The Bride who Loved_A Marriage of Convenience Regency Romance

by Bianca Bloom

  “Elena, I hardly know. You have been away from home a great many hours.”

  “Yes,” I said. “The weather was beautiful, and I had horse that you gave me. What need had I to be home?”

  He laughed. “Well, you were grossly negligent of your duties, at the very least.”

  I threw up my hands. “If you were negligent, horses would go hungry. Some of them would likely sicken, and none would have properly fitting shoes. If I am negligent, what changes? Not a thing.”

  Helping me dismount, Sergei looked thoughtful. “Perhaps that is the trouble here, then.”

  I frowned. “That I neglect my responsibilities?”

  “That you have none to neglect. Or practically none.”

  I started for the house, but Sergei called me back. “Wait, Lenotchka,” he said, commanding me as he had when I was small. “Walk to the stables with me. The sight of the horses may cheer you, and you shall need some good cheer tonight.”

  My mind was still occupied by Sergei’s pronouncements on my laziness. “I do have duties,” I mused, “But I did not choose any of them. I did not choose this horrid business of entertaining suitors, or learning the dullest dances, or writing in perfect little loops.”

  This made Sergei laugh, and his lined and bearded face fairly lit up the twilight. “Many of us did not choose our duties, Lenotchka. Do you think the servants of your father’s house chose to have the requirement of working? Do you feel that I chose my exile to this country, and I chose a situation in which I would not have enough money to live decently without spending each day caring for another man’s horses?”

  It was the longest speech I had heard from Sergei in quite some time, and I felt my heart drop as I contemplated it.

  “Sergei, you do not wish to work here?”

  Now he was shaking his head quite emphatically. “You mistake my meaning, dorogaya. As you know, this situation is my ideal for the present. But I cannot help but wonder that the person under this grand roof with the lightest duties seems to be the only person openly complaining about her lot in life.”

  “I’m not complaining,” I murmured, starting to split off toward the house.

  Sergei touched my arm as I left. “I know things cannot be perfectly easy for you, Lenotchka. But if you give it a moment’s thought, you’ll recall that your life used to be much more trying.”

  I did give Sergei’s assertions a moment’s thought. In fact, it was more than a moment, as my footsteps slowed with dread on my approach to the house.

  My childhood had not been at all easy, that was certain. But when I thought back to those years of hunger and strain, I simply remembered my companions in the cheap quarter of town in which we were forced to make our home. I would spend the morning with the neighboring children, be fed by my mother, then immediately run off with my companions again. Supper might be light or nonexistent, but mother would at least see to it that I had something to drink before I went to sleep. Though she could not afford to send me to school, she taught only me, and she simply chose her favorite stories from one of the few books that we owned. I was not forced to go through large chunks of classical nonsense simply to please tutors, nor did I need to learn how to dance.

  With a pang, I wondered after my childhood friends. We had been completely separated from them, and I wished that they could all simply live with me. The greatest feature of my life in our still-new mansion was not luxury, it was loneliness. Not only was I far from companions, I was very rarely able to encounter a young man like Elias.

  The thought of him next to the stream very nearly made my knees buckle. Was there something that I could have done differently to entice him, to show him that I was a woman who knew her own mind, not some simpering fool who would scream if he so much as touched her hand? And to convey to him that if we were never to meet again, I should regret my diffidence during our sole meeting with heavy heart – heavier for the thought that I should have been willing to overlook his rudeness to “foreigners” simply because of his god-like good looks.

  But when I walked into the study to look for my father and try and wheedle permission to eat a late supper out of him, I was quite surprised.

  Dusty was sitting there with him and with the boys’ tutor. Apparently, they were in some kind of conference. The younger children must have already been put to bed in the nursery.

  “Father,” I said, “Good evening.”

  “Have you got an apology or wot, Helena?”

  Much as my father had attempted to modify his accent, the more authentic slang of the streets came out when he was very angry.

  And this was certainly one of those instances. His face was already looking blotchy.

  “I’m sorry for my behavior earlier today,” I said. They were the safest words I could muster.

  Then, standing there, I waited for someone to praise my immediate apology. The tutor looked down, Dusty looked at the curtains, and only my father looked at me.

  Then he turned to Dusty. “I cannot say I know what to do with such a wayward child. Still quite a child, although she ought to be a grown woman at eighteen.”

  I scowled, knowing that I was, indeed, a grown woman. What on earth was my father on about?

  He continued speaking to Dusty and the tutor. “You two must forgive me. I shall have to let her mother settle this.”

  Like a fool, I went directly to my mother’s room, believing that at last I had won the war with Dusty.

  “Dusty won’t speak to me,” I blurted out. “You must let her go!”

  I delighted in the firing of governesses. In fact, it had been many years since any had been fired – they tended to quit and leave quickly. Then there would be a blessed period in which they were gone, and my mother was searching, and Masha and I were left to our own devices. Only our old nurse would stay on, laughing at me and scolding me, though now she had also left.

  My mother was sitting at her dressing table, already nearly ready for bed, free of the beautiful dress she had apparently worn for dinner and completely devoid of patience. She looked at me in her mirror as she spoke.

