An Unmarried Lady

by Willman, Anna

  Fortunately both of his daughters were competent needlewomen, and they had, with able assistance from both Miss Miles and Mary Hastings, already begun work fashioning gowns for Anne’s debut, copying the latest styles from the detailed plates contained in Ackermann’s Repository. To Anne’s great delight, Elaine had reluctantly decided that a subscription to this rather expensive monthly publication dedicated to women’s fashions and concerns was essential to their preparations for her Season. Elaine had also discovered a trunk of their mother’s gowns carefully packed away in one of the attics, and the sisters had found several dresses that could be scavenged for their fine fabrics, as well as a number of laces and ribbons and even a jeweled net that could be put to good use.

  Still there was not enough there to cover all of Anne’s requirements, let alone to piece together a wardrobe for Elaine as well (and he was determined that she should have a second Season). Fabrics and all the ribands and gloves and fans and lace collars and slippers and half-boots and reticules other essential frills were inevitably costly, and of course they could not be expected to make their own Court dresses, which were elaborate old-fashioned affairs with formal hooped skirts and long trains, easily costing three hundred pounds each if they cost a penny, not to mention the added expense of purchasing the white ostrich plumes that were absolutely de rigueur for each lady to use to adorn her hair when she was to be presented to the Queen. And although the Howards were not titled, their lineage was ancient and as highly regarded as many a Viscount’s or Earl’s was, and it was inconceivable that a Howard of Lynnfield should enter Society without being first presented at the Royal Drawing Room.

  He shook his head, marveling again at all the blunt he had wasted at the race courses and gaming tables, not to mention the large sums thrown away on opera dancers and high fliers who had nary a thought for him now. It seemed the girls’ dear Libby, Miss Elizabeth Miles that was, had through simple thrift and economy, acquired more of the ready than he had at hand now at the end of his life.

  Elaine, who had turned from the window and been watching him rather solemnly, came back to sit by the tea tray. “Are you tired, Papa? I’m afraid you are not getting the sleep that you need.”

  “I’m sleeping fine. It seems that’s all I can do well anymore.”

  “Really? I must have misunderstood Carney.”

  “Why, what do you mean?”

  “Only that twice now I have found your valet late at night in the library fussing over some books, and he told me that he was looking for something for you to read.”

  “Oh, that. Well yes, I did send him looking for a book or two, but it was not because I couldn’t sleep. I told him to go in when you weren’t there is all, so as not to bother you.”

  “Did he find what you needed? It would be better to send him in when I am there, for I could probably quite easily lay my hand on exactly the book you require and save him a great deal of trouble. No matter. Won’t you sign the paper? You’re right, of course, that we must manage some way to introduce Anne into Society, but not, surely, at the cost of ruination for Lynnfield. Our honor demands that we pass on the lands and the house in good order – at least as much as we can contrive while there is still time. Come, Papa, it need not come to that. You cannot seriously mean to sacrifice Lynnfield after all our hard work and economy? Anne would never want that.”

  “What wouldn’t I want?” asked Anne, coming into the parlor just in time to hear her name invoked. Her father and sister turned together to view quite a charming picture, for Anne was wearing her newest gown, one into which she had only just now put the final stitches. It was deceptively simple, a sprig muslin of soft pink, with puff sleeves and a high waist, and just a fine line of rose ribbon at the neckline and hem. Reading the admiration in their gazes, she twirled around once and gave a quick curtsy before going over to kiss her father affectionately on the cheek.

  “I know it is too early to leave off mourning, but I couldn’t wait to try it on, and Libby told me I might wear it just to show it to you. I am so bored with grey and lavender, you know. But this will do me very well in the Spring, and I think I can wear it without shame in London, can I not?” she asked.

  “Indeed you can,” replied Elaine, “For it’s as pretty a dress as I have seen in any of the issues of The Repository or any other of the periodicals we have been perusing so carefully these past months. And for all your curls take on that hint of red when the light hits them, that shade of pink suits your complexion charmingly. I wonder if we could use some of that rose ribbon to dress up your straw bonnet to go with it?”

  “That’s what I thought, with perhaps just a small silk flower. Oh, Laney, have you heard from my Aunt Katherine yet? Is she really going to introduce me?”

  “Well I certainly hope so, but if she doesn’t we will find some other way to contrive. You know I made a number of acquaintances when I was in London and several of my special friends have since married and would, I believe, be most glad to bring you out. In fact your Social debut is just what your father and I were discussing when you came in. Now you must go, if you please, my love, and put back on that becoming lavender dress I saw you in this morning, and I must go to Chudleigh to inspect the stable roof before changing from this disreputable rag I have on. Mr. Norton is coming to call, you know, and we must be ready to receive him.” And Elaine left the room to don her boots before going out to the stables.

