The Jane Austen Marriage Manual

by Kim Izzo

  “Oh, come on,” she said, taunting me. “Don’t worry about your dress. Scott keeps his horses very clean.”

  Damn her. I had no choice but to step forward and touch the horse. I could feel their eyes on me as I inched toward Jackson. I was just within reach, my heart pounding, trying to steady my hand to stroke him, when he suddenly shook his head like a wet dog, sending sweat flying everywhere, followed by a huge roaring sneeze that sounded like an elephant. I felt the spray hit my face, my chest, and arms. If you think horse sweat is bad, you haven’t seen the amount of snot that comes out of a horse’s nostrils. I couldn’t help it, I screamed and leapt backward, but instead of hitting solid ground my heel slipped in and I fell toward the moist, soft earth that wasn’t earth, but manure. I landed with a squishy thud and felt the dampness soak through my dress. If sitting in fresh manure wasn’t bad enough, try doing it with a gorgeous billionaire and his catty girlfriend watching. I tried not to squirm but couldn’t get my heels to grip in the soft ground. As any gallant gent would, Scott rushed to my side and helped me up. But it was too late for the white cotton eyelet; the skirt was stained greenish brown, the bodice strewn with green and white goo.

  “I’m so sorry,” he fussed. “Your dress.”

  “It will be fine,” I said swiftly, desperate to appear unflustered. He handed me a towel and I wiped off my chest and arms, but there was no denying the dress was ruined.

  “You should go home,” Tatiana chirped. She was holding Jackson and trying not to laugh, but not trying too hard. “Get some cold water and baking soda.”

  “Yes, I have to get changed,” I agreed. “But I’ll be back.”

  “Let me drive you,” Scott offered firmly. “I can take you to your car in the golf cart.”

  I contemplated his offer. It would mean time alone with him. But under such embarrassing circumstances I couldn’t do it.

  “Thank you, but I’ll be fine.” I smiled through gritted teeth. “Please go back to your polo game.”

  I had no choice but to turn my stained backside to them and march away as though everything were perfectly normal and I did not have manure smeared across my bum.

  As I slunk toward the clubhouse someone with an accent called out to me. And no, it wasn’t Bernardo.

  “What the bloody hell happened to you?”

  It was Griff again. Why I didn’t just keep moving I have no idea; instead, I stopped in my tracks, huffing and puffing, as he emerged from a horse trailer.

  “It’s not blood. It’s horseshit,” I retorted sarcastically, feeling no need to be polite after how he’d treated me. “I fell into a pile of manure.”

  I could see Griff trying to contain his laughter. My temperature rose.

  “Look, we started off on the wrong foot,” he said with sudden kindness. “Let me take you back to your hotel; you can get changed and we’ll see if we can’t cheer you up over drinks.”

  As if I would spend time with him—after how he’d treated me. If Austen’s books taught me anything, it was how to spot the wrong sort of man! I looked him up and down. He didn’t even know how to dress for a polo tournament. Definitely not a gentleman. His charm was all in the accent anyway. He could fool younger girls, like that blonde, but he couldn’t fool me. I swept my hair from my face and said coolly, “No thank you. I have other plans.”

  “Very well,” he said, clearly amused.

  I stomped away determined to prove that I could land in shit and come out smelling like a rose.

  17.

  Hitchhiking

  I doubt that you will ever have to make a choice between marrying for love and marrying for more material considerations.

  —Pride and Prejudice

  It wasn’t only the dress that was ruined. My hair had managed of its own volition to do what no hair product could make it be—limp and straight, yet soap opera big, due to the humidity and the various tangled clumps jutting out in all directions, all with added shine gleaned from being dampened by sweat. Then there was my face. My skin was greasy, as though I had emerged from a pot of boiling water, and what makeup remained was either smeared across my cheeks or caked in the tiny creases around my eyes and mouth. One thing was certain; there was no way I could set foot inside that clubhouse looking like this. I cowered behind a limousine and tried desperately to recall Orietta’s cell phone number when a woman’s voice called out to me.

