by Betina Krahn
“Scandalous,” Pollyanna said through pursed lips.
“Indeed it was,” Antonia agreed, burrowing pleasantly back into her chair.
“I meant your having to see the wretch bare like that,” Pollyanna corrected with an indignant scowl.
A laugh bubbled up inside Antonia. “Dear Pollyanna, the sight of a man’s bare shoulders is not unknown to me. I am a widow, after all.”
“As are we all,” Pollyanna said primly, nodding to the others. “But I for one have never seen a man’s bare … person … and I hope never to see one.”
“Well, sister,” Prudence Quimby said with a matronly giggle, “if I had been married to Farley Quimby, I should have been most happy to remain ignorant of such a sight as well.”
Hoskins arrived just then, bearing a bucket of chilled champagne and several tall, fluted goblets. As he uncorked the wine and poured, Antonia detailed her part of the encounter: confronting the innkeeper, charging through the door, and expressing convincing horror. Then with relish she recounted Bertrand Howard’s reaction and his guilty acquiescence to his nuptial fate.
With a “harumph” and a narrow look at his mistress—his customary protest on behalf of his beleaguered sex—Hoskins handed out the last glass and shuffled back out the door, muttering, “Unlucky bastard.” Antonia indulged in a perfectly wicked grin and, when he was gone, raised her goblet to propose a toast.
“Here’s to husband number … number …” She paused, narrowing her eyes. “Good Lord. I’ve lost count of just how many there have been.”
“Twelve previous, dear,” Aunt Hermione informed her. “Mr. Howard is your thirteenth victim.”
“Thirteenth?” Antonia was genuinely surprised by the number. She lowered her glass to make a cursory count on her fingers, and confirmed it. “Thirteen. Good Lord, it’s true. And they call us the weaker sex!” She chuckled, and the old Quimby sisters chuckled and nodded archly to each other in agreement.
“And as to this ‘victim’ business”—she turned a good-natured reproach upon her Aunt Hermione—“may I remind you, Auntie, that they were the ones who chose to seduce or entice the women of my household. I simply took advantage of the opportunity their baser impulses provided to lever them into decent and honorable marriages.”
It was true. Each of the thirteen men she had matched with her “protégées” had indeed cut a swath through London’s feminine landscape as an adamant bachelor. And it was also true that while she had contrived to introduce the women under her protection to a number of potential husbands, the actual choosing had been the work of the pair themselves. The knowledge that her “victims” always had a hand in selecting their own comeuppance made each bit of matrimonial justice all the more satisfying.
“Here’s to our Camille.” She raised her goblet again, seeing in the golden glow of the crystal and the wine the promise of her protégée’s future. “May she have a house in Mayfair … three lovely children … and all the pin money she could possibly want.”
“And a headache whenever she needs one,” Pollyanna added emphatically, drawing surprised looks from Antonia and the others. “Well”—she drew her chin back and frowned—“a woman can never have too many headaches.”
“Here, here!” Prudence seconded.
They laughed and drank more toasts: to the groom-to-be; to the toadying and bribable proprietor of the Bentick; to the weaker sex; and to the virtues of a well-made marriage. Then the subject of the date for the wedding came up, and they agreed that a month hence allowed a decent interval between engagement and vows.
“Sweet Camille,” Prudence said after a moment. “I shall miss her.”
“It’s hard to think that in a month she’ll be gone.” Pollyanna sighed wistfully.
In the brief silence that followed, the same thought struck them all.
“We shall have a vacant room!” Antonia spoke it aloud, snapping upright in her chair and scanning the tea table, the book stand, and the littered writing desk on the far side of the room. “Where is the latest Cornhill?”
“Oh, not again,” Aunt Hermione said with a groan. “Not already!”
“It’s not too early to begin planning our next project,” Antonia declared, spotting the magazine and jumping out of her chair to retrieve it from the desk. She thumbed through the pages until she came to the personal advertisements. “Here they are.”
She scanned them, her frown of concentration deepening as her eyes fell from one advertised tragedy to another. “Listen to this,” she said, positioning herself near the candles and holding up the magazine to read: “ ‘Mrs. F., thirty, husband in America, appears to have deserted her … will do anything.’ ”
“Oh, but you’ll want a genuine widow … not the ‘grass’ variety, surely,” Pollyanna offered.
“Then how about this one?” Antonia continued. “ ‘Mrs. G., aged thirty-seven, clergyman’s daughter, governess for seven years. Dislikes teaching. Is suffering in consequence of overwork. Desperate.’ Hmmm … it doesn’t say what happened to her husband …”
“The clergy produce such sour, long-faced women.” Prudence frowned, confirming her opinion in Pollyanna’s wince of distaste. “I think you’ll be wanting someone with a bit of life left in her.”
“Oh, dear.” The words fairly leaped off the page at Antonia. “ ‘Mrs. A., widow. Husband speculated and ruined the family, which is now dependent on her. Four daughters, aged fourteen to twenty-three. Not trained to anything … imperfectly educated …’ ”
“Oh, that won’t do at all. A whole family.” Prudence clucked her tongue.
