by Regina Darcy
Joshua, seeing her smile, found himself smiling as well. “Not far from the city,” he said, “there is a chap who has a stable of ponies for children to ride. He is a friend of mine and I daresay that your son would revel in an afternoon there. Perhaps we could picnic some time? The weather has been quite pleasant of late and if we are fortunate, we may find ourselves the beneficiaries of a sunny day without rain in the near future.”
“Oh, Micah would very much enjoy such an adventure,” she said. “He had his friends in the country, you know: the neighbour boys who did not stand on ceremony with him but included him in their games. I don’t want him to be a priggish little snob but would prefer to have him learn to respect the other lads, regardless of their station. They will be his tenants when they are older, and I hope for the foundation upon which that bond is built to be one of mutual regard.”
That was a bold, perhaps even radical ambition, Joshua thought. Most of the aristocracy wanted their subjects to grow up pulling at their forelocks and knowing their place. He smiled in satisfaction. It was very clear the Lady Randstand held extraordinary views which were not at all common in the rarefied society of the ton.
FOUR
It was to be expected that Atelia would know everything about Mr Hendrickson and was most eager to share her knowledge when she called upon Tabitha later that same day.
“I knew you would make a conquest, Tabby,” she exclaimed after being shown into the drawing room. There, just a short time before, Joshua had been charming, engaging and so sincere that Tabitha had felt her inherent timidity begin to fade as a result of his encouraging manner.
Atelia’s observant gaze had noticed the roses immediately and she had demanded to know where they came from. Blushing, Tabitha told her.
“Joshua Hendrickson is eight and twenty years of age,” Atelia said as if she were reciting the gentleman’s biography. “His family is quite wealthy, but he lives unostentatiously, although, I suspect he could put many a prince to shame if he chose to do so. The Hendrickson wealth—and I assure you, wealth is precisely what it is—is over a century old and quite established. His ancestors were backers of the explorations to the colonies in the bygone days and they made their riches off the trade routes, but there’s never been a whiff of condescension toward them. That’s because the Hendricksons are great backers of the arts.
“Why, it was Hendrickson money that was generously donated to rebuild the Drury Lane Theatre when it burnt in ’09, but it is not merely the stage which has benefitted from Hendrickson largesse. I do not believe that Joshua will ever tell you any of this, for his family is of the persuasion that one’s gifts should be given anonymously.
“You may be sure, however, that London would be shorn of much of its grandeur without the donations of the Hendricksons. The family refused a title—think of that—several generations ago, preferring to remain among the gentry rather than becoming aristocrats—and none of them has changed their mind, including Joshua. Is that not remarkable?”
It was, but from her brief meeting with Mr Hendrickson, Tabitha was not surprised by the revelation.
“He seems very . . . kind,” she said awkwardly, aware that the adjective was inadequate. “I am not accustomed to such.”
Atelia gave her friend’s hand an impulsive squeeze. “Dear Tabby, and you are truly the kindest of women. I am glad that Mr Hendrickson is declaring himself as a suitor.”
“Oh, hardly that,” Tabitha protested. “I told him how much Micah enjoys riding and he offered to take us on a picnic to a place outside the city where there are ponies for children to ride. I don’t think that quite counts as a declaration.”
“You’re blushing,” her friend noticed. “That means that you know very well that Mr Hendrickson is a suitor for your hand. And why should he not be? You are pretty and charming and the sort of woman that any man would cherish as a wife. Except, of course,” she added logically, “for the husband that you had. But you must put aside all thoughts of the past and concentrate on the present.”
“Yes,” Tabitha said. “I mean to do so. Only . . . you will think me very foolish, I daresay, but I find myself continually wondering what Arthur would have been like had he been more . . .” the rosy blush in her cheeks deepened, “more passionate.”
Atelia’s eyebrows rose. Coming from Tabitha, who was not a woman given to divulging intimate details of her private life, the remark was devastatingly revealing.
“I wonder—what shall I tell Micah when he is older,” Tabitha went on in a rush, embarrassed by her candour and yet unable to squelch the flow of words. “I must tell him something and I cannot tell him the truth.”
“There are many different truths in a marriage,” Atelia said quietly. “Even a happy marriage has its darker sides. You will tell him what he needs to know to be a good husband one day. Perhaps, he will be the better for your insights gleaned from your own unhappy marriage. And,” she went on briskly, “you may find that a match with Mr Hendrickson will make you a happy wife, after all.”
Tabitha thought her friend’s words were quite unrealistic. She was not thinking of marriage at all and when she accepted the invitation that came in the post, asking her to accompany him to a performance of Shakespeare’s romantic comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream, she accepted without a pause. She had not been to the theatre in a long time. There had been no opportunity in the country and that long-ago season when she and Arthur had spent in London had featured his choice of entertainments. She had been too overawed by London society to voice her own preferences; doubtless, Arthur did not think she had any.
As they took their seats, Tabitha was aware that, all around her, quizzing glasses and lorgnettes were aimed at her. She could not think why and did not much care for the attention.
