“Insufferable presumption!” Lady Harriot burst out when we had achieved the Painted Hall. “To condescend, in my presence, to offer me a place in my own household! When it is I who should be suffering her to remain! I, who should assume the role of hostess now in my father’s home! Good God, could my mother only see it! Can His Grace be so miserably blind to the insults that are daily offered me?”

Lord Harold placed his hands on Lady Harriot’s shoulders and looked directly into her eyes.

“She is no longer young, Hary-O, and she is very much afraid of losing all that she possesses. Consider how precarious is her position! While your mother lived, she might remain here as the bosom friend of a Duchess. But now? She has no position, no protection, no tacit veil between Society and herself; all the world must know what Lady Elizabeth is, and comment upon her indelicacy. Do not allow such a woman to drive you to the gravest error — an error you might regret all your life! You cannot flee one misery by choosing another. Do you understand me?”

Lady Harriot glared into his face rebelliously; she started to speak, and Lord Harold laid his finger against her lips.

“Quell your delicious temper, my sweet, and play the pretty to your father’s guests. The duties of a hostess fall to those who seize them. Every notice you desire, Hary-O, is within your reach. It is Lady Elizabeth who exceeds her grasp.”

Lady Harriot took Lord Harold’s hand, planted a kiss in the palm, and then turned hurriedly to me. “We are to have a trifling dinner on Saturday, Miss Austen, in respect of my twenty-first birthday. Do I presume too much — or may I beg you to make another of the party?”

“With the greatest pleasure,” I replied. I was sensible of the signal honour Lady Harriot thus did me, in extending the invitation to a relative stranger; her warmth must be all on Lord Harold’s behalf.

“Until Saturday, then.”

She moved swiftly back towards the terrace and the waiting Danforth brothers without another glance at Lord Harold; and so I was free to witness the expression that swept across his countenance. It was hollow, and yearning — the palm she had kissed still cupped at air — and I recognised the look for what it was: the pain of a man denied his very breath of life.

Chapter 12

A Rough Justice

28 August 1806, cont.

LADY ELIZABETH FOSTER WAS BORN A HERVEY; AND as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu once famously observed, the world is divided into three sorts of people: men, women, and Herveys. They are a family marked by considerable beauty, by varied talents, and by eccentric behaviour; by a whining nasal tone to the voice, and a bird-like frame; by a thread of insanity and a singularity of character that inevitably embroil them in scandal. Divorces, bigamy, and the murder of duelling opponents have dogged the Hervey clan; there have been Herveys estranged from their wives, Herveys who die without recognising their children, Herveys who clutch at greatness and fall rather short. Lady Elizabeth Foster may be deemed one of these.

As the Cavendish carriage conveyed me steadily towards Bakewell, I reflected upon the nature of The Adventuress’s career. Its broad outlines were known to me, as they must be to anyone who has lived in the world.

Lady Elizabeth Foster is approaching the age of fifty. She was married when still quite young to an Irishman whose violent temper and habit of seducing his wife’s maids had early estranged her affections. Divorced by Mr. Foster after only a few years of marriage, she was deprived of her two sons, then in their infancy, and forced to live on a pittance. Her father, Lord Bristol — one of the more bizarre of the Hervey clan — then threw off Lady Elizabeth and her sister, whose marriage had also failed; and the two ladies moved forlornly about the watering-places of Europe, presuming upon the privileges of birth, and clinging to a threadbare decency. It was then that Lady Elizabeth fell in with the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire — childless, not long married, and not entirely able to suit one another.

She lived with the pair for over twenty years, acknowledged as the Duchess’s dearest friend and the Duke’s principal mistress. The perfect delight of the three in each other was not unmarred by comment; in the salons of the Great, eyebrows and questions were raised regarding the Duke’s behaviour, and rather more gossip concerning the Devonshire progeny. Georgiana’s daughters were deemed above suspicion; but Georgiana had also condescended to rescue several “orphans” from war-torn Europe, and had raised them as her own in the Devonshire nurseries. The Duchess, moreover, had gone so far as the Continent to produce her son and heir, Lord Hartington — accompanied by none other than Lady Elizabeth. The Vicious in Society wondered aloud whether Lord Hartington was Georgiana’s son — or a Hervey bastard, exchanged for an unwelcome daughter at birth.[7]

Lady Elizabeth’s continuance in the Chatsworth household after Georgiana’s death must be perceived as awkward, both by intimates of the Cavendish family and by those more hostile to their circumstances. Convention held that Lady Harriot should assume the duties of her father’s household, her elder sister being already several years married; and yet there was Lady Elizabeth — senior to Lady Harriot, clearly held in preference by the Duke, and determined to wrest at last some acknowledgement of her claims and position from the Great World.

She would continue to make life painful for Lady Harriot until the girl fled the Devonshire ménage for a suitable household of her own. Was it this that Lord Harold had meant, when he advised Hary-O not to exchange one misery for another? Could any young woman, raised in so divided a household, regard marriage as a form of salvation?

Lord Harold would not allow Georgiana’s daughter to fall prey to a man who had brutally despatched his own maid. But which did he fear most: the easy charm of Andrew Danforth, or the subtle warmth of his brother, Charles?

As we descended the Baslow road towards Bakewell, my thoughts turned from Lady Elizabeth to the scene that had preceded her entrance. Whatever had been her principal object in engrossing all our attention, Lady Elizabeth had certainly succeeded in diverting us from the Marquess. Young Lord Hartington had behaved in a most extraordinary manner; but I suspected that such was often the case. He had the look of a boy tormented: by grief, by the deafness his family seemed determined to ignore, by the rumours that had dogged his birth. He must often be flying alone on horseback through the fields of his father’s estate.

I’d hoped the witch had died in agony!

Disturbing sentiments to voice aloud, even in the company of one’s friends. It must be impossible that Lord Hartington would expose himself in such a way, were Tess Arnold a complete stranger to him. The bitterness of the pronouncement — his rejoicing at the maid’s death — suggested rather that the boy harboured some deep grievance towards the woman that found satisfaction in her gruesome murder. What could possibly inspire so profound a hate?