother's will. People say he is a dutiful son; I say it is the behaviour of a milksop to marry a woman at your mother's behest when you are in love with another.”

Another storm of tears from Alethea; how could Fanny call Penrose a milksop?

“One's first love is always perfect until one meets one's second love,” said Fanny sadly.

 

Alethea didn't know just how much Fanny's heart went out to her. Every bit as much as her cousin had Fanny expected the two of them to marry, and she thought them a finely matched pair. Her indignation at Penrose's behaviour, though, had to be shared with no one except Dawson, for Mr. Fitzwilliam had decreed that the man's name was not to be mentioned under his roof, and Alethea refused to hear a word against him.

In return, she insisted that Mr. Fitzwilliam, though he might show kindness to Alethea, for he was a man of feeling beneath his rather conventional ways, was not to pity her. “Believe me, my love, the one thing Alethea will not be able to bear is pity. She has her father's pride, and it will carry her through this setback, but she will not tolerate anyone who shows pity for her.”

“No, indeed, she will look down her nose at them, in that way she has.”

Fanny exclaimed at that. “She does no such thing, she is always full of laughter and fun, what is this about looking down noses?”

“She's too like her father when something displeases her. Haughty, that's what she is. And even if she can put this affair behind her, she'd best learn to please a man, or she'll never get a husband.”

Fanny reported his words with some indignation to her friend Belinda Atcombe, who came to pay a morning call with the express intention of finding out the truth behind all the rumours that were flying about London.

“She has the Darcy pride, it is true, but she is as warm-hearted a creature as ever lived, and any man worth his salt would know it.”

“Warm-hearted or not, she's in trouble; I can't tell you the rumours that are flying about town. Now, you know that you may trust me, Fanny,” said Belinda, smoothing her skirts as she sat down. “For although I am a gossip to my fingertips, I also know how to be discreet when the need arises. Alethea is a connection of yours; I like her as well as pitying her from my heart. Young love—a first attachment, I suppose?—yes, how well one remembers the anguish. I can be of great use in suppressing scandal, but I must have the full story.”

Fanny took a deep breath, and told her friend both what she knew and what she suspected.

Belinda Atcombe gave a tsk of annoyance. “Why ever did she fall for the worthless fellow? She is well rid of him, let me tell you.”

“They made such a handsome couple, it seemed a perfect match.”

“Nonsense. Alethea has far too much character and wit for a dolt like Penrose. It hardly takes a great intelligence to realise that he will live under his mother's thumb until she mercifully goes to her grave, and that he will meanwhile turn into just such another obstinate, narrow person as she is. His father was little better, the dullest man in Christendom. Is Alethea sighing and weeping about the house? Lord, how difficult girls are at that age. You could send her home to Pemberley, of course, if she's inconsolable, only that will merely fuel the gossip and spite. What do her parents say about it, do they know how fond she has become of the young man?”

Fanny shook her head. “I wrote to Lizzy, and said that Alethea greatly liked Penrose, but I didn't like to make too much of it.” She hesitated, then added, “In truth, I do not think that Mr. Darcy would be impressed by Penrose Youdall.”

“I am sure of it, and there are others who do not care for him. I correspond with Hermione Wytton, who presently resides in Venice, you know, and she says that her son was dismayed to learn of his sister-in-law's attachment to Penrose.”

Alexander Wytton, Lady Hermione's eldest son, was married to Alethea's favourite sister, Camilla.

“Is he acquainted with young Youdall? I should not have thought they had much in common.”

“Enough, one gathers, for Alexander to despise him. I dare say he will think that Miss Gray is a better match for him.”

The two women spent a happy few minutes discussing the many shortcomings of that young lady, before Belinda Atcombe took a deep breath and said, “That's all very well, but now we must consider what is to be done for Alethea to keep her good name, and not be the object of scorn and derision for wearing her heart on her sleeve.”

