The Valentine Legacy (42 page)

“Hurrmph,” Dancy Hoolahan said.

“I hate this,” Jessie said, closing her eyes as she felt Dr. Hoolahan's hands move between her legs and to her belly. Then a pain struck, and she wouldn't have cared if the entire population of Baltimore had trooped into her bedchamber and commented on her bent, sprawled legs. The pain was ghastly, unimaginable. It was ripping her apart, she knew it. Four days? No, that couldn't be possible. No human could bear this pain for four days. “I'm not going to survive this, James,” she said, panting between gritted teeth. “My mama didn't tell me it would be this horrible. It's worse than horrible. I wish it were you, James, not me. Why the devil can't it be you?”

Dr. Hoolahan snorted as he stood up between her legs. “James couldn't bear it, Jessie. He'd be a pitiful mess after just one bout of contractions. Women are much better at it. Think about the beauty of the experience, how God ordained that you, woman, would be the vessel to carry all generations, think of how blessed you are, think—”

She screamed, nearly lurching off the bed.

“Shut your damned trap, Dancy,” James said, nearly yelling. “No, not you, Jessie. You shout as much as you want to. You're doing very well. How close are her pains, Dancy?”

“Coming more closely together, obviously. I'm doing other things, James. I haven't timed them. If you're so bloody interested, time them yourself.”

“You're nearly there, love,” James said, “nearly there. That's right, push as hard as you want.”

To Dr. Hoolahan's absolute astonishment, and a bit of chagrin as well, Jessie birthed a boy exactly twenty minutes later.

“I don't believe this,” Dr. Hoolahan said, holding the bawling infant by his heels and giving him a good smack on his tiny buttocks. The yell made both James and Jessie smile. “This wasn't supposed to happen. This must be some sort of record, Jessie. I will write to the medical journals and report this. Of course, they'll believe I'm lying just to enlarge my reputation. Jessie, would you mind coming with me if they do disbelieve me and testify that I did indeed birth your child in a mere twenty minutes?”

“I don't think so, Dancy,” Jessie said, staring toward the naked baby he held in his arms, seemingly unaware of him. “If you don't mind, that is.”

“I suppose not,” Dr. Hoolahan said, looking down at the baby, who promptly yelled.

“He sounds just like you, James,” Jessie said.

“I was thinking that was your voice I just heard, Jessie.”

“Actually,” Dr. Hoolahan said as he cleaned the baby and wrapped him in a soft towel, “I was thinking he sounded just like James's mother.”

Both new parents groaned.

An hour later, Jessie was cleaned up, dressed in a fresh white nightgown, her hair brushed and braided. The baby was asleep in the cradle next to the bed. She watched James stare down at their tiny precious son, then lean down and lightly kiss his forehead. He then turned to her, smiling widely. “You did it. In twenty minutes flat. For a while there I thought Dancy was going to cry, then when I
reminded him that he'd just been present at a new record, he did brighten up a bit. He asked me when you were feeling a bit stronger to give his request some more thought. I fear he's serious. He would delight in presenting you to his colleagues.” James laughed as he shook his head. “I told him to go get drunk on his success.” He bent over and kissed her mouth. She was still too pale for his liking. He sat beside her, took her hand between his, and said, “I did mean to say this sooner, Jessie: I love you.”

“I'm sore,” she said, not looking at him.

“Yes, but you'll mend. You didn't tear, and that's good. I'm so proud of you. And I do love you. Very much. I've felt love for you for a good long time now, ever since Gypsom told me that Compton Fielding had taken you. I realized then that I loved you, that I couldn't bear it if I ever lost you.”

“You're saying that because I just gave you a son. Every man wants a son no matter what he says to the contrary. It's brought forth all sorts of grateful feelings in you.”

“Where did you get that bit of errant wisdom?”

She had the grace to flush. She still wouldn't look at him. “From your mama.”

He smacked his forehead. “I love you. I love our son. I would have loved our daughter equally. When the hell did you ever believe anything my mother said?”

She looked thoughtful even as her hand stroked up his arm to his neck, to his cheek, where at last her fingers caressed him.

“That was the first and last time. I swear it.”

“See that it is.”

 

“He looks exactly like his father,” Mrs. Wilhelmina Wyndham announced to the parlor at large, as she looked down at her week-old grandson. “A chin as beautiful as Apollo's.”

“I think he looks like my little Jessie,” said Portia Warfield. “Just look at those green eyes and that sweet little dimple. Jessie had a dimple just exactly like that one, but she lost it when she was no more than five.”

“You don't lose a dimple, Portia,” Wilhelmina said, her disgust evident. “She never had a dimple. It's my James who has the dimple. About her eyes. Eyes always change color, but not with this darling child. He will have green eyes, just like James, whose green eyes are a richer and deeper green than Jessie's are. Yes, they will be James's eyes.”

