by M C Beaton
“Can’t do that, madam,” said the coachman. “Everyone stops for the prince.”
All the carriages were lined up. A swannecked phaeton, driven by the Prince Regent himself, came bowling slowly along, the prince nodding and waving to first one and then the other.
He came alongside the Waverleys’ carriage. It all happened so quickly, but Frederica saw the startled and then half-ashamed look in the prince’s eyes as he stared at Mrs. Waverley. Mrs. Waverley was ashen-faced.
“Good day to you,” said the prince and drove quickly away.
“I did not know you knew the Prince Regent,” cried Frederica.
“I don’t,” said Mrs. Waverley. “I met him briefly at Lady Artemis’s salon, that is all. Oh, please move, driver, and take us home.”
Frederica clutched the newspaper, her mind in a whirl. She had often wondered who exactly Mrs. Waverley was and where she came from. By the time they reached home, she was determined to find out. There was a mystery here, and solving that mystery might give her a hold over Mrs. Waverley, a hold that would mean more freedom and independence.
***
“And where do we go now?” asked Fanny, after that first delirious night of lovemaking as man and wife. “Do we go back to London?”
“No, I have decided we are to go to France on our honeymoon,” said the earl.
They were in his carriage, moving down the Great North Road. Fanny leaned her head against his chest and sighed, “I would like to see Frederica and Felicity again.”
“And so you shall, my sweet, after our honeymoon. That will give them time to forgive you.”
“I cannot yet get used to being so free and happy,” said Fanny.
“Don’t you feel tied to me?”
“Yes, but not imprisoned. I am still a modern woman and demand my rights my lord. Kiss me!”
He folded her in his arms and kissed her passionately while the coach lurched and swayed down the long road south.
Silken Bonds
M.C. Beaton
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter One
Marriage was the highest, most laudable ambition a woman could have in Regency England. Women were put on earth to support men, to comfort them, to sustain them. A woman was compared to the tender ivy winding around a strong tower: useless on its own, it just spread along the ground, and needed a strong support to flourish. To cling and draw strength from the lord and master set a woman among the angels.
Most women accepted this role, and a very comforting one it was, too. Protected and sheltered as they were from the realities of life up until the eve of their marriage, gently bred young girls could manage to survive all the rude shocks of the marriage bed and subsequent childbirth by being convinced in their minds that anything inflicted on them must not only be endured but welcomed. It was their divine duty.
But for the small band of women who thought marriage should be a joining of equals, life was very difficult. It was all very well to have these highly modern notions, but where on earth did one find a man to agree with them?
The solution was obviously to shun men entirely, while preaching and laying the ground for a future generation of liberated women.
Such a woman was Mrs. Maria Waverley of Hanover Square in London’s fashionable West End. She was rich enough to please herself and rich enough to buy herself a family. She had adopted three girls out of the orphanage: Fanny, Frederica, and Felicity. But despite all her care, and all her lessons, Fanny, the eldest, had run off to be married, a betrayal felt keenly by the remaining Waverley women, none more so than Frederica Waverley, just turned eighteen.
Although Frederica chafed at the restricted life they led, she could not help but agree with Mrs. Waverley’s teachings. She was highly educated, as were all three Waverley girls, and considered herself the intellectual equal of any man.
But sometimes she could not help thinking that Mrs. Waverley, in her way, demanded the same unswerving loyalty and unquestioning obedience as a husband. Mrs. Waverley not only held the purse strings, she also held over the two remaining girls the threat that she could turn them out if they did not behave themselves.
Neither Frederica nor Felicity loved Mrs. Waverley, nor could either bring themselves to call that lady “mother.” Mrs. Waverley operated on a divide-and-rule policy, trying to set one girl against the other so as to bind each closer to herself. Fanny, now gone, had become wise to this ploy and had opened the other girls’ eyes to it.
