Miss Milton Speaks Her Mind Read online

  Stanton sat beside the bed, impeccable as always, but with closed eyes. To her amusement, the man in the bed put his finger to his lips. I will take it as a good omen, my lord, that you have retained your sense of humor through another long day much like the one before it, Jane thought. She tiptoed forward and placed the nightshirt on Lord Denby’s bed.

  “Shall I send Andrew in to wish you good night?” she asked as she always did, knowing the reply, but asking anyway.

  “No, Jane, no,” he replied as always. “You know my feelings on the subject.”

  “Yes, sir,” she whispered back, wishing as always that he would not be so unkind as to consider his grandson a “subject,” and not a little boy. “And how do you do, sir?”

  He did as always, as far as she could tell, managing somehow to lie in bed straight like a soldier should, his bedclothes in order and not twisted about from the restlessness of disease or even discomfort. Blair had been like that, she thought suddenly, organized and military until the final month when he quit caring and gave his wounds permission to overrun his own superbly maintained defenses.

  “I am going to die,” Lord Denby told her, his voice less soft now and his eyes on the sleeping butler. “I wish you would believe me.”

  “We are all going to die, sir,” she replied, surprising herself for the second time this evening with a touch more asperity in her voice than customary. “Mr. Lowe is convinced that you will feel much better if you take an interest in your surroundings.”

  I wish you would get angry enough at me to get out of bed, she thought, as the head of her family merely glared back. I can always rouse your sister to unimagined flights of fury with far less provocation.

  “An interest in my surroundings? Mr. Lowe would have us believe that is the height of medical achievement?”

  Well, I will take that as a slight improvement, she thought. You almost sound jocular, Lord Denby. I’m certain the mood will pass. “I suppose we are lucky, my lord,” she replied, with just the hint of a smile. “Stanton, did we disturb you?”

  The butler was awake now, and looking from her to his master. “Miss Milton, you don’t disturb me,” he said, the lightness of his words telling her that he had been listening to their casual banter. “My lord, didn’t you tell me only this morning that there is no pleasure greater than waking to the sight of a sweet-faced lady?”

  “It is merely Jane,” Lord Denby grumbled, but Jane could hear that same lighter tone. Or do I imagine it, she asked herself. No, I will be the optimist this evening. He is getting better. Maybe tomorrow he will be more charitable about his grandson. Maybe something will be different.

  “Do you know, Stanton, she almost smiled,” Lord Denby said.

  “I would smile more if you decided to throw back the covers tomorrow morning and send the footman running to the stable to call for your horse, sir,” she said.

  He only fixed her with his usual eagle stare. “Jane, you are the silliest member of this family. Go away now.”

  She left then, after a nod in the butler’s direction, and the proper curtsy to the family head. I will try again tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow has to be different.

  And if it is not? She stopped in the hall and leaned against the wall, closing her eyes against the pain of the regularity of her days. This is a strange night, she thought. One would think when I try to jolly Lord Denby that I am only trying to jolly myself. One would think.

  Andrew was already asleep when she let herself into his room. A reminiscence of the American war by one of Lord Denby’s old comrades was lying open on his chest. With a pang that she had been too late this night to read with him, Jane took it carefully from him, marked his place, and stood looking down.

  “I suppose you are too old to be read to,” she said softly, “but, my dear, if everyone else must suffer me in this household, so must you, as well.” She kissed him on the forehead, grateful that he was asleep and would take no exception to this small sign of her great affection. My dearest, have you any idea of the depths of my love? I scarcely do.

  It was a thought she took to bed unwillingly, knowing that in the strange honesty of sleep and dreams, she would dream of his father with more regret than she knew she could ever acknowledge in the light of day. For all that it had been a good day—Lady Carruthers had been distracted from spending all evening complaining about Andrew, and Lord Denby seemed almost inclined to good cheer—she knew that she would awake far too early, and in tears.

