Marrying the Mistress

‘But one does like to have a say, nowadays, in who the father is to be. Even mistresses appreciate some warning of that event.’

‘Think about it,’ he snapped. ‘Had you been warned, as you put it, there’d have been no Jamie, would there?’

‘No, my lord. There most certainly would not.’ I had to admit defeat on that brief skirmish, and I had no stomach for a prolonged argument on the topic. I closed my eyes with a sigh, holding a gloved hand to my forehead. ‘This will not do,’ I whispered. ‘It’s too soon for recriminations. Or too late. I’m tired. It’s time I went home.’

He watched me, saying nothing as I recovered.

‘I know there will be changes,’ I said. ‘I’ve had time to prepare for them, whatever they are. And thank you for your offer of a loan, but I think we shall manage for the time being. I also owe you thanks for allowing me access to Linas at the end. That was generous too, and…and appreciated…’ My voice wavered and caught at the back of my throat, dissolving the last word. I took some deep breaths to steady it.

‘It was no more than you deserve. It was your careful nursing that kept him alive longer than his doctors had predicted.’

‘I think it’s more likely to be Jamie who did that.’

‘Yes, that too. Jamie was your other gift to him. Linas was a very fortunate man. He told me so more than once.’

‘Did he?’ I remarked, tonelessly, wistfully.

‘Did he never tell you so?’

‘No. Not even at the end. I think the pain made him forgetful. Or perhaps he thought I was the fortunate one. I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter now, does it? But I mean what I say about not hearing the will read, my lord. I would be out of place. I am not family and I have few expectations, except for Jamie, having fulfilled the role I was employed to do, to everyone’s satisfaction.’

‘You were not employed in any capacity, Miss Follet. You were my brother’s partner. It was his decision not to marry when he discovered he had so few years to live, and our family agreed that for him to do so would serve no useful purpose.’

‘Rather like good farm management, I suppose. You see, I am well able to think it out for myself, Lord Winterson. Having a mistress to support for just a few years was safer than taking on a wife. Linas preferred an illegitimate heir able to legally inherit and keep his estate intact, to a widow who would remarry and siphon it off into another man’s pockets. But don’t tell me that I was not employed, for that is certainly what I was, and I shall not sit with you round a table to be told that my golden goose has gone and left me nothing except my bastard child to care for. You may be very sure I shall guard my only treasure against any attempt to siphon him off into another man’s pocket. He may be the Monkton heir, but he is also my only legacy. Mine, my lord.’

I should not have said it, not then when emotions were so raw, Linas barely out of earshot, and both of us so tired. But my resentments were begging for release, freeing up words that I should have kept tightly controlled, as I had always done. I could have blamed my outspokenness on my northern roots, but that was too easy an excuse. So I held my breath and waited for him to retaliate in the usual Winterson fashion, with a set-down meant to silence me for months. Which he had every right to do.

His reply, when it emerged, was a calm reiteration of his claim. ‘And he is mine too, Helene. Linas has made me his legal guardian and you will have to get used to the idea, like it or not.’

‘I don’t like it.’

‘But I think Jamie will. He needs an active father, now he’s growing up. He needs more to do than walks with his nurse.’

‘He’s still only a babe. He needs only me.’

‘So let’s wait till we’ve heard what provisions Linas has made for you, then we shall know better what his needs are, shan’t we? You are exhausted, and so am I. It’s time you were home. Come. I have to get back to Abbots Mere before the snow gets deeper.’

‘What about the servants?’ I said, relieved to have been let off so lightly. ‘You came here to—’

‘Brierley can stay to deal with that. He lives on Petergate. You should trust him. He’s an honest man.’

‘I’m sure he is. He’ll have your interests at heart.’

‘And Jamie’s. Is that such a bad thing?’

Still, I could not help myself. Perhaps I wanted to provoke him, to make him react, in spite of his courtesy to me. Perhaps I was a little mad that day. ‘If I was retaining him,’ I said, ‘it would not be such a bad thing. But I’m not, am I?’

We had reached the door where his hand rested upon the large brass knob but, as my stupidly caustic remark stung him into action, he turned to me with characteristic speed, taking me by the shoulders with hands that bit through all my woollen layers. Holding me back against the deeply carved doorcase, he bent his head to look inside my hood and, whatever anger he saw on my face, it could have been nothing to the fury on his.