 

Alethea had plans of her own. Fanny had been right in saying that pity was what she most disliked, and she had no intention of showing her distress to an interested world. Summoning all her will, she forced her numb nerves into obedience, and went back into the social world that she had come to hate, armed with dignity, cool indifference, and what a catty fellow debutante called that ridiculous Darcy haughtiness. She defied anyone to feel sorry for her, danced every dance at every ball, bought and wore new clothes, rode at the fashionable hour, said the right things at the right time, and fooled virtually everyone except Fanny and Figgins.

Fanny's admiration for Alethea was beyond expression. “She is behaving beautifully,” she told her husband.

“Cold-hearted, if you ask me,” said Mr. Fitzwilliam.

Figgins had the worst of it, when Alethea let her guard down, allowing her maid to glimpse the depths of her misery and anger. Emotions that cooled, as time went by, into an indifference that Figgins found even more alarming. It was like the colour had gone out of Miss Alethea's life, she told Dawson, to which Dawson merely sniffed and said that the sooner the young lady was married and had a family to think about, the better. “That Mr. Napier will do well enough, he's showing her a good deal of attention, and he's a warm man, they say.”

Warm he might be, but Figgins hadn't taken to him, and she wondered just how much her mistress really liked him.

Had she been able to ask Alethea, and had Alethea told her the truth, she would have said that she was incapable of feeling any liking for any man, incapable of feeling anything very much at all. However, Napier was a great support to her at this time, by encouraging her to play and sing. At first, there was nothing she less wanted to do; music would stir all the painful emotions she was so desperately fighting. He pointed out, in a civil, passing remark, that for her not to perform her music would arouse people's suspicions, and when, reluctantly, she went back to the keyboard she found that the music relieved her jangled spirit.

Tongues began to wag again. It seemed that Miss Alethea Darcy had not cared so very much for Penrose Youdall after all; she was heartless, no better than a flirt, flitting from one man to the next; Napier was a richer man, a better catch, but she'd never get him to the altar, scheming mamas had been after him for ever, and he had a mistress tucked away down in the country, so everyone said; it would be a good thing if she became engaged to Norris Napier, for it would lessen that smug Diana Gray's triumph no end; had they noticed Penrose Youdall's expression when he was watching Miss Alethea dance with Napier last night?

Belinda Atcombe conferred with Fanny. “Is she really enamoured of Norris Napier? I know nothing against him, and yet I have a feeling—”

Fanny couldn't put into words why she, too, had a sense of unease about Napier. “He has posted down to Derbyshire to have an interview with Mr. Darcy. The family are not well acquainted with the Napiers; they have asked Mr. Fitzwilliam for his opinion.”

“Which is favourable, I suppose. Napier is a Tory, is he not?”

Fanny wanted to come to the defence of her husband, but could not. “He says he finds Napier a very good kind of fellow.”

“Fitzwilliam never was a good judge of men, was he?” observed Belinda dispassionately. “Men so often go by appearances and face value. Alethea has endured such unhappiness over Penrose, I should hate to see her make an unfortunate marriage.”

“There is the music; Alethea is so passionate about her music, it makes for a strong bond.”

“Strong enough, do you think? I doubt it. I think that Alethea had much better wait. At present, she imagines she will never truly care for another man as long as she lives, so what does it matter whom she marries? Delay matters if you can, Fanny; you will think of a way, I'm sure.”

Fanny had no opportunity. The date of the Youdall-Gray wedding became known, and within days, the
Gazette
carried the announcement of the forthcoming marriage of Miss Alethea Darcy, youngest daughter of Mr. Darcy of Pemberley, Derbyshire, to Mr. Norris Napier of Tyrrwhit House, Hertfordshire.

The stage was much less comfortable than the chaise, and Figgins was wedged between a clergyman of considerable girth and a burly merchant, both of them taking up more room than they'd paid for, she thought indignantly, and at her expense. Alethea was opposite, gazing down at her boots with unseeing eyes. Admiring the fine gloss Figgins had got on the gleaming Hessians? Figgins doubted it. Brooding, more likely.

