The Valentine Legacy (12 page)

“What about me? Aren't I entitled to some of Warfield Stables?”

Glenda smiled, wandered over to the small chair in front of the writing table, and sat down. “Surely Father will do something for you. You have been a prize jockey for some time now. Yes, he'll see that you're taken care of.” When Jessie didn't say anything, Glenda said, “I will provide you with enough money to get to New York City. It's all that I've saved, but I'll willingly give it to you. It's three hundred dollars.”

“That's quite a sum.” Jessie herself had saved nearly a thousand dollars beginning with the small coins tossed to
her when she'd been little more than a toddler.

“Yes, but I think you deserve it. I shan't regret giving it to you if that's what you're worried about. No, take the money, Jessie. I'm sure everything will work out well for you. I even have two gowns you can travel in to New York. I've even written to Aunt Dorothy telling her that you're coming. Naturally, I pretended the letter was from Mama. You see it's for the best, don't you, Jessie?”

“Three hundred dollars?”

“Yes, and two gowns.”

“Two of your
best
gowns or two gowns from three years ago?”

“Well, oh all right. I'll give you one of my best gowns and three older ones.”

“I would also like that velvet-lined lemon-colored cloak of yours.”

“That's robbery!”

“Take it or leave it, Glenda.”

“You swear to leave?”

Jessie looked out over the rose garden, a triumph of her mother's ability to find the best gardener in the area. Soon the air would be filled with the scent of roses. But she wouldn't be here to smell those incredible white blooms the gardener had managed to succor into vivid life the previous year. But what did the damned roses matter to her now?

“I swear,” she said.

 

James went to church. He always went to church. It pleased his mother to have him accompany her. Besides, he was very fond of Winsey Yellot, the minister. Winsey believed the French were the Unredeemed. He proved every one of his points with quotes from Voltaire, who was endlessly witty in addition to being an atheist. James usually lost their arguments because he laughed so hard at Winsey's execrable French pronunciation when he quoted Voltaire.

This morning it was overcast. Nothing new in that, he thought as he assisted his mother from her carriage. He found himself looking for the Warfields. He saw them in their usual seats in the fifth row. “Not too close, mind you,” Oliver had said to him, “to prevent a nice snooze, but far enough away so Winsey doesn't harangue me personally.”

Jessie wasn't in her usual place. He frowned even as he looked at the people in the other pews. He wanted to dismiss it, but he couldn't. She wasn't here because her mother knew she'd be shunned if she'd come. They'd left her behind. He felt rage building. Everyone had smiled at him, spoken to him, asked him about his health, his horses, and Marathon. Jessie would bear the brunt of all of it.

He couldn't wait for Winsey to finish his exhortations, this Sunday, his subject being slavery. Baltimore had just voted that no future state of the Union could allow slavery. James had heartily agreed.

He didn't know what he was going to do about Jessie, but he had to do something. When the service was finally over, he looked up to see Glenda staring at his crotch.

He didn't find out until Sunday night that Jessie was gone, to New York City, Glenda had told everyone, to their Aunt Dorothy. James, who'd heard Jessie whisper tales about Aunt Dorothy since she was fourteen, felt like the biggest bastard on earth.

N
EAR
D
ARLINGTON
, Y
ORKSHIRE
, E
NGLAND
M
AY
1822

Chase Park, home of the Wyndhams

“M
Y LORD
.”

Marcus Wyndham, 8th Earl of Chase, looked up at his butler, Sampson, who'd managed to glide across thirty feet of oak floor without his hearing a single footfall.

“You did it again, damn your eyes. However do you manage it, Sampson?”

“I beg your pardon, my lord?”

“Never mind. Someday my ears will attune themselves to you. At least I've learned to lock the door whenever the Duchess and I are involved in, well . . . never mind that. What do you want?”

“There is a strange young person here, my lord. Not a young person who is strange, just a young person I've never seen before. She asks to see you. She walked right up to the front doors and knocked. She looks somewhat like my dear Maggie playing the role of a disreputable waif, demanding to see the lord of the manor.”

“She wants work, you think? Send her to Mrs. Emory.”

“Well, you see, my lord, there's something about her,
other than the obvious fact that she's from the Colonies.”

“What? The deuce, you say, Sampson. The Colonies?” The earl rose, rubbing his hands together. “She must know James. She must be here because of James. You're certain it's not Aunt Wilhelmina, aren't you, Sampson? She asked for me, you say?”

“No, my lord. It isn't That Woman. As for the young person, well, actually, she wants the Duchess. I doctored the truth just a bit since the Duchess is feeling a bit on the poorly side.”

“She's off the poorly side as of luncheon. Tell you what, Sampson, get the Duchess and the both of us will see this young person from the Colonies who has the look of Maggie. Does she have a name?”

“Jessica Warfield, my lord.”

Ten minutes later, Sampson, the Chase butler since his twenty-fifth year, led a very pale, very determined young person into the Green Cube Room, a chamber that had intimidated a baron only last month with its magnificent painted ceiling set between beams covered with lavish geometric designs and opulent gilt furnishings. The Turkey carpets on the floor were at least a hundred years old, yet their reds and blues and yellows shone in the afternoon sunlight coming through the front windows. There were paintings on the walls that had to be older than the Colonies.

Jessie was intimidated. Even more, she was terrified. She was the greatest fool to be born on this planet. She dutifully walked behind a very handsome man who was obviously the butler, but who hadn't turned his nose up at her. Indeed, he'd been stiffly kind. She remembered James speaking of handsome Sampson, who'd married Maggie, the Duchess's red-haired maid, who'd been an out-of-work actress before she'd come into the Duchess's employ. She hoped this was Sampson, for James had always grinned whenever he spoke of him, telling her how he was the only one who could
control Maggie, and he had to grow more clever by the year to succeed.

