“So Wingate’s home at last, and he’ll be in the neighborhood, you say?”
“He’ll be here, sir. Haven’t you been listening? He has accepted my invitation to join the house party and hunt. That must mean he is interested.” She still regretted that his reply was penned by some anonymous secretary. Perhaps while his lordship was here…
“And you think the wench’ll have him?”
“Have him? Iselle will jump at the chance. He’s said to be handsome and charming, and she’s at her last prayers. Besides, she had all those years to make a choice. Either she’ll have the viscount or she can go visit your Aunt Irmintrude.”
“Gads, in Wales? How could she ever make a match stuck in that cold place?”
“Exactly. She’ll make a perfect diplomat’s wife.” Lady Bannister poured a fresh cup of tea. “As for Inessa, she requires a different kind of spouse.”
“She’s the quiet one, ain’t she?”
“She never really took in London, despite matching Iselle for looks. She seems to prefer the country and quiet pursuits. She’ll be a perfect match for Mr. Frye. It’s not a brilliant connection, with no title, of course. But there is all that lovely money.”
“Why, Frye is forty if he’s a day. And word is a lot of that blunt comes from trade. He’s got the finest stud in the county, by George—what I wouldn’t give for one of his Thoroughbreds—but Inessa?” The middle daughter’s handwriting at age fifteen had been painstakingly neat. Inessa truly wished to please, so copied her passage from Reverend Quigley’s tome over and over until she had it perfect, though her tired hand lent a slight waver and weakness to the letters. According to Lady Bannister, the thin lines meant she was unsure of herself, but the waver meant she was easily swayed. “The gal needs an older man, a steady influence. And Frye isn’t one for racketing around.”
“He’s not accepted in first circles, you mean.”
“Country society is good enough for Inessa,” she insisted. “And Frye’s been a widower for four or
five years
now. He
needs
a wife, especially one whose birth will make him more welcome in polite society.”
“Well and good for Frye, but what about Inessa?”
“She is biddable, I always told you, and knows her duty. Furthermore,” she said through gritted teeth, “I refuse to drag that shrinking violet to one more ball. She’ll have Frye or join her sister in Wales.”
Isa nodded, seeing visions of one of Frye’s colts being part of the marriage settlements. “What about, ah, the last one of the brood?”
Lady Bannister sniffed, that the gudgeon could hardly remember his own children’s names, then she shuddered to think of seeing her third daughter making her curtsies in town. No, the chit was impossible. Where the older girls had fine spun-gold hair, this one had flyaway red curls, wild hair and wild manners. She’d be a disaster at Almack’s, where one misstep set a female beyond the pale, and beyond the reach of any marriage-minded male. In truth, her every scrape and b
um
blebroth proved the validity of Lady Bannister’s theorems. Hadn’t her copied passage been full of blots and backward-leaning letters, a totally undisciplined, nearly illegible scrawl? The writing proved what Lady Bannister already knew, that the chit was headstrong and ungovernable. What she didn’t know was that the girl was left-handed, forced by convention and a cruel governess to write the “correct” way, with her right hand. The governess was dismissed anyway, for Lady Bannister saw no reason to pay good money in a hopeless case. The girl’s tomboyish behavior after that only reinforced Irene’s findings. The chit definitely needed a husband, or a keeper.
“I fear Squire Thurkle’s son is the best we can hope for in that quarter. And you’ll likely have to throw in that parcel of unentailed property that Thurkle has been after to get him to bring the boy up to the mark.”
“The lad’s got a good seat,” the baronet mused. “He’s young, but the two have been playmates for dog’s years.”
“Good, because he
will
marry her. Not even Aunt Irmintrude will take that hurly-burly miss off my hands.”
Just then there came a thud from the room next door, as from a book dropping off a shelf.
“Blast, I told you I didn’t want those clumsy maids in my library. I don’t know why you cannot hire more competent servants, since you claim to know so much about human nature.”
“I only claim that there are inferences to be drawn from a person’s handwriting, and servants don’t write.”
