Chapter 6

Chapter Six

At breakfast the following morning Mr Carter had presented Sebastian and Emilia with an invitation to a military salute evening at the Duke of Chatsworth’s residence.

“What is a military salute?” Jane asked curiously as she cracked open her boiled egg.

“It is basically a large party where all the officers in the regiment nearby are invited to drink to their heart’s content in their red coats and then have their way with the willing women,” Sebastian rolled his eyes. Jane knew her brother had never approved of the officer’s antics. When they were children and officers had passed through Yorkshire they left a string of broken hearts behind them belonging to ruined women.

“Sebastian has decided firmly that the girls shall be locked in their bedchambers should there be a regiment in town during their first seasons,” Emilia giggled as she looked at her three daughters who each had a clueless expression on their faces.

“Too bloody right,” Sebastian swore. The girls gasped and James laughed at the sudden use of profanity at the dining room table. “Don’t repeat that,” Sebastian instructed to his children. “I commend the officers for all their work military wise but ruining young girls is one step too far.”

“Don’t worry, papa, I won’t marry an officer and Little J said she won’t ever get married so we won’t go near officers,” Kitty assured her father innocently as she mashed her boiled egg with a fork.

Sebastian smiled at his young daughter. “How about you three make papa very happy and never marry?” he suggested seriously.

Jane and Emilia burst into a fit of giggles at Sebastian’s blunt request. Emilia leant over to Sebastian and kissed his cheek. “Relax, darling, we have a few years yet before we need to worry about fending the officers off our girls.”

“They dare look at them when the girls are out in society they will answer directly to me,” Sebastian growled.

Jane tried to stop herself from laughing again by disguising her giggles with a cough. Jane quickly finished her egg and rose from the table. “Excuse me, everyone, I’m going to go for a walk.”

Emilia looked like she didn’t want Jane to go. “You’ll be back for the ball tonight, won’t you?” she asked in a concerned manner.

“Yes, I’ll return by then,” she promised. “Why are you so worried?”

“There’s an acquaintance that Em so desperately wants you to make,” Sebastian explained.

Emilia’s brown eyes sparkled. “He’s the handsome young nephew of the Duke of Chatsworth, and as the Duke has only daughters, he will inherit. Her Grace, Jane, Duchess of Chatsworth, can you imagine it?” she asked excitedly.

Jane snorted without thinking. “Me, a duchess?” she said in disbelief. “I should sooner be an officer than a nobleman’s wife.”

“Well, you should at least take a maid to chaperone you,” Sebastian urged.

“No, that’s not necessary,” Jane smiled. With that Jane bid her goodbyes to her family and disappeared out of Ethridge Manor.

She walked briskly towards Hyde Park. It had rained the night before and there were still pools of rain in the cobble streets. Jane lifted her skirts up to avoid dirtying her hem but she knew the walking through a damp park would do nothing for her quest to stay clean.

When she entered the park she received many stares by couples and young women with their chaperones. She smiled at how scandalous she was being. A young, unmarried and unchaperoned woman was going to meet an unmarried man with a reputation for being a rake. If her mother saw her now she would surely have a heart attack.

She returned to the same place that she had brought the children the day before. It was quite a lovely and secluded part of Hyde Park. The trees surrounded the place where the grass was rather long. She was sure in spring time there would be a mass of wild flowers.

“You came,” she heard Daniel say as he stepped out from behind a large oak.

“You doubted me?” Jane asked as she took in his rather pristine appearance. While she looked dishevelled after making the walk to Hyde Park, his clothes could not have been finer or cleaner.

“I thought perhaps that my pathetic persona might’ve made you regret your decision,” he admitted.

Jane shook her head and smiled at him reassuringly. “Not at all, I promise, and you are not pathetic.”

“Thank you for doing this, Jane ... forgive me, Miss Alcott,” he corrected himself bashfully. “Your presence does truly drain the gentleman from me.”

“I’m ... sorry?” she replied as if it were a question.

“It is no fault of yours; I suppose I just feel rather comfortable around you. Perhaps it is because that you are the one woman I have ever approached that has rejected my advances; it makes me curious about you.” Daniel motioned for her to follow him around the other side of the big oak tree.

“If it makes things easier, Lord Southerby, you may call me ‘Jane’,” Jane offered. She gasped as she saw the sight behind the tree. Daniel had set up a picnic for them. On the ground was a red blanket with a basket filled with cheese and fruit from what she could smell.

“And you must call me ‘Daniel’,” he instructed. They sat down together, Jane making sure there was a few feet between their bodies.

Daniel poured her a glass of wine and she reluctantly accepted. He poured one for himself and then looked her expectantly. “Alright, how do you fix me?”

“I can’t just fix you,” Jane replied simply. “I’m not an expert, but there is no quick fix to issues of the heart.”

Daniel looked at her solemnly. “The heart?” he sneered, his upbeat demeanour gone. “No, my issue is that I do not know how to be a father to Sabine. Teach me some techniques, you’re good with children.”

