by Sarah Zettel
CHAPTER TWO
IN WHICH OUR HEROINE LEARNS MUCH THAT IS UNEXPECTED, FINDS HOPE UNLOOKED FOR, AND SHARES A SAD CONFIDENCE WITH AN OLD AND TRUSTED FRIEND.
“Betrothed?” I pressed my hand against my stomach and stared at the close-written papers. How was this possible? I had no suitors. I had nothing about myself to tempt any warm-blooded swain. I was going to grow old being Olivia’s companion and nurse to her children. Or go to Norwich and die of the rising damps. “I . . . but . . . but . . . who?”
“It seems Lord Sandford, Baron of L——, wants you for his second son. Sebastian’s his name. I think. In any case, he wants the boy married before he sends him back to the family’s sugar plantations in Barbados. Thinks it will keep him out of trouble, or at least give him some legitimate offspring for a cover.”
Barbados? I was betrothed to someone my uncle thought was named Sebastian, and who was expected in Barbados? It wasn’t possible he could do this. Except, of course, it was. I was an orphan. I was a girl. As my legal guardian, Uncle Pierpont could dispose of me as he pleased.
“Almighty Heaven, look at her,” said my uncle to his ledger, as if he expected it to sit up like one of Olivia’s dogs. “Gawping like a codfish. What sort of thanks is that? You’re coming off quite well, especially considering you’ve no dowry or family. The settlement’s exceeding generous.” He nudged the papers a little closer.
“But . . . but I don’t want to be betrothed.” Not to someone who would have me on my uncle’s word. Not to someone I’d never before laid eyes on.
“And who d’ye think’s asking what you want, you fool girl? It’s not as if you’re overrun with suitors.”
“I’m only sixteen.” That plea sounded weak even to me. But my wits had deserted me and taken my strength with them. The only things holding me upright were my corset stays. Those and the fear that if I fainted now, I might be shut up in the great desk drawers until it was time to be carried to church.
“You’ll be seventeen by the wedding. That’s plenty old enough.” My uncle wiped his pen on the blotter and dipped it once again into the ink.
That, unmistakably, was the end of the conversation. My knees bent of their own volition to make the curtsy my uncle would not raise his eyes to see, and I left that room. The door closed behind me. I stood in the shadowed hallway, unable to think which way to go next.
“Peggy!” Olivia sailed up the corridor like a lost but very enthusiastic sunbeam and gave me an enormous hug. “Mother told me! How wonderful!” She grabbed my arm and drew me down the hall away from my uncle, and the Desk, and the betrothal contract I’d left behind in my shock. “You shall have your own house, and I’ll come to visit every day. We’ll have heaps of time all to ourselves, and you’ll be able to take me anywhere we want, because you’ll be a married woman! And . . . what on earth is the matter? Did you think I’d be angry because you’re getting married first?”
“I’ve never met him,” I whispered. “I’ve never even seen him.”
“Is that all?” Olivia steered us into the breakfast room and shut the door. The sunlight of a clear May morning streamed through the windows, and her dogs flopped in their lacy baskets. The table had been cleared, and every other thing was in its place, as if nothing at all were wrong.
“All?” Disbelief melted the ice of my shock. “He could be a thousand years old and covered in shingles and swollen with gout and a drunkard and—”
“Actually, he’s very handsome.” Olivia settled herself in a round-backed chair next to her dogs and straightened her skirts.
I stared at her as if she’d just turned blue.
“With excellent legs,” Olivia continued. “Very much the horseman, by all accounts.”
“You know him?”
“No. But I know his sister Rosamond. Sebastian’s nineteen years old, he’s been in Barbados, but he was sent to Cambridge to finish his education, and he’s got every girl in London sighing after him. Including Lady Clarenda Newbank. I can’t wait to see the look on her face. Promise you’ll let me tell her, Peggy, do!”
“I . . .” I sat down quickly. I detested girls who slumped into faints at the drop of a fan, but now I felt I might be about to join their ranks. “But . . . your father said he’s to be sent out to Barbados after he’s married. And I’m to go with him.”
