The Silk Merchant's Convenient Wife

by Elisabeth Hobbes

  * * *

  ‘Contemptuous man,’ Jonathan raged to Edward as he strode about the office. ‘Thinks to barter his daughters to a complete stranger in return for ready cash. He knows nothing of me and neither do they.’

  He thought back to his father, domineering, cold and unpleasant. How fortunate he had been a son, not a daughter, because no doubt that man would have done similar. His conscience began to whisper to him; he had escaped from unpleasant circumstances, perhaps in marrying one of the girls at least one of them would be able to escape themselves.

  ‘I think you should consider it,’ Edward said quietly. With a hand that was shaking, he laid down his pen and closed the ledger.

  ‘What!’ Jonathan exclaimed. ‘Don’t begin that nonsense again. I’m perfectly happy as I am. Marriage is not for me.’

  ‘Listen for a moment,’ Edward said. ‘I was lucky to have found you. You’ve been almost a son to me and I could not have imagined a better one if you were my natural child. You worked your time in the factory and you know the business better than I do now. We’ve grown it together, but I am painfully aware that I will not be growing it with you for much longer. And when I go, the business is entirely yours. Apart from some personal effects and gifts to old friends, my personal property and my shares in Langdon and Harcourt will pass to you alone.’

  He paused and waited while Jonathan took his words in. Jonathan had always known there was no one else to whom Edward was close, but the implications had not struck him before. Sole ownership of Langdon and Harcourt. He’d be a rich man. Influential in the neighbourhood. John Brocklehurst had become Macclesfield’s Member of Parliament thanks to his silk manufacturing company. What was to say Jonathan couldn’t attain such heights? Langdon and Harcourt was not on the scale of Brocklehurst’s venture, but there was no reason it couldn’t aspire to be. Edward coughed, bringing Jonathan back to reality.

  ‘I cannot guarantee that you will be as fortunate as I was to find a protégé as capable as you were and I want to discuss this with you.’

  Edward closed his eyes and when he opened them Jonathan was dismayed to see they were filmy and moist.

  ‘When I say I will not be with you for ever, I mean I shall not be with you for long,’ Edward said. He looked at Jonathan and there were now tears brimming in his eyes. ‘The doctors say I have a little over a year at most. Fifteen months if the saints smile on me or as little as six if they do not.’

  Jonathan leapt to his feet and grasped his old friend by the hands.

  ‘This must be a joke,’ he said. His own voice was becoming reedy in desperation for it not to be true. ‘You’re jesting with me.’

  Edward coughed again. ‘My lungs are ruined. The doctor says that the fibres are in my lungs. My breathing will grow weaker and more difficult until I breathe no more.

  Jonathan hung his head. He didn’t want it to be true, but at the same time what Edward was saying was horribly familiar. Lung problems were a hazard brought on after years of working in the mills among the dust and the fibres so tiny they were barely visible, but which infiltrated the workers’ bodies with every breath.

  ‘What can I do to help? There must be something to treat you, we have money.’

  Edward cut him off with a wave of his hand. ‘My dear Jonathan, I’ve made my peace,’ he said. ‘For a long time I have anticipated this. Do you think this cold is merely a cold? I struggle more every day to breathe. What you can do for me is let me die knowing that my factory and our work is in safe hands with you and that you will have an heir yourself who in turn can take responsibility for the business.’

  ‘Marriage almost destroyed my mother,’ Jonathan said.

  ‘Your father did that. You are not your father.’

  Jonathan clenched his fists. No, he wasn’t, but what if a wife transformed him into such a man? His father had appeared to despise his mother to the point of insanity, while still wanting to possess her and rule every moment of her life, from the clothes she wore to the way she dressed her hair and the visitors she had. There was no one who made him feel like that. If he could forbid any passion from growing, he would never repeat those mistakes.

  ‘You’re thinking of it,’ Edward said. ‘I can tell.’

  Jonathan nodded. The land he needed would be his, Sir Robert’s daughter would surely have a better life with him and he would be satisfying Edward’s final wish. He did not need to have an intimate, romantic marriage. Merely provide a better home than the one he had been brought up in.

