Letitia Or The Convalescent Heart

by Catherine Bowness

  “Well, you have been,” Aspasia retorted. “You have been spending all your time with Captain Sharpthorne and shamefully neglecting your betrothed, which is why he has been forced to talk to me!”

  “Boot’s on the other leg,” Letty said, openly dissolving into laughter now. “He has neglected me so that I have been forced to watch him falling in love with my aunt! Oh, pray do not blush or prevaricate any further – I think it is the most wonderful thing. I’ll wager you never thought when you embarked upon this trip that you would find yourself another husband – and one vastly superior to the first one too!”

  “I cannot marry him if Mr Ripley is still alive,” Aspasia said. “And from what his lordship said yesterday there is no evidence that he is not.”

  “Not perhaps just at present but I am sure it will not be difficult to obtain an annulment or something on the grounds of desertion; in any event, you haven’t heard the slightest whisper from him in twelve years so that he probably is dead. Has Stonegate declared himself?”

  “I’m not entirely sure,” Aspasia admitted.

  “Not sure? Clearly he has, and you must admit that is positively outrageous when he is promised to me!” Letty exclaimed on a squeak. “I think you deserve each other: you are probably still married, and he is betrothed. Has he mentioned marriage, or will he offer you carte blanche, do you think?”

  “Marriage. Oh, Letty, I am sorry, but there is no accounting for whom one forms an attachment; we neither of us meant it to happen, but you must admit that you and he have little in common – and you have said several times that you do not wish to marry him.”

  “I don’t; you may have him with my blessing, dear Aunt,” Letty said, squeezing the older woman’s hand. “Only I don’t think you’d better let the Countess know; it’s my belief she’s quite a dangerous woman. She wants to have her own way and means to have it.”

  “And, since you seem to understand her motives so well, what does she want in your opinion?”

  “Why for Archie to become Earl – and that means that Stonegate had better not marry and definitely not have any children. He should probably have found a wife years ago for leaving it so late has given her hope that she may get her wish. That’s why she watches me so closely and why, recently, she has left off being unkind to me. She hopes Lord Sharpthorne will take me away. But I think she’s been too busy watching me and Henry to take any notice of you.”

  “And do you wish ‘Henry’ to take you away?” Aspasia asked, fascinated by this evidence that her niece had grown up so much as to pay attention to what was going on around her.

  “I can see you haven’t been thinking of much except Lord Stonegate,” Letty said. “No; I like him very well and I am convinced he likes me, but not to marry. To tell you the truth, I think he formed a rather negative opinion of me when he heard that I had fallen out of love with Archie. He thinks I should be hanging around wanting to dress his wounds and cut up his dinner for him but to my mind, although that would show a no doubt pleasing disposition to nurse someone, it would not be love – not at my age. I want a grand passion, not to have to look after someone and, if that makes me selfish, well, I’m sorry but I can’t help it.”

  “I see. Well, I have no right to lecture you on whom you should love or what sort of affection is proper between a husband and his wife, but I must ask what you intend to do when we leave Stonegate?”

  “I thought we had already settled that. You suggested I could live with you, which I own I would much prefer to going back to Papa but, now that you will be setting up home with Stonegate in one way or another, perhaps you have changed your mind? I had hoped, as I said at the outset, that I could stay here with you - and him as my new uncle. You’ve never had a London Season either, have you? Perhaps we could have one together …” she finished on a wistful note.

  “I think you’re moving a little fast,” Aspasia said. “That will be well and good if matters turn out so that I am able to marry him; but, if they do not – and if he does offer me carte blanche – I hardly think it would be proper for you to stay with such a supremely unrespectable person; and clearly I would not be able to launch you into London Society.”

  “Oh, I don’t know; it would give all those stuffy people something to talk about! I take it you would accept carte blanche? Really, Aunt, I am quite shocked!”

  “Would you not have accepted that in the days when you were in love with Lord Archibald?” Aspasia asked.

  “He did not suggest it.”

  “Neither has Stonegate. I apologise, Letty, I should not have asked you that. You were a young girl, barely sixteen, and could not possibly have accepted anything other than marriage. It is different for me; I have been, probably still am, married and it is too late for me to hope for the sort of life which we were brought up to expect but I think, I really do think, that I would accept carte blanche because I own I wish to live a little, to be happy for a time, even if it is only for a few months.”

  After this declaration, Aspasia fell silent although she cast a surreptitious glance at her niece, curious to know what she made of such a very improper announcement.

  She did not have long to wait: Letty, with a little cry, threw her arms around her aunt and said with shocking enthusiasm, “Absolutely, dear Aunt!”

  There was no time for more as they were entering the outskirts of Tunbridge Wells and the carriage soon drew up in front of what looked like an exceedingly expensive ladies’ outfitter.

  “This is where his lordship told me to bring you, Madam,” the coachman said, opening the door and letting down the steps.