“My lord. My lady. This is the young person from the Colonies. Miss Jessica Warfield.”

So this was Marcus and the Duchess, she thought as she forced her feet to move forward. Marcus was dark and tall and so handsome even she wanted to swoon, something she'd never before considered doing in the company of any man. So dark he was yet he had the deep blue eyes of an angel. Except angels smiled, didn't they? He wasn't smiling. On the other hand, neither was he frowning. She looked at the woman standing beside him. The Duchess. She wrote the clever ditties that James occasionally hummed or sang at the top of his lungs. She'd supported herself long before she'd become the Countess of Chase. Surely she was too beautiful to be so resourceful. Surely God wasn't being fair to dish out so much to one single individual. Like her husband, the Duchess had black hair and blue eyes and the whitest skin Jessie had ever seen. Unlike the earl, the Duchess smiled at her, a full, easy smile that made Jessie even more nervous.

“Oh dear,” she said, looking again from the earl to the countess, “this is certainly a flagrant intrusion. I know it is and I'm so sorry for it. But you see, James has told me so much about both of you—and all about Badger and Spears and Sampson and Maggie—that—”

The earl broke in easily, “James Wyndham? My cousin?”

“Yes, I race against James and many times beat him. Oh dear, I didn't mean to say that. Now you'll never believe I'm a lady.”

The Duchess stepped forward, her hand held out. “I thought your name sounded familiar, Miss Warfield. James has spoken of your family over the years. Welcome to our home. Since you're a friend of James's, you're welcome
here. Now, come and sit down. Sampson, bring some tea and seed cakes. Let me take that pelisse.”

Jessie willingly gave it up. It was an ugly mustard color, but she'd believed she had to have something to make her unquestionably female. The one Glenda had promised to give her hadn't materialized, damn Glenda. She hadn't gotten any gowns either, damn Glenda again. The Duchess folded the pelisse neatly, as if it were very valuable, and laid it over the back of a chair that had probably had kings sit in it. The current king, George IV, was very fat. She hoped he didn't visit and sit in that chair. It would collapse, surely. She didn't want to sit in it either. It would realize she was a peasant and disintegrate in shock.

“Now,” the Duchess said as she sat gracefully in a narrow, terribly French-looking chair across from Jessie, who'd gingerly sat herself on the edge of a blue brocade settee, “how is James?”

“Don't forget Aunt Wilhelmina, Duchess.”

The Duchess sighed. “One hesitates even to speak her name, but all right, I'll include her in the question. And dear Ursula. How are all of the American Wyndhams?”

“As of six weeks ago, they were fine, ma'am.”

This was interesting, the Duchess was thinking. She resumed her charming smile. “Miss Warfield, tell us how we may help you.”

“Well, you see, ma'am, I'm here not to race because I know that in England all females must be extra proper and that ladies can't wear trousers and can't be jockeys and can't ride in races and—”

The earl raised his hand. “How old are you, Miss Warfield?”

That took her aback a bit but she managed to say, “I am twenty, sir. James is twenty-seven and—”

“Did you travel from Baltimore to England all by yourself?”

Jessie knew the English were very particular about things like this and thus lied swiftly and cleanly. “I had a maid to accompany me, but she got vilely ill on board ship and then there was this ghastly storm, so violent, and everyone got very sick, me included, and poor Drusilla went on deck, vomited over the railing, and fell overboard she was heaving so hard. So I had no choice but to come here from Plymouth on a mail coach.”

The Duchess looked to her husband. He looked on the point of bursting into laughter. She looked quickly at the very serious, very frightened face, and said, “These things happen. It is tragic that poor Drusilla had to meet her maker in such an unfortunate manner, but you managed very creditably to get here all by yourself.”

“Well, there was one horrible thing that happened. It was near the town called Hayfield and there were three men with masks on their faces and they wanted to steal everything. I'd hidden my money beneath my gown—oh dear, anyway, I gave them my five dollars and they just looked at it. The leader spit on it and tossed it back to me and said he didn't want any of that odd stuff from the Orient. At least that's what I think he said. He was very difficult to understand.”

Jessie came to a halt all by herself this time. She was appalled at what she'd freely admitted. Surely they believed her a vulgar, brainless twit. She said, “Forgive me. I'm talking so very much and usually I don't. I'm just so very scared.”

The past two months, held at bay until now, collapsed in on her. She dropped her face in her hands and sobbed. They weren't delicate sobs, but hoarse, deep ones.

Suddenly, she stopped, raised her face, and swiped her hands over her eyes. “Forgive me again. I'm never afraid. I don't know what's happened to me.”

“Ah, here's Sampson. You need some tea.”

“James always says that tea is the solution to every problem in England.”

“Why, I suppose that it is,” the Duchess said. She poured a cup and handed it to Jessie. “Now, drink it down and see if you don't feel just a bit better for it.”

Jessie took a big drink and wheezed for breath. “It's stronger than the whiskey Old Gussie makes in his own still. This is tea? Just innocent tea?”

The earl rose to pat her on the back. She was thin, he thought. It must have taken her a long six weeks to get here. Alone on a ship. Then a good five days on the mail coach from Plymouth to Darlington. Just to contemplate it curled his toes. He gave her one of Badger's famous lemon seed cakes. Jessie didn't mean to, but she ate it in two bites, then felt like a coarse savage doing that in front of these magnificent people.

“Have another,” the Duchess said, smiling at her.

She gave this one three bites, but it was difficult.

“When was the last time you ate, Miss Warfield?” Marcus Wyndham asked easily.

“Well, yesterday, really. You see, all my American dollars were stuffed in my, er, chemise, except at night of course. Someone slipped into my bedchamber and stole all of it. I have a dollar left that I hid in the toe of my left boot.”