Before Fanny had eloped, life for the Waverley girls had become less narrow. But after Fanny’s betrayal, as Mrs. Waverley called it, the walls closed in again. Frederica and Felicity were only allowed out of the house for sedate walks. This imprisonment had not mattered very much during the exceptionally severe winter. But when winter gave way to spring, and London began to hold that heady, strung-up air which heralded a new Season, Frederica began to feel restless.
Unlike Fanny and Felicity, she was fiery and impulsive. She had masses of thick, slate-colored hair, which had a springy, natural curl. Her skin was a golden color, making Mrs. Waverley—when she was cross with her—call her a gypsy. But Frederica’s eyes were a startlingly vivid blue, very large and framed with thick, sooty lashes, which gave an appealing air of femininity to a face that was otherwise too strong for what was hailed as beauty in this first part of the nineteenth century.
The cult of the child bride or little doll was all the rage. It was fashionable for a woman to be stupid, to lisp, and to cultivate pretty babyish ways. The fashion at the court of Marie Antoinette for complete idleness, of never even opening a door for oneself, had finally seeped over and into English society despite the upheaval of the French Revolution and the Great Colonial War. Not only that, it became the fashion for a woman not to think deeply about anything. Useless bodies and useless minds led to fashionable posturing and subsequently to “going into a decline.”
When warm weather and sunny skies finally returned to London, Frederica decided it was time to see about arranging a little more freedom. She considered Felicity to be little help as an ally. Felicity had become quiet and pale and silent since Fanny’s departure. There had been a strong rivalry among the girls that still remained to a certain extent. Frederica privately envied Felicity’s more gentle, feminine looks, but would not admit this to herself and damned the girl as being totally useless.
Frederica’s plan was therefore to manipulate Mrs. Waverley into taking them out somewhere more exciting than round and round Hanover Square on their carefully guarded walks. As soon as she had achieved that, she meant to set about finding out the identity of her parents. Fanny had tried and failed, but Frederica considered herself to be made of sterner stuff. The little she knew was that the three of them had been taken from a foundling hospital in Greenwich and from there to an orphanage.
The house in Hanover Square was well appointed and efficiently run. There were no menservants, only women. Mrs. Waverley did not even keep a carriage, since to do so would mean having a male stable staff, and so rented one from the livery stables when she needed to go out driving.
Frederica went along to her boudoir one morning to start loosening the prison bars a little.
Mrs. Waverley was sitting at a small escritoire in the corner of her boudoir, writing letters. She was a heavyset woman with one of those proud, fleshy faces you see on old cameos. She turned round as Frederica entered the room.
“Tell Felicity to be in the library in half an hour,” said Mrs. Waverley. “That Greek translation of hers was not all it should be, and you yourself, Frederica, are not paying proper attention to your lessons these days.”
“We have a very limited education,” said Frederica.
“My dear child. You have the best. Have
I not taught you the masculine sciences as well as a knowledge of languages?” By masculine sciences, Mrs. Waverley did not mean fencing or boxing, but physics and mathematics.
“I thought the purpose of our education was to prove that women have minds the equal of men,” said Frederica. “But we are not in the least equal to men. In fact, we are in our way less than any of the pretty dolls who have come to London to look for a husband.”
Mrs. Waverley’s face flushed with anger. “How so?”
“Balls and parties may be frivolous pursuits,” said Frederica, “but plays and operas are not. You had begun to enlarge our experience, but since Fanny fled, you have made us recluses again. You have no faith in our strength of mind. We are kept at home like useless toys. It makes one think that marriage might offer more freedom.”
“You ungrateful girl!” said Mrs. Waverley.
“I am not ungrateful,” retorted Frederica. “Only think what people must be saying. You think they are walking past the house and saying, ‘That is where Mrs. Waverly lives, that great champion of rights of women.’ But they are probably saying, ‘That’s where that odd recluse lives… you know—the one nobody sees.’”
“Go to your room,” raged Mrs. Waverley. “You are unkind and unfeeling and—”
“Truthful,” pointed out Frederica. “Cannot we have a reasonable debate on the subject, or must your very female emotions always get in the way? Of what are you frightened? That I shall run off with some man? I am not like poor Fanny, who is probably discovering what misery marriage is.”
