by Edith Layton
She gave him more, for when she raised her head it could be seen that she wore a most unrepentant grin, and her eyes sparkled with laughter as she dissolved in giggles and said, as best she was able, “Oh, Charlie, some things never change. I believe I could have shot that gentleman in the hallway and left him there for dead, and still have gotten you to apologize for scolding me for it. My dear Charlie, Charlie my love, I’m all grown-up now, a great big whopping lass of one-and-twenty, and I have some manners, and know I deserved to be insulted for standing and gawking like a goose in a common public hallway. I was lucky that all the pretty fellow did was to twit me for my rudeness. Dear Charlie,” she said more soberly, giving him a warming smile, “will you never learn that your sister can do wrong, aye, and often does, too?”
“Of course I know that,” he said at once, seizing on her comment, for whatever his feelings toward his only sister, he was a man of business, and a good one too, and never a fellow to let such a rare opening for advantage get past him. “Isn’t that just what I’ve been saying all night? It’s a godsend, this weather, for it stopped us cold in our tracks and gives me an extra day and night to try to talk some sense into you. You don’t belong in Tunbridge Wells with Cousin May, no matter that we’re bound there, no, you don’t, no matter that she writes she needs a companion about the house. For you need a man about the house, Sukey, and that’s the whole of it. And for all she says she’s got a fine home, she’s old as the hills. How many dashing young blades do you think she’s got cluttering up her parlor? And though the place is supposed to be a fashionable spa, how many handsome, hardy young gents do you think go there on a repairing lease? No, gout and crotchets is what you’ll find in plenty, so if you want a nice old fellow reeking with liniment, why, then, it’s the place for you.
“A year in New Haven with Cousin Elizabeth ought to have been enough for you,” he said with real grievance, “with nothing to do but help with her brats while her husband was at sea, and no one to talk to but all the other married females whose husbands were at sea. I would’ve come to drag you away even if you hadn’t written when you did,” he grumbled. “All the young ensigns she promised me, all the worthy young chaps she raved about… ‘and all officer material, Charlie,’” he mocked in a brittle soprano. “All the grand young men that never materialized,” he sighed.
“Never say she promised you a young gentleman too!” his sister cried in mock horror, hoping to turn the subject, for he was getting onto firm ground now and she wanted to divert him.
But he was not to be sidetracked. “You might’ve gone straightaway to a convent after school for all the good that stay did you,” he said angrily. “Blast it, Sukey, you’re a rare beauty, don’t deny it, for I’ve eyes. You’ve a fine education too, out of the ordinary in fact, because that’s what Da wanted for you. And he provided for you in abundance, your dowry wouldn’t shame a queen. And how do you use it all? By agreeing to keep company to any old female relative that asks you in? It’s time to come out into the world, Susannah, it’s time to take your rightful place in it,” he shouted, bringing his fist down on the table and causing all the dessert plates of cakes and fruit to hop.
His sister remained very still, and then, when he again began to fear he’d wounded her, she spoke. Her voice was low and sober, and filled with such sorrow he realized this time she was beyond mere hurt. “And just where is that rightful place, Charlie?” she asked, gazing at him steadily.
But now he was ready for her, for it was an old hurt and so it was an old argument that he’d had time to ponder, and though he was doting he was never a fool.
“And how will you know unless you stop hiding and come out to try to find it?” he asked as steadily and seriously as he’d ever spoken to her.
She turned her head to the side to acknowledge the hit.
“A season, only a season in London,” he offered at once, pressing his advantage.
“A season?” she asked quizzically, one finely arched eyebrow rising. “Surely you don’t mean the Season? Just think, the closest I’d get to such a haven for society ladies as Almack’s would be if I passed it in a coach, and the nearest I’d come to a come-out ball would be if that coach rolled over someone coming out of one. A Season, Charlie? Not with all my dowry and education and looks rolled up in one, I think. For I’m no lady, Charlie, though I’ve been given all the trappings of one. I’m still the fishmonger’s daughter, and don’t forget it, for, believe me, no one will ever let me do so.”
“I meant a season, and so I said it,” he persisted, refusing to wince at her words, his fair complexion growing ruddy from the force of his emotions, suppressed and expressed. “This spring season in London, and perhaps, if this cousin of ours, this Mrs. Anderson I’ve turned up, if she’s got the sort of connections she says she does, why then, yes, something very much like a Season too. Oh, try it, Sukey, just once. For me, if for nothing else,” he pleaded, as she averted her head from him and kept to a stubborn silence, just as she’d done all night whenever he’d broached the subject to her.
“Because it pains me,” he continued in frustration, using almost all the same words as he had all evening, “it gives me real pain, it does, seeing you wasting yourself. I want to see you meeting fine young gentlemen, eligible men of wit and education and breeding, the sort you were made for. And London’s the place for it, never doubt it. Why, those young gents you saw in the hall, they’re London stock,” he said suddenly, inspired to new efforts by the thought of them. “You’ll never find their like in Tunbridge Wells or New Haven. Confess it, would you expect to? Why, take that young Warwick Jones for example, he’s top of the trees in London, and there are half a dozen other chaps I know—”
But she cut him off there, turning around at once and asking in surprise, “You know him? The young man I saw in the hallway?”