  She returned to the house some time later with a deep furrow between her eyes, for indeed she could not see how they could avoid putting a new roof on the whole stable block, and where they were going to find the means for that she could not fathom. She had managed to bring things about on the estate by practicing extreme economy. Their personal horses had all been sold, riding and hunting mounts alike, leaving only two cobs that were needed for work and one to pull the gig when the sisters must go out on some errand or other. And her father’s hounds too had been traded for a small herd of milk cows. What little income still came in from rents had for four years now been put directly back into the land, while house and garden expenses had been restricted to just the most essential and pressing expenditures. Household staff, like the gardening crew, had been pared down to a minimal level, mostly old family retainers and a few additional day servants recruited from the village. Only the rooms used regularly by the family and one good drawing room kept ready for chance callers now saw a daily dust up. The rest of the great sprawling house, comprising the whole West Wing and the better part of the East Section was closed, with dust covers on the furniture and a fine layer of dust accumulating on the floors. Meals served at Lynnfield were all now the plainest and most simple fare.

  This past year, hers and Chudleigh’s joint efforts had seemed to bear fruit at last, with a small but significant increase in the income from the estate. Elaine had continued the family’s economies and quietly set aside the increased portion of their income with Anne’s debut in mind. And though she was most reluctant to do so, it was clear that a good part of that money, so carefully hoarded, would now be required to pay for the new roofs.

  There was no time now to discuss the matter further with her father, however, so she hurried up to her room where Hastings had steaming hot water and a fresh bar of soap waiting for her and a fresh gown laid out.

  “Oh Mary, thank you. For I know I have the smell of the stables on me, and Mr. Norton could arrive at any moment.”

  “No such thing, not but what it will do you good to refresh yourself a bit with a good wash up.” With practiced skill, Mary Hastings eased Elaine out of her old work clothes and into a morning dress of fine grey silk with a delicate lace collar. Her boots were exchanged for grey stockings and slippers of black satin. A mere ten minutes more with a hair brush, and Elaine’s glossy curls were tied up a la Sappho with a black ribbon. She was ready to go down and greet her visitor.

  It was a two and a half hour drive from town, but Mr. Norton, as Elaine had suspected he would, arrived precisely on time in a
n old fashioned laudelet, with a groom handling the ribbons. He hoped, he said to return to London this same day, even at the risk of crossing the infamous Finchley Common after dark, and so refused all offers of refreshment, declaring himself ready to get right to business. He came, he said, to read them the will of Miss Agatha Howard, and once they were all settled around one of the massive oak tables in the library, he proceeded to do so.

  Elaine Howard, beloved great niece and faithful correspondent of Miss Agatha Howard, he informed them, was the sole legatee, conditional that is upon her entering into a matrimonial state on or before her twenty-fifth birthday. Failing that, the total estate would revert to the founding of a school specializing in the instruction of young ladies of a scholarly inclination in the Classics, Mathematics, Geography and Political Economy.

  “May I ask, what is the value of the estate?” Mr. Howard inquired after a stunned silence had lasted for more than several minutes.

  “You may. I can tell you that the sum total, including a few property holdings (her house in Bath and her brother’s country estate in Dorset), personal property and investments in the Fund, totals a little over 200,000 pounds, providing an annual income of approximately 10,000 pounds. A very respectable sum, if I may say so. May I be the first, Miss Howard, to offer you my heartfelt felicitations.”

  “Thank you,” Elaine said, her voice a little faint. “Forgive me if I appear uncivil, but are you certain that you read it correctly? I only receive the legacy if I am married?”

  “That is correct.”

  “But this is most unlikely! Great Aunt Agatha was most adamant on the subject of matrimony. She abhorred the married state. She was, you know, at one time a great personal friend of Mary Wollstonecraft and an ardent supporter of independence for all females. The school for scholarly young ladies, yes, I can understand that, but why would she wish for me to become ensnared in what she considered little better than a trap for any intelligent woman? Indeed, she constantly advised me against marriage. This cannot be right!”

  “Nevertheless, it is so.” Mr. Norton rose. “I must take my leave now. I have had a copy written out for your perusal. If you have further questions, you may address them to me, and of course when your marriage plans are set, we will meet again to arrange for you to gain access to your funds. Your obedient servant, Miss Howard. Mr. Howard. Miss Anne.” And, with a flourishing bow quite surprising from such a neatly turned out gentleman, he left them.

  It was some time before anyone spoke, and then it was on a subject far from their immediate thoughts. Elaine came out of a brown study with a start and exclaimed, “Look at the time. We must be changing for dinner.” Anne and Mr. Howard, who had been waiting, almost without breathing, to discover her response, both sighed and assented, and they all went upstairs to change.

  CHAPTER TWO: In which Mr. Lambert Howard takes Matters into his Own Hands.

  Elaine was accustomed to seeking comfort and counsel, neither from her father nor from her sister, but from Mary Hastings first and Miss Elizabeth Miles second. So it was that, as she dressed for dinner that evening, she warned her abigail that she would need her support later that night and gave her the bare outlines of her Great Aunt’s will and testament.