  ‘Don’t grieve for me,’ Edward said, taking his hands. ‘Honour my name by ensuring my business thrives and living a life happier than the one I was able to.’

  ‘I’ll...consider it,’ Jonathan answered.

  * * *

  Late that night when sleep eluded him, Jonathan clambered from his bed and lit the oil lamp on his bedside table. He drew out his diary and read back the previous entries, all still in Greek as he had never given up that habit from his first journal. It made for dry and depressing reading. He had written of business. Of life in the factory. Of the new maid and cook he had employed—he wondered then whether any of them had once worked for Sir Robert’s household. There was nothing in there about him. He did nothing. He had nothing beyond the house and his business and Edward.

  And now Edward was dying and then Jonathan would be alone.

  He sincerely wanted to fulfil Edward’s last request. He would have done anything immediately if only it had not involved such personal sacrifice to him and forced him into the state which he had no wish to be in. All the same the baser urges of his body had reacted to the presence of the girls, especially the delicately pretty Aurelia whose melancholy had aroused his protective spirit.

  A shudder of desire that ran the length of his body, through every extremity, reminded him he was a man with a man’s needs. He had never resorted to the methods that other young bachelors did to relieve himself of those yearnings by visiting one of the establishments in Manchester that he had heard about, but he did feel, naturally, those urges.

  Restlessly, he wandered around the house. He had begun the process of purchasing it shortly before the death of his mother and she had never lived there. The empty rooms were barely furnished and the house was far too big for a single man to live in. For two people living together it was perfectly spacious and it was possible he would not encounter a wife too much. He would spend the majority of his day in the mill and need only spend evenings and nights in the company of his wife.

  He returned to the bedroom and as he walked ideas began to swirl around his head. The house was big and could easily be divided into two. In fact, that had been one of the attractions when Jonathan chose it—that his mother might live under his roof almost independently. Any wife would be able to have her own apartment. Jonathan would only need to meet her for mealtimes. And at night.

  He had reached his bedroom and stopped in the doorway to look at his bed. The sheets were crumpled from sleep, but he slept there alone. Getting an heir would require intercourse and at that thought he grew hot. He was twenty-five and still a virgin. Edward had been right: he had spared no time in his life for love or romance and even less to explore and satisfy the cravings he felt. He might as well have joined the priesthood instead of knocking on Edward’s door all those years ago.

  He climbed back into bed and drew the sheets up, listening to the silence. He was lonely. He admitted it to himself now. The brief conversation with Aurelia Upford had given him more happiness than he would have expected. Maybe marriage would suit him slightly better than he thought.

  He rolled on to his belly and crooked his arm beneath the pillow, trying to find a more comfortable position, but sleep still eluded him. He knew that he had already made his decision and wasn’t sure who he was providing these excuses for.

  Sighing, Jonathan clambered from the bed, returned to his study and picked up a pen. I
n his journal he listed all the reasons he could think of for the marriage beyond the land and satisfying Edward’s strange whim. He laid his pen down after three. Her beauty, her family connections and her accomplishments were all he could think of. But how many men married for less than that and lived perfectly tolerable lives? He stared at the blank page for a long time before decisively writing as many reasons as he could why agreeing to Sir Robert’s terms would be sensible. Finally he added a single sentence beneath the column.

  Tomorrow evening I shall propose to Miss Cassandra Upford.

  Chapter Four

  ‘I should prepare you for something exciting,’ Lady Upford said as Aurelia and Cassandra stood before her for the customary inspection before a dinner with guests. ‘There is a strong possibility that Mr Harcourt will ask for your hand in marriage this evening, Cassandra.’

  Cassandra and Aurelia exchanged a glance of surprise. Aurelia’s heart stopped. She had suspected that Mr Harcourt’s invitation to dinner had been yet another attempt to push him towards the girls, but had not realised matters had progressed so far.

  ‘But I barely know him and he barely knows me,’ Cassandra said. ‘Why, I haven’t spoken more than a dozen words to him.’