“Nonsense, Peggy. No one would dream of sending an English girl to the tropics. You’d be sick in an instant, not to mention brown as an Indian.” Pale skin was regarded as one of the many signs of rank and virtue, and therefore must be strictly cherished. We good English girls were constantly warned that ruination accompanied turning the least bit brown. “Don’t you see? It’s perfect! You’ll be installed in his London house and free to do whatever you like. And if anyone does entertain the idea of Barbados, you’ll simply become ill. Far too ill to travel to such a harsh climate.” Olivia tipped me a broad wink.
She meant a baby. I was barely able to comprehend that I’d been betrothed to this young man, and she saw me having his child. A strange, sick sensation bubbled through my mind. “This can’t be happening. I’m not ready. I can’t do this, Olivia. I can’t—”
“Oh, Peggy, I’m sorry.” Olivia folded me in her sisterly embrace. “It’s been a shock, hasn’t it? Do you want to lie down?”
I grasped at this. “Yes, yes, I think perhaps I should.”
My room was right next to Olivia’s. My uncle grumbled at this, but Olivia had always insisted. It was furnished in the modern style, that is to say, hardly at all. I had a bed with a lace canopy, a wardrobe, a dressing table, a chair, a round table for a candle, and another chair for sitting beside the hearth and sewing. The floor was bare, but it was clean, and the maids liked me, so I always had plenty of coal for my fire and stout quilts in winter.
I had no window, nor any pictures for my walls, nor a desk where I could write in private. I was not allowed to keep more than one book at a time up here. None of this mattered at that moment. What mattered was the door I could shut against the rest of the house. Even against Olivia. I needed to be alone. I needed to think.
“You’ll come to me at once if you need me?” asked Olivia anxiously. “Truly, you’ve turned a very odd color.”
“I will. It’s just the shock.” Dutifully, I settled onto my coverlet. “See? I’m having a lie-down. I’ll be right as rain in an hour or so.” I made myself smile.
Olivia snorted at my exaggerated, wooden expression. “You’ll like Sebastian when you see him, Peggy. I’m sure of it,” she said kindly.
With this happy idea, she did leave me alone. The door shut firmly behind her, and I lay on my back as stiff as Flossie, the porcelain doll Olivia had given me so long ago, and who still shared my pillow. I blinked up at my faded lace canopy. I was cold. What warmth May had to offer did not seem to have penetrated this deeply into the house.
I was betrothed. My opinion was not wanted or needed, because I was poor. Because I was orphaned.
According to our best novelists and playwrights, daughters loved their fathers unfailingly, be they present or absent. But I never had. From my youngest days, I had hated mine. My father’s abandonment had been the source of all my troubles. I could remember quite clearly the morning I’d come into the parlor and seen Mother with her lovely face turned all red and blotchy.
“He’s left us, Peggy.” Mother held out her arms, and I ran into them at once. She hugged me too tight, her hot tears falling against my brow. “He’s left us, and we must fend for ourselves now.”
We must fend for ourselves now. I’d never forgotten those words, but I’d never truly considered them either. All I knew was that my father, in leaving, had taken my mother with him. Until then, Mother had come up to the nursery every night to play with me and read to me. We took breakfast together, and there had been excursions about the town. After Father left, Mama became a much-loved and beautiful ghost glimpsed on the stairs. If she came to me at all, it was for a fleeting kiss once I was tucked in.
When I finally was let in, I looked on her corpse and I cried, because that lifeless stock was not my warm, beautiful mama. She was gone, gone farther even than my father.
This memory finally brought the tears. They trickled down my cheeks and into my ears and nose, because I hadn’t turned my head. I sneezed, and sneezed again, and it was all too ridiculous.
This realization dried up my self-pity and my tears. I found I was able to sit up, at which point I realized Flossie’s dress was soaked.
“I’m sorry.” I brushed out her old-fashioned flounces and smoothed down her hair. “I’m being silly. Really, crying over . . . nothing.” The betrothal to Mr. Sebastian Sandford had already happened. I had to find some way to make peace with it.