  Mary Hastings was a woman of many skills, not the least of which was her ability to walk the narrow path between service and friendship. Her devotion to Elaine Howard was absolute almost from the first instant that she had set her eyes on the beautiful child with the torn flounce and tangled hair one morning in the Lynnfield orchard. She had gone into the orchard to steal an apple or two and found the daughter of the house there before her.

  “Do give me a boost up!” Elaine had called to her. “I can’t reach the branch on my own, and I have made a sacred vow to climb this tree, to the very top.”

  As Mary had never before met anyone who had taken a sacred vow, she hurried to assist the lively sprite, and then swung herself up into the tree after her.

  Thus began the adventures of Mary and Elaine. From the beginning, they interacted as equals, Mary’s advantage in years (at nine years of age, she was a full two years the elder) and dress (she was allowed to go about quite unburdened with petticoats and laces) quite easily compensating for Elaine’s superiority in social status. If sometimes Mary’s mother required her to stay home and sweep out their cottage or help by the fire, well Elaine could not always escape the ministrations of Nanny either, nor later on, the discipline of the schoolroom. Still, escape they must and escape they did, often enough to build together a secret and fantastical world which transformed the placid fields and forests of Lynnfield into a land peopled by magical tribes over which the two girls reigned along with the dragons and griffins who allowed them to ride upon their backs. Usually the girls recruited Elaine’s pony for the role of dragon, and some other horse put out into the pasture for the griffin, but once when there were no horses available, they had climbed upon the back of a dairy cow, which startled creature had immediately tossed them into the mud, forcing them to retire from the field in ignominious defeat.

  Elaine, returning home that day had received a mighty scold from Nanny and it was determined that she was become quite unmanageable and (now almost nine years of age) ready for the restraining influence of a governess. There ensued a rapid succession of ladies of varying degrees of educational competence, but all of them quite old and all of them espousing a rigid code of ladylike conduct with which Elaine could not find it in herself to comply. Finally the family resorted to a somewhat younger woman who had a reputation for successfully managing even the most hardened cases, and Miss Elizabeth Miles arrived at Lynnfield.

  An educationist first and foremost, Miss Miles recognized a bright and imaginative mind in Miss Elaine Howard and instead of trying to dampen her young charge’s spirit, set out instead to engage her in the adventure of learning. Instead of keeping her barricaded in the school room, she sent her out into the fields of Lynnfield with instructions to make Scientific Observations and to write down whatever she saw. She commissioned her to journey into the woods with the express purpose of finding a Metaphor in the natural world which she could use in constructing a poem about her (then) odious brother Giles.

  And Mary joined her in her Observations and her Poetry expeditions. That was when Elaine first realized that her best friend in all the world could neither read nor write. And so began the secret lessons which changed Mary forever.

  Elaine herself had delighted in teaching her friend the rudiments of reading and writing. She not only included her in the Observations and Poetry, but she smuggled the library atlas out into the woods, so that they could pour over the maps together, dreaming up a whole new set of adventures and misadventures on the high seas and in the vast desert wastes of Arabia.

  When Elaine was ten and Mary twelve, Miss Miles quite accidentally discovered their secret friendship, and instead of forbidding the connection, quite wisely invited Mary into the Lynnfield schoolroom. If the governess had expected the cottager’s daughter to become quickly bored with her lessons and gradually disappear from the scene, she soon found that she was quite mistaken, for Mary threw herself passionately into her lessons, setting Elaine an example of diligence rather than the other way around. A word with the mistress of the house, and Mary was placed at Lynnfield as an under housemaid assigned to the nursery and the schoolroom, thus freeing her from her duties at home.

  As the girls grew older, the differences between their social status inevitably became more apparent, but their friendship did not die, but rather strengthened with time. They resorted instead to a kind of mannerly subterfuge in which they comported themselves according to their separate social stations whenever others were present, but behaved as equal and open hearted friends, indeed best friends, when quite alone. Elaine was as quick to pick up a shawl or a book that her maid had dropped as the other way around, and Mary was as open in expressing her thoughts and opinions as Elaine.

  Mary had accompanied Elaine to London f
our years ago and acted as her abigail during the Season, returning to Lynnfield as “Hastings”, whose supposed pretensions the housekeeper, Mrs. Fraidy, was quick to depress, declaring that it was hard to swallow the notion that that little scapegrace with dirty knees and a torn dress could grow up to be so high in the instep, fancying herself a real true ladies’ dresser capable of turning Miss Elaine out in style, and she’d be hornswoggled before she called her anything but just plain Mary.

  Mary just laughed and gave the red faced housekeeper a saucy curtsy (the same sweet insolence that had in her childhood earned her many pieces of warm bread spread thickly with jam) and said that her dearest Mrs. Fraidy could call her just plain whatever she pleased so long as she stayed her friend. A few tears were shed then and Elaine was amused to note that from that day on Mrs. Fraidy addressed Mary crisply as “Hastings” in the presence of the under servants, using the more familiar name only when the two were quite alone together.