“That fellow is Clancarty—I am sure of it,” he said fiercely, “and the minx is in communication with him—but, by Saint Thomas, I’ll break it up—if I have to break his head!”
“Fudge, my love,” replied the countess tittering, “’twill take more than your wit to keep two lovers apart; but never fear, she’ll not give up her wealth and comfort to run away with him—she has too much sense.”
Lord Spencer’s eyelids drooped lower. “I’ll see that she never has the opportunity, madam,” he said, in a cool voice that had the effect of making Lady Sunderland shiver much as Betty had.
Meanwhile, Lady Clancarty poured out her hopes and fears and half-formed plans to Alice Lynn. The first thing to be done was to get the wounded man into a place of comfort, where he would also be secure, and in this Alice could help more than her mistress had dreamed. The girl had an uncle living in Cambridge, a mercer, and a man with Jacobite leanings, and she at once suggested his house as a possible shelter for Lord Clancarty. After some discussion, her mistress eagerly accepted this opportunity, especially as she must leave Newmarket soon for London to join her father, and Cambridge would be near. There were many secret missives passing to and fro between the house in the woods and the Lion’s Head, but Betty found herself too closely watched by Spencer to dare another visit, and by the end of a week Lord Clancarty was strong enough to be moved to Cambridge, to her infinite relief. The journey was safely and secretly accomplished, and she had the happiness of knowing that he would have both care and nursing, besides greater security.
By this time the races were over, and the stream of people had poured back to the capital, where Parliament had been opened by the king, and Newmarket was empty and quiet. Lady Sunderland went to Windsor, leaving her daughter to go on to London to the earl’s house, where Sunderland and Spencer had preceded her.
Lady Clancarty went up to London, therefore, with her two women, Alice and Melissa Thurle, and tried to wait with patience for an opportunity to see her husband again. She was cheered and solaced, however, by frequent secret messages that assured her, not only of his safety, but that he was mending rapidly. He had even been able to write her one letter himself, which she kept hidden in her bosom by day and under her pillow by night, though it was only a meagre little letter, written while his hand was still unsteady.
“Dear heart,” he wrote, “was it a dream—that lovely vision in the dark cabin? Were those soft kisses immaterial too? Or did I really hold you in my arms and feel your cheek against my own? Dear heart, dear wife, I love you, yet am I parted from you—but not for long—not for long! Else would this earth be a purgatory and I should wish the wound had been fatal! Forgive me, I do not doubt you,—I should rather die.”
But the time came, at last, when it was even dangerous to receive or send these missives, for Lord Spencer was watchful and suspicious still, and for Clancarty’s sake Betty forced herself to be patient,—the sharpest trial of all.
The weeks passed and the cold Saint Agnes weather was upon them. Parliament was in the depths of its wrangles over the military establishment, but the House of Commons, though never more unruly than in these last years of William the Third, was in a somewhat milder mood—alarmed by the threatened difficulty of the Spanish Succession—and it permitted the ministers to put the most favorable interpretation upon the law and retain ten thousand fighting men. Further, it expressed its attachment to the sovereign’s person by suspending the benefit of the Habeas Corpus Act twelve months longer from Bernardi and the other conspirators involved in the late Assassination Plot. Lord Sunderland was almost constantly at the king’s elbow, absorbed in political affairs, and Spencer stood out as a shining light among the younger Whigs.
Meanwhile, Lady Clancarty fretted her heart out because she could neither see Clancarty nor get a message from him. Her suite of rooms at Leicester House—which was now the town house of the Earl of Sunderland—were never so dreary. She paced them day and night in her anxiety, and struggle as she would to hide it, there were signs of it upon her face. Yet she played her part well as the mistress of her father’s house, and she had never been more lovely or more courted. Her receptions were always crowded, and at every ball she was the centre of a lively group of admirers and friends. But with it all her heart ached.