This week’s Monday for Tea post is the second chapter in my new story for newsletter subscribers. It forms part of the novella Paradise Lost, which tells the backstory of the Duchess of Haverford in a series of memories, as she goes through the eventful year of 1812, in which her long-ago beloved returns to England with six of his ten children. See The Children of the Mountain King for more about the series to which this is a companion. If you’d like a copy of Paradise Lost, make sure you’re subscribed to my newsletter. A word of warning. It isn’t a romance; the Duchess of Haverford does not enjoy a happy ending with the man she loves in this novella, though she negotiates a life she can live with. Does she find true love? You’ll have to read the series for the whole story.
Haverford House, London, July 1812
Eleanor had withdrawn to her private sitting room, driven there by His Grace’s shouting. Her son Aldridge was as angry as she had ever seen him, his face white and rigid and his eyes blazing, but he kept his voice low; had even warned the duke about shouting.
“Let us not entertain the servants, Your Grace, with evidence of your villainy.”
Unsurprisingly, the duke had taken exception to the cutting words and had shouted even louder.
Could it be true? Had Haverford paid an assassin to kill the sons of the man he insisted as seeing as his rival? An assassin who had been caught before he could carry out his wicked commission.
His Grace’s jealousy made no sense. Yes, James was back in England, but what did that matter to Haverford?
He had been furious when James and his family attended their first ball. Eleanor had looked up when the room fell silent, and there he stood on the stairs, surrounded by members of his family, whom she barely noticed. James looked wonderful. More than thirty years had passed, and no person on earth would call him a fribble or useless now. He had been a king somewhere in Central Asia, and wore his authority like an invisible garment. And he was still as handsome as he had been in his twenties.
As she sat there with her tea tray, sheltering from the anger of her menfolk, she caught herself sighing over James like a silly gosling. She was a married woman, and he was a virtuous man who had, by all accounts, deeply loved his wife. Besides, women did not age as well as men, as the whole world knew. She no longer had the slender waist of a maiden, her hair was beginning to grey, and her face showed the lines her mother swore she would avoid if she never smiled, laughed, frowned, or showed any other emotion. Of course, she had not followed her mother’s instruction, but those who had were no less lined than Eleanor, as far as she could see.
Putting down her tea, she fetched a little box of keepsakes from her hidden cupboard. The fan her long dead brother had given her before her first ball. A small bundle of musical scores, that recalled pleasant evenings in her all too brief Season. Aldridge’s cloth rabbit. She had retrieved it when Haverford had ordered it destroyed, saying his son was a future duke and should not be coddled. Aldridge had been eight months’ old.
It had not been the first time she secretly defied her husband. She had been sneaking up to the nursery since Aldridge was born, despite the duke’s proclamation that ladies of her rank had their babies presented to them once a day, washed, sweetly smelling and well behaved, and handing the infants back to their attendants if any of those conditions failed or after thirty minutes, whichever came first.
It took three more years and a major shock for her to openly defy him.
Haverford Castle, East Kent, 1784
The Duke of Haverford did not bother with greetings or enquiries about Eleanor’s health. He flung open the door without knocking and marched into Eleanor’s sitting room, saying, “What is it, duchess? I have a great deal to do today.”
Inwardly, Eleanor quailed as he stood over her, threat in every line of his posture. Unlike her father, he had never beaten her in cold blood, but she had every reason to fear his temper.
But fear would not serve her here. She was fighting for her life and for the wellbeing of her son. She maintained an outward semblance of calm and gestured to a chair. “Will you not be seated, Your Grace? As I said in my note, I have an important matter to discuss with you.”
Haverford grumbled, but sat; even accepted a cup of tea. The delicate porcelain cup might not survive the next few minutes, but its sacrifice was a small price to pay for giving the discussion a façade of normality.
As she’d hoped, the good manners drilled into every English gentleman in the presence of a lady, even his wife, kept the duke sitting during the ritual of preparing the cup, but he burst out as soon as he accepted it from his wife’s hand. “Well, duchess?”
Eleanor prepared her own cup, glad to have a reason not to look at him as she spoke. “Your Grace, you will be aware that I have been very ill this past six weeks. It is, indeed, why I removed myself to Haverford Castle.”
“Yes, yes. And I’m glad to see you much improved, madam. I have need of you in London.” He condescended to provide an explanation. “The bill I am sponsoring—those idiots who will not listen are much easier to convince after you’ve given them one of your excellent meals, and invited their wives and daughters to your soirees. How soon can you be ready to travel?”
What an excellent opening. “I can pack tomorrow and leave for London the day after, Your Grace.”
Haverford smiled. “Excellent, excellent.” He put the cup down, shifting as if to stand.
“If I do not have a relapse,” Eleanor added.
Haverford sank back into his chair, frowning.
