London - Edward Rutherfurd [457]
All she had needed, next, was an accomplice. That had not been difficult to find. The shabby, green-eyed woman she had finally selected in a dark corner of Covent Garden had no idea who the strange lady wrapped in a cloak might be, but the payment of five pounds, together with the promise of another ten when the business was completed, had been more than enough to secure her cooperation, with no questions asked.
The servants at Hanover Square had been astonished when suddenly, two days after his lordship had gone, her ladyship had suddenly become anxious.
The child was sick, she announced. The wet-nurse was at fault. The girl was dismissed. Goat’s milk must be found. “None may come near the child,” my ladyship insisted, “but myself.” Nobody had ever seen her like this. They offered to call the nurse, the doctor. She seemed to consider it, but decided: “I trust no one.” Then, one terrible dawn, there was a scream. Her ladyship, distracted, rushed downstairs, carrying the baby, wrapped in a shawl. She gave orders: the fast post-chaise must be ready within the hour. She was going to Bocton. To Bocton, if you please, which she never liked, and at this hour of the morning! She would take no one with her but the coachman and a groom.
“Country air,” she cried. “The baby needs air. Give him country air,” she insisted, “and he will be well.” Then she rushed out into the square with the baby – who would dare stop her? – and disappeared for nearly an hour.
What a mad drive that was. Clattering over London Bridge, through Southwark, out on the old Kent road that leads up to high bare Blackheath and the long drag of Shooter’s Hill; the groom riding postilion, half-terrified of highwaymen; hour after hour they went, only stopping to change horses at Dartford and later at Rochester. How her ladyship drove them on, would not even leave the carriage when the horses were changed but told them to bring her a chamber pot. It was dusk already, that March day, when they came at last to the ridge and the wooded park of Bocton, where the astonished housekeeper had to hurry to make up the chamber to which her ladyship, holding the child close to her, immediately retired.
And it was a most astonished doctor from Rochester, summoned the next morning, who announced:
“This child has been dead a whole day at least.”
But Lady St James, it seemed, was far gone by then, insisting distractedly that, now it had country air, the baby would be well, and the doctor had wisely taken the little corpse away with him.
Ten days later, when Lord St James returned from the north, it was to find that his heir was safely buried in the little churchyard by the deer park at Bocton and that his wife was practically out of her mind with grief – so much so that for a time he had feared she might go mad.
This was the dark memory that assailed her ladyship as she sat alone in her chamber at Hanover Square, nearly eight years later, with her hair so perfectly coiffed.
For her real child, whom she had exchanged for the dead one during her early morning disappearance, she felt nothing. When the woman from Covent Garden had asked her what to do with it, she had hissed: “Do what you like. So long as I never see it again.” Nor had she. I did not kill the child, she told herself. She just hoped that it was dead.
But that was long ago. And hush, her ladiesmaid has entered the room, to help her ladyship into that gorgeous dress, so that she can go out.
Isaac Fleming could afford to be happy. His account to Lady St James was for no less than thirty pounds; since the huge order of cakes he had sent her had been, he knew, of the finest quality, he hoped that it would lead to a profitable business. Like many who have not had the good fortune to serve a truly fashionable clientele, Isaac Fleming was under the impression that the aristocracy always paid their bills.
“Perhaps,” he told his family, “she will recommend