I would marry Lord King.
Chapter Twenty
Links Grace and Harmony in Happiest Chain
June 1835
An astute observer would note that I had known Lord King less than a fortnight. One might expect a young lady to feel alarmed and overwhelmed by such a swift progression from introduction to acquaintance to betrothal, but I felt swept away on a wave of excitement and relief. Lord King seemed the ideal husband for a mathematical young lady such as myself, and since he was evidently fond of me and I liked him very much, we had every expectation of happiness. And now that the decision had been made, I felt as if I had been struggling up the steep slopes of Mont Blanc for two years and had at last reached the summit. At last I knew that I would not disappoint my mother by failing in my foremost duty. I would not be condemned to the miserable fate of the Three Furies, forever lingering in the shadows of other people’s happiness. And, best of all, Lord King would not expect me to abandon my mathematics once I became his wife—in fact, he would be surprised and disappointed if I did.
Lord King had spoken to my mother alone in her study while I was supposed to be sitting demurely in the garden, innocently unaware of what transpired inside. Instead I had paced, imagining the many different directions their conversation might take, and only after Lord King had joined me in the garden, my mother on his arm, both of them smiling, had my lingering worries fled. With my mother looking on approvingly, Lord King had taken my hand in his and had knelt before me, and when he proposed, I had joyfully accepted.
We embraced, and he gave me a chaste kiss on the cheek, but his lips lingered close to my mouth, trembling with anticipation. I felt it too, and I smiled up at him with happy tears in my eyes. I think we both forgot about my mother standing a few paces away until she cleared her throat and said, “Perhaps we should discuss a date for the wedding?”
Lord King readily agreed, and so the three of us sat down on adjacent benches, my mother took her diary from her pocket, and we considered the options. My mother and Lord King agreed that since there was no impediment, financial or otherwise, to our marriage, a long engagement was neither necessary nor advisable. “I am happy to wed Miss Byron at the earliest possible opportunity,” Lord King said, his eyes shining with affection as he took my hand, kissed it, and pressed it to his heart. I was too overcome with happiness to reply, but I knew he understood all I could not say.
My mother paged through her diary. “What about the eighth of July?”
My heart gave a little jump. “That’s little more than a month away,” I said, my voice sounding very small and meek. “Will we have enough time to prepare?”
“Of course, my dear,” said my mother, so affectionate and solicitous that I was quite taken aback. “A small family wedding is a relatively simple affair. We’ll spare no expense, and it will be done exactly as we wish.”
“If the eighth of July is the earliest it can be arranged, I can wait until then,” Lord King declared. I could not have asked for a more ardent fiancé.
“July eighth it is,” said my mother, writing in her diary. She underlined something for emphasis, but when she glanced up from the page, her expression became more serious. “Lord King, I do hope we might beg a favor from you.”
“Name it. You’re giving me your only daughter. I’m happy to give you anything you ask.”
“All I want is your silence.”
He blinked at her and threw me a puzzled glance before returning his gaze to my mother. “My silence?”
“For as long as it is worthwhile to maintain it.” My mother looked to me for confirmation, and I gave her the barest of nods. “My daughter has been an object of popular fascination from the moment of her birth because she is the daughter of Lord Byron. Neither of us wishes for her wedding—the most sacred, intimate event in a young woman’s life—to become a public spectacle.”
“Nor do I,” said Lord King. “I’ll say nothing, and I’ll swear my family to secrecy.”
My mother regarded him gravely.
Lord King’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, I see. You wish me to keep this secret from my family as well.”
“Yes, for as long as possible.” My mother sighed and made a graceful gesture signifying resignation in the face of the inevitable. “The truth will come out eventually, but until then, we would prefer to enjoy our mutual happiness in peace and privacy.”
Lord King assured us that he would not breathe a word of our engagement until my mother gave him leave to do so. He added, wryly, “Please let it be before the day of the wedding or my family will never forgive me.”
I laughed, but my mother did not even smile. “We should be so fortunate,” she said. “Some caterer or florist’s assistant will likely divulge the secret well before then.”
My mother invited Lord King to return later that evening to dine with us, but he declined regretfully, explaining that he had to return to Ashley Combe at once, to evaluate what refurbishments would be necessary to make it a suitable place for our honeymoon. “Good-bye, darling,” he said in parting, the first time he had ever used an endearment to address me. The tenderness of his expression moved me.
The next day I received an ardent letter from Lord King, so warm and affectionate that I could scarcely keep from smiling as I read it. The next day another letter came, and I laughed in sheer wonder that he could be so in love with me already. In my reply, I mentioned that I planned to visit Mrs. Somerville on the first day of June; in his next letter he said that he had planned to be in London that day, and he suggested meeting me in Chelsea and driving me home after my visit. He added that he had not told Woronzow about our engagement even though our mutual friend deserved the credit for it. “That is how faithfully I keep my vows,” he wrote, signing himself, “Yours with the most devoted affection and respect, King.”
