Prologue
Wiltshire, England, 1759
The girl in the narrow wooden bed was in agony. Curled up
in a ball, legs drawn up to her small breasts and thin
arms wrapped tightly about her knees, her whole body
shuddered with excruciating contractions. She had no idea
if she had been in pain for five hours or twenty.
Exhausted and bathed in sweat, her cotton nightshift with
its little lace cuffs and pearl buttons had become twisted
and tangled with the bed sheet. Both were soaked with
blood.
In the small, brief moments of reprieve between each
painful cramp, she whimpered for the hurt to go away, big
blue eyes staring imploringly at her nurse, as if a simple
kiss from this most treasured servant would make
everything better again as it always had with a childhood
bruise. But no matter how tenderly the girl’s feverish
forehead was bathed or soothing words of comfort offered,
the contractions continued unabated; the intervals
becoming shorter and shorter until the girl lost all sense
of time and space.
Tears coursed down the nurse’s sallow cheeks and she
pressed the wet cloth to her own mouth; it was all she
could do to stop herself sobbing uncontrollably at the
sight of her beautiful, sweet-tempered child in such
torment.
“Have the girl drink this and tomorrow she won’t be
troubled,” she had been ordered.
Obediently Jane drank the bitter-tasting draught, on
reassurance that the medicinal would ease the nausea and
restore her appetite. She had then thrust the tumbler back
at her nurse, laughingly accusing her of poisoning her.
Poison.
Yes, Nurse had poisoned her beautiful girl. She knew that
now as she bathed Jane’s tortured forehead free of sweat.
She would pray to God for forgiveness for the rest of her
days for not better protecting her girl, for trusting her
betters to do what was right and proper when all along
they had planned for this to happen. But she had poisoned
Jane unwittingly. The same could not be said of the other
two occupants of the darkened and airless bedchamber; or
the girl’s absent, unforgiving father, who had disowned
his only child for losing her virginity to a noble seducer
who lasciviously planted his seed then discarded her like
a used, worthless thing.
Murderers all.
Nurse dared not look over her shoulder. But she knew the
man and woman were there in the shadows, waiting. Jane’s
cries and her ministrations to help ease the pain did not
make her deaf or blind. She knew why they were there, why
they suffered the stench and the ignoble sounds of
suffering, why they could not avert their eyes from the
offending sight of the waif-like creature with the
translucent skin and distraught gaze who convulsed,
sweated, and bled before them. They had to satisfy their
own eyes that the murderous deed was done. How else could
they inform her heartless father that his wishes had been
satisfactorily fulfilled?
Nurse hated them. But she reserved her greatest hatred for
the noble seducer. It gave her the strength and single-
minded purpose to fight to keep alive her precious, ill-
used girl. It did not stop her jumping with fright when a
firm hand pressed her shoulder.
“The physician will be here soon,” Jacob Allenby assured
her. “The recent snow fall must have delayed him.”
“Yes, sir,” Nurse replied docilely, continuing to rinse
out the soiled sponge in the porcelain bowl on the side
table.
“Physician? Good God, what use is a saw-bones?” scoffed
the female over Jacob Allenby’s shoulder. She came out of
the shadows to warm herself by the fire in the grate, her
carefully painted face devoid of emotion. “It is evident
my medicinal is working to everyone’s satisfaction. A
physician will only interfere.”
The merchant rounded on her. “Forgive me for not trusting
the word of an angel of death!”
“Pon rep, Allenby, how dramatic you are,” she drawled, a
soft white hand to the heat. “Anyone would think by the
creature’s moans she is on death’s door. She isn’t. Syrup
of Artemisia hasn’t killed anyone of my acquaintance—yet.”
She glanced at the bed in thought. “Of course my
apothecary on the Strand advises that the required dose be
taken immediately a female suspects she is with child,
usually the first month her courses are overdue,” she
mused matter-of-factly. “That this dolt waited four months
before confessing to the fruits of her wickedness
necessitated I increase the dosage to compensate for her
sly stupidity. After all, one must be absolutely certain
the monster is expelled.”
Jacob Allenby ground his teeth. “You’re a cold-blooded
feline, my lady.”
“No. I am a pragmatist, true to the patrician blood that
flows in my veins,” she said conversationally, preening at
her upswept hair adorned with pearls and ribbons in the
dim light cast on the oval looking glass above the
mantle. “Blood connection is prized above all else.
Bastard offspring of indeterminate lineage have no place
amongst our kind.” She glanced at the middle-aged
merchant’s reflection whose frowning gaze remained fixed
on the suffering girl in the narrow bed. “Nor does mawkish
sentimentality. Why you agreed to take her off Sir Felix’s
hands, I shall never fathom.”