“Go away,” said Mrs. Waverley quietly. “I shall expect you both shortly to attend your lessons.”
Frederica left, feeling defeated. There must be someone she could apply to for help.
But Lady Artemis, who lived across the square and who might have been relied on to spur Mrs. Waverley into some sort of action, was traveling on the continent. Mr. Fordyce, who had taken the house next door to the Waverleys, had given it up ever since the time Lady Artemis had jilted him, and so he could not be called on, either.
Frederica slouched into Felicity’s room and kicked the door shut behind her with her foot. Felicity was lying on the top of the bed, reading a book.
“That’s all you ever do,” jeered Frederica. “Read, read, read.”
Felicity put down the book and looked wearily at her sister. “I find life between the pages a great deal more interesting than real life,” she said. “What ails you, gypsy? Someone steal your cooking pot?”
“I’ve been trying to get her to take us out a bit more,” said Frederica, “but she won’t be moved. You’ve got to come downstairs for your lessons. Your Greek translation needs improving.”
Felicity groaned. She clasped her hands behind her head and stared at the ceiling. “You know,” she said dreamily, “I think the time has come for me to go into a decline.”
“That’s just the sort of thing a weak-brained creature like you would think of.”
“Can you think of a better idea?” demanded Felicity. “The doctor will come. I shall whisper painfully that I am in need of entertainment to liven my spirits. I shall look so frail and delicate—you couldn’t look frail and delicate if you tried for a year, Frederica—and before I bless Mrs. Waverley with my last dying breath, I am sure she will be forced to take some sort of action.”
“Strikes me as totty-headed.”
Felicity grinned. “Bet it works.”
“All right. I’ll try anything,” said Frederica. “What do you want me to do?”
“Well, for a start you can hand me that pot of blanc so that I can whiten my face.”
“No, I will not. That stuff contains lead. If you don’t die of lead poisoning, you will end up with your face pitted like the face of the moon.”
“I made it myself, stupid. The main ingredients are glycerine and white wax. Go and tell Mrs. Waverley I cannot attend lessons. I am dying.”
“Very well,” said Frederica. “But don’t blame me if she gives you a purge!”
“Take your time,” called Felicity. “I have a lot of preparations to make.”
When Frederica returned with Mrs. Waverley half an hour later she was amazed at the scene that met her eyes. The curtains were drawn close and Felicity’s pale, wan face seemed to float in the gloom. There was also a smell of sickness in the room, a sweetish smell of decay.
Mrs. Waverley tried to question Felicity, but Felicity lay there, unmoving, her eyes blank.
Alarmed, Mrs. Waverley sent for a physician. There were naturally no women physicians, and so a man set foot in the house in Hanover Square for the first time that year.
Mrs. Waverley and Frederica waited downstairs for the physician’s report. Frederica was almost on the point of confessing the trick to Mrs. Waverley, so anxious and distraught did that lady look, when the physician, Dr. Jenkins, came down the stairs.
“Is it serious?” asked Mrs. Waverley.
“She is going into a decline,” said the doctor. “There is nothing I can do for her except suggest you find some way to raise her spirits. I have known the promise of a treat to rouse many young ladies from their sickbed.”
“But what treat?” cried Mrs. Waverley. “I will do anything! Anything!”
“Perhaps it would be a good idea to ask Felicity what it is would amuse her,” said Frederica smoothly.
“Exactly!” said the physician. “I have given her a restorative cordial, but it is the mind which is ill, not the body. I have heard of you, Mrs. Waverley, and must take you to task. This is what comes of taxing the weak female brain with too much knowledge. The poor, little, dainty creatures cannot sustain it and fall ill. What Miss Felicity needs is a few beaux and a few parties. She was mumbling and fretting over some Ancient Greek translation. I beg you, Mrs. Waverley, to be careful, or you will drive her mad!”