  “Elena,” said my mother, and my ears perked up instantly. From her tone, I could tell that this was going to be one of her more serious admonitions.

  “Dorothea deserves your respect.”

  My mouth opened ever so slowly, but mama held up a hand, signifying that I was to stay quiet. “If you have any brains at all, surely you can put them to good use. Find a way to secure some modicum of happiness without taking away from the dignity of that poor woman.”

  My lip grew ragged from the way that I bit at it. I had expected something more specific from my mother, such as “Finish the Latin book you were to have finished” or “Spend ten hours in your horrid shoes each day”. To insist that I not upset Dusty, and that I actually try to be happy while not upsetting Dusty – that seemed perfectly impossible.

  “My very presence makes her unhappy, mama,” I ventured.

  To my great relief, my mother looked more thoughtful than angry when I mentioned this. “Yes, I suppose that is true. I have given her one week of leave from your presence. That should give you enough time to set your mind to the task I have given you.”

  It seemed like a perfect dream. “So for the next week, I shall not have to spend time with Du – with Dorothea?”

  “Precisely. But you are going to do your studies with me instead.”

  From the serious expression on her face, I could see that mama did not mean to neglect my education. And I began to feel that I gone from one breed of misery to a very similar sort of tedium.

  She could not have known how forward I was with Elias, and yet she was going to punish me for a different offense. My side hurt from sadness, but also from keeping in any mirth at the irony of my situation. It was as if God had witnessed my lust next to the stream, and was looking down and laughing at my punishment.

  It was a dull penance, indeed. By the second day, I was certain that I preferred entertaining papa’s
dreadful suitors to the “self-study” regimen that mama had forced upon me. At least the suitors were like innocent, blind little kittens – if one were very cruel, one could delight in teasing them. Sitting in mama’s deserted morning room, the world moving about just outside the window, I truly felt as if I were on my own little Elba.

  Though I did thank God that I was, in fact, not Napoleon Bonaparte. The way papa told it, my mother was so occupied in rejoicing after Bonaparte’s death that for days she walked around with a large and constant smile, the likes of which he had never seen. Even the mewling and fussing of little Helena, her tiresome infant, could not worry her.

  And yet, my brief excursion to the woods after my run-in with father’s “suitor” friend had apparently worried my dear mamotchka so much that she saw fit to keep me cooped up for an intolerable length of time. She had assigned me Taras Bulba, having somehow scraped a copy of Nikolai Gogol’s book of stories from an acquaintance in town. From mother’s descriptions, and from the way that she read the stories out loud, they should have been interesting. But my own lethargy prevented me from enjoying Mr. Gogol’s writing. I knew little of Cossacks, and the land described was very unlike the Russia of my heart and imagination. Saint Petersburg, for example, occupied my dreams. Not only the canals and the beautiful streets, which were said to rival those of any European capital. But the idea of the actors there, the literary personalities, the men. Just the thought of the lovely city, the so-called “Venice of the North”, made me sigh.

  If Nikolai Gogol had thought fit to set his story in a more romantic location, rather than deep in the desolate countryside, he might have found more of an admirer in me.

  Mama might be angry, but she wouldn’t want to punish me horribly if I found another sort of study. So I walked about the room, attempting to think of a topic for a literary treatise that would pass muster with such a difficult judge. The challenge lay in topic selection. Mama didn’t want me to write about anything that she knew I had already read, and a page of penmanship exercises (tortuous but simple) would not satisfy her either. This would have to be something original and compelling.

  With a blank sheet of writing paper and a quill in front of me, I felt a certain power. At the very least, I could be thankful that for some days, my intellect – rather than my ability to take mincing steps in disgusting attire – was going to be on display. If more girls were encouraged to be learned, rather than stupid, this might make for a richer nation. Rather than the essays that mama demanded, which were hardly possible given my dire lack of Russian penmanship, I decided to put my own ideas to paper. Perhaps I would be just like Taras Bulba, fighting for ideals! In the past, I had fought only for my own comfort. And, in fact, in hoping for a school that would earn me a living, without need of any men or inheritance, was another way of selfishly securing my own comfort. But it was a way to do so while being of use to young women, which couldn’t be entirely without merit.

  Beginning with tiresome things that girls were forced to learn, I used up nearly the entire page scribbling out my thoughts. Dancing came at the top of the list, a useless and thoroughly humiliating preoccupation. Embroidery. Manners. All of the details of undergarments and fashion. Household economics, ever a dull chore.

  Then I added the things that I wished my governesses would teach me. Languages, particularly those such as Chinese and Hindustanee, would be most fascinating. Russian, of course, I wrote, angrily thinking of the proudly ignorant Elias. And history would need to get its due. My mother, never much of a patriot, had given me indignant publications about the tyranny of the bloody broadsheets in the American colonies. These had secretly thrilled both of us, as we liked to see the king mocked. Indeed, we both of us agreed that the colonists had rather a point when it came to taxation. But we never told my father, of course – it was a sort of secret among the women of the house. Yes, little girls would do well to learn history on their own, rather than from the lips of war-mongering fools such as my dear father.