“If they could write, they wouldn’t be servants, they’d be barristers. Or poets. Perhaps you could tell if Walter Scott would make a good valet. You sure as Hades cannot keep a good cook.” He pushed aside his ruined breakfast.
“At least I never judged a man by how well he sits a horse. Why, if I’d seen your miserable scribbling before we were wed, I would have—”
2
“Botheration.” The young lady in the library stooped to pick up the fallen book, then tore out of the room and down the hall. She avoided colliding with the butler and his fresh pot of tea by mere inches, calling over her shoulder, “Hurry, Dobbs, they are at it again,” before flying up the stairs. Dobbs winced and redirected his stately tread in the other direction, back toward the kitchens, shaking his head at the sight of his youngest mistress taking the marble stairs two at a time. Her muslin skirts, dusty from an early visit to the stables, swirled around her muddied half boots. Red-gold hair tumbled out of its ribbon to trail down her back and in her face, and when she brushed the offending curls out of her eyes, her hand—her left hand—deposited a streak of dirt across a cheek already a
ffli
cted with freckles.
“Botheration,” she cursed again on her way to wake her sleeping sisters, to announce the disasters in store for them. Of all the dire fates, though, in a life filled with injustice and slights, Algernon Thurkle was the worst blight of all. At least Ellie, beautiful Iselle, was to get a handsome peer. And Nessie, sweet Inessa, was to get Frye Hall and those marvelous horses. She, the last child, the unwanted third daughter, was to get Algie Thurkle, with his spots and stammer and stable-centered conversation. Why, his horse had more intelligence! She’d rather wed his horse, for that matter. At least the horse did not have roving hands. Lady Bannister’s youngest girl may have been without a governess for these past years, but she had the lending library and the collection downstairs to teach herself, and if there was one thing she learned, it was that there was more to life than horses and hunting. Well, she was not going to do it. She was not going to marry an unlicked cub without even making her bows at the marriage mart, and she was not going to become Mrs. Algernon Thurkle, not after spending the last eighteen years as Irmagard Snodgrass. Life could not be that cruel.
The freckles were bad enough, the left-handedness could usually be concealed, and she had long resigned herself to being the ugly duckling in a family of swans, but Irmagard! Not even Maggie, she thought with eighteen years of resentment, because Lady Bannister thought Maggie sounded common. So she was Irma to her closest associates, and more often Irm the Worm to her older sisters, who had too often found the grubby infant underfoot, asking questions, following them about. From the natural superiority of five or six years, they resented the constant shadow of a bumbling baby sister.
They did not resent her now, falling on Irma to save them from the atrocity of arranged marriages. At least they did so after Iselle roundly berated her for waking them before noon, and Inessa raised her blue eyes to heaven and clucked her tongue at the sight of the dirt tracks across her carpet.
“Oh, hush, both of you, do. Ellie, you know you don’t need any beauty sleep; you’re always prettiest after dancing the night away. And if you don’t hurry and listen, you’ll find yourself never dancing again. And, Nessie, you’ll have to do more than pray over a little untidiness, unless you wish to have Mr. Frye tracking stable muck through your parlor.”
“Mr. Frye? Whatever are you speaking of? He would never come calling on Mama in all his dirt.”
“And what do you mean, I’ll never dance again? Why, there will be balls every night as soon as Papa’s wretched hunt is over and we leave for London.”
“We are not going to London, none of us, that’s the point. We have a veritable crisis.” And so she explained about their mother’s plans to see each of them engaged by the night of the hunt ball, less than a week away.
Predictably, Iselle dissolved in a flutter of weepy lace onto the chaise longue, without looking one jot puffy or red-eyed or rumpled, Irma thought disgustedly as she bathed her eldest sister’s forehead with lavender water.
“I made sure Mama would give up after all these years,” Ellie groaned. “I’ll go into a decline, I swear, and waste away from a broken heart. Viscount Wingate will marry a faded wraith, and then I’ll come back to haunt him for taking an unwilling bride.”
The only books Iselle ever read, nay, listened to while Inessa or Irma read aloud, were gothic romances from the Minerva Press. It showed. The handkerchief wafted through the air. “I shall die for true love.”