‘Stop it, woman!’ he snarled. ‘You think you’re the only loser in this damned business? You think you’ve had the thin end of the wedge, do you? Well, do you? Forget it. He was my brother. You had him for the best part of six years. I had him for thirty. We both…you and me…did what he wanted us to do, and if you had less choice in the matter than you’d have liked, well, I had just as little. I did it for him, and you believed I did it for you, didn’t you? That’s why you’re so angry. D’ye think I make a habit of creeping into my lady guests’ beds while they’re asleep?’

Since he was being kind enough to ask my opinion on that, I’d like to have said that he must have had a fair bit of practice at it. But, no, I said nothing of the kind. Nothing at all, in fact. I simply shook my head, which made my hood fall off. I noticed two new hairline creases from his nose to his mouth. I noticed that his eyelids were puffy, as if he’d been weeping. I noticed a sprinkling of silver hairs in that luxurious dark mop, just above his ears.

‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered. ‘I’m overwrought. We both need to rest.’

He sighed through his nose with lips compressed, and I thought he was going to say more because his eyes held mine, letting me read the sadness written there more eloquently than words. Then he released me, and I felt the tingling where his hands had been, and I stood still while he pulled up my hood and settled it round my face. I was under no illusions; he would do the same for any of his closer woman friends, I was sure. Perhaps their minds would empty too, just for those few seconds.

‘Calm down,’ he said, gruffly. ‘Go home and get warm. Come on.’

Outside on the pavement, the lamplighter clambered down his ladder into the horizontal white blizzard, having cast a halo of light dancing across the ghostly snow-covered figures below. Lord Winterson’s groom emerged from the narrow alley that led to Linas’s courtyard and stables, riding one horse and leading the mighty grey hunter that blew clouds of white into the freezing air. ‘Follow on,’ Winterson called to him, taking my arm and linking it through his.

‘I can manage,’ I said, ready to pull away. ‘Really I can.’

But he clamped my hand with his elbow and, bending his head into the snowstorm, began to escort me home, not far, but far enough for us both to struggle against the conditions. His only conversation was, ‘Mind…take care…hold on…you all right?’

Standing under the porch before the door, I thanked him.

‘Stay at home till it clears,’ he said. ‘I’ll contact you as soon as I can get through. See Brierley if you need anything. He’ll help.’

I nodded and watched his effortless leap into the saddle, wheeling away as if the snow was no more than a mild shower. Across on the other side of Blake Street, the lights in the workroom, more properly known as Follet and Sanders, Mantua-maker, Milliner and Fabric Emporium, had been extinguished earlier than usual to allow the girls to get home, though I knew that Prue Sanders would still be working at the back of the shop on the new year’s orders, the alterations on ballgowns, fur trims and muffs. The cold weather had swept in from the north-east with a vengeance that year, and I had ordered that the fire in the sewing room should be kept burning constantly to keep the place warm. It was an expensive luxury I had not budgeted for, and my recent assurances that I could manage were not nearly as certain as I’d made them sound. But not for any reason would I have accepted a penny from him. Prue and I would have to manage on what the business earned.

That evening, however, my thoughts were in turmoil, for although my contacts with Lord Winterson had always been as brief as I could make them, this was the first time he and I had spoken about what had gone before, about his claim to Jamie, or about my feelings on the matter. As long as Linas lived, the subject had been studiously avoided, and now the impromptu unveiling had shaken me, if only because I had believed until then that he and Linas were alike in refusing to discuss things they found too uncomfortable. I had been proved wrong.

Only a day after his brother’s funeral, Winterson had brought out our shameful secret for its first airing, along with the reason for it and the well-planned result of it. My Jamie. He was right: I was angry, not because I was mistaken about his motives—for those I knew by then—but because he had known how easily I would give myself to him that night, repeatedly, willingly, and with little conscience. He had known, and my pride was wounded to the quick that all our mutual antagonism had been so easily suspended in the face of a temptation like that. How shallow he must think me. How disloyal. How easy.

What he would never know, though, was that I had fed off that experience since it happened, savouring it every night through each amazing phase, knowing that it would never be mine again. And since he had been unconvinced of my dislike of him before the event, I must of necessity try harder to convince him of it afterwards. His accusation about keeping Jamie at a distance from him was a part of my strategy but, with him now as Jamie’s guardian, I would find that more difficult, thanks to Linas.