Alethea looked up, glowered at the clergyman, whose face she seemed to have taken in dislike, and shut her eyes to blot him out.

Figgins sighed, and wriggled herself into a slightly more comfortable position. Well, Miss Alethea—never Mrs. Napier to her—had plenty to brood about, the Lord knew. Her own mind, usually filled with the here and now, had started to pick over the past, chewing over all that had happened to bring her and Miss Alethea to this rattling coach on this day, on their way to London and then onwards to Dover and abroad.

Abroad!

Figgins knew about abroad; she had been abroad, and hadn't cared for it. Moreover, that had been a journey planned and undertaken in comfort with proper attendants and no sense of danger or urgency about it.

That had been before Miss Alethea's come-out, when her mistress hadn't known that men such as Norris Napier, rot his soul, existed. She, Figgins, could have told her what most men were like, but Miss Alethea had been bred up in a happy family, among good and honourable men; there was no reason for her to take any such cynical view of the opposite sex.

Well, she'd found it out for herself the hard way, and Figgins would have given a lot to spare her what she'd been through. What a mistake the marriage had been, and what a scrape it had landed them in. It was all very well to bowl across the countryside behind a team of galloping horses, but where would it end?

Still, if abroad was where Miss Alethea wanted to go, then she would need a companion, and who better than her one-time maid? Figgins still smarted under the contemptuous dismissal she had received from Miss Alethea's husband, on the very day of the wedding.

“That servant of yours is to be turned off,” he'd said, as though she was a piece of cheese gone mouldy to be thrown out for the stable cat. “I'll have none but servants of my own choosing under my roof.”

And there had been Miss Alethea, arguing fit to bust, and she might as well have been addressing the statue in the square for all the notice he took of her. A right one he'd set to be her maid, too, a nasty, brutish kind of woman who had no proper notion of her work and was there to spy on Miss Alethea as much as to wait on her.

Lady Fanny had taken Figgins back into her household when she learned what had happened. “I do hope he is not going to turn out to be a jealous man,” she had exclaimed. “There is nothing more tiresome than a jealous husband.”

Jealous, well, that might be part of Napier's make-up, but it wasn't the worst of the man, not by a long chalk. She hadn't liked him, any more than she'd trusted that Mr. Youdall, he who had nearly broken Miss Alethea's heart, and had treated her so badly, bedding her and then wedding another.

Men! She, Figgins, had no time for any of them, no, nor for marriage. That was for fools, in her opinion. Look at her ma, seven children living and to be provided for, three dead before they were even born, and four dead before they were five. What a way to spend your life! It was a miracle that Ma had survived, and what joy when she knew for sure she would have no more children. “The happiest day of a woman's life, young Martha,” she had told her daughter. “When you know the Lord isn't going to send you any more children.”

The Lord could have laid off his deliveries a long time before, Figgins thought. Much better not to marry, never to risk a pregnancy, not to put yourself at the mercy of a man and of a brood of children. She liked her little brothers and sisters well enough, and had done her duty by the children in the Fitzwilliams' nursery, but the happiest day of her own young life was when she left the infantry behind and was promoted to the different world of grown-up clothes and a mistress who was more of a friend than anything else.

She would never forget the look on Miss Alethea's face that day when they drove away from Lord and Lady Milton's house. Never. Stricken, that's what she was, and that's how Figgins knew she'd be, from the moment she heard the news in the servants' quarters that Mr. Youdall was to wed that smug Miss Gray, a pert, disagreeable girl, in her view, and one as deserved a husband as fickle as that Mr. Penrose Youdall would probably turn out to be. Easy come, easy go, that was her experience of men such as Mr. Penrose.

