Chapter Sixteen
The visit with Lady Catherine went well, and Lady Caroline paid two more visits on her own. These discussions must have settled the Dowager Countess’ mind because the last evening of her visit she took Roberta into their confidential drawing room to speak of her errands once more.
The two settled themselves into the chairs by the fire with a decanter of fine sherry, a wedding gift from the First Lord―some of his coveted amontillado.
“Have you written the letter to the Marquess?” Lady Caroline asked.
Roberta smiled and shook her head. “I have started several, but none of them seemed fit to send.”
“I sympathise with you. It must be difficult to write such a letter to someone you have never met. Perhaps the words I must speak to you before I leave will put some fire into your thoughts.”
Roberta stared, but said nothing.
“This is the worst of the messages my Brother required me to carry.” She paused. “I could not think of a way to speak them that held both decency and accuracy, but my old friend suggested I let you make of them what you will. That you would know that his plan was nothing that I could countenance.”
Roberta took a generous taste of the sherry and waited with her eyes riveted to her companion’s face.
“My Brother said that if you would oblige him with a confession of adultery he would . . . ‘make it worth your while’ . . . were his words.”
Roberta’s temper rose but she held her peace.
“He said that he knew of several noblemen in straightened circumstances who would marry you after the divorce if he were to pay them a yearly remittance. One is a Marquess and the others a viscount and a baron―”
Roberta’s words spilled out. “He thinks I need his assistance to find a husband? I will inform him that I do not need any man who has to be hired to give me his name. Does he still believe that I only married Julian for his peerage?”
“I’m afraid he does. The powers of nobility crowd all other possibilities from his mind.”
“They do not cloud mine. In fact, his plotting clarifies them most starkly. If the power of aristocracy does this to men, I want to have as little to do with it as I possibly can. I was quite prepared to honour my vows at our marriage if Julian has any chance of changing and acting like a man in love. A man bound in duty by his marriage vows.” She set her glass of sherry heavily onto the table beside her chair as Elise’s image came to her. “I quite accept that he will often stray and humiliate me as we grow older and yet would steel myself to accept his remorse, such as it may be, until it should happen again. All this in the hope that my forbearance and example should serve as a guide, as a lighthouse that would return him to the steady course he is missing. But if this is what the power of a peerage would likely do―. If he may grow more selfish and more arrogant as the years pass then I am best out of this trap I have fallen into.”
“I am so sorry, My Dear.”
“Thank you for telling me, Aunt Caroline. I believe I know exactly what I must write to my father-in-law. If you will excuse me, I would go to the library and write while the words are in my head.”
Roberta opened the writing desk and found a goose-quill ready sharpened and the inkwell fully stocked from her previous visit to the sheets of paper. She lifted one from the drawer and immediately the pen seemed to have a life of its own as the nib flew over the paper.
My Lord, Marquess of Tiverton―, Sir. It is related to me that you expressly wished me to write this letter―an impertinence I would not have entered into without your leave . . . so distasteful is the writing of it and I do not doubt, the reading of it.
Firstly be informed that I have faithfully carried out the whole of my duties as wife to your son, and consider myself disgracefully ill-served by the head of the family in return. I will say only this of the insult you have dealt me in the message you required My Aunt, the Lady Caroline, to relate to me―a shameful and most unfraternal task that ever a man has contemplated―Please be informed that I will under no circumstances take any payment, bribe, or favour from you now or in the future.
Secondly, be informed that I have never committed nor contemplated the sin of adultery and will neither break nor sin upon the vows I made to the Lord My God at the marriage ceremony held on Thursday, September seventeenth in the year of Our Lord Eighteen Hundred and Fourteen aboard His Majesty’s frigate Medusa while off Flushing in the Channel. I will not consent to swear dishonestly in any court against the vows I made to my Maker on that day. None whatsoever.
However, I am advised that due to the unusual nature and circumstances of the nuptials so carried out that I may find some irregularity in the sacerdotal conduct of the matter, should I request they be investigated by the fathers of the church. Since it is my marriage that we are considering, which is―in the sight of God―no business of yours, I may at some future date request that you not intervene nor in any way attempt to influence the carrying out of this duty. I would also, on point of law, ask you not to slander in any way myself or those who might be acting on my part in the matter . . . neither should you bring any other hardship upon them.
I sign this letter as your most dutiful and innocent daughter, Roberta. Lady Bond. Nee Stephenson.
With that, she blotted the ink from the sand glass, quickly folded the paper into an envelope, wrote the name of the addressee, and sealed it with sealing wax at each corner. Taking only long enough to set the writing implements back in their drawers she went back to the drawing room in the hope that Lady Caroline was still there. She was.
“May I prevail upon you to return this reply to your Brother?”
Lady Caroline looked up in some surprise. “It is done?”
“Yes. Please take it for me.”
“I will. Perhaps it is better taken from your hand while the ink is barely dry. No time for second thoughts, eh?”
“No. I have told him my mind.”