Chapter Two

Thanks also to the weather, that part of my plan held up well when all the traffic in and out of the city was stopped for more than a week until men could shovel paths through the deep drifts, allowing access to the suburbs. We heard reports of farmers losing sheep, of snow burying hedges and cottages, trapping the mail-coach miles away with all its passengers, and the drowning of some young lads who had played upon frozen ponds. Fresh falls of snow added more depth to the fields each morning and broke branches off trees, the dropping temperatures killing everything that was too old, frail or poor to keep warm. The thermometer in Linas’s hall registered thirty degrees Fahrenheit, and a few days later we had twenty degrees of frost. I had never experienced such cold.

All through the freeze, my daily visits to Stonegate continued, partly to check on the remaining servants and partly to mentally mop up what was left of the essence pervading each room. In one way I had to be thankful that his suffering had ended at last, for I had not found it easy to watch him die and know that there was no way of stopping it happening. Jamie’s birth had done more than anything to extend the reprieve, but Winterson had been right to suggest that, when his brother’s illness began to distress the little fellow, a move to Abbots Mere would be best.

So I’d had a chance, at the end, to spend more time with Jamie, to begin some small rearrangements of our life in preparation for the future, to involve myself more with the thriving dressmaking business, to make another buying trip to Manchester and to pay an extended visit to my family without having to account for our absence.

Even so, I felt the gaping hole in my life where my Linas had been for, although we had not been lovers in the true sense for years, we had shared a real need for each other that was not wholly material, but emotional and spiritual as well. We never actually spoke of it: he was not good at speaking of love, and any attempt on my part only embarrassed him. But we were aware of our need for each other, especially so since Jamie’s appearance, and I was not foolish enough to end that prematurely when I knew the end would come soon enough. Had I remained childless, I might have thought differently, but I could not take a gamble when there was the son of a noble house to care for.

The River Ouse that brings boats up to the York warehouses froze all river traffic to a standstill, offering a quicker way to cross without using the bridge or the ferry. Those who could skate had a merry time of it, and Jamie’s nurse and I took him there, astonished by his pluck and persistence.

While Linas was alive, the natural tendency had been for everyone to compare him to the one he called papa, but by three years old his sturdy little frame and bold wilful nature, dark eyes and thick curly hair indicated characteristics that I was able to identify only too easily. Fortunately, my own dark colouring disguised the truth, but then, that must also have been taken into account at the outset, I supposed. It was so clever of them.

The nine seamstresses in the sewing room were loath to return home each evening during the freeze when the conditions at work were so much more comfortable than their own. Remembering how I too had been one of them, fourteen years old with only my clothes to my name, how Prue had sheltered and fed me, I tried to do the same for them, many of whom had worked there longer than me. Oh, she had worked me harder than hard to make it worth her while, being a canny Yorkshire woman, but I had not resented it, nor did the girls appear to resent me moving up the ladder rather faster, so to speak. Now, Prue Sanders and I were partners in the business, having expanded sideways into the house next door to the Assembly Rooms. A perfect situation, if ever there was one.

My own house was placed diagonally across the road, so convenient for us both especially during those exceptionally cold weeks when the ice seemed to creep into our veins. All our stores of potatoes froze solid. Few people could reach the mill for flour, nor could the miller use his wheel, sending up the price of bread accordingly. Fish was locked under the ice and people had to delve earlier than usual into their reserves of dried and pickled foods, feeding cattle with precious hay.

I did better than most in that respect, for as soon as a narrow passage was cut through the drifts, two pack-ponies and men arrived at my kitchen door having trekked from Abbots Mere at their master’s command. Into the kitchen were carried sacks of flour, oats and barley, chickens and geese, a brace each of pheasant and grouse, rabbits and a hare, baskets of apples, pears and plums, butter and cheeses, eggs and half-frozen milk, a half-carcass of lamb, hams, and trout packed in ice, all piled on to the table while cook stood with jaw dropping. I saw this gift as an answer to my refusal to accept a loan. For all our sakes, I was bound to accept this.

Gulping down beakers of mulled ale and wedges of fruit cake, the men would give no more information than, ‘Compliments of Lord Winterson, ma’am. And ye’re to let him know when you want some more. He hunts most days.’