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Antoinette and Bertram looked downcast. Shuffling one foot over the flagstones, Antoinette ventured, “I saw Mr Bramley today and he was very attentive. I’m sure he’s going to make me an offer and as he is the Earl of Quamby’s heir—”
“Shut up, Antoinette!” Her mother rounded on her. “You understand nothing of the ways of men. You think because you are loose and obliging with your affections that a wedding band will secure the deal?” She shook her fist at her youngest. “They’ll be only too delighted to secure their pleasures without having to negotiate a marriage contract with ticklish family who consider there are better contenders than the Brightwells. You are, there’s no getting round the fact”—the substance appeared to drain from her and she slumped against the wall—“not every designing mama’s dream.”
Chapter 7
Lady Brightwell was in no mood to accept the various attempts made by her offspring to paint their circumstances more rosily. In the bleak hues she had cast over their futures, ‘Fanny’s gross selfishness and disregard had ruined those who had sacrificed everything on her account’.
“Fanny will find another brilliant match, Mama,” Bertram generously predicted as Lady Brightwell directed her three children—in clipped tones and with a brow as glowering as they’d ever seen—to arrange for a conveyance to take her home.
To Fanny’s relief, she had acquiesced in allowing the rest of them to walk, provided they return directly to their dingy residence, but she was in no mood to be mollified by Bertram.
“You’re as much a foolish optimist over your sister’s prospects as you are over your fortune at the gaming tables, Bertram,” Lady Brightwell snapped, slapping away his hand as he solicitously tugged her skirt clear of the door of the hackney.
“Really, Mama, you all but forced the match upon her,” he persisted, unperturbed by the set-down.
“Did it never occur to you that your folly is as much a reason why your sisters must accept unpalatable alliances as your father’s impecuniousness is the cause of our distress?” Lady Brightwell slammed the door and glared out of the window before rapping on the roof for the jarvey to take up the reins.
Antoinette had by this stage lost a little of her usual effervescence. “I’ve never seen Mama quite so angry,” she said as the three of them set off along the pavement.
It was a lovely day and Fanny had used the excuse of needing the good air in the hopes of spying Lord Fenton. Her distracted answer obviously needled her sister who said, “Perhaps Mama has good reason to be angry with you after all, Fanny—for all that I sympathise—since you could have been married in the morning and a widow by noon if you’d simply done what was required.”
“I’d have been a widow before the wedding breakfast was digested,” muttered Fanny in disgust, “if Lord Slyther had tried to have his way with me. Ugh.” She shuddered. “Then I’d have had to wear widow’s weeds for a year and how do you suppose that would have advanced my chances?”
Bertram looked quizzically at her. “Surely it wouldn’t have mattered, Fanny, since you’d have inherited a fortune? Lord Slyther had no children. I can see why Mama is down in the mouth.”
“Fanny wants to marry Lord Fenton,” Antoinette said matter-of-factly. “She thinks he’s going to ask her in the next few days. That’s why she’s not concerned by what’s happened to Lord Slyther.”
This came as such a shock to Bertram that he dropped the monocle he was using to ogle the passing young ladies.
“Marry Lord Fenton?” He gawped at his sisters as if the idea were preposterous. “My, you’ve aimed high this time. I mean, after Alverley, surely—”
“Lord Fenton thinks Fanny”—Antoinette giggled behind her hand— “highly desirable.” Fanny rounded on her with a glare before she continued. “And, after the way they carried on at Lord Quamby’s, I’d say there’s every chance he’ll make her an offer before tomorrow is ended. Isn’t that what a gentleman has to do when he compromises a lady?” Antoinette tossed her pretty head, more concerned with the interest she was receiving from the passing males than her sister’s patent horror.
“What are you saying, Antoinette?” Fanny felt about to swoon on the spot.
Antoinette wrapped a ringlet around her finger as she turned her dazzling smile upon her sister. “Just that I saw you and Lord Fenton when you thought you were alone and I realised that you were tricking him into having to make you an offer. That’s when I realised that I, too, could be as clever, and why I agreed to slip away with Mr Bramley this morning.” She looked smug as she took Bertram’s arm. At his look, which was more quizzical than Fanny’s scandalised horror, she added gaily, “Mr Bramley isn’t nearly as nice as Lord Fenton but he is Lord Quamby’s heir.”
What Lord Fenton felt upon reflection on their incredible union, Fanny had no idea. Whether he felt tricked—as Antoinette regarded it—or whether he was at that moment pondering his obligations towards Miss Brightwell, he had not yet been galvanised into letting her know his intentions. He owed her something, surely—a word of reassurance at the very least? But no word came all that long evening, or even the next morning.
Just before noon, the parlour maid appeared bearing a silver salver on which lay an elegant cream wafer. Fanny cried out with relief as she snatched up the correspondence, but her desperation turned to abject misery as she studied the missive before handing it to her sister.
“From Mr Bramley,” she whispered, feeling akin to some pathetic creature slinking into a chair with its tail between its legs.
Gaily, Antoinette scanned the few lines. “Can I go riding with Mr Bramley in his high-perch phaeton this afternoon, Mama?” she asked.
Her mother did not look up from her stitching. Wearily she said, “I see no harm in it,” adding with a sigh, “I see no harm in anything anymore. Once the lease runs out on this place, we’re all doomed.”
Fanny felt doomed already. Dazed, doomed and undecided as to what course she could take. Two days had not yet passed. She couldn’t behave like some eager strumpet and demand her beloved explain himself—not when she couldn’t very well explain her own actions.
She hadn’t even the heart to reiterate her warning to Antoinette about her suspicions that Bramley was only using her—though she did mutter, “Be wary and don’t go off with him alone.”
She felt a fool for miscalculating so badly—like a traitor to her family and, worse than that, like she carried a great hole in her heart.
She’d pegged Fenton for a romantic. A man of sincerity. The words he’d whispered in her ear at Lord Quamby’s had filled her with hope for the future.
So Antoinette went riding, returning full of glee owing to the admiration she’d received from all quarters. She was flushed and as pretty, Fanny reluctantly conceded, as she’d ever seen her. Antoinette, her pea goose of a sister, was either going to ruin them all or win the marriage Fanny had failed to secure, which would ensure their mother’s eternal devotion.
Fanny prostrated herself along the length of the window seat in their bedroom, between bouts of lonely weeping, while the others played backgammon in front of the drawing room fire. She could speak to no one of her distress. She’d taken a gamble on love, having eschewed the solid, albeit unpalatable, offer that would have made them all comfortable and secure…
