Lady in the Veil (9 page)

‘Give me the child,’ she spoke softly. ‘It is too chilly. Give him to me now.’

‘Do I drop him now or deliver him up to the Constable as a foundling? Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just end it now?’ Matt was wavering. There was still a chance but
her face was stiff with fear at his words.

‘I am pleading for your understanding. We have deceived you, that is true, but hear me out, give me the child, please,’ she begged but not moving, in case a sudden approach might
drive him into madness.

‘I am waiting . . . You two will be whipped through the streets and put in the stocks, if I have any say in the matter,’ he said, holding the child fast to his chest in defiance . .
.

‘And no one would blame you but hear me out before you hang yourself as a murderer and condemn us to public shame. The child needs its mother. William’s done nothing but be born. I
beg you, don’t harm your son,’ she sank on her knees in despair.

‘Son, hah! Where is my wife? Mirabel should be here, not her messenger,’ he sneered, looking down at her with contempt.

‘I am Mirabel Dacre. I am the one you once desired to wed,’ said the woman and looked up at him, her cheeks blazing.

‘No . . . no, that cannot be,’ he stammered, edging ever closer to the drop in shock. ‘Mirabel sits by the window sewing, come what may. You are not she.’

‘And she is not me but Eliza, my sister, who always sewed, even as a child, and never rode like the wind over the fells,’ she replied softly.

‘Eliza is dead. She died in York. I was told so by her father. It was Mirabel who survived unharmed.’ She could see he was so confused as he slumped, jerking the baby who screamed in
protest.

‘You were told lies, Matt. It was I who caught the smallpox from my aunt and I who nearly died. Eliza was kept away from the sickness but she isn’t strong. She’s always been
delicate in her mind and I knew no one would ever marry her. Who would want the eldest daughter with her face disfigured? Do not blame her. It was all my idea. We’d no choice but to deceive
everyone. Eliza was so afraid that I had to protect her. This was the only way to spare us both, so Eliza took on my name to save our family from shame. I came as her maid knowing she can’t
walk abroad as most women do. We couldn’t stay in York to the mercies of some terrible fate. I owe her everything,’ she cried then paused, seeing he was listening. ‘Give me my
child, for as God is my witness he is surely mine. He is the one beautiful thing left to me. Do not part us. Have mercy on us all,’ she pleaded, falling on her face at his feet.

‘How could your father not have guessed the truth?’ he sneered scornfully. ‘Does he not know his own daughters?’

‘Did you not recognize your own sweetheart? We see what we want to see,’ she replied. ‘You wanted Mirabel and he wanted her too so we gave her back unmarked but Eliza’s
weakness we could not hide for long.’ There was a silence. ‘I watched you making love to the idea of the lady Mirabel who would confer on you all the status and connections you desired.
You were cheated down the line by my father’s desire to fob us off. You were fooled by all of us but there’s none so blind as those who do not want to see,’ she looked up, hoping
to touch his conscience.

‘Eliza could never be the wife I would have been to you. I watched you struggling to understand the change in her manner and bearing. Could you not see that I was always taller, fuller,
fairer than she? It is only my outward skin that was marked, not my soul nor my spirit. It has not changed but you have coarsened and hardened in my eyes.’

‘You don’t have to tell me that,’ he said, suddenly slumping down on the damp ground and staring out towards the bank on the other side. Then to her relief he put the baby in
her hands gently, ‘Take him. I’ll have none of him. We have all been deceived but this boy, most of all, this waif and stray. You must think up a scheme for his future, for he is none
of mine. Your words are clever, but I am not deceived. You are not my Mirabel and never were. She would never have done this to me. She was no thief! Perhaps my pride has gone before my judgement
and I should never have chosen to look above me for a wife. I saw her station not her person and I did her disservice, but the boy?’

Mirabel sighed and gripped the baby with relief. ‘We did you all great wrong but a girl brought up only to idleness has few choices but to marry well and I had none . . .’

‘You have made fools of us all and betrayed our generosity. You are not the Mirabel I once knew. She would not have done all this.’

