It was very difficult to imagine such a situation, but Percival had seen the result of it and was determined his own family would have just the same.
Miss Mayton grew in his estimation, when he understood that she’d been all of the Bennington sisters’ bedrock of constancy. The lady was eccentric in the extreme, and likely a very great liar, but when one of her girls fell down, her hand reached out to pull them back up.
In the end, they concluded that Cordelia was not unintellectual. Harveston was not unemotional. They simply had different strengths.
After their month in the pine forest, they made the obligatory visits.
Lord Harveston’s mother had been informed by letter that her son had wed Lady Cordelia Bennington at the Duke of Castleton’s residence. The dowager had not had the first idea that a marriage had been in the works. In fact, she had been rather despairing of her son’s marriage ever being in the works. She had not been able to understand why, until Cordelia explained the matter to her.
The dowager and her husband had not provided a very comforting or loving home for their son, which the lady had at first been affronted to hear. But, she had the good sense to not only face it, but to regret it. She had been pushed into a marriage that had never suited and had allowed an ice-cold house to be the result. She rejoiced that the family Cordelia would create would be far different.
Cordelia’s father, for his part, had long got over any surprises his daughters might provide him. He took the whole thing in stride—his daughter had sought a Corinthian and then brought home an intellectual. It really mattered very little to him. He respected Lord Harveston and had every confidence in the lord’s care of his daughter, and that was quite enough.
Over time, thecouple would come to some satisfactory arrangements regarding their particular strengths. Percival read to Cordelia about facts, but he worked hard to make them interesting and ask her about what she thought of the people who might be affected by the topic.
Cordelia enacted her Desdemona final scene often– sometimes Desdemona would live and go off happily with Cassio, and sometimes she died very dramatically. Whatever her fate, Desdemona was generally carried up the stairs afterward.
Cordelia also educated her lord on when he might be feeling the effects of love, particularly if he felt as if his hair had been struck by lightning, to which he invariably claimed it had burst into flames the moment he’d met her.
If a question arose whose answer might lie in a book, Percival found it. If a question arose that might be found in a heart, Cordelia provided the guidance.
Makepeace, as might be imagined, was not over the moon to understand a mistress was coming into the house. Cordelia was able to soothe his bruised feelings by assuring him that his sideboards were excellent and that she did not require an outrageous amount of flowers in the drawing room.
The literary society carried on, with Lady Harveston on hand to deliver a heart to heart with one of its members when it was deemed necessary.
Surprisingly, it was often necessary.
The men, and eventually the women, of the society were made better for it.
Though Cordelia’s season had ended abruptly, it had ended happily.
The earl had one more daughter to go—the youngest, Lady Juliet. She would arrive in London armed with the hundreds of odes she had written, and she would find her poet.
At least, that was the plan.
The End
