This chapter started off as just the introduction to the real meat of the chapter, but then it grew into its own chapter. It’s another transitional chapter, of which there are many in this book about transition. 😉
—
To Bridewell
November 1812
Amelia found Lord Ashbourne in the library. After he had greeted her and asked how she had found Yorkshire, she said, “Milord, may ask some clarification on Uskweirs’ rules about invitations?” He inclined his head, and she went on: “I am not to invite anyone here, which makes sense on the face of it when it’s someone new, and I suppose just so it’s never written down, of course. But… if one were staying at Uskweirs and wished the pleasure of a visit from someone who is already acquainted with the place—and if milord were amenable, of course—how might I… word that in a letter?”
One thing had occupied Amelia’s mind, ever since she had been kissed in Yorkshire and she’d thought not of the girl kissing her, but of Theresa Chesterley. The rest of the garden party, the whole of the ride home, the two days she’d dithered in her rooms uncertain, she had thought only of seeing Chesterley again. Finally she had resolved to write her, but that presented its own obstacles, too.
The viscount waved a hand dismissively. “I should like to see you, please visit, you know where I can be found. Et cetera. Who should you like to come visit?”
Amelia folded her hands over her half-written (more like quarter-written) letter, trying and failing not to blush. “Theresa Chesterley, milord.”
He frowned softly at that. “Ah, then I can spare you the trouble of writing; she can’t visit.”
“Has she… done something wrong?” Amelia asked, suddenly worried. “Is she not welcome at Uskweirs?”
“Oh no, she’s quite welcome here, she’s just not visiting anybody, because, you see…” the viscount trailed off, directing a pained look at the girl. “I’m afraid she’s in prison.”
Amelia backed into a chair and sat down without any grace.
“She shouldn’t be there long—mere months,” he explained, all sympathy.
But a short prison sentence was no consolation for Amelia’s astonished distress. “What has she done?”
He waved a hand. “She published a pamphlet with more zeal than sense, claiming that men conspire to keep women ignorant and powerless in order to exploit them. A certain magistrate took exception to her language and, on the argument that if all men are members of this conspiracy, that included every lord in England and every member of parliament, at which point she was guilty of criminal libel.” He added a moment later, “And he threatened to bring her up on treason the next time.”
“He couldn’t possibly.”
Ashbourne shrugged. “He can, even though it would probably be unwise. He’d look a fool for a few weeks but she’d be transported to the colonies for much longer. As it is, I’m sure he hopes a few months in Bridewell will crush her. Mostly because he doesn’t know her like you and I do. I’ll be happy if she comes out the other end with a basic sense of discretion.”
“Bridewell, at least,” Amelia murmured, “I’ve read how they’ve sought to improve conditions there.” She glanced out the windows, where grey autumnal clouds filled the sky. “But it sounds like she’ll be there for the worst of winter.”
The viscount studied her for a long moment, and then rapped on his desktop. “This sounds like a change of topic, but it isn’t. Are you done with Cordelia?”
“Done with?” the girl responded, at a loss. “I… well, I practice with her every day, but… she has told me that there’s nothing more for her to teach me. It really is just practice, now. Why do you ask?”
Ashbourne fished into his desk and withdrew a folded letter. “I’ve been meaning to make an introduction for her, but did not want to curtail your education before it was complete.” He unfolded the letter and glanced over it. “If she impresses Sam as much as I suspect, she will be leaving us for a bright future.”
Amelia folded her hands in her lap. “I’ll miss her, but I would like to see her happy. I think she’s bored, here.”
“She has a limited audience here,” the viscount smirked. “Well then, that settles it. We’ll leave for London on Monday. While I introduce Cordelia to Sam Arnold, you can visit Chesterley in Bridewell.”
Amelia’s heart leapt into her throat. “Milord, that’s… very kind. Thank you.”
“I already have more than half a reason to go, so it has the benefit of being both kind and convenient,” he assured her with an avuncular smile, with collapsed a moment later. “And of course Elizabeth will insist on calling on every modiste in Mayfair.”
—
When Monday came, Amelia was surprised that it was not Cordelia who boarded the carriage but Ned. The girl had seen Cordelia’s “other half” only a handful of times in the months they’d been at Uskweirs, and thought that her tutor rather preferred being Cordelia over being Ned. But perhaps, she thought to herself, that was her own bias creeping into her perceptions.
