Page 76 of His Illegitimate Duchess

“I do not,” he said and glanced at Lizzie, who was pressing her lips together to stifle a laugh, at his expense, most likely.

“It was lovely meeting you, Hettie,” he said, and offered Elizabeth his arm to escort her out.

“Why are there so many paupers in this parish?” Lizzie said after her first deep breath of (somewhat) clean air when they stood in front of the hospital.

Talbot felt unclean and feared that the stench had contaminated his insides as well.

“I think all cities are heading for this,” he said despondently. “Just look at the last ten years, the wars, the Year Without a Summer , the population keeps increasing, but the economic landscape keeps changing, so people have no work…”

“Isn’t there something the government can do? The King?” She looked like she was about to cry, and he really didn’t want to break her heart any further.

“Maybe,” he said with a shrug.

In the carriage, Lizzie asked Mrs Cooper, “What made the two of you devote your Wednesdays to such noble work? And how do you manage not to fall into desperation due to all the horrors and sadness you witness?”

Mrs Cooper pressed her lips together and nodded solemnly. “We have both always believed that every life is valuable. The circumstances of one’s birth don’t define a man; his behaviour does.”

The words cause goose-flesh to erupt all over Colin’s arms.

“I view it as my own little game,” Doctor Cooper said mischievously.

“Our social system is extremely flawed and incredibly unjust, and it works very hard to keep the people who were born into disadvantaged families from changing their position in life. I like to do whatever I can to even out the scales even a little bit.”

“So, you are righting the wrongs in this world? How very quixotic of you.” Talbot smiled, amused by the Doctor’s views.

“What I consider quixotic ,” Cooper said, emphasising the word mockingly, “is this determination of the men belonging to our set to go through life without ever acknowledging that it is shameful how the majority of people around us live, through no fault of their own! I frequent the same club as you and I am technically part of polite society, but through my profession, and other things, I’ve been exposed to the other side of humanity, and I remain forever unable to look away from it.

I hope that is going to happen to you too, my friend, because having your determination on my side would help me even out the scales a lot more,” the Doctor concluded with a smile.

Talbot raised his eyebrow and said nothing, turning over Cooper’s words in his mind together with the events of the day.

He suddenly remembered a parliamentary debate from years ago, about child labour in cotton factories.

He vaguely recalled someone arguing that “those poor children” were compelled to work 15 hours every day at the age of six or seven years old.

Yes, this was around 1816, he realised.

Talbot had been a young duke with a struggling estate back then, and the debate surrounding the children and the factories had seemed to him so abstract ( In my mind, they weren’t even real people , he realised with a frown), so removed from himself, and now that he had seen the stump where Samuel’s hand was supposed to be was horrified.

Good God! He shuddered and felt Elizabeth’s eyes on him.

Colin remembered his own carefree childhood spent playing with the boys in Norwich, for the first time considering the possibility that the only thing standing between him and the fate of the workhouse boys was the accident of birth.

If some cradle robber had taken him from his parents’ house, he could have ended up like them, bloodline or not.

He remembered what Elizabeth had said about grace being the unmerited favour of God, and for the rest of the drive, he wondered what he truly merited as a man, not as a duke.

As soon as they arrived at the Mayfair house ( Home, he thought with a start), Colin closed himself in his study and started a letter-writing campaign.

He wrote to every titled peer he could remember, invoking and calling in debts, favours, friendships, and familial connexions to raise funds for the hospitals he had visited.

The Foundling Hospital will be my personal project, he decided.

*

During the quieter moments over the next week, the thoughts of the children crept up on him occasionally, but he masterfully evaded them.

He had a good reason to feel happier, for something had changed between him and his wife on the day when they were holding the babies, but he was too upset at the change in himself to enjoy it.

Ever since he’d allowed himself to entertain the possibility that each and every illegitimate baby in that room was as precious as his illegitimate wife, he was tormented by the knowledge that none of them would be allowed to improve their lives or rise above the station assigned to them at birth.

His mind went back to the Principle of Non-Contradiction.

A proposition and its negation cannot simultaneously be true. Either I am special because I am a duke, and they are all less worthy than I am. Or, every human life is precious and thus deserves the same dignity and opportunities and respect.