  She said her prayers on her knees as always, then laid herself down, already dreading the sorrow of her sleep and the pain each wakening brought, a private agony to be worked through before she dared show herself to anyone in the morning, a sweet-faced woman.

  It is not winter I so much dread, she thought as her eyes closed in resignation more than sleep; it is every day.

  Chapter Two

  She woke too early, jolted awake and staring at something that was not there, alert to the smallest sounds. There were none, of course. She tried to relax, remembering a time—it had been years—when she could roll over, snuggle down deeper in the mattress, and return herself to slumber. As she lay there in the dark, Jane tried to remember just how long ago that had been. She thought first of the workhouse, something she never cared to reflect on, but which occasionally surfaced like a piece of shrapnel embedded deep in flesh that works its way to the top of the skin.

  No, it was not the workhouse. She never woke there one second sooner than needed, mainly because even at age eight or nine—was it twenty years ago now?—she went to sleep exhausted and clung to every particle of sleep grudged to her.

  The years in Dame Chaffee’s School for Young Ladies? Jane almost smiled into the darkness, remembering her years of growth and how hungry she always was, even though Eliza Chaffee could never be accused of setting a stingy table. I have never wanted for appetite, she thought, though Lady Carruthers scolds when I take second helpings. It must be a particular trial to her that I never put on weight.

  “No, indeed, not at the Dame’s school,” she said as she sat up in bed. “You were hungry, Jane, but you slept well.” She never woke early at school, especially after she was seventeen and put in charge of the littlest girls who boarded there. She did smile then, remembering her cherubs, who were probably even now preparing for come-outs in London. Has it been so long? she asked herself with a pang. My dears, you all ran me ragged at Dame Chaffee’s. Now I suppose you will dance merry tunes for husbands or lovers—perhaps both. I wonder, do you ever think of me?

  Jane knew that no one did, and there was nothing in her thoughts of ill-use or self pity. Lady Carruthers had been telling her for years that she had nothing to recommend herself, and Jane could find no argument.

  “Except for Andrew,” she amended, as she always did. “Andrew would miss me.” She sighed and closed her eyes as she wrapped her arms around her knees, perfectly comfortable, even if the sun was not up. That was it; from the moment Andrew had been put in her arms when she was almost eighteen, she never slept soundly again. It has been nearly twelve years, she told herself in dismay. Am I so old? Better still, was I ever young?

  For all that she was the poor relation, she had believed Blair Stover—more properly Viscount Canfield from one of their family’s numerous honors—when he had put his small son in her arms, winked at her in that way of his, and said, “Janey, just keep an eye on him for a little while, won’t you? Lucinda claims that if she cannot bolt to Leeds to peruse the silk warehouses, she will dissolve.”

  Strange that after all these years she could remember that plea from Blair. Home to Denby from Dame Chaffee’s and waiting for her first position in a household, she had been only too pleased to take the infant in her arms, enjoy the sweet smell of him, and watch him quite carefully during the day of Lord and Lady Canfield’s expedition to Leeds, the first after Lucinda’s confinement.

  Jane looked out the window and was rewarded with the sight of dawn glowing dull red to the east. “Oh, it will
rain today,” she said out loud, straightening out her legs and tucking the coverlet tighter. “Andrew will be so disappointed.”

  She kept her gaze on the window, remembering that she had been sitting in the window seat at dusk with her knees up and Andrew, burped and fed, regarding her with sleepy eyes from his resting spot on her stomach, when a messenger arrived on horseback from Leeds. Not enough years had passed for her to forget Lady Carruthers’ shrieks from the front hall, the long silence, and then the butler’s heavy tread on the stairs.

  “I put you right here on my bed, Andrew,” she said, as though he were there. “You were six weeks old, and I laid you down right there, and opened that door to such awful news.”

  The butler had been unable to speak. She thought about him, dead these several years, recalling vividly the way his mouth had opened and closed, and the way he had crumbled into tears before her eyes. Never before or since could she remember a butler succumbing so entirely to grief, and as she sat in bed, the memory made her tuck the covers tighter.