“No Cordelia?” she asked innocently.
Ned shook his head. “Not if we’re going to talk business. That gets handled as Ned; people are more likely to try and take advantage when you’re wearing skirts.”
“How convenient that must be,” Elizabeth laughed as she settled in next to Amelia. “To switch whenever it suits. I imagine it’s also much easier to pack for Ned than Cordelia.”
“One pair of breeches folds considerably smaller than three layers of skirts,” Ned smiled in response, and Amelia all but gasped at the rakish tilt he had summoned to his lips. The actor’s transformation to masculine demeanor was nothing short of incredible. He was a man of compact stature, precise dress, and voluable expression—not exactly the most masculine of traits—but he was still inescapably a man in every respect.
Not for the first time, Amelia wondered if her tutor had grown up being called a girl or a boy.
The weather was worse than their trip to Yorkshire, but the roads were much better. Starting at the break of dawn, they raced down the hill to catch the first ferry to Bristol. Elizabeth called this “the Ashbourne Morning Comet” without any affection, on account of how early she had been made to wake and dress. Her father remarked that she didn’t actually have to come to London to buy a ridiculous number of dresses and in fact could be dropped off at Bristol to make her own way home, at which point she thanked him for waking him before the cock crowed.
The first night was spent at Mulvey’s house at Bath. The mistress of the house had returned to Hertfordshire for the winter; Lord Mulvey spread a generous table and plied them all with far too much wine. Ned was goaded into performing his Lear, and then felt obliged to give his Tamburlaine to demonstrate some finer point of dramaturgy that was lost on his more-than-tipsy audience. Amelia did not remember finding her bed, but that was where she was awakened the next morning by a raging headache.
The carriage then made haste to Oxford. Halfway there, Amelia watched for and spotted the crossroads where, with a different turn, the carriage might have taken her to her family home. As she watched the signpost recede into the distance, she was dimly grateful for how fuzzy her head still was. When the hangover eventually abated, it was just in time for her to worry about crossing paths in Oxford with someone she knew from school, or worse, her professor cousin. But once there, the carriage rattled into the modest courtyard of a country house where Ashbourne’s sons lived while they were at school. No one beyond the house staff saw them disembark, dine, retire to bed, breakfast, or board the coach in the morning.
London was a smoke stain across the horizon before it was anything else. As it slowly blossomed into sooty glory before them, the number and frequency of buildings on either side of the road increased dramatically. The sun had not even touched the horizon when they reached Ashbourne’s townhouse. Elizabeth jokingly welcomed Amelia to “Uskweirs on Piccadilly” only to be wearily corrected by her father that Randall House was not a part of the Uskweirs estate, but actually part of the Viscounty of Monmouthshire. The visibly haggard viscount was about to go into further detail when he stopped himself, claimed exhaustion from travel, and retired for the evening.
But at least Randall House was equipped to chill their virus amantis equae, a luxury over which both girls expressed relief at dinner. Ned made companionable conversation through the final course and then excused himself, leaving the girls alone.
“So tell me, my darling Amelia,” said Elizabeth, smirking across the table, eyes flashing through the candles. “Do you want me to come along with you to Bridewell tomorrow? Or would you rather it just be the two of you?”
Amelia suddenly found the last remnant of her cake fascinating, picking it apart with her fork. “Oh, I… didn’t think you’d even be interested.” Her answer layered on an affected nonchalance the credibility of which she herselfwas wholly incapable of evaluating.
“Chesty’s my friend, too,” the dark-haired girl pointed out, unoffended.
“I don’t know why you call her that,” Amelia said instead of answering.
Elizabeth snorted into her wine. “Yes, you do.”
Amelia rolled her eyes. “You’re teasing me again.”
“I’m always teasing you, it’s how I show affection,” Elizabeth countered. “But if you tell me to stop, I’ll stop. And if you don’t want to talk about this, we don’t have to. But like I told you before, Amelia: you’re not subtle. It’s as plain as day what’s going on, here.”
“I wish it were plain to me!” Amelia cried, and only with the application of all her willpower set down her fork instead of dashing it into the table.
Elizabeth cocked her head. “You don’t know how you feel about her?”