  Mathematics, too, and Greek. All of the languages and classics that the boys were learning, that were neglected in favor of more “feminine” topics. Latin, of course. Perhaps even Hebrew.

  My quill wasn’t writing well. For the first time, I realized that this might be due to a rather studied neglect. Unlike mama, I never took much care with any of my writing implements. My quills scratched horribly, my seal was always caked in yesterday’s wax, my letters grew crimped from being put away in entirely the wrong manner. My governesses had always been after me to change my slovenly ways, but for the first time, I realized that the deficits in my care actually lead to genuine discomfort and inconvenience.

  It was not a particularly comforting thought.

  Marking up the paper with my inelegant hand, I reflected on the needs that one might have when attempting to open a proper girls’ school, the type of place that my mother would see as legitimate. Perhaps, if I were quick enough, I might have it running soon enough to accept Masha as a pupil. And future children, if there were to be any – mama said not, but I knew that a woman of her age might well have more little darlings. In particular, those still trying for an heir – perhaps, after bearing six children, with four still living, mama was rather exhausted on that score.

  A school would need a building. How was one to go about purchasing a building, or purchasing land? Or advertising in a newspaper for staff? Or attracting any students?

  These business decisions all appeared to be in my father’s realm, and I reflected that my ambition of not asking him for any assistance was apt to be a rather unrealistic one.

  Additionally, in order to know exactly how to teach little girls the rather dull tasks of dancing, sewing, and household management – those things that would convince reluctant parents to send their sweet little girls to the school in the first place – I would need to consult a different kind of expert.

  I walked off in search of Dusty. Or, as I was to be forced to start calling her, Dorothea.

  When I found her, she was not with Masha. My sister, apparently, had been allowed to accompany my mother on a shopping trip to the village. Reflecting that I had once accompanied mama in all things, when we lived in town and our life was far less circumscribed, I longed for the days when I could have a presence that was considered sweet and pleasant, without any sort of caveats.

  In these days, I rarely accompanied mama, as the talk of marriage had started to wear on me. When we were out together in public, it felt a bit like a meat market. Every impertinent villager seemed ready to ask mama when I was to be married off. And though I might pout and frown, mama herself was never much troubled by it. “When she is grown,” she would say, placing a gentle hand on my head. “Sometimes they are not, yet, and one doesn’t want to marry them off in that condition.”

  Then she and any number of horrid women would laugh, talking of how young they were at marriage and all of the mistakes they had made as youthful brides. Depending on how closely I seemed to be following the conversation, they might even let drop several bawdy details that were certainly better left unsaid. Mama still seemed to think me too young for marriage, and the thought always outraged me. I was old enough to have a mind, I was old enough to leave my father’s house.

  And, presumably, old enough to negotiate a mutually agreeable settlement with my governess. Or so I hoped.

  “Miss Dorothea,” I said, taking the chair next to her writing desk.

  She looked up, but it was without joy. “Good afternoon, Miss Morton.”

  My governess always seemed to be rattling on about something or other, so I thought that she would have more words for me, but she did not.

  “I hope you are well,” I began.

  “Quite well, thank you,” she responded.

  Our stalemate continued.

  With a sigh, I thought of my mother. Her apologies to her children were often in jest. If I scolded her for forcing a dull story upon me or forgetting a promised treat, her response was nearly always to pret
end great regret while her eyes laughed over at me.

  Perhaps I could use my mother’s words with a little more sincerity, thereby winning over Miss Dorothea. If she were to provide me with information and ultimately help run my future school, her feelings toward me would certainly need to undergo a sea change.

  “I apologize for my rudeness,” I began. “It was quite uncalled for.”

  Miss Dorothea’s face was turned toward me, expectant, and I hastened to continue my thought. “I am sorry for the trouble that I have caused you, Miss Dorothea. I hope that you shall see a way to forgiving me.”

  She was not at a loss for a response. “It is not a question of forgiveness, young lady. Rather, it is a question of my benefit to your household. If you are learning nothing from me, than I must go. It is quite apart from this question of your rudeness.”

  I blushed to hear my own flaws acknowledged so coarsely. “I hope to show that I have learned, Miss Dorothea. Might Masha and I make another attempt at a model tea this afternoon?”

  At this time, Miss Dorothea actually turned to face me, which I initially took for a good sign. When she spoke, however, I realized it was because I still had not satisfied her.

  “A model tea is all well and good for a young girl Masha’s age, but it shall not do for you, Helena. You know quite well what is expected of you at tea, and if you will not play along with the suitors your father arranges, there’s hardly anything I can do that will influence that.”

  Sadly enough, this was a fair point. I did know precisely the right things to say to men like that horrid Sir Reginald, but each time I began to say them, I would feel pressure like a knife to my belly not to give in. And after I was honest with them, I never felt ill for myself, only feared the punishment that my angry parents might dole out. In that vein, I was going to have to improve – perhaps I could find a way to let the men save face by rejecting me. By pretending to be a bit too religious, perhaps, or a bit too stupid. That was certainly a thought.