Margaret McPhee – Temptation In Regency Society: Unmasking the Duke's Mistress (страница 9)

‘It is only me,’ Arabella whispered in the darkness, but Mrs Tatton was already struggling to her feet, armed with the chamber pot as a makeshift weapon.

‘Oh, Arabella, you startled me.’

‘Forgive me, Mama.’ Arabella made her way across the room by the light of a nearby street lamp that glowed through the little window.

‘What are you doing home so early? I had not thought to see you until the morning.’ Her mother’s hair hung in a heavy long grey braid over one shoulder and she was wearing the same crumpled dress she had worn for the last five days. Then her eyes widened with fear. ‘The workshop have turned you off!’

‘There has been a change of plan, it is true,’ Arabella said and quickly added, ‘But you need have no worry. It is for the better.’

‘What do you mean, Arabella? What change?’

‘It is an arrangement that will ensure we do not end up in the workhouse.’ She glanced towards the sleeping form of her son. ‘We will live in a warm furnished house in a good respectable area, wear clean clothes and have three square meals a day. I will have enough money that Archie need not go without. And you, Mama, can have the best of medicines in London. We will not be cold. We will not be hungry. And …’ She glanced towards the footsteps that passed on the landing outside. She lowered her voice, ‘We will be safe from robberies and fear of assault.’

Her mother set the chamber pot down on the floor and came to stand before Arabella, staring into her face.

‘What manner of arrangement?’

Arabella felt herself blush and had to force herself to meet her mother’s gaze. She had known this moment would come and could not shrink from it. Better they spoke of it while Archie was not awake to hear. They would be moving out of here in a few days and there was no way that Arabella could continue her pretence. She had to tell her mother the truth … just not all of it.

‘With a gentleman.’

‘Oh, Arabella!’ Her mother clasped a hand to her mouth. ‘You cannot!’

‘I know it is a very great shock to you,’ she said in a calm reassuring voice that belied everything she was feeling. ‘And I am not proud of it.’ She was ashamed to the very core of her being, but she knew in order to make this bearable she must hide her true emotions from her mother. She must stand firm. Be strong. ‘But believe me when I tell you it is the best of the choices available. Do not seek to dissuade me from this, Mama, for my mind is quite made up.’

‘There was no workshop, was there?’ her mother asked in a deadened voice.

‘No.’ She saw the tremble in the old swollen hand that Mrs Tatton still clutched to her mouth and felt as bad as if she had just reached across and dealt her mother a physical blow.

‘And the gentleman?’

Arabella swallowed and averted her gaze. ‘It is best that he remains nameless for now.’ If her mother knew it was Dominic to whom she was selling herself there would be no force in heaven or on earth that could stop the awful cascade that would ensue.

‘Really?’ Mrs Tatton said in a hard voice that revealed to Arabella everything of her mother’s disillusionment and hurt. ‘And have you told him yet of Archie and of me?’

‘No,’ said Arabella quietly and her heart was racing and all of her fears rushed back as fast and frantic as a spring tide racing up a shore. ‘He need know nothing of either of you.’

‘It will be his house, Arabella. Do you not think he will notice an old woman and a child cluttering his path to his fancy piece?’ Mrs Tatton’s nostrils flared, revealing the extent of her distress.

Oh, indeed, Dominic would more than notice Archie in his path, Arabella thought grimly.

‘It will be a large house and he will not visit very often.’ She had been very careful in her negotiations with Dominic, forcing herself to think only of Archie’s safety and not the baseness of what she was doing, laying out her demands like the most callous of harlots. ‘All we need do is keep you both hidden from his sight when he does come.’ Words so simply spoken for her mother’s sake, but Arabella knew that they would have to be very careful indeed to hide the truth.

‘You think you are so clever, Arabella. You think you have it all planned out, do you not?’ Mrs Tatton said. ‘But what of the servants? It is the gentleman’s money that will pay their wages. They will be loyal to him. At the first opportunity they will be running to him behind your back, eager to spill your secrets. And he shall send Archie and me away.’