“You said yourself that it was not just your parenting skills that prevented your returning to your home in Nottingham,” Jane reminded him of what he said the day before.

As they did when he was angered, his brown eyes turned black as he glared at her. “I should not have said that, Miss Alcott,” he snapped, returning to using her formal name.

“Humour me,” Jane said patiently. “Tell me what happened the day Sabine was born.”

Daniel took a big gulp of his wine. “I am not drunk enough to divulge that story,” he murmured as he took another swig.

Jane rolled her eyes. “Then why are we here? Do you wish for me to help you or not?”

Daniel stared into the distance. Jane guessed that he was purposefully avoiding her eye. “There is something about you, Jane, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something about you makes me lose my senses. My guard falls down and I am completely naked – figuratively of course.”

Jane smiled slightly. “Is that not a good thing?”

His dark eyes met hers suddenly. “It is a dangerous thing.” Daniel took another gulp of his glass and it was empty. He poured himself another generous amount of the purple liquid and drank another mouthful.

“Perhaps I enjoy danger, Daniel,” Jane fished. Now that she had him talking she wanted to know everything. Not for gossip reasons, but because she genuinely cared.

“Believe me, Jane, you do not want to know,” Daniel sighed as he opened the picnic basket. He brought out a bunch of grapes and picked one off and popped it in his mouth. “Would you like one?” he offered.

“No, thank you,” Jane refused. She wanted to get back to the reason she had stolen away from her family at breakfast. “Daniel, you asked for my help and I am more than willing to give it to you. I think we should start by you telling me what happened the day that Sabine was born.”

“Night,” he replied.

“Pardon me?”

“Sabine was born at night,” he clarified. He laughed a little to himself then. “Eleanor, she was such a martyr, she had been in labour all day and hadn’t said a word. I thought something was wrong as she was dreadfully ill during the day – vomiting and headaches and such but she said it was nothing. And then when we went to bed she asked me to call the doctor as the baby was coming.” Daniel emptied another glass as his story came out quicker. Clearly he did need to be drunk to divulge the story. “I rode out myself, you know,” he said proudly. “I fetched the doctor from in town and brought him back to Southerby House with me. He made me wait outside. It must’ve been three in the morning when I heard Sabine’s cries from inside our bedchamber,” he smiled as he remembered fondly.

“What was it like hearing Sabine’s cries for the first time?” Jane asked calmly as she subtly took his glass of wine from him.

“Magical,” he laughed at himself. “There is no other word to describe it. She was mine, I did not even care that she was not a son. I would have had a thousand more children to have that feeling again. I turned to Eleanor as I held Sabine and that’s where it all went wrong.” His face dropped to that of the scowl that usually occupied his face.

“What happened?” Jane asked softly.

“She started shaking and talking nonsense. The doctor tried to stabilise her and stop her shaking but he couldn’t. I saw his face and it said it all – she was dying. I gave the baby to a maid and tried to help the doctor stop her shaking. Her eyes followed the maid from the room and she said ‘Sabine’ ... I don’t know if it was a word of her nonsense or whether that was what she wanted the baby to be named but it was the last word she spoke. The doctor said later that she suffered from eclampsia and that there was nothing he could do. He tried bloodletting when I wasn’t in the room but it didn’t work. The only one he could save was the baby and he did just that.” Daniel hung his head and closed his eyes as he leant back against the big oak tree.

It was nearly impossible for Jane to fathom such a tale, and she couldn’t know how Daniel had lived through it. He was stronger that she’d ever thought. “I have never heard of eclampsia,” Jane whispered. She’d heard of women dying in childbirth, it was a risk a woman took when she was with child, she prayed every time Emilia was with child that she would be alright. She’d never heard such a graphic tale; she hoped that Eleanor was safe in heaven.

“Neither had I,” Daniel commented sadly. “The doctor said that the headaches and the vomiting were all signs of pre – eclampsia. He said even if he had been called during the day the only thing he could have done differently would be to deliver the baby through a caesarean, but even then Eleanor could have died from bleeding. She was dying either way.”

“What happened to Sabine after Eleanor died?” Jane asked. Knowing what she now knew, she fully understood Daniel’s fears of returning to Nottingham. He most likely wouldn’t ever be able to walk into the same bedchamber again. She was sure, for Daniel, that many ghosts walk the halls of Southerby House.

“A lady in the village became her wet – nurse,” he replied. “The rest is just a blur. I remember telling him that her name was to be Sabine Eleanor Winchester and the rest is history. I became the man you know now and I haven’t been back to Nottingham since.”

Jane’s eyes widened. “You haven’t seen Sabine since she was born?”

Daniel shook his heads. “Not in person. I commission miniature oils every now and then. I get letters from her governess telling me that she does not like sitting for them, apparently she ‘fidgets’,” he laughed. “It is how I know she looks like her mother, you see,” he explained. “She has the same long blonde hair and blue eyes.” He looked up at Jane and she was shocked to see that his eyes were watery. “It is probably the drink talking but you are a very good listener, Miss Alcott. If you wrote for a newspaper you could make a lot of money off of this story.”