‘Oh, but I am and you are not the saint in glory you like us to think, Mr Stockdale, for I know your secrets too, or have you forgotten our secret tryst in the glade when you leant me
against the tree and took my likeness for your own pleasure? Only I know you never received payment for your plates and that Hector’s portrait sits in my brother’s chamber in York. If I
am not Mirabel Dacre, how is it that I have a letter written in your own hand expressing your ardent desire to be my suitor? . . . Go and ask Eliza where we took those photographs. See if your
precious Mirabel wife knows anything about that little misdoing!’

‘I shall do just that,’ he replied, not daring to look her in the face. ‘I hear your arguments, you’re cunning, I’ll give you that. How do I know that Mirabel
didn’t share the secret before she died? But to foist a son on me that was not mine . . .’ He spat out his fury and she grabbed his arm.

‘William is your son, may God strike me dead if he is not,’ she paused lowering her head talking to the ground. ‘It was not Eliza who lay in the chamber in the silken shift in
the darkness. Darkness covers a multitude of deceptions. Where there’s no light I can be who I once was, beautiful in your eyes, desirable, wanton and willing to the man I cared
for.’

Matt couldn’t take in what he was hearing now. His heart was beating at the thought of those nights of passion. It was not then some dream. ‘So that was why the hands on me were
rougher and harder,’ he whispered as if to himself, shuddering with pleasure at the images they stirred up.

‘Here they are, feel them. Do not flinch from them in daylight for they gave you much pleasure at night,’ she whispered, holding out one hand for him to examine. ‘Now you know
the whole truth, all of it. William is your true son, fruit of our loins and I am his mother: the union of a Dacre and a Stockdale, as you desired. We can leave you now in peace and make no further
demands on you, if you so wish. Arrangements can be made; some story will suffice of sickness or whatever. We will return to Lawton as soon as possible and trouble you no further,’ Mirabel
offered as she walked back to the horse to lift the child on the saddle, smiling. ‘It’s never too soon to get a baby used to its mount.’

‘Stay,’ said Matt, shaking. ‘And to think I nearly . . . I must admit when I saw you riding towards me . . . I nearly . . .’

‘But you didn’t, Matt, because in your heart you’re a good and just man. What must I do now?’ she asked, turning away.

‘Let’s walk back slowly so that I may take all this in. Who else knows of this deception?’ He could not bear to think that the whole district knew of it.

‘The three of us, that’s all, I swear. Some may guess there’s some irregularity but not what it entails. Your dear mother is kindness itself. I will deceive her no longer. Papa
is so befuddled with drink, he thinks I am but the maid and a whim of his daughter’s charity.’

‘Then why need we change anything?’ Matt heard himself saying.

‘Because it is not honest and I’m sick of lies,’ she replied softly and he looked down at her with respect.

‘Honest to who? God knows what we know and we know what we know.’

‘What about William when he is older?’ she said.

‘You are his mother in the sight of God. You feed him and see to him, nurse him. That’s all that will matter to him,’ he argued.

‘But there is Mirabel . . . I mean Eliza?’ she said.

‘She has her silks, thread and needles and she can have as many canvasses as she can sew in the windows of light. She will be content for her life to continue in safety under our
protection. If she cannot live like others do, we will protect her privacy and protect each other.’ Suddenly it felt as if a great weight of doubt was shifting from the tight band around his
head. He could sense sunshine and daylight and warmth gliding over Yewbank at last.

‘It’s not right. I must leave,’ she said turning from him but he grabbed her arm roughly.

‘Do you want to leave us, Mirabel?’ He pleaded with his eyes.

‘No,’ she replied, staring back at him in tears.

‘Then that’s an end on it, madam. The Master has spoken,’ he smiled and touched her face with his finger, tracing the scars as if seeing them for the first time. There was
indeed more to beauty than a pock-marked skin.

Mirabel lay in the crook of Matt’s arm that night. This time there was no more of the Master creeping in the darkness while the Mistress slept in the dressing room. This
time like true lovers, Mirabel shared his own chamber and they made love by candlelight as if for the first time.

‘Whatever are we going to do?’ she whispered. ‘I can’t just come back from the dead. Nothing must appear changed by your discovery. I would not like to shame your mother
with our deception and yet . . .’ Mirabel rose as if to leave but Matt pulled her back into his arms.

‘All in good time. Eliza will stay as she is. If we are discreet no one will challenge things. Come back to bed.’