  Aurelia turned her head away to hide the blush that had risen to her neck. She had spoken a lot more to Mr Harcourt than that and hoped her parents did not know the extent of their conversation by the river.

  ‘Why does that matter?’ Lady Upford said. ‘Your father and I had only spoken twice before our marriage. As the eldest, you are most likely to receive the honour and it would be a good match for you.’

  ‘I won’t do it,’ Cassandra said. ‘You can’t make me marry him. He is no one.’

  ‘Of course I cannot force you but if he asks you should accept,’ their mother said. ‘Goodness knows there is even less society here than I remember. You are in danger of becoming an old maid.’

  ‘It was not my choice to move here from Oxford,’ Cassandra said, her voice rising to a wail. She threw her fan across the room. Aurelia deftly caught it before it landed amid a display of carnations and upended the vase.

  ‘You took me away from society and buried me in the countryside. I have danced with the sons of earls and now you want to marry me to a tradesman!’

  Aurelia listened, aghast. She had never heard her sister speak to anybody with such frankness. Their mother looked close to swooning. Aurelia’s scalp prickled at Cassandra’s blatant snobbery. Cassandra could most likely have any man she wanted and not wanting to marry a man she didn’t know was one matter, but calling Mr Harcourt a tradesman was deeply unfair. He owned a successful business and Aurelia knew he had ambitions. She recalled the determined look on his face when he had told her of his plans for the riverside fields. His enthusiasm had lit his face, giving him a boyish air that had been infinitely more appealing than when he had sat solemnly in the drawing room.

  ‘I’d marry him,’ she blurted without thinking.

  ‘You?’ Cassandra asked incredulously.

  Aurelia stood trembling, wishing she hadn’t spoken.

  ‘What makes you believe that Mr Harcourt would consider you as a wife?’ Lady Upford asked, turning her attention to Aurelia. ‘Aside from That Unfortunate Incident, which we do not mention, every time a man has shown the slightest interest you managed to drive him away with your talk of political affairs and your unwomanly insistence on reading newspapers. A man does not want a wife who thinks herself his intellectual equal, but a woman capable of running his establishment as he commands and raising his children.’

  Aurelia bit her tongue. When had her mother ever been subservient to her husband? She ruled him and chided him constantly, although she certainly made no pretence of being intellectual in the slightest.

  ‘Mr Harcourt may not want me,’ Aurelia said, ‘but Cassandra clearly does not want him and you would not be so unfeeling as to force her into a marriage she would hate.’

  Cassandra nodded, but looked a little less defiant. Aurelia handed back the fan and linked arms with her sister.

  ‘Yes, perhaps Lia should marry him. After all, it’s her scandal that has forced us back here into a house we can’t afford to keep,’ Lady Upford mused.

  Aurelia reddened. ‘Perhaps neither of us should marry him. I’m sure a man as rich as Mr Harcourt could find a wife in any place he chose to look,’ she snapped.

  Lady Upford shot her an angry look. ‘We will have no more talk of this now. I can hear our guests arriving.’

  She swept out of her room with her head high. Aurelia ran to the window and looked out. Mr Harcourt wasn’t on foot this time, but in a two-wheeled pony chaise driven by a coachman. She tried to get a glimpse of him as he descended and came to the front door, but only saw his back and the top of a silk top hat as he helped Mr Langdon from the seat.

  ‘Would you really marry him?’ Cassandra whispered to her. ‘Even without a title?’

  Aurelia tore her gaze from the window. ‘I don’t much care who I marry and Mother is right. We could have stayed in Oxford if it wasn’t for me.’

  Cassandra hugged her tightly. ‘Mother shouldn’t have said that. It was cruel and not true. That wretch was at fault, not you.’

  Aurelia hugged her sister back. She accepted it was due to her that they had returned from Oxfordshire, but the reason they could not afford to keep the house on the rambling Cheshire estate was her father’s doing, not hers. ‘At least Mr Harcourt lives close by so we would still see each other. But I think you should consider accepting him. How likely are you really to catch an earl living here?’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ Cassandra said. ‘I’ll consider it, but I’m making no promises.’