“Sir Felix Despard is a spineless drunkard who should have
kept a better eye on his only child or she would not now
be suffering. As for my actions, they’re not for you to
fathom.”
“Indeed? A Bristol Blue Glass manufacturer could do worse
than take as mistress a nobleman’s quick tawdry rut. She
is the offspring of a baronet, when all is said and done.
Used. Discarded. But still very beautiful.”
“You’d know all about quick tawdry ruts, my lady.”
“You rival Mr. Garrick, to be sure. This unholy alliance
we’ve formed is so diverting. La! I do believe it’s the
best night’s entertainment I’ve had since—”
“—you went down on all fours at one of his lordship’s
orgies?”
“Shall I show you my technique?” she teased, tickling the
end of Jacob Allenby’s snub nose with the pleated tip of
her delicate gouache fan. She pouted. “Tiresome little
merchant moralists must dream of rutting titled ladies. In
your dreams is the only place you’re accorded the
opportunity of entering society.”
“I pity your offspring, my lady,” the merchant stated with
undisguised loathing and put space between them.
The lady’s hazel eyes went dead. She stared coolly over
nurse’s shoulder at the girl in the bed, who continued to
hug her knees tightly and whimper in pain. Just turned
eighteen and with no prospect of future happiness. Good,
her ladyship gloated, and recalled how the squire’s
beautiful daughter had captivated society on her first
public engagement.
It had been at the Salt Hunt Ball, and the girl’s
extraordinary beauty coupled with a refreshing natural
modesty had caused a sensation amongst lords and ladies
alike. Unsullied and brimming with naïve optimism,
charming to all and sickeningly self-effacing, by the end
of the evening she had received three proposals of
marriage and two declarations of undying love. Embraced by
Society, it was expected she would marry title and wealth.
That very night her ladyship had found them together in
the summerhouse down by the lake: the handsome nobleman in
all his splendid, wide-backed nakedness and this beautiful
eager virgin with her tumble of waist-length hair the
color of midnight. They were blissfully riding to heaven
together, as if they were the only two in the Garden of
Eden. It had enraged her, but what had crushed her dreams
and broken her heart was spying the ancestral betrothal
necklace of the Earls of Salt Hendon around the girl’s
white throat.
The tragic consequences of the lovers’ unbridled lust
could not have made her happier. But when she least
expected it, in those rare moments when she permitted
herself to smugly believe she had regained absolute
control of the future, the image of those two heavenly
lovers joined as one haunted her waking hours and turned
her dreams to nightmares.
“You, sir, have no idea to what lengths this mother has
gone to secure her son’s future,” she stated dully and
retreated into the shadows just as the girl let out one
last guttural moan that filled the quiet of the airless
bedchamber. “For God’s sake! How much more pathetic
whining must I endure?” she growled, and threw her fan at
the wallpaper in a temper. She slumped down on the
horsehair sofa in a billow of blue velvet
petticoats. “Allenby, have the wench examine her. She
must’ve expelled the brat by now.”
Nurse began to sob openly.
“I wish there’d been another way, my dear,” Jacob Allenby
apologized with real remorse. “You must understand that
this is the best outcome for her, with the least pain.”
He patted Nurse’s shoulder and then he, too, retreated
into the shadows.
Understand? Least pain? Nurse wanted to scream. How did
any female recover from the loss of a child, be it from
miscarriage, stillbirth, or taken away at birth? And Sir
Felix would have had every right to take it away. Sent to
an orphanage, it would never know its mother, never have a
father. Best if the child was taken now, barely formed and
unknowing, because giving birth to a bastard child was a
sin, a stain for life. Her poor suffering darling Jane
didn’t deserve such ignominy.
“Please. Please, please, God. Please let my darling live,”
Nurse whispered and buried her face in the bedclothes,
squeezing the sponge so tightly that her fingernails dug
into the flesh of her palm and drew blood. “Please, no
more pain. No more suffering.”
And as if in answer to her prays, an eerie stillness
descended upon the bedchamber as the girl ceased to move
and finally lay quiet amongst the down pillows in the
middle of the narrow bed, the agony of the contractions
abating and giving way to relief, emptiness and loss.
Jane blinked at the guttering candle on the side table,
tears staining her cheeks knowing that it was not just
sweat from her painful exertions that bathed her exhausted
body in cool wetness but blood, her blood, and the blood
of her unborn child; life extinguished. Quiet sobbing made
her turn her head. She touched Nurse’s lace cap, which
instantly brought the woman’s tear stained face up with a
jerk. Her voice was barely a whisper.
“Silly. Don’t cry. There’s nothing to cry for now.”
© 2003-2026