“All those unmarried daughters.” Pollyanna covered her mouth, looking genuinely pained. “Quite a tragedy.”
Unmarried daughters. A tragedy. That terse assessment caught Antonia’s heart unawares, rousing feelings she had thought well mastered. She, too, had been the unmarried daughter of a widow whose husband had “speculated,” then died, ruining the family. Her eyes slowly scanned the lines again, then again.
Antonia Marlow Paxton had been born the only child of a wealthy and nobly born financier and had grown up among the wealthy and privileged. But when she was only sixteen, her father was killed in a boating accident, leaving a Gordian tangle of interconnected loans, a mountain of unpaid debts, and a wife who had been lovingly protected from the vulgarities of money and finance.
One by one the familiar comforts of her and her mother’s lives had been stripped away: the country estate with its fine stables, the line of credit, the town house with its paintings and furnishings, the family jewels, and soon their fashionable but fickle friends. Totally unprepared for the realities of her diminished life, Antonia’s mother gave in to despair and, within months, mourned herself into an early grave. At seventeen Antonia had found herself virtually alone, with the security and the dreams of girlhood lying in ruins at her feet.
Shaking off the effects of that advertisement, Antonia straightened and continued. “Perhaps this one: ‘Mrs. R., aged thirty, a widow, lost large property by a lawsuit … tried to live by needlework and failed … eyesight damaged …’ ”
On she read, giving voice to the desperate pleas of women needing help. Some were widowed, some had never married, and some did not know the whereabouts of their husbands. “Off in the colonies,” “lost in foreign service,” and “took French leave” were common phrases. Some of the women had dependent children; some were alone in the world. Some of the unfortunates were victims of financial disasters, some had lost loving and protective families to illness, and some were simply advancing in age and had been turned out into the streets by employers desiring younger workers.
The more she read, the more intense her manner became. Her fingers gripped the pages harder and her spine straightened. In her mind’s eye she began to see them: their faces haggard, expressions listless, and eyes dulled by deprivation and fear. Then she came to another advertisement that jolted her composure:
“ ‘Mrs F., aged forty, recent widow and mother, seeks
honorable position for daughter … dear angel of the house … creditors closing in … desperate situation.’ ”
It was a thinly disguised plea to save a daughter from the predations of male creditors who would slyly suggest a man’s debts could be paid by his daughter … on her back.
Memories materialized through the walls built to contain them in Antonia’s mind: her father’s business associates paying oddly timed condolence calls, commenting on how much she had grown, making her uncomfortable with their knowing smiles and avid stares. At first she hadn’t understood. Before she could suppress it, her head filled again with the scents of brandy and cigar smoke and cloying ambergris … with the crude, clandestine caresses of men old enough to be her father … with the rasping, suggestive whispers that offered to forgive debts in return for her cooperation. She had soon learned what it was they wanted from her, and why.
She had no dowry and was considered unmarriageable.
Men who only months before had been considering a dynastic match between her and their sons now saw her merely as a vessel of male convenience … a depository for their lustful urges. And in those two precarious years between her father’s death and her marriage, she had learned well that the only protection, the only security, a woman could expect in life was to be found in marriage.
As Antonia read, Dame Hermione Paxton-Fielding removed her reading spectacles and settled her attention on her niece by marriage, taking in her upswept chestnut hair and glowing eyes, and settling on her flushed face. Antonia’s dramatic features—long, straight nose, prominent cheekbones, and generously curved mouth—had seemed too strong and her eyes too large and intense when Hermione had first seen her as a young girl of eighteen. But the years had set and finished her face into a work of unique beauty, and now, at the age of twenty-five, her unusual features, womanly shape, and natural wit combined to make her a stunning young woman.
Not, the old lady sighed, that anyone ever noticed. Until now Antonia had shown a perfect genius for staying in the background of society. Except for her charity work and occasional husband-hunting forays into shops and public events with her protégées, Antonia was something of a recluse. If only she would concern herself less with others’ lives, Hermione thought wistfully, and more with her own.
“See here, Antonia,” she inserted into the next available pause. “Perhaps it would be best to wait awhile. Give yourself a chance to rest, and give the tongues that may wag a chance to tire. After all, this will be your third wedding since Christmas.”
“But the only one for a woman under my own roof,” Antonia answered defensively. “No one knows of my involvement in the other marriages.”
“No one but the brides and grooms, and whoever else they might have told,” Hermione corrected, wagging a cautioning finger. “Thirteen, Antonia. You cannot count on their embarrassment to keep them all silent forever.”
Antonia could feel heat collecting in her face. She closed the magazine with a flourish and held it up in evidence. “If the entire world knew of my activities, I would still do what must be done to help these abandoned and downtrodden women.”
“Yes, yes, I know you feel most deeply about it—”
“Oh, my. Just look at the time.” Prudence looked down at the watch brooch pinned to her bodice and pushed to her feet, giving her sister a hand up. “Where has the evening gone?”