  That was the best answer Aurelia could expect, but she hoped Cassandra would see sense and not ruin her chance of marriage.

  * * *

  Dinner was less contentious than Aurelia had feared. Among the servants her mother had acquired was an excellent cook and Sir Robert’s wine cellar was always well stocked—usually beyond his means. Mr Harcourt was seated between Lady Upford and Cassandra, while Aurelia was beside Mr Langdon. Throughout dinner Aurelia watched closely for signs that Cassandra was warming to the idea of marriage or that Mr Harcourt had fallen in love so quickly that his head was turned, but she saw nothing.

  Mr Langdon was older than his business partner. He would have been a large and handsome man once, but now he was painfully thin with a sallow complexion and reddened lips that made him look severe. He was nothing of the sort and proved to be a fountain of local gossip, with eyes that flashed when something amused him. He kept Aurelia entertained all evening and even raised a smile from Cassandra.

  ‘You are not married, I believe,’ Lady Upford asked at one point. Aurelia and Cassandra exchanged an embarrassed glance.

  ‘I have never met a woman capable of inducing me to enter that state.’

  ‘You have never been in love?’ Cassandra asked.

  Mr Langdon let out a heartfelt sigh. ‘I did not say that. I had the great misfortune to fall in love only after the object of my affection had been claimed by another.’

  Aurelia toyed with her napkin, head bowed. Talk was verging uncomfortably close to her own heartbreak.

  ‘I imagine that is a common scenario and many people marry anyway,’ she said.

  ‘I believe so. However, I determined not to add myself to those ranks. Marrying any poor girl simply for the sake of it would not have been kind to either of us.’

  ‘Of course, as a man you can support yourself, living independently in a manner one of our sex would not be able to,’ Dora supplied.

  ‘At least, not until we are allowed the same opportunities for education,’ Aurelia added.

  ‘Time for dessert, I think,’ Lady Upford said loudly, throwing a hard stare at Dora and ringing her silver bell vigorously for the servants to return t
o the room.

  Aurelia gave her sister a surreptitious wink. Nothing was designed to signal a change of subject as quickly as the topic of female education. She glanced across the table and noticed that Mr Harcourt had leaned forward and was watching her intently with a thoughtful expression. She could not tell at all whether he approved or disapproved of what the girls had raised and it intrigued her to try find out.

  * * *

  When Sir Robert and Mr Harcourt retired to Sir Robert’s study, Mr Langdon excused himself, saying that his chest required him to take a hot steam bath before retiring for the night.

  ‘Tell Benson he can put Samuel and the chaise away,’ Mr Harcourt told him. ‘I’ll walk home shortly.’

  Mr Langdon’s eyes flickered in the direction of the women who were standing together before the two men clasped hands and bid each other goodnight. Aurelia suspected his excuse was merely that and he was leaving Mr Harcourt to do what Lady Upford had predicted.

  Lady Upford, Cassandra and Dora went into the drawing room to take coffee. Aurelia excused herself to attend to nature’s call. As she passed through the entrance hall, she noticed the door to her father’s study was ajar. Unable to resist, she crept closer and heard Mr Harcourt speaking.

  ‘Sir Robert, you have the land that I need and I have the money that rumour suggests you are desperate for. You are the one insisting your daughter is part of the bargain, not I. I am more than happy to leave her out of matters entirely and deal solely in terms of the property and payment. I do not particularly want a wife, although I admit one would be advantageous to me.’

  He didn’t want a wife. The marriage proposal Lady Upford had been so confident of was little more beyond a business arrangement. Her parents must have discussed it after Mr Harcourt’s previous visit, which was why Lady Upford had been so certain of it being offered. Aurelia pressed her ear to the door and listened, incensed by what her father was suggesting. And yet why not? It made sense he would take any opportunity to find one of the girls a husband. But knowing how dire his financial position was and how great his debts were, she could not believe he was willing to risk Mr Harcourt turning down his proposal and walking away.