“I would never sell you out, Daniel,” Jane said sincerely. “I feel honoured that you trust me with this information,” she said honestly. “I can’t imagine that you tell this to just anyone.”

Daniel nodded. “No – one, actually,” he corrected. “As I said, there is something about you.”

Jane took a deep breath as she processed the information. “Do you blame yourself for Eleanor’s death?” Jane settled on that as her first question.

“I guess I do,” Daniel admitted. “If I hadn’t listened to Eleanor and gone and got the doctor sooner –” he started but Jane interrupted him.

“But the doctor told you that he couldn’t have done anything differently other than to perform a caesarean, and even then she would have died. It isn’t your fault.” Jane reached over and took his hand from his lap and squeezed it comfortingly.

“It feels as though it is,” he sighed.

“But it isn’t,” Jane pressed. “You must know that, deep down.”

Daniel smiled slightly at her. Jane felt that he should smile more often, he looked very handsome when he smiled. “I do,” he nodded. “But it’s easier to put the blame on myself then to know it was just Eleanor’s time.”

“What was she like?” Jane asked, wanting to change the subject to something happier.

“Eleanor?” he raised his eyebrows. “She was very, very beautiful. She was the daughter of my father’s advisor so we grew up together. We married when I was eight and twenty and she was five and twenty, it took that long for her father to give consent. After two years she fell pregnant and ... you know the rest. She was a very calm person,” he recalled. “She didn’t get very angry, even when I’d done something incredibly stupid she would just roll her eyes and laugh. She was very sensible and well mannered and she always knew the right thing to say.”

Jane couldn’t help but compare herself to Eleanor. Hearing Eleanor’s characteristics she knew that she was the exact opposite of everything he’d just said. She did get angry; she had a very fiery temper. She wasn’t terribly sensible and she often spoke her mind rather than thinking through what she was to say.

“Sometimes I wished though that we did argue. We never did so I never really knew what she was really thinking. She often agreed with me even when what I wanted was preposterous,” Daniel told her fondly.

Jane laughed to herself. She knew that she was the type of woman who would never give in. She got what she wanted, whether she had to fight for it or not.

“My brother and Emilia have some rowdy arguments sometimes, I’ve heard them,” she commented.

“The best marriages do, I believe,” Daniel replied.

“What do you think you would say to Sabine if you ever saw her?” Jane asked. She felt as though if she had Daniel remembering happy things he might be in a better frame of mind to contemplate seeing his daughter.

Daniel bit his lip nervously. “I don’t know what I would say. I would apologise, I suppose, other than that, knowledge of what to do with children escapes me.”

“Do you think you could ever go back to Nottingham?” Jane prompted.

“Perhaps, one day,” he nodded. “I want to have a relationship with my daughter, which is my main goal. I don’t want her to grow up having been raised my staff.”

Jane smiled at him. “We share that goal.”

Daniel sucked in a breath as he looked around him, possibly for his wine glass. “I suppose we should clean up, I think I’ve bored you enough for one day.”

“You could never bore me, Daniel, I’m grateful that you trust me enough to be so open,” she said as she tipped his glass of wine onto the grass subtly so he couldn’t sneak anymore. She put the grapes back in the basket and stood up to straighten her gown.

“Same time tomorrow then?” Daniel asked hopefully. “I rather like the company.”

Jane nodded gladly. “Of course, but will you be attending the ball at the Duke of Chatsworth’s this evening?”

Daniel made a face as he groaned. “I’d forgotten about that. That man is a frightful bore; he can talk for hours about the art pieces in his house.”

Jane giggled. “Well, steer clear of him then,” she suggested.

Daniel grinned as he folded the blanket up and picked up the basket. “I shall have to. Pencil me in for the waltz on your dance card, will you, Miss Alcott?” he added casually.

Jane was taken aback at the sudden request. “I thought you didn’t dance,” she replied as she thought about the exact time when he had told her he didn’t dance at Lord Latham’s.

Daniel produced a genuine smile, which Jane hoped was not influenced by the drink. “I don’t dance with just anyone,” he retorted, using her own words against her. “And there is something about you, remember.”

Jane’s cheeks reddened as he spoke. “I better get back, my brother and Lady Em will be wondering where I am.”

With that she quickly retreated before her cheeks could betray her even further. She could not entertain any attraction that she felt towards him. He was trusting her with his innermost thoughts; she could not ruin it by being a petty child with a crush.

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There was a LOT of dialogue in this chapter so I apologise, and the eclampsia stuff comes from google/wikipedia etc so it might not all be factual so I apologise for that.

I know I was going to include the ball in this chapter but it was getting a bit long so I decided I would put it in the next chapter :)

Please vote and comment if you enjoyed!!! xox