Good riddance to him, or so she would have said if Miss Alethea hadn't ended up with a husband a thousand times worse. It made her want to cry, it really did, to see the come-down of Miss Alethea from such a proud, independent girl to a shadow of herself, bruised in body and soul and driven to desperate measures that would make her an outcast from the world she'd been born to if it ever came out.

It was wicked, the way he'd been let get away with it, tormenting Miss Alethea like a little boy torturing an animal. Penning her up in that house, watching her, taking everything away from her, not allowing her to have her letters, or her jewellery, or pin money of her own. And her so rich and bringing such a fortune to him. He had told her that she and everything she had owned now belonged to him and was his to do what he liked with.

Figgins had had to behave in a very underhand manner to get back close to her mistress, which she had set about doing the very day she heard in a roundabout way that Miss Alethea was in deep trouble. She'd had that from Mrs. Barcombe's maid, when Miss Alethea's eldest sister, Miss Letty as was, now married to the Reverend Mr. Barcombe, had come with her husband to stay in Aubrey Square.

A sly, sneaky wench was Betty, one who listened at doors whenever she could, but this time Figgins was thankful that she had, or otherwise how would she have heard that Miss Alethea, permitted a rare visit to her sister, had told her things about her married life that made even Betty's hair stand on end?

“You wouldn't believe it, Martha,” Betty had said. “Sister or no sister, Mrs. Napier had a rare time getting a few minutes alone with my mistress, for that husband of hers watches her like he's her gaoler.”

“Don't tell me so,” said Figgins.

“I do tell you so, indeed. He lays down the law like she's a child, tells her when to get up and when to retire, what gowns she may wear, he hands out her jewellery—her own jewellery that she had on her marriage—and she can only have the pieces he chooses for her to use. Then every bit of it is to be handed over and locked away in his strongbox at night. He makes her sing, he loves to hear her sing, dreadful caterwauling, I call it, but the gentry go for that kind of music, as you know. She can't sing what she wants, but must wait for him to say what she may play and sing. Her voice is going, she said to her sister, and my mistress says a good thing, too, high time to give up such interest in music now she is a married woman and she'll soon have her nursery to think about, and that will be an end to all the music nonsense.

“Then Mrs. Napier comes right back at her and says she hopes there won't ever be no children, not the way Mr. Napier is, and my mistress puts her fingers in her ears—”

“How do you know that?” Figgins had demanded. “Being as how you had your ear pressed to the door; I never heard you had eyes that went round corners.”

“They were talking that loudly, I didn't have to do no pressing. It's a big keyhole, and no key to it, so I took a look and saw her with her hands against her ears. Mrs. Barcombe says, ‘I'm not listening to another word, I don't want to hear such things, you're making it up.' Then she goes on about how wicked of her sister to invent such tales and how it's her duty, now she's a married woman, to obey her husband in all things.” Betty paused and wrinkled her nose. “Not that it isn't a case of the pot and the kettle, for my mistress is one as likes to rule the roost in her own house, and the reverend knows better than to argue with her, not if he wants a quiet life.”

Trust Mrs. Barcombe to take it all so priggishly. Figgins had never had much time for Miss Alethea's eldest sister. No, nor for the twins, who were next to her in age; a flighty pair they were, in her opinion, with never a thought for anyone except themselves.

Mr. Barcombe was a pleasant enough gentleman, though; maybe it was a pity that Miss Alethea hadn't spoken to him. Mind you, given what Betty said, he might not have stood up against the strictures of his wife, even if he had believed Miss Alethea. Husbands and wives all had their ways, and no two marriages alike, that was what Ma always said. Most of any husband's ways made a woman's life a misery, in Figgins's opinion. If it wasn't blows and cuffs, then it was harsh words, and one almost as bad as the other to a young woman like Miss Alethea.