  Both women descended and, the knocker having been employed by the coachman, sailed into the shop, which turned out to be a very mecca of gorgeous dresses. Having stated their requirements, both were soon offered a vast array of garments from which to choose, tried on several, sought each other’s opinions – as well as the proprietress’s – and chose a gown each, together with a shawl in case the evening should turn chilly. Aspasia’s was a daring apricot although she took the precaution of choosing a plain black shawl. Letty’s was jonquil.

  “I don’t think he can accuse me of dressing like a chaperone in such a colour, do you?” Aspasia asked her niece.

  “No, indeed, although I don’t think it’s the colour – which by the way becomes you to a quite devastating degree – so much as the cut, particularly of the bodice,” Letty said. “In any event, if you are too ashamed to be seen in apricot, trimmed with lace, you can always wrap the shawl around your shoulders.”

  “Do you think it cut too low? I could add a fichu to preserve my modesty,” Aspasia asked with an anxious frown.

  “I have just the thing,” the proprietress said at once, darting to the back of the shop, “although I think it will spoil the line.”

  “It ruins the line,” Letty said at once, “and the dress is not cut too low; why it is much the same as mine!”

  “Yes, but you are not a chaperone.”

  “No, I am a young unmarried girl – fairly young in any event - and likely to remain that way,” she added with a wry twist of her lips.

  “You know you have only to say the word,” Aspasia said quietly.

  “To whom?”

  “To him – or to the other.”

  “Which other? If you mean the one I think you mean, I am afraid that I have well and truly burned my boats there and the alternative – the one you – and he – seem to expect is not interested.”

  “Afraid?”

  “Yes. He will not ask me again – I have made my sentiments only too plain.” Letty stood in front of the mirror, looking at herself in the jonquil silk. It was charming and brought out the almost lemon-coloured streaks in her hair where the sun had bleached it.

  “You should wear a hat when you go outside,” Aspasia said. “Have you changed your mind again?”

  “I would be ashamed to admit it even if I had,” Letty said, “because it would be perfectly clear to everyone that my opinion was influe
nced entirely by his looks, and that would make everyone think me excessively shallow.”

  “We will discuss it in the carriage on the way home,” Aspasia said firmly, conscious that the proprietress, for all she appeared to be busy elsewhere, was almost certainly listening and would know precisely whom they were discussing when it came to the point of telling her to send the bill to the Earl of Stonegate.

  Chapter 27

  It seemed that Letty regretted having said as much as she had for, when Aspasia raised the matter again once they were settled in the carriage for the return journey, she attempted to brush it off.

  “Was it the time spent wandering about the ruins yesterday which led to your change of mind?”

  “I did not say that I had changed my mind.”

  “You said,” Aspasia explained carefully, “that you would be ashamed to do so in case everyone thought you had been swayed by his lordship’s looks. I own I am surprised to hear you place so much importance on other people’s opinions. For a girl who did not hesitate to kiss a man, and subsequently run off with him in the teeth of her family’s opposition, to claim to be afraid of criticism does not, to my mind, make any sense. I presume it is a case of your mind beginning to waver and your not wishing to declare it until you are certain.”

  “He does not care for me any more.”

  “What? The man is besotted!”

  “I am persuaded he is not – not any more. Why, he was discussing quite calmly whether I should marry his brother or Lord Sharpthorne. I did not like to point out that his brother had fallen in love with my aunt – and I would be behaving quite shockingly selfishly if I were to insist upon marrying him in those circumstances – and Lord Sharpthorne has not asked me. I did tell him there was nothing between the Captain and me, but he did not seem particularly pleased and certainly did not see it as an opportunity to plead his own case. It’s my belief he is thoroughly disillusioned with the way I have turned out and no more wishes to marry me than either Stonegate or Sharpthorne. In fact, I am coming to the conclusion that no one wants to marry me – and I am sure they have good reason for such reluctance!”

  “Pray don’t be absurd!” Aspasia said. “Do you expect every man who meets you to fall hopelessly in love with you?”

  “No! But I did think Archie had!”

  “Well, never mind what his sentiments are; at the moment what I want to know about are yours.”

  “I am trying not to dwell upon them.”

  “If you want to live happily ever after, as I must presume you do, you will have to dwell upon them long enough to decide what you want – and I am afraid that may lead to disappointment. But it is only by admitting - to yourself at least – and perhaps to me - what you do want that you will be able to take steps to achieve it.”

  “I cannot!” Letty exclaimed, her voice so full of pain that Aspasia was quite startled. “I have spent years wanting something which I could not have. I have suffered the most terrible disappointment and I cannot face that again.”

  Aspasia reflected that she had too for she could not pretend that Mr Ripley had fulfilled her girlish hopes.

  “But did you not accept Stonegate’s offer because you hoped to meet Lord Archibald again in spite of being under the impression that he was married?”

  “No; I thought Stonegate was a good match and I wanted to escape from my stepmama, as I have told you – and anyone else who cares to listen – but I also wanted to put an end to the horrid cycle of hope and disappointment which I was afraid might kill me.” Letty sounded quite angry as she catalogued her reasons for choosing the man whom her aunt now wanted to appropriate for herself.