Eagerly I replied to give my consent, and then I awaited the first day of June with great anticipation. My visit with Mrs. Somerville, Mary, and Martha was as delightful as ever, but it was all I could do to keep my happy secret from bursting from my lips. When Lord King arrived to drive me home in his carriage, Mrs. Somerville looked askance at us both, but she had known Lord King for years and trusted him not to lead me into scandal, even if she did not entirely trust me to avoid accidentally blundering into it.
We were all merriment and good cheer as we made our farewells to the Somervilles, but once Lord King had helped me into the carriage, seated himself beside me, and rapped to signal the driver to commence, we fell into an awkward silence. Even though the hood of the barouche was drawn back so we could bask in the warm summer sunshine, for the first time we were essentially alone, and for all our mutual admiration and blossoming affection, we were still strangers. William seemed to realize this at the same time I did, and when I sensed him withdrawing into his customary reserve, I decided that it was up to me to set the course for how we would carry on together.
As the carriage took us down the sun-dappled Royal Hospital Road, I drew upon two of my favorite subjects, music and horses, in hopes of putting him at ease. I described the new piece I was learning for the harp, Beethoven’s “Six Variations on a Swiss Song,” which I could not wait to play for him. I told him about my favorite horse, Tam O’Shanter, and how I looked forward to exploring the grounds of Ashley Combe on horseback with my bridegroom leading the way. At first Lord King only listened, earnest and attentive, but by the time the carriage reached the banks of the Thames, his reserve had melted, and he was chatting with me as easily and frankly as he had during our visit to Weston House.
He took my hand, and when we reached a secluded spot, he glanced around to be sure we were unobserved before kissing me tenderly on the mouth. I sighed and lifted my face to his to claim another kiss, and he responded with ardor and passion, until for a moment I think we both quite forgot that we could be seen by anyone we passed.
After seeing me home, Lord King stayed long en
ough to give his regards to my mother, then raced back to Ashley Combe. In the days that followed, letters flew between us, his imbued with love and anticipation, mine with happiness and increasing affection. Enthusiastically he described his efforts to prepare his Somerset estate for our honeymoon, “to make this hermitage (for it is little more) less impossible in its appearance, & to make it not unworthy of your presence. The scenery is the only thing that can so entitle it, for within doors it is of the most humble description and it is in the state which most homes are which have not been inhabited for fifteen years, & even then only temporarily & with long intervals.”
“You make my future home sound thoroughly rustic and abandoned,” I teased in my reply. “If you think to discourage me from marrying you, or at least from marrying you so soon, you will have to do better than that. I would be happy to spend our honeymoon in the most humble cottage, or even in the stables in the hayloft, as long as we are together, although I confess I hope for a proper bed and strong walls to shut out the world.”
Although I honestly had not meant to be suggestive, his next letter revealed that my words had inflamed his ardor, and even I laughed at my inadvertent innuendo, my own arousal heightened. Even so, not knowing who else might see my letter—my mother, perhaps, before I had a chance to post it—and thinking that perhaps like most men he preferred an innocent bride, I phrased my response more carefully, affectionate but measured, as if I were only vaguely aware of the pleasure that a man and woman could give to each other.
His reply suggested that perhaps I had been too restrained, for a new note of worry infused it. “I look upon our future happiness as too excessive to be enjoyed otherwise than in a dream,” he confessed, “as too splendid and too overcoming for a reality. I am only rescued from this delusion by reflecting upon your own sincerity and nobleness of character.” A slight alteration in the pressure of his pen revealed his emotion when he added, “I hope to present myself at your home this coming Friday and to be assured from your own lips that you do not repent of having made me the happiest of men.”
I cared for him too much to toy with his feelings, so as soon as I finished reading his letter, I composed a reassuring reply. “Your letter has been an unexpected happiness to me this morning,” I wrote, “but I cannot allow you even to mention such as thing as my ‘repenting’ of anything that has passed between us. I do not know when I have been in so calm and peaceful and, I hope I may add with truth, so grateful a state of mind, as I have been since you made me the happiest of women.”
He wrote back wryly to say that he envied me my sense of peace and calm, for his thoughts were a tangle of “excitement and an absence of mind,” which nonetheless delighted him.
As Lord King made ready Ashley Combe, my mother and I prepared my trousseau, which involved a great many dressmakers’ fittings and visits to the finest shops in London. One evening, as my mother and I sat together in the library, I writing a letter to Lord King and she perusing the bills, she looked up from the slips of paper and remarked, “The expenditures for your wedding now equal all that I have spent on the Ealing Grove school this year. Only in a mother’s arithmetic could one’s own daughter equal eighty other children.”
Her tone was light, but nonetheless, I hastened to acknowledge my indebtedness and gratitude and to thank her for her generosity. It occurred to me to point out that soon I would be someone else’s burden, but I held back the words, suspecting that she did not look forward to relinquishing her authority over me.
As often as he could, Lord King came to London to attend to matters of business, and he never failed to visit me and my mother. On 19 June, after one of these visits, he wrote earnestly to my mother to ask if she would now grant him leave to inform his family, in strictest confidence, about our upcoming nuptials, for his mother and his uncle, especially, would surely feel slighted if he neglected them any longer. My mother consented, and she confided to me that she was rather surprised we had managed to keep the news out of the papers so long, for she had observed shopkeepers’ assistants staring at us and whispering together from the moment we began assembling my trousseau.