“No, I—” Amelia started, stopped, and levelled a finger across the table. She thought about accusing her friend of trying to entrap her (“if you know how you feel why don’t you just say it out loud?”), and then gave up on it. “I know how I feel. I know what I want, or at least I know what I… want to find out. What I don’t know is how she feels. I don’t even know if she… well…”
Elizabeth lifted her eyebrows expectantly. “If she fancies the ladies?”
Amelia slumped into her chair and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Yes.”
Her friend waved a wine glass at her. “I could have told you that ages ago if you’d just asked. As if it weren’t patently clear. But yes, she is a Disciple of Sappho. A connoisseur of soft curves. She’s that kind of girl.”
Relief washed over Amelia, and she scoffed good-naturedly. “I thought we were that kind of girl.”
“We’re the other that kind of girl,” her friend replied, and then giggled. “Although I guess you’re both that kinds of girl.”
Amelia’s laugh dwindled. She almost didn’t ask, but then forced herself to push the question through her lips: “Do you know if she’s… amenable to our that kind of girl?”
Elizabeth gave her friend a pained smile and didn’t answer at first. “I can’t help you there, Mellie.”
Amelia squinted through the candles. “Mellie?”
“You don’t like it?” her friend giggled, shrugged as if it had been worth a try, and then pointed an accusing finger across the table. “Why don’t you call me Lizzie?”
Amelia pressed herself against the back of her chair, suddenly timorous. “You’ve never asked me to.” She’d never wanted to take too much for granted in the magical house that might as well have really been in Faerieland, or with its residents.
“Please call me Lizzie,” said Lizzie, and decisively set her glass on the table. She rose from her seat, smiling at how she had successfully flustered her friend enough with nicknames that she had completely forgotten about Theresa Chesterley’s unknown thoughts on their that kind of girl. “Let me show you to your room and then I’m going to go sleep until noon.”
—
Bridewell had once been a royal palace, which only went to show how much all institutional buidings inevitably resemble each other. There was a tall gate, a wide cobbled yard, a bank of stairs, and a pair of double doors. The only thing that changed was the grime. The prison entrance had been the service entrance, and it was still flanked by stacks of crates, tubs of washing water, and billows of chicken feathers.
Amelia crossed the yard toting a wicker basket filled with meat pies, oranges, woolen gloves, and a very thick blanket. Atop all that, secured by her thumb and forefinger pinched tight on the paper, fluttered a sealed letter from Ashbourne.
He’d given it to her in the carriage ride over, saying, “Hand this to the warden and no one else. He or his underlings may ask you for money, tell them it’s all in the letter. The bribe has been taken care of.”
“Bribe?” Amelia echoed, eyes wide.
Ned, riding along on the way to his introduction, chuckled. “It’s a prison; it runs on bribes. The warden paid good money for his position so he could collect those bribes. Don’t want to disappoint him, do we?”
Ashbourne chuckled, too, as he watched the prison gates approach. He turned to Amelia, brow furrowed. “I don’t know how much you know, Amelia, so forgive me if I seem to condescend. I want to make explicitly sure that you understand the situation you are walking into.” He paused to take a deep breath and considered his words. “Chesterley’s position is… delicate. She has no husband, no father, no brother. She lives on a stipend that keeps her independent. But that also means that there is no check on her, which some find difficult to accept.”
“Some… magistrates, specifically?” Amelia hazarded.
He nodded. “I’m sure they found great joy in jailing her for libel, but that won’t last. The permanent solution is committing her to bedlam. And she’s protected from that, but imperfectly. No father, no husband, no legally responsible relative to recommend her to an asylum.”
Ashbourne looked out the window as the gates of the prison slid past. “So it’s dreadfully important, Amelia, that any visitor she receives is seen to be her friend,” he said, voice clipped and exacting, and then he turned his steely grey eyes onto her, “and not her lover.”
Amelia’s heart very nearly stopped in her chest. She closed her eyes, took one deep breath, and nodded. Then she asked, “Why does everyone know?”
Ned shrugged. “You’re not exactly subtle.”
“Her criminal history combined with witness to unconventional desires would be enough to commit her,” Ashbourne went on, quietly but equally urgent. “Do not trust any apparent privacy you are given.”
“It’s a prison that used to be a palace,” Ned put in. “The walls have ears.”
And so with warnings ringing in her own ears, Amelia strode up to the door, flashed the seal of the Viscount of Monmothshire, and asked to see the warden.