“Don’t be a cabbage head, Ellie,” Irma chided. “No one dies from an arranged marriage. Just look at Mama.”
Ellie moaned again. Then she sat up suddenly, tipping the basin of scented water onto Irma. “Wingate!” she shrieked, as if she’d truly seen a ghost. “Why did she have to pick that stuffed shirt Wingate?”
Irma ignored the spreading wetness in her lap.
“Oh, do you know him? Did you ever meet him in London? Mama says he is handsome.”
“Handsome?” Iselle echoed distractedly. “I suppose, if you like sober-sided and stiff-rumped old men. Why, there’s never been so much as a hint of scandal to his name, not a single
affaire
or gaming debt or duel, only his stodgy accomplishments at those wretched peace conventions. No, I never met him, although I did see him a few times. But, but, Irma, you were right! He never dances, just stands in corners having boring conversations when he’s not at those fusty government conferences and things. I’d have to be a political hostess,” she wailed, “giving those interminable dinners where no one laughs or gossips or flirts. And you know I never understand any of that other talk about exclusions and excise taxes. You know I don’t!”
“Sh, Ellie, don’t get yourself in a pelter. Mama says Wingate is retiring from the government to take up managing his properties.”
“Worse and worse!” Iselle cried. “Then I’ll never get to London at all! How will I find out the latest fashions? Besides, in the country away from company, I’d have to talk to him all the time, every day!”
“Yes, dearest, that is customary among husbands and wives.”
“But, but, Irma, they say Wingate speaks eight languages! Eight!”
Irma had no words of comfort for the beautiful wigeon who barely spoke one. She turned instead to her other sister, who had been quietly wringing her hands together in the corner of the sitting room the sisters shared.
“What think you, Nessie? Can you be happy with Mr. Frye?”
With blue eyes awash in tears, Inessa looked like an injured angel. Her chin trembled and her voice quavered, but she managed to say, “If Mama wishes it, I shall try to make him a good wife.”
“But can you be happy?” Irma insisted. “Mama doesn’t have to live with him, you know.”
Inessa swallowed. “A woman cannot simply follow her own heart in these things, Irmagard. You’ve always been too impetuous to see that there are higher goals than the mere pursuit of happiness. A daughter owes her parents obedience and…and deference to their wisdom.”
Irma made an unladylike sound. “Is it wise to shackle you to a man nearly old enough to be your father and whose manners, moreover, smell of the shop no matter what airs he puts on for the countryside? That is not wisdom, Nessie, it’s greed for all that money he has.”
“Well, at least I shall be able to accomplish a great many good deeds with all that wealth.”
“What fustian. The man did not get to be a nabob by giving alms to the poor. And I am certain he won’t want his beautiful young bride going among the diseased and downtrodden. Can’t you see, Nessie, Mama just picked him because he is well-heeled and handy. She just wants to get rid of us.”
Iselle dabbed at her nose. “I cannot see what you have to complain about, Irma. Your life won’t be ruined. You’ll still be able to muck about in the stables and tromp over the hills to visit the tenant farmers the way you’ve been doing. Algie won’t mind that you never learned to play the pianoforte or embroider.”
“What you mean is that I can never hope for a better match.”
“I never said that! It’s just that you and Algie have so much in common. Your…your outdoorsyness, and…and your freckles!”
Irma laughed. “A fine basis for a marriage. You are as bad as Mama, but never mind. No one thought to inquire if I might enjoy a London ball, or even an intelligent conversation. You might be resigned to the fates Mama has assigned you, but I swear to you, I shan’t marry Algernon Thurkle. And no,” she said to Iselle, “I won’t go into any histrionic declaration that I’d sooner die. I’d more likely murder poor Algie first. But if you don’t want to hear my plans…” And she made to leave the room, flipping her damp skirts away from her legs.
“Don’t you dare leave, you little worm, without telling us your plan!” Iselle commanded. Then Inessa murmured, “Do you really think there is a chance Mama will change her mind?”