I remained reluctant for our forthcoming wedding to be announced before I was ready to accept the onslaught of attention it would inevitably provoke, but I agreed that it was high time Lord King’s family was informed. The next day, I confided in Mrs. Somerville, but I begged her not to tell Woronzow, Martha, and Mary. “Your friends would want to share in your happiness,” she protested mildly.
“Of course they would,” I replied, “and I’ll let you know as soon as the news may be imparted to the rest of the family. But our wish at this moment is to keep everything as quiet as possible.”
She smiled understandingly and agreed, as I had known she would, but there were others about whom I was not so sure. Since I had come out in Society, I had seen two of William’s sisters, Hester and Charlotte, here and there without knowing I would one day be engaged to their brother. To interested observers, it must have seemed curious that a warm friendship had blossomed between us apparently overnight, for one day we merely exchanged polite nods at parties and the next we were smiling, arm in arm, whispering in corners. I was delighted that at last my longing for siblings was going to be fulfilled.
Whether our conduct raised suspicions, or shopgirls gossiped, or one of the intimate friends to whom my mother divulged the news did not keep her confidence, I can only speculate, but by the last week of June, letters of congratulations were trickling in to Fordhook and 10 Wimpole Street. A rather astonishing number of these letters, most of which were addressed to my mother, congratulated her on marrying me off and expressed astonishment that I had captured the heart of so good a man. “Do they believe I’ve been seeking a bridegroom at Newgate Prison?” I said, indignant. “Why shouldn’t a good man want to marry me?”
My mother regarded me from beneath raised brows as if she hardly knew where to begin.
After I shared the news with Mrs. Somerville, the very next person I had confided in was Mr. Babbage. He was overjoyed, and tears filled his eyes, and although we did not usually embrace, on that occasion he held me by the shoulders and kissed me on both cheeks. With a pang of sorrow, I realized that he was probably thinking of his own Georgiana and wishing that he could have danced at her wedding and toasted the happy couple, a proud father entrusting his beloved girl to a worthy gentleman.
One humid afternoon when the promise of rain hung heavy in the air, Mr. Babbage paid me an unexpected visit. My mother did not usually receive callers at that hour and she happened to be out, but I showed him into the drawing room, where cross breezes through the open windows offered some relief from the heat, and I offered him a cool glass of cider. He accepted with his thanks, but his manner was unusually agitated and I wished I had something stronger to serve him.
“My dear Miss Byron—” He stopped, regarded me grimly, and tried again. “Do you know of the Contessa Teresa Guiccioli?”
“Only by name,” I said, taken aback. “I believe she knew my father when he was in Ravenna, before he made his final journey to Greece.”
“I see. Well, perhaps you may have guessed that she knew your father very well, very intimately.” In case I missed the point, he added, “She was his last mistress, before his death, and by all accounts the one he loved best.” I must have flinched, because he quickly said, “My apologies. I regret the indelicacy of this subject.”
I took a deep, steadying breath. “It’s all right. I know you must have good reason for bringing it up.” I clasped my hands together in my lap and waited, preparing myself for whatever would come next.
“Contessa Guiccioli is presently in England,” he said. “She has come on a pilgrimage to visit the most significant locales of Lord Byron’s life. She has already toured Newstead Abbey and has placed a wreath on his grave at Hucknall Torkard.”
“I see,” I said, dismayed. “My father never lived here or at
Fordhook, so I suppose I needn’t fear her knocking upon my door and demanding a tour and souvenirs.” Another thought struck me. “Is it possible that our paths might cross in Society?”
“She has been making the rounds since she arrived in London,” he said carefully, “but you travel in different circles, and I, myself, would never invite you to the same dinner party. However, some of our acquaintances are not so conscientious.”
“And still others would relish the thought of bringing us together in the same room to see what might unfold.” I drew in a breath and pressed my hand to my heart. “Oh, goodness. How fortunate it is that my mother is at Fordhook. Perhaps I can contrive to keep her there. Do you know how long the countess intends to stay in London?”
“I don’t know, but there is another matter of concern.” He winced and rubbed his jaw, stalling for time. “She has long wanted to meet you, and she’s heard rumors of your impending marriage, and—Miss Byron, I regret to say that she plans to attend the wedding.”
“Is she mad?” I cried, bounding to my feet. “What could she be thinking? My mother will be there!”
“I know, I know.” He held up his palms in a calming gesture as I paced. “I told her that this is a terrible idea and I urged her to reconsider, but she is resolute. She wants nothing more than to meet the daughter of Byron.”
“Well, I don’t want to meet her,” I said hotly, dropping back into my chair. “Especially not on my wedding day. And never when my mother is present. What a dreadful creature this contessa must be, to want to flaunt her affair with my father in his widow’s face.”
“She’s actually quite charming,” said Mr. Babbage, a trifle dreamily. “Petite and quite voluptuous, with lovely auburn hair and an enticing manner. She has already acquired many admirers here in London—”
“I sincerely hope you are not one of them.”
“No, no, not I,” he quickly replied.
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