‘Do you think I would stay without you?’ she demanded. ‘It is true that it is his money that will pay the servants. But it is also true that if I dissolve our agreement, which I would most certainly do were they to tell him of your and Archie’s presence, then they shall be out of a job as much as me. I shall put it to them that it is in their interest, as much as mine, that we keep your presence secret from the gentleman.’

‘For men like him there are plenty more where you came from. Do not hold yourself so precious to him, Arabella,’ her mother warned.

The smile that slipped across Arabella’s face was bitter. ‘Oh, Mama, I know that I am not precious to him at all. Do not think that I would ever make that mistake.’ The word again went unspoken. ‘But he will take the house and the servants for me. And were I to leave, he would let them go again just as easily.’

‘Then we best pray that you are right, Archie and I.’ Mrs Tatton turned her face away but not before Arabella saw the shimmer of wetness upon her cheeks.

Mrs Tatton did not look round again, nor did she return to bed. She just stood there by the empty black fireplace, staring down on to the bare hearth. And when Arabella would have placed an arm of comfort around her mother’s shoulders, Mrs Tatton pulled away as if she could not bear the touch of so fallen a woman.

Arabella’s hand dropped back down to her side; inside of her the shame ate away a little more of her soul. She wondered what her mother’s reaction would be if she knew what the alternative had been. And she wondered how much worse her mother’s reaction would be if she ever learned that the man in question was Dominic Furneaux.

Chapter Four

Dominic was supposed to be paying attention as his secretary continued working his way through the great pile of correspondence balanced on the desk between them.

‘The Philanthropic Society has invited you to a dinner in June.’ Barclay glanced up from checking Dominic’s appointments diary. ‘You are free on the evening in question.’

‘Then I will attend.’ Dominic gave a nod and heard Barclay’s pen nib scratch upon the paper. But Dominic’s attention was barely fixed on the task in hand. He was thinking of Arabella and the discomposure he had felt since seeing her last.

‘The Royal Humane Society has written of its need for more boats. As one of the society’s patron you are in receipt of a full report of …’

Barclay’s words faded into the background as Dominic’s mind drifted back to Arabella. While making her his mistress had seemed the perfect solution at the time, in the cold light of day and after a night of fitful sleep, Dominic was not so sure. He had revisited their meeting during the long hours of the night, seeing it again in his mind, hearing every word of their exchange, and he could not remain unaware of a growing uneasiness.

Surviving. The word seemed to niggle in his brain. Her explanation of what she was doing there did not sit well with the later claim that she was in Mrs Silver’s House out of choice. Surviving. The word pricked at him.

Barclay gave a cough in the silence and cleared his throat loudly.

‘Most interesting,’ Dominic said, having heard not a word of what the report had been about. ‘Organise that they receive a hundred pounds.’

‘Very good, your Grace.’

‘Is that all for today?’ He could barely conceal his impatience. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to think.

‘Indeed, your Grace.’ Barclay replied, checking the diary again. ‘Except to remind you that you are due at Somerset House for a Royal Society lecture this afternoon at two o’clock and that you are sitting in the House of Lords tomorrow to debate Sir John Craddock’s replacement in Portugal by Sir Arthur Wellesley.’

Dominic gave a nod. ‘Thank you, Barclay. That will be all.’

And when his secretary left, taking with him the great pile of paper, Dominic leaned back in his chair and focused his thoughts fully on Arabella.

***

Arabella had to endure two days of pleadings. Mrs Tatton begged that Arabella would not cheapen herself and warned her that once it was done there would be no going back. She cried and shouted, persuaded and coerced, but once the shock had lessened and her mother saw that Arabella would not be moved, then Mrs Tatton’s protestations fell by the wayside and, to Arabella’s relief, no more was said about it. She seemed to have accepted the inevitability and necessity of what would happen and steeled herself to the task every bit as much as Arabella.

Which was well, for on the Friday morning of that week a fine carriage and four arrived outside their lodgings in Flower and Dean Street. Every face in the street stared at the carriage, for nothing so grand had ever been seen there before. Archie stared in excitement at the team of bays and kept asking if he might run down the stairs to see them more closely. It pained Arabella to deny him and to force him away from the window for fear that Dominic himself might be within the carriage.