“Olivia says he’s handsome,” I informed Flossie. “It might be he’s nice as well. If he’s been to Cambridge, he must like to read.” Maybe he liked plays. We could go to the theater together. And the New Gardens. I’d always wanted to see a fireworks display at the gardens. My uncle expressly forbade it, but a young man from Cambridge, who had traveled, wouldn’t be anything like so fastidious. “Anyway, once I’m married, I won’t have to worry what Uncle Pierpont thinks.”
Now, that was a fine thought. As a married woman, I not only wouldn’t be under my uncle’s management anymore, but he could no longer scold me or order me about. That would be my husband’s privilege. I could tell Uncle Pierpont he was nothing but a pinch-faced miser, and there would not be one thing he could do about it.
“Perhaps Olivia’s right,” I said to Flossie. “Perhaps this is for the best.”
Flossie did not seem to have any opinion on the matter. I hugged her close and willed myself to believe it would be all right. There was, after all, nothing else I could do.
CHAPTER THREE
IN WHICH OUR HEROINE IS WICKEDLY CONFINED, CRUELLY PROVOKED, AND COMMITS SEVERAL ACTS OF A RASH NATURE.
It should be more widely publicized that the nimble-fingered creators of ladies’ attire are raised entirely by she-wolves. This infant experience leads them to conclude that the proper home for anything female is in a cage. It is the only conceivable explanation for the device known as the mantua.
For those among you who have been spared direct experience of the mantua, I shall describe this evil spawn of the dressmaker’s art. It is principally, as I have said, a cage. The condemned prisoner stands shivering in her linen shift and gartered stockings, her breathing already constrained by the stays of her most confining corset. Wardens, in the form of ladies’ maids, compel her to step into a round framework of willow struts, plainly modeled on the dimensions of the great bell at Bow. These struts are then laced firmly to her hips. The average weight of the cage is somewhere between one and two tons, and thus prevents her from moving quickly, or, indeed, breathing effectively.
The entire edifice, with the prisoner in it, is then concealed beneath layers of ruffled petticoats and damask satin of some shade deemed pleasing to the Masters of Fashion. It is further disguised with ribbons and furbelows and suchlike feminine decorations in one or more contrasting colors. The whole is then secured firmly with a broad, highly decorated stomacher in order to remove any lingering ability on the part of the prisoner to slouch, or breathe. If she is to attend court or a formal ball, a train may be added, which is a gaudy tail more unwieldy than that possessed by any prize peacock. The weight of this cloth and trimmings adds a further one ton to the cargo the Dainty English Beauty is compelled to carry.
Our prisoner is then handed a fan and exhorted to smile and act naturally.
The true indignity of this torturous device is not, however, found in its construction, but rather in the fact that the mantua-makers did not once consult the makers of doorways or sedan chairs when determining the proportions of their wearable prisons. If the prisoner’s family have so impoverished themselves by their purchase of a proper mode of confinement for her that they cannot afford their own coach, she must be stuffed into the nearest chair and sit with her cage folded up around her body like the brilliant wings of some gigantic and demonic bird.
At which point, she is exhorted not to squirm, lest she accidentally crease her ribbons.
It is a great wonder that more ladies of quality do not commit murder upon the unhappy population of dressmakers. And ladies’ maids. And chaperones.
I have, for the sake of brevity, neglected to this point to mention that the lady’s face is painted over with white and red as thoroughly as that of any New World savage, then powdered with more white and stuck all over with black patches to cover any marks left by inconsiderate Nature. And then . . . But no. I shall stop here. If I am required to discuss at any length the process of being strapped into the powdered and sculpted horrors of the wig, I shall faint quite away.
For the occasion of Lady Clarenda Newbank’s birthday party, my particular prison of a mantua was an ice blue damask silk with buttercup yellow bows, white petticoats, and ivory embroidery depicting birds in flight. Last year, it had belonged to Olivia. I was repeatedly assured no one would notice that, especially as it now had several rows of flounces added to accommodate the difference in our heights, and an entirely new color of ribbon for its trimming. I also had my mother’s sapphire necklace and her sandalwood fan to call my own, but didn’t hold out much hope for my pride in such details. There is nothing so much noticed or so long remembered as a girl’s gown, especially by those who are not her friends.