  When he could not speak, she shouldered her way past him and ran down the stairs where the footman—butler now—was attempting to revive Lady Carruthers. “Stanton,” was all she said. She could still see Stanton gentling Lady Carruthers’ head back to the floor and rising to grab her by the shoulders. Standing there so close to her, he told her of the contents of the note that rested by Lady Carruthers’ hand, fluttering a little from the breeze let in by the still-open door.

  She had heard him in shock and horror, and then released herself from his grasp to retrieve the note, as though she did not believe his words. She recognized her cousin Blair’s untidy scrawl, and how the words “accident” and “near death” leaped out at her like imps.

  I suppose I could have made some effort to revive Lady Carruthers, she thought, but felt no more regret now than she had all those years ago. Instead, she had pulled herself hand over hand up the stairs again, hardly noticing Lord Denby’s rush down them, and then the sound of his carriage leaving the estate with the crack of a whip and the sudden grind of gravel on the front driveway. She had returned silently to her room and picked up the baby, as though to shelter him from the news that had changed his young world even before he was aware of it.

  Messengers had come and gone those next two days, but she knew nothing of Andrew’s young mother. Even then, Lady Carruthers had been disinclined to grudge her any civility, and she had not the heart to ask. She should have known that Lady Carruthers would later throw it back in her face that she was callous and had a heart of stone, but at the time, she only wondered and grieved deep inside herself, and held the baby.

  Two days later, Lord Denby and his son returned to Stover Hall in a carriage swathed in black. Ignoring everyone, Blair had let himself into her room to hold out his arms for his son and sit with him in silence.

  Jane got out of bed and lit the lamp on her bureau, welcoming the little light that forced the demons back into the shadows. She sat in the chair that Blair had sat in so many years ago with his small son resting along his legs. His voice a perfect monotone, he had told her how Lucinda, her arms full of packages, had looked both ways before attempting to cross the High Street, and then stepped out directly in front of a mailcoach.

  “She knew it was there, Janey, she had to know,” he had told her. “She was so happy to be back in the shops again! I think she just forgot what she was doing. I had turned to speak to an acquaintance. Janey, the last thing she said to me was ‘Oh, I hope it will hurry by and not spatter me with mud.’ And then she just ... just walked in front of it!”

  Watching the lamplight, Jane knew that no amount of years would ever dim the amazed grief in her cousin’s voice. It had been forceful enough to wake his son, who stirred, made little mewing sounds, and then cried. She had taken the baby from him to caress into sleep again.

  “Why did she do that, Janey? Did she just not realize? Was she that excited?”

  She had never questioned the strangeness of Lady Lucinda’s death, because she knew the impulsive nature of the dear creature who had captured her cousin’s heart, and both of them so young. When the rumors started about suicide and worse, Jane had simply closed her ears; she knew the truth. Wrapped up in her excitement and pleasure, Lucinda had walked before she thought, and her fatal steps so many years ago had, in their own odd way, dragged them all after her.

  The worse horror to Jane was that the poor woman had lingered in such pain for two days. His own voice destroyed with grief, Blair told her how Lucy had patted her deathbed, as though searching for her baby.

  “Oh God, Jane, I remember how she used to wake up at night and pat our own bed, hunting for Andrew,” he told her. “She laughed about it, and assured me that this must be an instinct mothers had. My God, Jane, she would not stop patting that bloody bed, and then digging into the mattress with her fingers! I will hear that sound forever.”

  And so I became your mother, Andrew, she thought, as she made her bed. She must have been a few moments later rising than usual, because she was still sitting on her bed in her chemise and petticoat when the second upstairs maid tiptoed in with the copper can of hot water.

  “Miss Mitten, I wish you would sleep longer!” Becky said, as she set down the can.