His head was starting to ache, but he told himself that was due to the laurel and holly Mary and his wife had used to decorate the house for the holidays.

That evening, they were expecting Lady Burnham, the Brandons, and Miss Woodhouse for dinner, and he was looking forward to discussing lighter topics, if only for one night.

*

“You’ve been unusually quiet tonight, Your Grace,” Lady Burnham told him when she approached him where he stood by the fireplace, alone, while the rest of the guests in the large sitting room had gathered around his wife.

“Well.” He smiled fondly at the older woman. “I like listening to others sometimes.”

“How have you been feeling? Your wife has told me a bit about the challenging situations you encounter in your work with the Coopers.”

“I have… I don’t know.” He shook his head. “The last two months have been eventful, to say the least. I find myself questioning things, seeing things with new eyes – it’s rather unsettling. What do you do when a belief you’ve held for most of your life turns out to have been false?”

“You forge ahead, with this new knowledge shaping your future actions,” Lady Burnham said matter-of-factly. “We cannot change the past. We can apologise for it, make amends, show improved behaviour, but we can never undo what has already happened.”

“That is a rather bleak way to look at things,” Colin said with a frown, and Lady Burnham laughed softly.

“On the contrary! It is a wonderful, liberating way to live life. Imagine letting go of all the things you cannot possibly do anything about, and instead directing those efforts towards the things you actually can accomplish.”

“I know that Stoic philosophers such as Seneca and Epictetus have preached the same thing: focus on the things that are in your control, such as your thoughts and actions, and simply accept those that are not.”

She nodded.

“What if that’s not good enough?” He almost whispered.

“Then that’s one of the things you cannot do anything about, because that’s not your decision to make,” Lady Burnham retorted.

Colin’s headache was returning.

“Enough about all those philosophical musings,” he said. “How have you been? How’s your brother?”

“Oh, my brother,” Lady Burnham wrinkled her nose.

“He doesn’t understand me. I’ve been feeling quite…

restless lately. I told him I wanted to go abroad, travel a bit, change my surroundings, I suppose.

According to my brother, however, I should not want those things; I should be content to stay at home, or ideally at his home, and just be an elderly widow whose life is over. ”

Talbot was taken aback by the sincere admission.

“Do you care much for your brother’s opinion?”

“Unfortunately, I do,” she admitted dejectedly.

“Well, there’s your problem,” Talbot smiled.

*

When Lizzie had told the women of the Mayfair household about her experiences at the hospitals during their exclusive nightly kitchen meetings (which Colin was apparently not good enough for), they had all cried and begged to be allowed to help as well.

Elizabeth had been loath to allow Mrs Barlow and Jane to do any more work than they already did as part of their duties in the house, and she and Mary had had a big fight during which Lizzie had actually forbidden Mary to upset herself further in her delicate state, going as far as to threaten to call for Robert and Mister Ed for support.

Both Talbot and Jane had been left speechless by the exchange.

In the end, it was proposed that Mary ought to make clothes for the foundlings, which she enthusiastically accepted.

When it came to Miss Williams, Lizzie had no real reason to prevent her mother from going, so Catherine had accompanied them to the Magdalen Hospital this Wednesday, and Talbot couldn’t help but think that his wife’s mother was… enjoying herself?

She smiled and laughed and chatted animatedly with the girls. Elizabeth looked as dumbfounded as her husband, while Mrs Cooper smiled at the scene with visible fondness.

“I don’t know how you did that,” Doctor Cooper said somewhere behind him.

Talbot turned around, confused. “Did what?”

“Oh, don’t play coy, Talbot. I thought you might be able to help me tip the scales a little, but what you managed to do was… beyond impressive. Do you know how many donations we received in the last week alone? More than we’ve had in the entire year!”

“I’m happy to help,” Talbot smiled.

“I need to thank the Duchess as well,” Cooper started saying, but Talbot shook his head.

“Please, no. Not a word of this to my wife.”

“Why not?” The Doctor was puzzled.

“I’m afraid she… I don’t want her to think this is but a ploy to use my title and money to get in her good graces.”