“Yes,” he answered, pausing to watch curiously as her color mounted as he spoke, before he went on to say slowly, as he continued to observe her interest, “As a matter of fact, I do. Capitol chap. From an old family, a fine proud-looking fellow but with not a toplofty bone in his body for all of it. I’ve done business with him and he’s never made me feel the less for it. Oh, you’d like him, my girl, why, it’s a wonder I never thought of it before,” he said, his enthusiasm mounting even as the flush in her cheeks did, for he was a born salesman, like his Da, and so knew how to shade his speech to suit his audience’s response exactly, and catching fire from her kindled interest he went on:
“He’s bright as a golden guinea and he’s got enough of those, Lord knows. He’s rich as Croesus, and getting richer as we speak, for he’s got a head on those broad shoulders and knows how to get a bit of silver to sire golden babies with the best of them. And he’s the best of them himself, never doubt it.
“But,” his sister asked, a frown replacing the wide-eyed attention she’d shown, “then why is he driving a coach?”
“Driving a coach?” Her brother laughed. “Why, I suppose if he does, it’s because he belongs to the Four-in-Hand Club, like so many of the young sporting gentlemen do, though I hadn’t heard of it. It surprises me, because Mr. Jones isn’t the sort of fellow to do the fashionable thing for the sake of it, not much of a clubman, I’d have thought. Bit of a renegade, he is—not,” he said hastily, “that he’s a rebel, or an upstart, or anything like, no, just his own man, is what he is.”
“Oh,” she said abruptly, visibly crestfallen, remembering then that some other fellow had come into the hall to join the young fair-haired coachman, “then I mistook you. It was the other gentleman I thought you knew. The one they called a viscount, though I suppose that was just a joke—the nobility don’t drive public coaches.”
“Some do, especially on the Brighton run, and not just for a joke neither,” her brother mused. “It’s a fashionable road, lots of the gentry go down to Prinny’s new palace and then back again, so I’d imagine the tips are good, since the quality try to outdo each other in everything. As a matter o
f fact, there’s a baron, and a lord, aye, and a marquess’s son that I know of, all down on their luck and so up on the coachman’s box to earn a penny, for what else are such cubs equipped to do after they’ve drained the family dry and their creditors are at their heels? No one’s going to pay them a farthing to play cricket or fence, taste wine or dance, or do the sort of thing they were raised to do, so driving’s as good a way to turn a living for them as any. Yes, he might well be a viscount, at that,” he went on, casting a shrewd glance at his sister’s complete, arrested attention as he spoke, “and as he’s obviously a friend of young Warwick’s, I can find out easily enough.
“I tell you what,” he said with great vivacity. “If you don’t mind sitting here alone for a spell, I’ll go and hunt up Warwick Jones and have a word or two with him, and find out the lot. I’d wanted to have a chat with him when I first saw him tonight anyway, but I scarcely could after you’d closed the door in his face.”
He left the room immediately, ignoring his usually collected sibling’s hesitant, embarrassed protests about not wishing him to bother, “since really it was only an idle thought, since actually it made no matter what the viscount did, really.” He decided it would be excellent for her to meet up with Mr. Warwick Jones, and hold a good thought for him while such a meeting was being arranged. Because that gentleman was one of the best that went by that name that he’d ever encountered. And since the fellow had no title, but a great deal of wit, sensitivity, and breeding to make up for it, it became clearer as he thought on it, and he regretted not having thought it sooner, that it was as though Mr. Jones had been made for Susannah.
Although he had no similar wish for her to encounter the unknown viscount, since that sort of young nobleman was just the type of reckless ornamental wastrel and care-for-nothing that he wanted to shield her from, if her interest in the fellow could interest her enough to move her to going to London to learn even more, why then, it was a worthwhile one. For then she could be in a position to meet Mr. Jones and a dozen other similarly worthy young men.
The robust gentleman wore a bright expression as he strolled down the hall to seek out the innkeeper and get Mr. Jones’s direction. He’d find out about the unfortunate viscount, he decided, and regale his sister with the story, suitably edited, when he rejoined her. He didn’t pause for a moment to worry about whether her interest in the nobleman might be a lasting one, because he was a fair judge of human nature and he didn’t believe it to be any deeper than the easy, romantic concern any impressionable young female might feel after seeing such an unusually handsome, ill-fated young gentleman. And at that, his Susannah, he thought smugly, was far more than just any young woman, for she had a first-rate brain in that beautiful head.
But then, he could be forgiven for his complacency, for he was a doting brother, and it had been, after all, a year since he’d seen his sister, and many more than that had passed since he’d really known her.
Because even as he sought information about the noble coachman, his Susannah—his clever, educated, and sensible young sister—sat back in a chair in their private dining parlor and used all the power of the considerable brain her brother had admired to dissect that last smile she’d received from the young man. And in her mind’s eye she reviewed it, turning it about and upside down, wondering what else she could read into it. She’d seen charm there, of course, and since the mockery had been so outsize, she discounted it, as its creator had doubtless intended; she found humor instead, along with a merry sort of self-deprecation, and so she reckoned humility was there as well. It was a great deal to infer from just a smile, but then, it had never been just a smile at all. It had been a revelation to her.