  “Hello there!”

  I raised my head reluctantly, embarrassed at being caught crouching behind a limo, to see the lady in gray, Fawn Chamberlain, in the next parking space gazing down from the sunroof of a gray Rolls-Royce. The car was the same gray as her dress and fascinator, she held a glass of champagne in one hand, and eyeglasses in the other, which she put on to examine me in more detail. I expected an admonishment, but her tone was sympathetic and right then I needed any help I could get.

  “Have you had an accident?” she asked, clearly searching for a plausible explanation for my state of dress.

  “You might say that,” I admitted and slunk toward her, my hands clasping my skirt behind me to hide the manure stains. “I ran into some trouble on the polo field.”

  “Sat in trouble, is more like it.” She grinned. “Need a lift back home?”

  “That would be awesome,” I said and chided myself for sounding like a schoolgirl. “But don’t you want to watch the rest of the game?”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said, as if astounded by my suggestion. “I always leave after the fifth chukka, otherwise it’s hell getting out of the parking lot.”

  “I’m staying at The Breakers,” I added in the hopes she wouldn’t think me a total loser. She nodded and disappeared into the car as if she’d fallen through a trap door, then the passenger door opened and she waved me toward her.

  “Are you sure it’s all right?” I hesitated, seeing the polished leather seats.

  “Of course, why wouldn’t it be?”

  I gestured to her pristine automobile. “That’s an expensive car and my dress has seen better days.”

  “Oh, I see,” she responded with a burst of laughter. She had a robust laugh, not at all ladylike but like a woman who spent her days in pool halls with hard-drinking men. “I have something you can sit on.”

  Fawn spread a beach towel out on the passenger seat and I sat down gingerly, fastening my seat belt tightly, determined not to move an inch. The car was enormous, more like a yacht than an automobile, but that seemed the norm in Palm Beach. I was certainly getting around—first a Bentley, now a Rolls, and in between a pile of horseshit.

  “Breakers, you said?” she asked and hit the accelerator. I braced myself, anticipating a mighty lurch, but the Rolls glided forward as though it were a warm knife slicing through butter.

  “I love your dress,” I said simply. Orietta had said that Fawn was a southern belle and her accent confirmed it, which probably went a long way to explain why she was friendly and helpful to a total stranger—southern hospitality. I wanted to prove that I was worth knowing, too. Summoning my inner aristocrat I introduced myself: “My name is Kate Shaw.”

  “Fawn Chamberlain,” she said and held out her hand without taking her eyes off the road. “Are you Lady Kate? Orietta’s new friend?”

  Word spread fast in Palm Beach.

  “Yes, but please just call me Kate,” I said quietly and took the opportunity to examine Fawn as she drove. She definitely had had work done, but it was good work. The acting beauty editor inside me wanted to ask her which doctor she’d seen, but thought better of it; women like Fawn didn’t reveal beauty secrets.

  “Orietta mentioned that she’d met you on the flight from New York,” Fawn continued. She kept glancing over at me as she spoke although I couldn’t help wonder if she weren’t sizing me up, trying to determine if I was a fake. “Your accent isn’t European,” she added suspiciously.

  “I’m American, from New York. I inherited some land in Scotland,” I answered confidently; telling my new story was getting easier all t
he time. “I own Highland cattle, but wanted to escape the cold for a week or two.”

  “A Yankee? That explains it. But with cattle, now I am impressed,” she said with a grin. “My pappy had Herefords on his farm. I love cows and their big eyes, don’t you?”

  Yikes. Of all the things for us to have in common: cows. “Yes, especially during calf season,” I said, then quickly changed the subject. “Are you going to Orietta’s dinner party tonight?”

  “Of course.” She grinned. “I never miss one of her dinners when I’m in town. Someone is bound to get drunk and make a fool of him- or herself. And by that I mean ending up in bed with another guest’s spouse during the cheese course.”

  “Really?”

  “Happens all the time.” She laughed. “It’s a buffet so it’s easy to slip away. Although people have been known to wait until coffee.”