  It was their little joke, begun when Becky arrived from the workhouse as the new ’tween stairs girl, terrified and tongue-tied, even as she had come from there herself, all those years ago. No one else would bother to put the child at ease, so Jane did, the result being that Lady Carruthers announced with some satisfaction to dinner guests one night, “It takes a servant to deal with a servant, I suppose.” No matter; Lady Carruthers’ words no longer flayed her, as they once would have. Becky could never do enough for her and Andrew, and that was enough result from a little kindness.

  “You know I cannot sleep longer,” Jane replied, providing her share of the tease. “You must wake up before you ever go to sleep, to catch me, my dear!” She stood up to twist her hair into its usual tidy knot. A pin here, a pin there; she scarcely had to look into the glass, except that Becky was watching.

  The maid sighed, then looked around before she spoke. “I don’t care what Lady Carruthers says, miss, I wish you would not wear those dratted caps, because your hair is so beautiful.”

  “Lady Carruthers says that I need the dignity,” Jane said, as she settled her cap at its customary angle. “You are a dear, though.”

  She buttoned her dress thoughtfully, mindful of the mirror as she seldom was. It was nice hair, thick and black and so unlike Lady Carruthers’ thinning brown hair. No argument with her figure, either; Lady Carruthers regularly cast her glances that could only be called envious. Or her grace; Blair had even once told his ill-starred Lucinda that she could copy his cousin’s graceful way of getting from room to room without mishap to furniture or dignity. (Jane had scolded Blair then, reminding him that any woman seven months gone with child had gravity troubles that would baffle even Sir Isaac Newton.)

  There was a time when mirrors interested her, and she thought of it now, that year she was sixteen and completing her final year before she began to teach the younger girls. Dame Chaffee’s pimply son, home from Cambridge for some infraction, had composed a poem to her “eyes of sea foam green, sprung from limping pools where Venus rose,” or some such nonsense created when he should have been repenting with his books. She was certain he meant “limpid,” but at sixteen, a poem was a poem.

  By seventeen she was too busy to think about poems, and chose from then on not to give much heed to her own reflection, no matter how sea foam green her eyes, or even how glorious her skin. No more poems found their way under her door; she would have been certain they were intended for someone else, had one appeared.

  But that was years ago, she reminded herself as she quit her room that morning. “No, no, Jane, do be honest,” she said under her breath. “As of next January, you will be thirty, and it will be twelve years.”

  She hurried toward Lo
rd Denby’s room, intending only to look in, and see if he needed anything, but she could not face the smell of the sickroom. Instead, she stopped on impulse, looked around, and let herself into Blair’s room.

  To her surprise, the draperies were open. She almost exclaimed, before she thought, that it was too much light for an invalid, even if it was the October sun, which steadily lost its strength. She gritted her teeth and reminded herself that Blair Stover, Viscount Canfield, Lieutenant Colonel of the Sixth Foot, slept in the Denby family vault.

  She knew that she could never perch upon that bed again, so she settled herself on the campaign chest at the foot of it. The bedding had been stripped from the mattress, and the whole thing covered with a spread, and she wondered why no one had thought to burn the wretched mattress and replace it with a new one.

  Jane looked around, afraid for one irrational moment that nothing had been done since that horrid death in the early hours six months ago. She relaxed; all the bloody cotton wadding was gone, as well as the useless medications that had lined the table beside the bed, and the puny edition of Rudge’s Medicament that she had ripped through frantically in those last moments of his life.

  She knew the pillows were gone and burned, because after Mr. Lowe’s early-morning arrival and official pronouncement of death (as though anyone could still be alive with what remained of his blood spread like a rug on the floor), she had marched downstairs with the sodden pillows in her arms, and quick-stepped them across the endless lawn to the fenced area where the gardener burned old leaves.

  The door opened and she looked around in surprise. “Well, Stanton,” she said, “I thought I had sneaked in here unaware.”

  Lord Denby’s butler closed the door behind him and joined her on the campaign chest, obviously as unwilling to sit on the bed as she was, even after six months.