Now to get to the meat of the matter. Eleanor grasped hold of her dwindling supply of courage with both hands. This is about saving Aldridge. The situation in the nursery was fit to ruin him. His attendants had always indulged his every whim, egged on by the duke, who considered himself to be the only person the infant marquis needed to obey. Eleanor’s frequent visits and threats of dismissal allowed him to be raised with some sense of structure and decorum. He knew she would not tolerate rudeness or temper, to her or to his nurses and the maids.
After spending four weeks too sick to leave her bed, she found the nursery in disarray, the young heir ruling the roost. He was in a wild tantrum when she arrived, and the next hour left her drooping with fatigue, and she still had to hunt down the boy’s missing head nurse and find out why she had allowed such chaos to reign.”
The memory prompted her to deal with the minor issue first. “Your affair with Aldridge’s nurse, Your Grace.”
He straightened, and opened his mouth, but Eleanor spoke over the rebuke that was certain to come. “I have no objection, sir, but I assume you have not given her license to neglect your heir or to be impertinent to me.”
The duke frowned. “Certainly not. I shall have a word with the bitch.”
“Thank you, Your Grace. You have always required others to treat me with the respect due to your wife, and that is why I was certain I could depend on you for what I am about to ask.” Honey worked better than vinegar, one of the Haverford great aunts was fond of saying.
The duke smirked at the compliment and inclined his head, graciously indicating that she should continue.
Now for it. Best to say it straight out, as she had rehearsed a dozen times since she and Haverford’s base-born half-brother, who was also his steward, had concocted the strategy. “You may be aware, Your Grace, that I have been taking the mercury treatment for the pox. As I am a faithful wife, and have only ever had intimate knowledge of one man—yourself, Your Grace—I must assume it originated with you.”
As expected, Haverford erupted. “I will not—”
Eleanor held up a hand. “Your Grace has needs, and I would not normally comment on how you meet them, as long as any lovers you take within the household you have given me to manage are willing partners.”
She kept talking over his attempt to interrupt, hoping his temper would not override his manners. “I owe you a second son, Your Grace, and I fully intend to attempt to carry out that side of our bargain, but I have a request to make to keep me safe from falling ill again.”
He frowned, silenced for the moment. Eleanor thought it best to wait for him to speak. At least he was listening.
“Go on,” he said at last.
“My doctor has assured me that fewer than half of all people who contracted second stage syphilis moved into the deadlier third stage, and most of those had the disease multiple times. I would like to take steps to limit my risk, Your Grace.”
“What steps?”
In the end, Haverford lost his temper twice more before he signed the document she put before him. In it, he promised to not to require intimacy from Eleanor unless he had refrained from any potential source of the disease for six weeks, and had been inspected by a doctor.
She had delicately hinted at the retribution that would follow if he didn’t keep his word. A gentleman’s word was his bond, of course, but only when given to other gentlemen. Haverford would not hesitate to break an agreement with his wife, if it suited him.
Thanks to the duke’s training in politics, she knew all about the pressure to apply—in this case, the social contacts who would be informed of the whole disgusting situation if he broke his word. She had been a lady of the chamber to the Queen, was friends with several of the princesses, was sister to the current Earl of Farnmouth and sister-in-law to another earl and an earl’s second son.
Added to that there were all of her social contacts. Those she had been presented with were only the start. Being Haverford’s hostess had given her huge reach into the upper echelons of Society, especially those families headed by his political cronies and rivals.
One son, she contracted for, and a maximum of two pregnancies. Eleanor prayed she would conceive quickly, and that the child would not be a daughter.
To give Haverford credit, Eleanor conceded, he had stuck to the agreement. She put the cloth rabbit back into its box. Her copy of the agreement was still in the secret compartment, somewhere. Her co-conspirator, Fitz-Grenford, had a second copy, and the third had been given to her brother in a sealed envelope, to be opened only if she died unexpectedly or sent a message asking him to read it.
Presumably, that copy was somewhere in the papers inherited by her nephew. Perhaps she should ask for it back, for Haverford had not approached her with marital duties in mind since she announced that she was enceinte with the child who proved to be the wanted spare son.
She very much doubted that he ever would. After all, his mistresses and lovers were all twenty or thirty years younger than Eleanor.
On the other hand, he was behaving like a bad-tempered guard dog over James Winderfield’s return, and she wouldn’t put it past him to—mark his territory, as it were. The copies of the agreement had better stay where they were.
In truth, as long as the disease never recurred, Haverford had done her a favour. Without the incentive, she might have taken much longer to grasp what freedom she could.
At the firm rap on her door, she slid the hidden compartment back into place and moved the panels to return the escritoire to its normal appearance. She knew that knock. “Enter,” she called.
As expected, the visitor was Aldridge. Also as expected. He had been coming to her to be calmed after he’d worked himself into a fury since he was a little boy.
“Brandy, rather than tea, I think, my dear,” she said to him.
