Of Noble Birth (2 page)

“My
lady
? After
five years, this is what she gives me. A cripple. A
laughingstock!”

The sound of shattering glass made Martha
jump. The baby began to wail, and she fought the urge to march in
and fetch him.

“But Yer Grace, the duchess ‘ad no—”

“Leave me!” he shouted above the cries of
his son.

Something—his fist?—crashed down onto a
table. A startled yelp escaped the midwife, followed by the thud of
other articles being hurled against the walls or fireplace. Then
the midwife scuttled from the room, slamming the door behind
her.

Martha acted as though she were just
approaching. “Mrs. Telford, is somethin’ wrong?”

“‘E’s gone mad, I tell ye. Simply mad.” The
midwife threw up her hands. “Ye’d best leave ‘im for a time. I’ve
got my work cut out for me with the duchess.”

Martha wavered as Mrs. Telford fled down the
hall. She longed to enter the room and rescue the crying infant,
but was loath to further fuel His Grace’s anger, for the baby’s
sake as much as her own.

Silence jolted Martha out of her quandary.
One minute the baby had been wailing uncontrollably; the next,
nothing. She pressed closer to the door, holding her breath. Not a
single sound reached her ears.

Panic propelled her forward. She burst into
the room and her eyes took in the tall, immaculately dressed duke
leaning over his son. One large hand covered both nose and mouth of
the newborn infant.

He’s killing the lad. He’s
killing him!
her mind shrieked as she flew at her master.
Scratching and clawing at Greystone’s manicured hand, she tried to
provide the child with air.

“Get away!” he snarled.

But Martha fought for the child’s life with
the same desperate longing she felt for her own dead sons, and
finally the infant let out a howl.

The duke backed away, his face red, the
veins in his neck bulging above a white collar. “I’ll kill you for
this!”

“Please,” Martha gasped. “‘E’s yer son.”

Greystone gave a derisive snort. “I could
not have fathered this... this deformity. I will not have him. Do
you hear? He will never be my heir.”

Martha gulped air into her lungs as the
duke’s words registered in her mind. How could a man be so cruel?
Finally she asked softly, “May I take ‘im, then?”

Crimson suffused the duke’s face. “Without
me, without my reference, you will be unable to find work. How will
you provide for a sick husband and a deformed babe?”

“I don’t know.”

“Fool! I’m tempted to let you starve the
child for me, let you watch him die a slow death, but I cannot take
that chance. Should you manage it somehow, as soon as he grew old
enough, the two of you would be on my doorstep crying
‘Inheritance!’ ‘Heir!’“ He lunged at her. “Never!”

The air stirred near her ear as Martha
whirled away. She fully expected to feel the duke’s long fingers
close about her neck, pinching off her own breath, when suddenly
she heard an odd gasp and turned in time to see him trip on the
plush rug. His head struck the corner of the table as he toppled
over like a felled tree.

Martha stared at the limp body lying
unnaturally at her feet. Blood oozed from a wound at his temple.
What now?
she thought as panic rose like
bile in her throat.

Bending to search for a pulse, she felt a
faint beat at his throat and slowly let out her breath. But the
fact that he yet lived posed another problem. Suppose when he
awoke, he blamed her for his fall—blamed her and the baby.

Martha’s gaze left, the duke’s ashen face
and moved to the squirming bundle atop the table. Its cries
registered in her mind. Greystone had tried to kill the baby. The
duchess was likely dead already.

Without further deliberation, Martha pulled
the infant into her arms and fled the room. She ran through the
long halls of Bridlewood Manor, past bedrooms and sitting rooms and
libraries, to the back stairs and down, and finally through the
kitchen and beyond into the cold winter’s night.

Manchester, England

March 5, 1854

“Let me out! Please, Willy, let me out!”

Alexandra’s voice rose to an unnatural,
high-pitched scream. The walls and lid of the trunk pressed in upon
her like a coffin, the heavy darkness crushing her chest like a
thousand pounds of sand. Stifling. Suffocating. Terror gripped her
as she struggled for breath, pounding her fists on the locked lid
of the old steamer trunk.

In her panic, she almost failed to notice
the sliver of light that penetrated the blackness. When she did see
it, her gaze clung to it as tightly as a drowning man might clasp a
life preserver to his breast. Age and use had left the dome-shaped
lid slightly warped. Surely air could pass as well as light. Still,
Alexandra had to force herself to breathe slowly, to resist the
hysteria that threatened to overwhelm her.

She ceased her pounding.

“Papa?” she wept. She hadn’t called Willy
“Papa” for years, but she felt like a child again, like the little
girl who used to love him, trust him. “Are you still there?”

Silence. Alexandra concentrated on the beam
of light. The tiny slit didn’t provide much air. She could hardly
breathe. Where was he? There had been no sound for several minutes.
Had he left her?

“Oh no, please,” she whispered. Certainly
even Willy wouldn’t abandon her this way. Her stepfather never hurt
her when sober, rarely spoke to her, in fact, but his love of gin
exposed another side of his nature. The beatings that had begun
shortly after her mother’s death five years ago had become
increasingly common and more violent as Willy’s dependence upon
alcohol grew. Now drunkenness was his way of life.

Alexandra tried to shift her weight, but the
trunk was too small to hold a nineteen-year-old. She was crammed
into it with her long legs tucked under her chin, her arms squeezed
tightly against her sides. Her right hip supported the whole of her
weight, causing pain to shoot down her leg until, mercifully, the
restricted blood flow made it go numb. Still, her head throbbed;
whether from the punishing blow Willy landed when he had first set
upon her, or from the fit of weeping that had overtaken her when he
had forced her inside her mother’s steamer trunk, she did not
know.