James looked from his mother to his mother-in-law and said, “I think he looks more like Bellini, my three-year-old, when he was just foaled.” He laughed and laughed when the two grandmothers turned on him, outrage stiffening every bone that wasn't already stiff from age in their bodies. “After all, he was all wobbly, wet, nearly bald, but he had the cutest mouth, opening all the time, showing a tongue surely the size of a hand. Just like Bellini when he was foaled.”

“James, that's ridiculous,” said his mama. “You will cease such comparisons.”

“Yes, James, this is my grandson. He is surely beautiful. He is surely perfect.”

“Just wait until he begins wailing. You will run from the room covering your ears.” Jessie grinned at the people in her parlor as she walked into the room. “In fact,” she said thoughtfully, “I think he should begin to realize he's starving any minute now.”

Everyone stared at the white bundle in James's arms.

In one minute to the second, Taylor James Warfield Wyndham let out a yell that set the crystal trembling on the mantelpiece.

Y
ORK
, E
NGLAND
D
ECEMBER
1825

York Races—the Day Jessie Wyndham Beat Everyone

It took Jessie only a minute to realize that all the jockeys around her were protecting her from the few jockeys from other stables. At first she wanted to yell at them, curse them with every foul word she'd learned from her earliest years in the stables. Then she began laughing.
Well,
she thought,
let them keep up
. She kicked Dorsett in his sleek sides and shot forward. The wind pulled at her hair, she felt the air burning her face, she felt a thousand pounds of horse pounding beneath her. She loved it. Lord, she'd missed racing. She quickly outstripped her jockey honor guard. Then she saw one of them out of the corner of her eye. She'd known that any self-respecting jockey wouldn't allow her to walk away with the race. But she beat him handily, laughing when Dorsett flashed across the finish line, blowing hard, head high. The other horses pulled into a circle around her, and the jockeys threw up their hats and cheered wildly. James walked toward her, looking furious.

Oh dear, was he blind? There'd been no danger, except perhaps from one of her protectors accidently running into Dorsett's rear end, which hadn't been at all likely. She wouldn't have let that happen. She was by far too good a jockey.

“Madam, what the devil do you think you're doing?” He clasped her around her waist and lifted her down. “Just look at you, your streamers are tangled and blown apart. That bloody hat—you look like a beggar. I don't know what I'm going to do with you, damn you.”

“How about giving the winner a cheer, James.”

He stared down at her, pulled a streamer from around her neck, and stepped back. “May God grant me patience,” he said, then grabbed Marcus's hat off his head and threw it into the air, yelling, “May our son be as excellent a rider as his mother!”

“Hear, hear,” the Duchess said. “Well done, James.”

“I'll kill her when we're alone,” he said. “You outran your protectors. You left them to swallow your dust. You didn't give a good damn about your own safety. You”—he stared down at her, his heart in his eyes—“you, Jessie Wyndham, were magnificent.” He then took his son, Taylor, from Spears. “What do you think?” he asked his son as he nuzzled his throat. “Do you think I should throttle your mama?”

Three-year-old Taylor said in a voice loud and clear, “My mama told me she was the best jockey in all the world. My grandpa said it was the truth. She said you were good, Papa, but you're too big a man. She told me she hoped I didn't grow as big as you.”

James groaned, pulled Jessie against him, and said, “I don't stand a chance.”

She turned a glowing face to him. “Isn't life wonderful, James?”

“It's the best,” he said, and leaned down and kissed her. They heard cheering all around them. Taylor let out a yell that nearly felled his father.

“Dr. Hoolahan was right, James,” Jessie said. “Those are your mother's lungs. They just get stronger by the year.”

M
ARCUS
W
YNDHAM
,
THE
Earl of Chase, not only became a father to four children (all by the Duchess), but also became active in the House of Lords in the Melbourne government. In 1837, he was appointed an advisor to the new queen of England, Victoria. It is said she would have married him if she could have because he was so “wickedly fair of person and so wickedly wicked of tongue.” This was her last witty remark.

The Duchess, the Countess of Chase, became the most famous ditty writer of her time, although Queen Victoria is said to have complained that “some of the ditties hovered on the precipice of
The Vulgar
,” to which a journalist replied in an impertinent column, “Then tootle them not, your majesty, and leave them to your salty dogs.” In the English navy today, her famous
Sailors' Song
is still one of the favorite drinking tunes.