  I nodded and smiled. I wondered who else would be at the party. As I fondled the hem of my dress my mind went back to Scott and Tatiana.

  “Do you know Scott Madewell?” I asked nonchalantly.

  “Scott!” she practically shrieked. “Scott and I go way back. He was a business partner of my second husband. And my first, come to think of it. He’s single now. Handsome, isn’t he?”

  “I met him and this young girl today.” I tried to sound vague, but truth was I couldn’t bring myself to utter her name.

  “Tatiana?” Fawn said it for me. “That little gold digger has got her talons sunk into him. I’m determined to rescue him from her.”

  “She didn’t seem his type,” I said, as if I knew what his type was. “She’s a sexy young girl. She’s everyman’s type,” she retorted. “My first husband married me when I was Tatiana’s age. A girl can get a lot of mileage out of her youth. Mileage and millions, I always say.” She smiled and winked.

  When we stopped at a red light, Fawn turned to me and smiled but didn’t look away.

  “Are you looking for a husband?”

  I never knew that southern belles could be so blunt. “Of course not!” I said forcefully and stared out the window as my hands grasped the skirt of my dress and twisted it.

  “It’s all right if you are,” she continued. “In this economy, women have to be creative. But I suppose with you having a title and an estate to go with it, you don’t need to think of those things.”

  I kept silent, unsure how to answer. “Even a girl with a title needs a man,” I said, attempting humor. “It’s cold in Scotland.”

  To my relief Fawn laughed very hard. “And you’ve set your sights on Scott Madewell?” she stated matter-of-factly.

  “Not at all,” I protested but to no avail. She immediately let out another of her pool hall laughs.

  “He’s a catch, all right, worth billions, enough to keep you warm for life! He’s a whiz in the market, or so people say,” she went on. “We don’t have any of our money with him, but tons of people around here do. He handles billions of dollars in investment portfolios. But he’s just one man. There are plenty of others like him, depending on what you want out of it,” she said slyly.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, my curiosity piqued. Who knew there were options?

  “If you’re content for a high-end affair with some travel and trinkets, there are loads of men who will do,” she explained with the same tone one would have when giving out the recipe for apple pie. “If you want a permanent arrangement, if what you want is to be married, well, then you have two ways.”

  I sat up straighter, the article was writing itself! And who better to get advice from than a woman who has had three rich husbands?

  “You get the man to fall in love with you and become his mistress and pray he leaves his wife, but that rarely happens. But it was the case with my first husband,” she added with a wink. “Or you find a single, newly divorced man—like Scott—and fight tooth and nail for him. How old are you?”

  I recoiled. Fawn noticed my reaction and grinned. “You look like early thirties, but from your reaction I’d say older?”

  “I just turned forty,” I confessed.

  She pursed her lips as though my age were some problem that could be solved.

  “No matter, you’re still a gorgeous girl. But getting pregnant to snag a husband isn’t so easy for you,” she said flatly. I was amazed how she could broach the topic so coolly.

  “Does that even work nowadays?” I snapped dismissively. It seemed so 1960.

  “Not as much as when I did it,” she said breezily. “Husband number two.” She held up two fingers for emphasis. “But a baby would at least guarantee child support payments, and a child of a billionaire has to live in the lifestyle into which he or she was born.”

  I was speechless. And depressed. Maybe I was too old to marry for money. Maybe I would end up like Miss Bates in Emma, an aged spinster living with her mother for the rest of her life, only minus the sunny disposition. For a brief moment it occurred to me that while it may be too late to marry for money, I could still fall in love. Be less mercenary. Be happier. But with my track record, who was I kidding? I had to stay the course.

  “There’s no shame in marrying for comfort and security,” she continued with the first note of seriousness I’d heard from her. “Especially at our age. You’re forty. I’ll be fifty-six next month. If you haven’t got it all saved up by now, what are you supposed to do? Live on the street? Tough it out in some tiny rental? No thanks. While we still have our looks, faded or not, we have to use them to earn our way. My mother always said, ‘That’s how a beautiful girl uses her head.’ ” Fawn poked her forehead with her index finger. “Have you ever had a job?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer, but I needed some semblance of truth in case she asked for details.