Joshua Hendrickson noticed the gazes as well. “Do not mind the ocular invasion,” he advised her.
Tabitha burst into laughter. “I have never heard that description before,” she said, “but it is most well put.”
Joshua smiled in satisfaction. “I think that Londoners must be among the most bored citizens in the entire world. Only witness the staring they do because a new face—admittedly, a very charming and attractive one—appears in the city. They all peer and squint to ogle the novelty.”
“I wish they would not,” she said.
She was self-conscious about her appearance; she was wearing a dress that she had purchased from the dressmaker only the other day. It was a rich jewelled ruby shade. Heather Wakefield had crowed over her appearance in the mirror. Her shoulders were bare and her hair, coiled in a sleek chignon upon her neck, gave the ensemble a simple but sophisticated appearance.
“Let them stare,” Joshua said. “Londoners appreciate beauty.”
His eyes were honest, and she knew that her maid had not exaggerated. Joshua’s gaze told her so. It was a new and bedazzling sensation for Arthur had made no effort to make her feel beautiful when they were husband and wife, and her father had regarded beauty as a woman’s sole attribute.
She was expected to be beautiful because women had no other merits, other than the physical one of bearing children, but it was not something worth commenting on, in Peregrine Greane’s view. It was easier to marry off a beautiful daughter than a plain one, that was all.
As the play commenced, Tabitha was aware now and again that Joshua had turned his head to look at her. Perhaps it was because the characters were so suited to their parts that she could not forebear from laughing out loud at the play’s situations. She could not recall laughing so much, not in her entire life and when she and Joshua left their seats during the intermission, she confided that the play had cast a spell over her.
“Yes,” Joshua agreed, “they’re doing an excellent work of it. I find it refreshing when actors surrender to the Bard rather than seek to compete with him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, there are those versions of his plays which offer alternate endings or try in some other way to
demonstrate a modern take on his works, as if one needs to refurbish Elizabethan writing. It’s foolish of them, I feel, but one must accept that Shakespeare’s genius allows for all sorts of renditions. Hmmm, that’s very odd.”
“What is?”
“Do you see that man over there? The one holding his drink as if he means to refill it at the first opportunity?”
Tabitha looked up.
“The one in the unfortunate yellow waistcoat,” Joshua grimaced. “He should be relieved that George Brummel is not in England to see it. The Beau would, I am sure, heap scorn upon Mr Overton for his wardrobe. But it is not his attire that is remarkable; it is his presence.”
Tabitha noticed the thickset man whose clothing seemed ill fitting even though she was sure it was expensively made. He had a belligerent look to him as he met the gaze of those who passed by; she noticed that most people pretended not to see him.
“Who is he?”
“Walcott Overton, recently an advisor to the Prince Regent, but I believe he is currently in disgrace. I thought he had been dismissed from Court. The usual response after such a fate is to retire to the country until the gossip has stilled. It is interesting the Overton chooses to be visible rather than hidden.”
Walcott Overton. Why did the name stir a memory in her mind, something to do with Arthur, something he had said . . . She could not recall, but she knew that she had heard the name before and that Arthur had known the man, or that they had both been guests at some country outing.
“He does not seem to be a very pleasant-tempered sort of gentleman,” she remarked.
“No. Pleasant is not a word I heard in the same context as his name,” Joshua agreed. He was puzzled by Overton’s aggressive stance in the theatre, as if he were daring those going by him to meet his eyes. But what was more puzzling, and disturbing, was the way in which Overton’s hard green stare fastened itself to Lady Randstand as they passed by him. The stare was intrusive and offensive, and Joshua found himself irritated by it.
He did not have the right to challenge the man for his effrontery. Lady Randstand Clemens was his guest for the evening, no more, and to make a scene would have invited a level of attention which he knew the shy widow would deplore. He was glad, therefore, when they returned to their seats for the rest of the play where the romantic misadventures of Titania and Oberon, the mischief of Puck, and the comic plight of Bottom would soon take his mind away from court officials with seamy reputations.
Tabitha surrendered herself entirely to the merriment of the play and after it ended, and she and Joshua were back in his carriage, she found her spirits still uplifted by the entertainment.
She leaned back against the smooth leather seats of the Hendrickson carriage with a sigh of contentment. “How different it is,” she observed, “having an evening out as a woman rather than a debutante.”
“So I should think,” Joshua concurred with a smile. “All those confining rules. . . now, you may dance as many dances as you choose with whatever gentleman you like, and the gossips need not count on their fingers to determine whether you have violated the sacred rule of the three.”
Tabitha laughed. “It was dreadful,” she admitted. “I always felt as if I were conspicuous, merely because I’d entered a room.”
“Some of the debutantes quite like being the showpiece,” he said.
Tabitha shuddered. “I never did. Although, I did not have a long season . . . Arthur went to my father not long after I was presented at Court and our engagement was announced. Of course, the sharp-eyed matrons were still watching to be sure that nothing untoward happened, but once the engagement was announced and speculation ended, there was comparatively little for them to gossip about. I suppose now that I’ve reached the matronly age myself, I—”
“Hardly,” he protested, amused at the thought. “You are hardly matronly.”
