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IT was only by the sixth draft that Sylvester felt his letter came close to saying what he truly felt with the right degree of humility and artfulness.
Like a schoolboy squirming with mortification, he’d slunk home after his disastrous encounter with Miss Brightwell, paced the library like a caged tiger, then finally resorted to the inkwell and a sheet of parchment. The written word was not the manner in which he felt most comfortable expressing himself, but he certainly wasn’t going to get a chance to put his feelings into words in a face-to-face encounter.
Dorcas, the housemaid, clanked around the fireplace, building it up and making a dreadful clatter with the fire irons until his concentration was so shot to pieces he had no choice but to cry out, “Will you stop that infernal noise!” Looking up at the pregnant pause that followed, he locked glances with her shocked face, whereupon she brought her apron up to her face and ran, weeping loudly, from the room.
“Gad’s teeth!” he muttered. Had he completely lost his artful touch with the feminine species? Could he do nothing to melt a susceptible heart with finesse, or at least not send them all fleeing from him, and in tears?
Stifling the urge to run after the maidservant and make some attempt to appease her before she informed the entire household of his devil incarnate ways, he sighed instead and read through, for the final time, his agonisingly crafted sentences. Then, sprinkling sand upon the wet ink, he stood up and stretched his arms as high as he could without tearing the seams of his nearly new superfine coat as he contemplated how he might proceed with the task Lady Fenton had set him—purely for the good of her cousin, he hastily reassured himself.
Miss Brightwell was like a nervous thoroughbred. While he’d been assured she was for the moment robust enough in body to accept his overtures, she had still the sensibility of the untutored virgin, which he should have understood. She also clearly had no idea of her cousins’ desires to see her exit into the afterlife a little worldlier and, he hoped, a little happier than the virginal miss she currently was.
If guilt nagged at him for deceiving her, it was only for a moment, as he fully endorsed her generous and well-meaning cousins’ desires for her happiness, which he would discharge with all the care and thoughtfulness of which he was capable.
He’d started off like a bull in a china shop but he was not going to make the same mistake twice. His letter would make it clear that he felt abject and cast down by his impulsiveness and, if she would accept his apologies, he hoped they might start again.
The thought she might dismiss him altogether was difficult for one of his pride to entertain and as he paced before the fire, waiting for the servant he’d summoned to ensure delivery of his letter, he was buoyed up with hope one minute, but filled with doubt the next. What if she rejected his offer of forgiveness? What else could he do?
An image of her sweet, shocked face kept intruding on his consciousness. She was so innocent, so lovely, so…
The memory of her cousin Bertram’s doleful voice chimed in at this point: ‘doomed’.
He would not think of that now. He would think only of her innocent charms and the fact that Lady Fenton had charged him with the task of…well, moulding them into something more sophisticated.
He would be doing her a kindness, and that’s all this was ever about.
The trouble was, the kindness he might render for an elderly aunt, who liked the company when he found time to dash in and see her before the theatre, did not play havoc with his heart in the way that doing Miss Brightwell a kindness did.
Not that he was in danger of harbouring any inconvenient feelings for the girl. She was sweet and lovely, granted. But she was also dying, and he was if not actually a rake, he was, when it came to practical matters, a gentleman who required a wife with something of a dowry.
Nevertheless, it was a matter of honour that he render Miss Brightwell the kind of service that would see her go to her grave having experienced something wonderful of life.
***
Thea closed her eyes to summon the fortitude she needed to get through this evening. What a torment it was having to untangle Aunt Minerva’s skeins of wool and listen to her homilies on good behaviour and everything wicked she’d observed in her nieces. Aunt Minerva had, however, reserved most criticism for Thea, chastising her for everything from her ‘roving eye’ to her all but throwing herself at ‘that unconscionable rake, Mr Grayling’.
Thea accepted all this in silence while inside her rage and injured dignity grew. Not for one moment was she tempted to defend herself much less mention that she’d displayed every feminine outrage that her aunt would have expected had she had an inkling of what had occurred.
“Thea, what’s the matter with you? There’s no time to waste in foolish daydreaming when you have work to do! I think the sooner we remove from Bath, the better. In fact, I’ve decided we shall return to Heskett tomorrow.” With a click of her tongue, her aunt communicated her displeasure, tugging at the skein of wool that Thea had in her lap so it jerked up and rolled across the floor.
Thea crawled across the carpet to retrieve it, careful to keep her sour expression averted. It was true she’d been daydreaming, though her thoughts were more akin to nightmares as she relived the ghastly, humiliating images her two cousins had gleefully recounted to her only this morning on what husbands and wives were forced to do when the marriage contract was signed and in order to procreate. Little wonder that a woman would only submit when she was under such an obligation. The idea of flesh touching flesh, much less a man’s…oh dear God, the idea that a man had a sword-like appendage that he pushed inside his wife in order to sow the seed of future life was utterly abhorrent. Yet apparently a man gained far more pleasure from his thrusting for the entertainment of it than the serious business of making a child.
And what of the woman who must bear such indignity? Little wonder Mr Grayling’s poor French wife had not been up to the task. There must be so very many women in this world who gritted their teeth and lay back staring at the ceiling while they hoped this would be the last time they’d have to suffer such humiliation, hoping that a child had indeed been created within them. She shuddered once more. Were they teasing her? Was this really what marriage was all about, for what Antoinette and Fanny had explained mentioned nothing about love. Only this terrible brutality.
“Thea, what’s this sniffling about? You’ve been like Polly when she has the earache, and you
know how I can’t abide invalids.” Such admonishments were usually like water off a duck’s back, but when her aunt unwisely added, “I hope you’re not mooning over your Mr Grayling, for you know nothing will come of that!” Thea couldn’t help wailing.
Of course Thea had no intention of telling her anything but somehow Aunt Minerva must have suspected that her niece had had an encounter of some sort with the gentleman in question for soon she was barking questions like a Spanish Inquisitor and Thea, never a good liar to begin with, went to pieces. “Please, Aunt Minerva, you really have no need to be concerned for I kicked Mr Grayling in the shins and ran away. I can assure you that I don’t ever want to see him again. Ever!”
Aunt Minerva raised an eyebrow and her look of horror turned to satisfaction. “No doubt he thought he could take any liberty he liked, considering you’d be in the workhouse if it weren’t for me, eh, girl?” Her unsympathetic relative returned to her stitching, rocking gently. “We’ll be two old maids together, and happy to keep one another company as the years go by. Perhaps it’s not a bad thing you’ve discovered for yourself how quick handsome men are to take advantage of innocence.”
The horror of such an endless future with her aunt was at that moment on par with Thea’s horror at the specific nature of conjugal rights.
“Dr Horne’s here to see you, ma’am.” Polly put her head round the door.
Thea, having regained her composure with difficulty, glanced at her aunt with a sympathetic look she hoped would help banish her dissatisfaction with her. “Are you feeling poorly again, Aunt Minerva?”
“An unexpected pleasure, Dr Horne,” her aunt said, waving aside Thea’s concern as she invited her visitor to sit. “You’ve come with my liver pills, I take it.”