She’d been set on joining Cousin May in Tunbridge Wells, one more stop on her journey to a sufficient age to set up housekeeping by herself being much the same as any other to her. Her brother had been right, which was why she hadn’t bothered to dispute him: Cousin May looked to be a bore. Cousin Elizabeth had been one, but she hadn’t expected anything else from them. She didn’t expect much more from her life. She might well have an education, she granted that she had some wit, and though she doubted she was as exquisite a creature as her devoted brother thought, she believed she’d do. It was just that she knew there wasn’t any place for her anymore, at least, not in any world she knew.
She supposed it was her father’s fault, but even if it were, she couldn’t help but be grateful to him anyway. Raised by a fond papa and two older, protective and adoring brothers, she imagined that she might have grown to be a shockingly conceited, spoiled young woman. From earliest days her least frown had brought instant comforting, her largest mischief only indulgent chuckles. She had only to breathe to be admired, and being wrapped in unrelenting love, might have grown to adulthood never knowing or caring about how to win or deserve it. But her father in his wisdom had foreseen that, and wanting to save her from the results of unquestioning love equally as much as he’d wanted to lavish it upon her, he’d taken the harder road for himself and sent her off to school to be educated. It had saved her from conceit. It had also ruined her for the life it prepared her for.
Miss Spring’s Academy for Young Women was an excellent school, with lofty tuition fees and a manor to house its students in what was as fine as any nobleman’s principal seat. It attracted those who could afford it, and those who wished to be taken for those who could afford it. Miss Spring elevated the academy even more by instituting the discreet policy of letting titled young women in for a reduced fee so that the common young women’s families, such as Miss Susannah Logan’s, might think their offspring would be equipped to eventually socialize with just that class of person they’d been to school with. It was a clever ploy, and the academy prospered, even if some of its graduates broke their hearts colliding with the real world when they entered it. But this didn’t affect the school’s reputation at all.
After all, just as Miss Spring envisioned, any scheme that had to do with matters of social climbing and status would be amply protected by the secrecy of all involved. And so it was, for silence was kept on both sides. The unlucky young persons who weren’t admitted into select society when they exited the school were hardly likely to want the world to know it, and after graduation, the titled young persons would scarcely let on about how they’d been little more than charity cases at the academy, or mention how many commoners had attended with them. It was an excellent plan, for the school at least. And Miss Susannah Logan did receive quite an education there.
Perhaps living at school would have been difficult for her wherever she went, for she doted on her family just as much as they did on her. Then too, young females didn’t usually receive educations outside their homes unless there were unusual circumstances at work, and whatever girls she’d have met at any school would have been young persons with certain difficulties in their homes, and thus in their own lives as well. And of course, human nature being what it is, only the mediocre can sail through childhood without hurt or insult from their peers. An extremely bright and beautiful young girl encounters just as many problems in growing up as an extremely dull and ugly one does, perhaps more, because she’ll be more aware of them. And from the first, Susannah was aware.
Lady Mary might be at Miss Spring’s Academy because her papa drank, and the Honorable Miss Amelia might be there because her mama sought a new papa for her and so took a great many lovers in the process of elimination, and even simple little Miss Smythe might be sent there because her papa, a suspicious baronet, had decided her red hair proof that his lady had played him false, and with his best friend this time, but none of them had to apologize for any of these family failings for a moment. And Jenny Mason’s papa might have been only a man-at-law, even less important than Betty Howard’s father, who was a country doctor, and even further down on the scale from Bessie Parsons’s mam, who owned a horse farm, and yet they prospered at Miss Spring’s. But Susannah Logan’s father had started out in life as a fishmonger, and everyone knew
it, and no one forgot it.
He was proud of it, and rightly so, for now he had more blunt than anyone else’s father at the entire academy, or in the entire county, for that matter. But that didn’t make things any easier for his daughter. Because a hundred years earlier he would have remained a fishmonger, hawking eels and waving his mullet under the nose of anyone who dared to challenge its freshness, to the end of his days. Still, a hundred years later, no one could get used to the idea that he was now rich enough, just as he often declared, to buy his own sea to fish in, and name it after himself too, if he’d a notion to.
But then, nothing was stable anymore, not these days. The winds of change were blowing a great many lives off course, for there was a war on and the world was suddenly expanding. Not only were there new inventions being unveiled daily for health and wealth—gas for heat and light, and machines to weave, farm, and cook with—there were new roads to get to new lands to make new trade with, there was talk of someday being able to travel altogether without proper roads, by sailing along tracks in a “Puffing Billy” engine, and those on the coast scanned the skies for the threat of Boney’s forces flying cross-Channel in those amazing enormous balloons. Overnight, it seemed, new successful businesses that dealt in these wonders were springing up like the “mushrooms” the quality called the men who made their fortunes from them.