The Speckled Monster by Jennifer Lee Carrell

his father’s house outside York, and his family’s coal-mining business near Newcastle. Lady Mary would not admit she had made a mistake, but by January 1713, she was strongly advising Philippa to choose family over romance.
    For all Wortley’s jealous fears, she had not cuckolded him. With impeccable timing, she produced a son and heir nine months after the elopement, on May 16. He was christened Edward Wortley Montagu, Jr. Wortley stayed in town for the whole length of her lying-in, the six-weeks court that new mothers presided over from their beds, from which they were not allowed to rise. It was the longest period they had yet spent together. The very morning she was free, she found him in his study, packing.
    â€œSo much for conjugal bliss,” she said icily from the door.
    â€œYou would do well to control your sentiments,” he said tersely. “They are nothing but affectation.”
    â€œAffectation!” she cried. “A pious prude in love with her stableman, Mr. Wortley, could not be more outraged by her own passion than you are.”
    They quarreled, and Wortley departed abruptly, leaving Lady Mary to wander about London all afternoon like a soul adrift. You have not been gone three hours, she wrote that evening, and I have called at two people’s doors. Without knowing it myself, I find I am come home only to write to you. The late rain has drawn everybody to the Park. I shall pass the whole evening in my chamber, alone, without any business but thinking of you, in a manner you would call affectation, if I should repeat it to you .
    Her eyes sore from hay fever, dim light, and crying, she left off at dusk and went early to bed. The next morning, she awoke early to find Frances pushing hollow-eyed into her bedchamber.
    â€œWhat is it?” gasped Mary, her stomach dissolving into cold fear for Mr. Wortley.
    â€œIt is Will,” said Frances. “He has been taken with the smallpox.”

3
    A DESTROYING ANGEL
    M Y brother has the small pox, Lady Mary scrawled numbly at the bottom of the letter she had written to Wortley the night before. I hope he will do well .
    She would never have been allowed near the sickroom, since she had not had the disease herself. Still in her father’s disgrace, however, she was barred even the comfort of holding vigil with the family. Pacing through her tiny rooms alone with dread coiling tightly about her heart, she had to await the few terse messages Lady Frances could smuggle out and finagle whatever else she could from Dr. Garth.
    When word came at last, she sifted between the lines for hope: My brother, she wrote Wortley, is as well as can be expected. But Dr. Garth says ’tis the worst sort, and he fears he will be too full, which I should think very foreboding if I did not know all doctors (and particularly Garth) love to have their patients thought in danger . She refused to admit that her brother, not yet twenty-one, had already been pronounced beyond remedy. Six days later, on July 1, he died.
    The howl that rose through her mounted in waves until she thought she must burst. Fists to mouth, she strangled her grief into a silent scream that she poured into her journal: Will had been her best and only natural friend, standing by her even as she found herself banished from the rest of her family for the sake of a man whose desire had frozen to disdain. His death left her worse than alone.
    She had never seen the smallpox at work, but she had heard plenty about it and saw its scarring tracks everywhere. Spotted and blown like a carcass left in the sun, Will began to haunt her dreams. In her waking hours, her fears veered in the direction of Wortley: Your absence increases my melancholy so much I fright myself with imaginary terrors, and shall always be fancying dangers for you while you are out of my sight. . . . I am afraid of everything. There wants but little of my being afraid of the smallpox for you, so unreasonable are my