‘But it will soon be time for milking. The girls in the parlour will wonder if I am late.’

‘Let them wonder.’

‘But if they talk our secret will leak all over the dale.’

‘One day at a time, my dear Bella. On a farm nothing changes, not with chores and stock and the seasons. I am just sorry this is not the life I wanted for you as my wife.’

Mirabel bent over and kissed him. ‘And I am sorry I’m not the beautiful bride that you wished for but I am strong and willing to share the work. When I think how I treated the
servants at Lawton, I’m so ashamed. Being scarred and a mere invisible servant has humbled my pride. I have learned that we must treat those beneath us in station with fairness. They work so
hard for their living.’

‘With you in charge how can things not get better?’ Matt replied.

‘You know now I feel useful for the first time in my life. I am happy to be Bella, your outdoor farm wife so Eliza can be Mirabel Stockdale, the indoor society one. She will be happy
tutoring little William and teaching a little daughter her stitches, should the time come. Perhaps when our parents are gone we can revert to our real names but I must get up now to feed
William.’ She opened the shutters onto a beautiful dawn rising over the fells. ‘It’s like living on the top of the world here,’ she laughed. ‘Like gods on Mount
Olympus. Perhaps we can do what we like, for who is there to say yay or nay?’

Matt admired her naked outline as he sank back on his pillow content for the first time in years. All that he needed and loved was here in the house he’d built from his dreams. Mirabel was
right. They could live by their own rules. Was this not their kingdom after all?

There was much change in the household in the following years and all for the better. Mirabel was relieved that Eliza was free to sew and to play with little William, now there was a new baby to
come. Eliza had even taken her first steps unaided through the door with little William holding her hand and could sit in the walled garden without fainting. It was a start.

Sometimes in private, they called each other by their real names. Far from prying eyes they could live life by their own rules. It was Mirabel who accompanied Matt to church on Sunday, whose
bonnets were the talk of Lawton, being far too lavish in ruffles and feathers for a mere nursemaid. She was the one to give Matt his night comforts in the chamber they shared together.

Eliza stayed at home seeing to the linen, receiving a few parlour visitors as a good indoor wife should. There was much to see to in the growing household. Mostly she liked to keep to her
special sewing room but she was never lonely now, having little children to play with while Mirabel took on the duties of a Dales farmer’s wife most seriously. Sometimes they all sat
together, the three of them admiring the view from the windows of light.

If there were rumours of a strange arrangement at Yewbank House, not even the Parson dare challenge the truth of the matter. Only Eliza’s samplers hinted at the tale with secret symbols
hidden in the borders. Yewbank prospered but Lawton Hall was sold out of the family to pay Barnett’s debts and the grandeur of the Dacres was soon forgotten when it was bought by a Cotton
mill magnate from Bradford.

One afternoon when Eliza was resting, Matt dusted down his tripod and his special camera, pointing Mirabel to the garden. ‘I’m going to make a portrait of mother and son,’ he
ordered. ‘Put him in his best gown and sit him on your knee.’ He smiled but Mirabel shrunk back.

‘You mustn’t do that, Matt. I’m not fit to be seen.’

‘You are to me, wife of my heart. This is just a private shot of us both and our son together.’ He was setting up his equipment in front of the rose bower where there was a bench. He
sat them both down to fix the distance and the light. Mirabel was shaking at such a request as she unwrapped William Albert from his layers. She whipped up the lacy wool shawl and threw it over her
head to make a veil.

‘Just take the boy! Not me, please,’ she pleaded. ‘I must be hidden, for everyone’s sake.’

‘Are you sure?’ Matt peered from his cover ready for the exposure. ‘It will look bizarre but I want to hold him too.’ He jumped to the side and gripped the baby, staring
into the camera. ‘Look, Billy boy, watch the birdie . . .’

‘Promise you won’t show this to anyone. This must be our secret. Promise me . . .’

In the years that followed, Mirabel and Matt took to riding over their estate together but somehow always ended up sitting by the side of Gunnerside Foss watching the waterfall
cascading down or finding new vistas for him to photograph. Soon there was another baby in the picture but Mirabel would never let them be shown in public and gathered them in a fine leather album
that was kept in their chamber.