  “I dabble in writing,” I explained. “I’ve worked as a beauty editor, just for fun. I love makeup.”

  “What name do you write under?”

  “My own, Katharine Shaw,” I said. “I don’t use my title in my byline, seemed too pompous, and I’m not.”

  “Of course you aren’t!” she agreed wholeheartedly. “I adore fashion magazines! I read a ton of them. Which one did you work at?”

  “Haute.”

  “Oh, I love it!” she exclaimed excitedly. “The photography is just divine! And of course the writing is too, dear.”

  She seemed very pleased with this new piece of information and she dropped the inquisition for the remainder of the drive. When at last we pulled up to the front entrance she turned to me.

  “I’ll see you tonight. Don’t you worry, Scott will be there, too.” She beamed. “I’m going to try and find you on Google.”

  I smiled back. To be honest, it wasn’t that unusual for women who didn’t work at fashion magazines to be overly impressed by women who did. The job did reek of glamour, even if the truth was a disappointment. But my revelation seemed to make us instant best friends, which was fine by me; I needed one, and if my girl crush on Fawn was reciprocated, even better. Traveling alone makes for strange bedfellows, so why not a journalist working undercover as a fake aristocrat and a three-times divorced southern belle?

  “See you tonight,” she said and drove away.

  A long shower soon put to rest my disastrous first go at mingling with the rich. It was abundantly clear that polo season and I didn’t mix but Orietta’s dinner party was an entirely different matter. I excelled at this type of event. And I had just the dress.

  18.

  Look the Part

  A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.

  —Mansfield Park

  It doesn’t work like that,” Emma chided me over the phone from London. “Referring to yourself as ‘Lady Kate’ all the time is a dead giveaway you aren’t one.”

  Emma should know, being English and all that. But the real reason I called her was to discuss Griff. I quickly ran through the ordeal of the day. She listened carefully, clucking in disapproval at his behavior.

  “He’s very snobby,�
� I observed. “And then the next minute he’s trying to be my friend. I don’t get him.”

  “I’m sorry he did that to you,” she apologized. “Clive insists he’s a good person. He is painfully shy apparently.”

  “He showed no sign of shyness with the young babe he was chatting up,” I reminded her. “Strange he’s in Florida, don’t you think?”

  “I think he travels a lot during the winter and does a sort of marketing campaign for the estate,” she explained. “He’s run ragged.”

  “Yes, tough life, Palm Beach,” I joked. “There are tons of rich men here. Throw a stick and you hit ten.”

  “Kate,” Emma began in a tone that implied a warning was coming. “Be careful. You’re not like those people. I don’t want some rich man eating you alive and tossing you in the rubbish bin.”

  “I’m a grown-up, forty, remember? I can take care of myself,” I answered breezily.

  We hung up and I immediately felt better despite her concerns. I was ready to put on my game face and meet my new social circle.

  “What a lovely dress!” Orietta called out when I arrived, her words felt like déjà vu from my doomed polo outfit. “Is it vintage?”

  “1991,” I said with a nod and stroked my Chanel dress. “It’s almost twenty years old.”

  “Just a year younger than me,” came Tatiana’s purr as she slunk out from behind a bamboo screen and with a smile disappeared into the house.

  “Such a child,” Orietta said sweetly as though Tatiana were a precocious five-year-old instead of a slinky twenty-one-year-old. It wasn’t fair. Austen never had to contend with sluts! But I wasn’t about to give up hope. I’d find a way of outshining her. Orietta grabbed my arm and led me in the direction that she had gone.

  “As a special treat,” Orietta told me. “I’ve managed to dig up one of your kind.”

  I was taken aback. “Another New Yorker?”

  “No, silly,” she said with a sweet smile. “I invited Colonel Stuart MacKay to dinner. He’s a Scotsman like you’ve never seen! He even wore his kilt in honor of you.”