No, Miss Alethea was in the right of it, for all that running away from the home of your lawful, wedded husband would be considered a great wickedness. She had no choice but to flee, and if it was madness to reckon on dressing up as a man and going abroad, setting sail to foreign parts, which only the freedom of the male would allow her to do, then let them both be mad and how she prayed that it would answer.

They made a pretty enough pair of men, she thought, glancing at Alethea, who was sitting back on the squabs, her long legs in their pantaloons and boots stretched out before her, such female shape as she had left after all the weight she'd lost being married to that monster well disguised by the well-cut coat and folds of a neck cloth.

As for herself, she'd always been thin. Scrawny, like a chicken, her brothers used to say, and also that no man would want to marry her, and wake up to find themselves cuddling an armful of bones. Very well, but now that she was clad in the unobtrusive, sober clothes of a manservant, no one would give her a second glance, or doubt for a moment that she was what she appeared to be.

The tale of what Miss Alethea had said to her sister, relayed to Figgins in breathless tones by a round-eyed Betty, had galvanised Figgins into action. She recklessly gave in her notice to Lady Fanny, first having filched some notepaper to write herself a character. Then she'd tipped her savings out of the cotton stocking tucked into her mattress and had made her way to Bedfordshire, getting a lift on a wagon as far as Butley and then walking towards the small hamlet of Tyrrwhit.

She had no definite plan in mind; all she wanted was to get near enough to Miss Alethea, by some means or other, and to be able to talk to her. Mind you, it wasn't going to be easy, not if Betty hadn't been exaggerating about the way Napier kept an eye on her.

She was in luck, however. Walking along the grassy path that led to Tyrrwhit, she had met a sobbing girl coming the other way. Common humanity, apart from insatiable nosiness as to what her fellow human beings were up to, made her stop and offer comfort and find out why the girl was in such a state.

Turned off by Napier, this Meg Jenkins had been; well, Figgins knew all about that. Without a character, and her only fifteen, and, the girl said between hiccoughs, she'd never agree to what Mr. Napier wanted to do with her, she'd sooner rot in hell for ever and ever, and what was she to do? Her da would never take her back into his house now she'd been turned off.

That this was the reward for refusing to let your master have his way with you didn't surprise Figgins in the least.

“And that awful Mrs. Gillingham, as is Mr. Napier's fancy piece, she was that rude to me, saying I was a silly, prudish miss who didn't know which side my bread was buttered.”

Figgins's interest quickened. “Fancy piece?”

“She's his mistress, has been for years, the others say, and they laugh at poor Mrs. Napier for having to put up with having such a woman as a guest under her own roof.”

Laugh, did they? “What are you going to do?”

The girl was intending to walk to London and seek employment there, as a maid in a respectable house. Figgins raised her eyes to heaven, gave the girl a hunk of bread and a piece of cheese—she'd been sent away without a morsel to eat—and gave her directions to Ma's house. “You tell her what happened and that Martha sent you to her, do you hear me?”

Figgins watched the forlorn figure dwindle into the distance, shrugged her shoulders, and went on toward Tyrrwhit. She reckoned the girl would never make it to Ma's; with those looks and that ignorance of how many beans made two, she'd be snapped up long before she got to that part of town.

It had given her an idea, however. Where one maidservant had been turned off, another would be sought. Moreover, the hapless Meg Jenkins had mentioned that they were short-staffed up at the house, they always were. Figgins knew that when Napier turned her off on his wedding day, it was not for dislike of her; he'd no more noticed her than he would a cur in the gutter. No, it was because she was part of his bride's former life, and he wanted to cut her off from that as completely as he could. She felt she could count on his making no connection between his wife's former servant and a lowly new maid called Susan Peters.

 

Lucky for them both that her brother was apprentice to a tailor, to a man in a good way of business near the Corn-Exchange. He didn't cut and sew for the smart of smarts, but he did well enough by his prosperous and social-climbing customers, and Joseph Figgins had a flare for the work and had happily made several suitable outfits for Alethea, as well as more ordinary garments for his sister.