“I am six-and-twenty,” she said. “I was married, I am now widowed, and I am a mother. I am quite content to assume the title of matronly.”
“Was your marriage so unhappy?” Joshua inquired softly. It was none of his business, he supposed, and an impertinent question to ask when their acquaintance was so recent, but he wanted to know the answer. Despite her age, she had an air of youth about her, or perhaps it was innocence, as if much of her had been dormant during her marriage and remained unawakened.
Joshua frowned. A husband ought to be about the business of fulfilling his wife’s sense of her own beauty and accomplishment, not giving her cause to doubt herself.
She paused before she answered, and he realised that she was not offended by his question. Rather, it seemed to have stirred a thoughtfulness in her as she considered it.
“I did not mean that I am content to be widowed,” she corrected herself. “Rather that I am content to be the age I am. As to my marriage . . .” She paused again.
Joshua allowed the silence to remain; it was not an uncomfortable stillness. She deserved the time it took to put her thoughts together.
“Arthur was self-sufficient,” she said at last. “He wanted a wife only because it is customary for a man to have one. A viscount must have an heir.”
“I would say, if it were not uncouth of me to do so,” he said wryly, proceeding to voice his thoughts anyway, “that the intimacy of marriage which engenders the birth of an heir ought to inspire a man, regardless of his self-sufficiency.”
She smiled at his choice of words. “There was a time when Arthur fell ill. Very ill. I nursed him back to health. During his convalescence, I felt that there was a closeness between us. He needed me. Or rather,” she corrected herself, “he needed a nurse, I suppose, and as I was his wife, he had one. Perhaps it was no more than that.”
“Any man would be grateful for the tender ministrations of a wife who cared for him while he was ill, I should think,” Joshua said. “But it would make him even more appreciative of his wife’s presence in his life, and when his health improved, he would surely want to show his gratitude. Particularly,” Joshua said, glad that the darkness of the carriage prevented her from seeing the glint in his eye, “when he was returned to vigour and could express his appreciation in full health.”
Arthur had not done so.
Tabitha had hoped that he would, had envisioned scenarios where he would take her in his arms and hold her close, proclaiming his love for her . . . but when Arthur was well, he seemed to resent the recollection of the period of time when he had been dependent upon her.
“If you will but give me the chance,” Joshua continued, “I will show to you that you are worth far more than your nursing skills. My notions of marriage do not preclude taking care of one another when circumstances require it, but I would undertake the challenge of proving to you that love is not something to be undervalued.”
Tabitha inhaled sharply; she had not expected such a declaration.
“As you say, you are content to be the age you are, with the experiences you have accrued in those years. Time to try something new.”
Tabitha bit her lower lip. “Yes. I had a great many foolish dreams when I was a girl. Dreams about romantic love. I believed that once we were married, Arthur would cease being so distant and he would miraculously be transformed into my knight in shining armour. How very silly it must sound,” she said with an apologetic laugh.
Joshua felt a surge of sympathy for the young girl whose hopeful dreams had been blighted by a marriage which had likely had no chance of thriving, even from the beginning. Arthur Clemens wanted a wife and he found a pretty, malleable young woman, the daughter of an influential and dominating man who had imprinted his will upon her from the time she was a child. She had gone to her marriage as if she were exchanging one form of enslavement for another.
“Young women ought to have more say in their own destinies,” he exclaimed angrily. “It is monstrous that daughters are bartered in this manner! We speak of our era as one of enlightenment and we boast of our magnificent accomplishments but in truth, we are as barbar
ic as any primitive tribe in the manner in which we conduct our domestic affairs.”
“You sound quite radical,” she said. “I have not heard of a man becoming so heated in his discourse when the subject is the rights of women.”
“Probably not,” Joshua admitted ruefully. “We men know that we have a very good thing going for us and we are loathe to relinquish it, even though equality between the sexes would improve the species.”
She could not imagine having such a discussion with Arthur. In fact, she and Arthur had not had discussions on topics of interest. He did not share his views on politics with her. Their conversations had been quite ordinary. He informed her which invitations to accept and he told her whom they should invite to supper. After the first year of their marriage, when he had first gone missing, she had stayed at home in the country until she had gradually been more or less forgotten by the neighbours, regarded as a widow before the court made the decision a fact.
“You are familiar with the Hindu custom in India of suttee?” Joshua asked. “The British are taking steps to outlaw it.”
“Suttee? No, I am not familiar with it.”
“There is a tradition among well-born Hindu woman that when her husband dies, she ought to throw herself on his funeral pyre and bring herself to an honourable death.”
“How horrid!”
“It is not practiced widely, from what I understand, but that it is practiced at all is disturbing. But I wonder if we English are any different in the way we treat our wives and daughters. Are not English women viewed as appendages of their fathers and then their husbands, without thought given to their own unique identities?”
“I don’t know,” Tabitha said uncertainty colouring her features. “I should much prefer to be an English widow and alive than an Indian widow and dead.”