In 1837, Anthony Godwyn Ruthven Wyndham, Viscount Radcliffe and eldest son of Marcus and the Duchess, married Cecilia Derwent Nightingale, eldest daughter of North and Caroline Nightingale, whose wild antics fascinated Anthony and terrified her parents. He called her his devilkin. Queen Victoria was persuaded by the Earl of Chase to be godmother to his grandson, Marcus James Bentford Wyndham, born in 1838. It is said that many busy fingers counted months until the birth of their child,
which, fortunately, arrived only one week early.

Charles, second son of Marcus and the Duchess, married a Russian duchess—whose mother was English—and moved to St. Petersburg only to return with his wife to England after but one Russian winter. Charles later became the British ambassador to Russia, though he turned down the post twice before finally accepting it. He said that “even my dear wife's fiery kisses can't keep me warm enough in that bloody climate.” His wife, Marianna Shelley Petrovinka Wyndham, sang her mother-in-law's ditties far and wide in a rich soprano voice and wrote two gothic novels in the 1860s.

 

North and Caroline Nightingale, Viscount and Viscountess Chilton, helped revitalize the tin-mining industry in northern Cornwall with the aid of Rafael and Victoria Carstairs. They brought five children into Cornwall, all of them hell raisers, their eldest daughter, Cecilia, leading the way, their father said many times in near-despair. Their two younger blue-eyed daughters married twin-brother robber barons from New York and moved there in 1846. North and Caroline's sons, Edmund and Alexander, both became vicars, strangely enough, after having sowed enough wild oats for a calvary battalion, their father said, shaking his head whenever he viewed his sons exhorting their flocks from behind their pulpits.

North walked on the moors with his hounds once a year just to remind himself how very sweet life was and how very warm it made him feel to hear his wife's rich laughter upon his return. Owen Ffalkes married Miss Mary Patricia. His adopted son, Owen, became a famous violinist and composer and moved to Prague. His first sonata was dedicated to his mother, Alice, who had died birthing him. Mr. Ffalkes remained at Honeymead Manor until his fond wife happened to find him dead in a ditch, supposedly of too much drink,
in the late fall of 1832. No one questioned her closely.

Caroline never ran out of laughter. Her two godly sons tried to populate Cornwall double-handedly, she was heard to say when her fourteenth grandchild was born, healthy and loud, another prospective hell raiser, North added, rubbing his hands together, seeing revenge in the future.

 

James and Jessie Wyndham, the American Wyndhams, lived a Proserpine arrangement—six months at Candlethorpe in Yorkshire and six months at Marathon in Baltimore. They brought three children into the world. Taylor, the eldest, was as horse-mad as his parents. In 1844, he married Marielle Elizabeth Wyndham, his first cousin, born sixteen months after he was, saying just after their wedding that “I've known her since I was one and a half years old. I might as well stay with her to see how she turns out.” Both of them turned out very well. Marielle became more American than English, though she continually mixed her idioms.

James and Jessie spoke rarely of Blackbeard's treasure, but they did occasionally visit the Warfield house on Ocracoke in the summer. They rode horses bareback on the beach, Jessie's streamers tangling wildly in the wind. Jessie published a treatise on the lost colony of Roanoke, but it wasn't well received. She was promptly accused of having falsified Valentine's diary, being a woman and thus unskilled in proper forgery methods. Wilhelmina Wyndham bullied her grandchildren until the day she passed on to her just reward, which all her relatives prayed was truly just. As for Alice Belmonde and Nelda, widow of Bramen Carlysle, Compton Fielding was right. Upon her husband's death in 1824, Nelda and Alice moved to New York and became famous literary hostesses. Jessie passed down the Valentine swan necklace to her eldest daughter. It is still in the Wyndham family despite outlandish offers made by collectors.

*   *   *

Spears and Badger remained with Marcus and the Duchess, becoming godparents many times to all the Wyndham offspring, both English and American. They spent at least a month every year in Baltimore with the American Wyndhams, Spears informing Marcus that “Mr. Badger and I know our duty. Indeed, we do enjoy ourselves in assisting James and Jessie to improve upon their child-rearing practices.” Marcus, never one to complain, nonetheless forewent writing any major speeches for the House of Lords until Spears had returned to provide him nominal assistance. It is said that Badger once cooked for President Andrew Jackson.

Sampson and Maggie also remained part of the Wyndham household. Maggie gave birth to Damon Arthur Lancelot Sampson in 1825. Damon became one of the most famous actors on the London stage in the entire nineteenth century, excelling in his roles of Othello, Hamlet, and Shylock. He was extraordinarily handsome, charming, and witty, but he never married. He always gave thanks to his beautiful mother who, he was fond of saying, “sacrificed her own acting career to the rigors of motherhood.” No one ever challenged this.

Wyndhams and Nightingales are everywhere. Perhaps one is a neighbor.