  “Yes, I can understand that, but I cannot help feeling that, if you really had given up hoping to be reunited with your Archie, you might have been wiser to marry another man – one unrelated to him and preferably not living only a few miles distant!”

  “I didn’t know any other men and neither did I know that Archie would be living so close. I remembered Lord Stonegate and knew that he was not given to violence – even when provoked beyond all bearing. Only, when I met him again, I knew I could not go through with it.”

  “No, perhaps you could not. But, when you did meet Lord Archibald again, you declared that your sentiments had undergone a profound change. What I am trying to elicit is why you thought they had and why you appear to have changed your mind again for, if I am not much mistaken, you are beginning to acknowledge that, in point of fact, you do still love Lord Archibald.”

  “I thought – I do not know, Aunt, truly I do not – but I think that, when I saw him again, he did not seem to be the same man I fell in love with; my heart sort of froze and everything I had felt before, which I had kept alive by constantly going over and over it in my mind, suddenly seemed to have been an illusion. I had embroidered upon a shadow of a memory until I had ended by inventing a hero. Then, when I saw him, something died within me. I thought it was love – and I was afraid it was related to the way he looked, which made me ashamed - but now I wonder if perhaps it was nothing more than my childish dream.”

  “It may be,” her aunt murmured when Letty paused.

  “I am not in the least surprised that none of these men care for me,” her niece pursued in a despondent tone. “May I live with you and Stonegate and perhaps take care of your children?”

  “Lud – you go too fast and you are trying to focus upon me again. I want to discuss your sentiments. You said, when you first saw Lord Archibald again, that you did not want to kiss him.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes, and I always think – although of course there are far more important things than kissing – that it is in a way a sort of test which a woman should ask herself before she commits to marrying a man. But then, dear child, I am very likely the worst person of whom to ask advice since I own I wanted quite dreadfully to kiss Mr Ripley who, far from becoming a prince, turned into the most horrid toad - although not, unfortunately, until it was too late.”

  “Do you think all men become toads when you marry them?” Letty asked in a small voice.

  “I don’t know; I have only married one; he didn’t become a toad quite at first; to begin with I thought I was in paradise – and I believed he thought so too. It was not until about six months had passed that he began to consider me a toad and I think it was then that he became one. Of course, that is very hard on toads, who are no doubt perfectly agreeable characters and elicit much affection from toadesses – or whatever female toads are called.”

  “Yes, yes,” Letty said impatiently, not particularly wishing to be instructed in natural history just at present. “I suppose you want to kiss Stonegate. Have you done so?”

  Aspasia blushed. “No.”

  “Well then, I don’t think you can be certain how he will turn out, but I suppose, in view of what you have just said, you must want to kiss him.”

  “We are not discussing me,” Aspasia pointed out. “Do you now feel that you would like to kiss Lord Archibald? In fact, did you do so when you were wandering about amongst the ruins?”

  “No; yes.”

  “You don’t want to kiss him but you did?” Aspasia asked, frowning.

  “I did not kiss him – and he did not kiss me. As I already told you, he no longer loves me.”

  “But you love him?”

  Letty did not answer this very direct question but she stared at her aunt with such a wild-eyed look that Aspasia thought she had her answer and ceased to press for one. Letty, however, did speak after a long pause.

  “I think perhaps I am beginning to like him – even to love him – in a way that I did not before. You see, Aunt, I realise that in point of fact I never knew him until now; when I fell in love with him it was from across the room and we were parted almost at once when Maria threw the paperweight and Archie was banished. We had not exchanged two words.

  “After that we corresponded but I do not think it would be altogether accurate to say that we exchanged views on any subject
other than our sentiments. My letters – and I remember them with shame – said nothing except how much I loved him, how much I yearned for his kisses and his arms about me and how hateful my papa and mama were.”

  “What did his say?”

  “Well, his were much longer and I think they retailed what he had been doing and sometimes included poems or extracts from books, but I am afraid I did not read those bits with very much attention. I jumped to his protestations of love, his praise of my beauty, his memories of holding me in his arms – and so on – and then later to the arrangements he had made for us to elope. I read those with great care, packed my bag when he told me to and crept from the house to meet him. Of course, it was unfortunate that Stonegate was staying in the vicinity at the time. Archie hadn’t known that, or I am persuaded he would not have suggested fleeing that night.”

  “I thought he was a guest in your house.”

  “No; he was staying with the Duke of Appledore a few miles away, but had come to dinner. I didn’t join them as I was not yet out, but Papa sent for me to sing and that was how he discovered my absence. And then, like a fool, I left a note which explained everything, including the name of my lover. That was what prompted Stonegate to come after me. I suspect Papa would simply have let me run away and then disinherited me as he did you.”

  “I see. How soon after you had left did Stonegate catch up with you?”

  “Oh, long before we’d had a chance to do anything excessively improper, if that’s what you’re thinking! We left quite early, more or less when everyone went in to dinner, as Archie thought that would give us a head start. But we had still hardly exchanged two words when we were parted – and those words were all about love, so I realise now that we barely knew each other. It was all about how we looked, was it not, Aunt?”