I tried to tell myself that the girls at the party didn’t matter one whit. Sebastian Sandford had never seen this dress before, and I did look well enough. At least, I hoped I did.
Olivia certainly did. She had been imprisoned entirely in shades of pink: dusky rose petticoats, pale pink overskirt and bodice, with deep pink ribbons and silver embroidery. She wore pink tourmalines at her throat and in her wig, and in general, looked stunning.
We arrived together at the party during the fashionable window, that is to say, an hour after the announced time on the invitation. Footmen in the livery of the Earl of Keenesford—Lady Clarenda’s father—threw open the doors for us, unleashing a flood of light and music. The butler announced us to a ballroom already well filled with young people in their brightest velvets and silks.
“Lady Trowbridge Preston Pierpont! Miss Olivia Preston Pierpont! Miss Margaret Fitzroy!”
Heads turned. I craned my neck, searching the faces of the young men who stood in clusters about the room. I had not the least idea what my betrothed looked like, but I searched for him all the same.
“Olivia!” Lady Clarenda sailed up to us. I swear, some mantua-maker had designed Lady Clarenda Newbank specifically to go with the current fashion in gowns. She was tall and willowy, with long white arms and long white hands, a slender throat, and no bosom to speak of. While the rest of us fought to breathe against our stays and struggled with swaying hoops, Lady Clarenda glided easily under her cream and gold skirts. “I’m so glad you could come!” She grasped Olivia’s hands and kissed her cheeks carefully so nobody’s face got mussed. “And Peggy! That’s a simply delightful dress. Olivia, didn’t you have something a little like it once?”
I returned her my sunniest smile. We’d had other such conversations, Lady Clarenda and I. I reminded myself I shouldn’t knock the wig off her head. My betrothed might be here, and first impressions were important.
“Olivia, dear, there was something about which I particularly wanted to ask your opinion. You’ll excuse us, won’t you, Peggy?” Even as she said this, Lady Clarenda had already threaded her arm through my cousin’s to draw her deeper into the heart of the gathering. Olivia had no choice but to go along, which left me there alone, with my skirts blocking the doorway of the ballroom.
I faded sideways and backwards to stand against the nearest wall. La
dy Clarenda’s mother, Lady Newbank, had decided to use the occasion of her daughter’s seventeenth birthday to debut her new ballroom. For months, rumors about the cost of this addition to the London house had been running wild through the drawing rooms, which clearly demonstrates how little there was to talk about in those drawing rooms. It was indeed beautiful, with a dark parquet floor, cool blue walls decorated with plaster garlands, and gilded trim around the painted ceiling. They must have spent a small fortune on candles, and the air was filled with the scents of hot wax and smoke. Four musicians in matching gray coats played a decorous minuet for the line of dancing couples. At the back, French doors opened to show the small night-shrouded garden beyond.
I was still alone. All the young blades and young ladies had turned away to talk to their companions.
I tried in vain to stop my gaze from darting about the room. I counted at least a half dozen youths who were strangers to me. The fashion for young men this year was brightly colored silk coats cut with excessively full skirts at the bottom and yet extraordinarily tight across the shoulders. So tight, in fact, that if any of them did reach for the sword worn at his hip (assuming it could be found among the many folds of the coat), there would be a mighty and instant tearing of seams. Broad cuffs with embroidery or lace, or both, were a requirement. Coat hems, buckled velvet breeches, and silk stockings must be similarly adorned. Wigs were mostly powdered white, with either long or short queues at the back. I did note that Toby Blenham and his crowd had decided, for no earthly reason I could make out, to streak theirs with red and green.
But no youth from Toby Blenham’s crowd or any other glanced in my direction. None moved around the dancers or got up from the little tables where youths and young ladies laughed and played at card games like ombre and piquet.
What were you thinking? I snapped open my fan and used it. Despite the open doors, the room was already far too warm. Did you imagine he’d sweep across the room and take your hand? Perhaps he just should have ridden up to your chair disguised as a highwayman and abducted you.