A shuffling sound alerted her to the fact
that she was not alone after all. She tried to hold her breath so
she could hear from whence the movement came, but her involuntary
gasps continued.

“Willy? Please, open the lock.” Alexandra
hoped a calm appeal would evoke some response, but she received no
answer. She felt as though she were walking a tightrope of sanity.
One wrong word could turn her stepfather away and send her
plummeting into panic once again.

“Are you still there? Don’t leave. Please.
If you don’t let me out, how will I work? You know we have a half
dozen shirts to finish today.” She paused. “Don’t you want to get
paid?”

“Shut your trap, wench,” Willy growled. “I
can’t stand the sight of you.”

“But I’ll go directly upstairs. I promise.
You won’t so much as see me.” Her body ran with sweat, but
Alexandra fought to control her fear. At least Willy was there. At
least he was talking to her. So far, she was managing to keep her
precarious balance.

“We’ve got only until noon to finish the
shirts. The skirts for Madame Fobart’s are due right after. You
said so yourself,” Alexandra pleaded. “I’m the quickest seamstress
you’ve got, aren’t I? I’ll work hard, you’ll see.”

Willy cursed, but Alexandra could tell his
anger had lost its edge. Her approach was working, it seemed.
“Madame Fobart gives us the bulk of our work. We certainly don’t
want to lose her.”

“To hell with bloody Madame Fobart!”

Willy kicked the trunk, causing Alexandra to
yelp in surprise as he bellowed in pain. “To hell with it all!” he
croaked.

“You don’t mean that.” Alexandra forced the
words out above the heavy thumping of her heart. “We’ve got a lot
of business now, and soon we’ll be making good money. But I can’t
finish our orders if you don’t let me go.”

For the briefest moment, she wondered if
they could finish their work on time in any event. The order Willy
had brought from Madame Fobart’s was double the usual, and with the
work came the demand that the skirts be made up and delivered in
less than two days. Though Alexandra and the other needlewomen had
sewn well into the night, they still had much to do. But how would
Willy know that? He had left for the tavern while the candles yet
burned in the garret above, and she and the other women worked
tenaciously on. Could he even begin to comprehend the mounting
pressure of each new deadline when his time was spent sleeping off
the effects of the previous night’s bottle? Willy never appeared
until late in the day, and then only to criticize, grumble, and
complain. That he procured any clients at all was indeed a great
wonder.

Silence again.

“Willy?” Rational thought bled slowly from
Alexandra’s mind as her head began to spin. There was so little
air. Work. She had been talking about work. But why? She no longer
remembered, except that her life was one monotonous round of
stitch, stitch, stitch. Even now her mind called her fingers to
sew—but it was so dark.

The lamp is out,
she thought.
I must relight it.

“Someday,” Willy said, his voice grating low
and cutting through her fuzzy thoughts, “someday I’ll snuff out the
light in those eyes that are so much like your mother’s.”

Alexandra had long since given up trying to
understand the unrelenting anger that poured out of Willy when he
was in his cups. What had she done to deserve such punishment? And
Willy had loved Elizabeth. More than loved her. He had worshiped
her. On her deathbed, her mother had asked Alexandra to look after
him.

A roaring, like the sound of the sea, filled
Alexandra’s head, and she felt as though her body were being gently
buffeted by the water’s currents.

I don’t care what he
says...
I only want to sleep.

Then another thought surfaced.
The others will be here soon.
Of course! That’s what
she had been trying to remember: The six women who climbed the
rickety stairs to the workroom garret each day before dawn.

They would soon arrive to begin the long
day’s work of sewing trousers, linen shirts, and skirts. The
pittance they received for their labor, along with the demands
placed upon them by Willy and his impatient buyers, required that
they work sometimes eighteen or more hours in a day. Alexandra knew
she could depend on them to help her if she could only last a few
minutes more. But a peaceful, black abyss beckoned, and she began
to move toward it.

The lock clicked. Alexandra heard it above
the crashing of the waves in her ears, though the sound had no
meaning until the battered lid was thrown open. Then the cool
morning air rushed upon her like a good, strong slap in the
face.

Her chest heaving as she sucked air into her
lungs, Alexandra glanced wildly about until she saw Willy.

He stood not three feet away, the imprint of
a hat still matting his gray hair above a heavily lined face.
Bloodshot eyes, yellowed with age and bad living, peered at her
with loathing. He seemed to stare into her very soul, then he
staggered away toward his own room, a string of epithets spewing
from his alcohol-numbed tongue.

It was over, for now. Alexandra closed her
eyes and breathed deeply, her nails curling into her palms.
No,
she promised herself.
Not for now. For always.

* * *

By the time Miss Harper arrived, Alexandra
had composed herself. Though the others knew about the beatings,
she did her best to conceal what she could for fear her fellow
seamstresses would jeopardize themselves on her behalf. After all,
they were powerless to offer any real help. They needed every penny
they earned for the most basic wants—food, clothing, shelter. And
it was a fortunate needlewoman indeed whose income provided enough
for all three.

As the aging spinster entered the small
attic with its peaked ceiling, sloping walls, and single window,
Alexandra was already hard at work on a full-dress shirt with a
pleated front. Shirts required some of the most exacting
needlework, forcing her to bend toward the tallow candle to better
see each intricate stitch.

“Good day.” Alexandra glanced up to smile at
the woman with a cheer she did not feel. She was in charge of the
small shop, and felt obligated to greet each needlewoman in a
welcoming manner, though today that simple duty contended with a
strong desire for comforting. Those with whom she worked were her
only friends. Had anyone but Myrtle Harper been the first to
arrive, Alexandra might have blurted out the whole terrifying
experience. But the sight of her feeble comrade, whose steady
decline she witnessed day by day, stemmed the tide of her
self-pity.