Mrs. Waverley took a deep breath. “I would point out, sir, that it is you who will drive me mad. I have never heard such rubbish! I…”
Frederica slipped quietly out of the room and ran upstairs to Felicity.
“I don’t think it’s going to work,” she said anxiously. “That stupid doctor is giving Mrs. Waverley a lecture on the feebleness of the female brain and she is becoming quite incensed. But perhaps she might ask you what would entertain you.”
This proved to be too high a hope. Mrs. Waverley shortly entered and said that as soon as Felicity was better, she would arrange a social visit. But the proposed visit was to a dried-up old spinster friend, a Miss Pursey, who lived in Montague Street. To Frederica’s surprise, Felicity immediately pretended to rally.
“And what is the good of a visit to that old harridan?” asked Frederica after Mrs. Waverley had left the room.
“It is better than nothing,” said Felicity. “We shall be out and about in London and that’s a start. If you look under my bed, Frederica, my sweet, you will find a dead cat in the chamber pot. It was necessary to find something to give the room that smell of sickness. Do throw it out the window for me.”
Mrs. Pursey was duly warned of the forthcoming invasion. Then Mrs. Waverley found that all the carriages at the livery stable had already been taken out because there was a great prizefight over on the Surrey side. For a lady to take a hack was not fashionable, but they were so laden down with jewels that they did not dare walk, and so Mrs. Waverley hired three sedan chairs. Sedan chairs were going out of fashion and more than Mrs. Waverley mourned their departure. The advantage of taking a chair, particularly on rainy nights, was that you could step into it in the comfort of your own hall and then be borne right into the mansion you were visiting.
The Waverley girls were treated like women in a harem. They were allowed to wear their best clothes and jewels only when there were other women to see them.
Fanny had fled, leaving all her jewels, and they had been divided up between the two remaining girls.
Unmarried misses were supposed to content themselves with simple, unpretentious jewelry such as a coral neckla
ce or a locket. But the Waverley girls blazed with jewels like barbaric princesses.
Frederica was wearing a simple white muslin gown under a gold silk pelisse trimmed with swans-down. But a great collar of rubies blazed at her neck and heavy bracelets of rubies encircled her arms. Felicity had chosen sapphires in contrast: sapphire necklace, sapphire bracelets, and long sapphire earrings.
Mrs. Waverley’s pelisse, of striped sarcenet, was fastened at the front with diamond-and-white-gold clasps and a great diamond brooch was pinned on the front of her velvet turban.
Miss Pursey would have liked to refuse to entertain the Waverleys, for she lived in genteel poverty and knew even the few sandwiches and cakes she would need to produce would mean she would have very little to eat in the days to come. But she had often been entertained royally at Mrs. Waverley’s, and so when that lady had sent her a note to say they were descending on her, she felt she could not refuse.
With tears of gratitude and relief in her eyes, she accepted a large basket of delicacies from Frederica. Frederica, unlike Mrs. Waverley, had remembered Mrs. Pursey’s straitened circumstances, and had the thoughtfulness to augment that lady’s poor larder.
Miss Pursey’s two friends, Miss Baxter and Miss Dunbar, were also there. Frederica thought dismally that nothing had really changed. Another evening with the faded ladies. Another evening of poetry reading. Another evening of orgeat and stale cakes. Frederica looked impatiently at their blazing jewels. How tempting it was to take off just one ruby bracelet and leave it behind. It would keep poor Miss Pursey in comfort for quite a long time. But Miss Pursey would return the bracelet. Outside the poky little house in Montague Street, stretched nighttime London, full of excitement and adventure. Perhaps I shall never escape, thought Frederica. Perhaps when I am quite old, thirty, say, I shall still be here, listening to poor Miss Pursey read her dreadful poems. Fanny had adventures. Fanny was taken up in a balloon. Even her elopement was an adventure. She cannot be happy. No woman can be happy as the slave to some man. I wish I had not been so angry with her. Now I do not know where she is and how she is. Oh, God, send me just one small adventure!