“Busy day tomorrow, don’t you know,” Pollyanna muttered, stealing with her sister toward the door. They knew what was coming.
“It is a hideous injustice, a disgrace upon our land.” Antonia scarcely took note of the old sisters’ retreat or of the click of the door latch behind them. “These are women of good and decent families who grew up expecting to take up their places and live out their lives as wives and mothers. Now vast numbers—as many as half a million—find themselves unneeded, unwanted. Surplus. Can you imagine? That insufferable wretch in the Spectator called them surplus women!”
“An outrage, I agree,” Aunt Hermione said, frowning.
“And there wouldn’t be a surplus of women if the cursed ‘empire’ didn’t send hordes of British men into far-flung corners of God-knows-where to serve its grand notions of majesty.” Propping her hands on her waist, she narrowed her eyes. “Or if the selfish wretches left behind would quit smoking cigars, swilling Scotch, and throwing their money after slow horses and fast women. Bachelors, auntie … those cold-blooded, tightfisted, self-indulgent creatures who refuse to accept their duty to women and their debt to soci—”
“Antonia!” Aunt Hermione interjected, bringing her up short. “You are only one person. Try as you might, my dear, you cannot save them all.”
The old lady’s voice, filled with familiar warmth and wisdom, poured over Antonia like a balm. She stared at her dear friend and kinswoman, and knew that if anyone understood both the injustice of the situation and her burning desire to rectify it, Aunt Hermione did. Dame Hermione Fielding was a widow four times over, a woman who knew what it was to be alone and adrift in the world.
Since coming to Paxton House several years ago, when her fourth husband died, Hermione had taken Antonia under her wing and guided her through the marriage in which she matured into womanhood, then through the loss of Sir Geoffrey and into widowhood. Because of their shared history, Antonia could guess what came next.
“Dear girl, you are so absorbed in finding husbands for other women and bettering their lives, that you seriously neglect your own.” She raised a hand to ward off Antonia’s objections. “Hear me out. I simply think you should wait awhile … give some thought to your own life before taking on another matrimonial project.”
Antonia vented some of the steam in her blood with a hiss. “That again. I tell you, Aunt Hermione, I am perfectly content with my life as it is. Perfectly.”
“Perfectly Content does not get up in the middle of the night and rummage about in the kitchen making hot milk with brandy. Perfectly Content does not redden her eyes by reading late into the night, then fall asleep in her kippers and eggs the next morning. And Perfectly Content does not come home after every wedding and closet herself away in her room to cry.”
The old lady’s perceptiveness momentarily disarmed Antonia. Her rigid posture melted a few degrees. “Weddings are an occasion for tears, after all,” she said, raising her chin to compensate for the slide of her defenses. “What should it matter to anyone that I prefer to shed them in private?”
Aunt Hermione sighed. “You miss the point, my dear. There is more to life than cats, aging widows, and rescue work. When I was your age, I had lived on three continents, buried two husbands, and was being courted by every cock-o’-the-walk in London. I was determined to drain every drop of life I could from this mortal cup … attending soirees, staying out until dawn, chatting up the prime minister, and playing footsie with ambassadors under tables …”
“I have no desire to play footsie with ambassadors.”
“Nor with anyone else, I take it,” her aunt said with an aggrieved expression.
Antonia felt her face redden. “Footsie” was something she refused to discuss with anyone, even Aunt Hermione. Forcing a glare at her insightful old aunt, she turned away to the window and pushed back the lace curtain to stare down into the gaslit boulevard below.
“Geoffrey would have wanted you to get on with your life, Antonia.”
“Sir Geoffrey would have approved of my efforts, probably even helped me.” A spark flashed in her eyes. “He undertook a bit of rescue work himself, remember.”
It was true. And the subject of his noble efforts, they both knew, had been none other than Antonia herself.
While Antonia’s only living uncle chafed under the burden of having her added to his household and looked the other way while his male cronies made indecent overtures to her, Sir Geoffrey Paxton—a man of substance and impeccable character—had quietly stepped out of the shadowy circle of her father’s business associates to offer her his support and protection … an offer that c
ould only be accepted within the framework of marriage. Thus rescued from the life of a demimondaine, or of genteel servitude as an unmarriageable poor relation, Antonia had become a bride at eighteen, and a widow at the age of twenty-two. And since her husband’s death, three years past, she had devoted herself to rescuing other women the way she had once been rescued … by marriage.
“Well, at least give some thought to putting this mourning business aside.” Aunt Hermione tried yet another route. “All this wearisome black and gray and purple—it’s quite oppressive. You cannot stay cooped up in this house forever, Toni. You need to get out and about.” She flung up a hand in a carefree gesture. “Life is perilously short, my dear.”
Antonia turned it over in her mind as she searched the determined look in her aunt’s aged but undimmed eyes. This was not the first, nor would it be the last, of Hermione’s appeals. The old dear worried about her, she knew, but she couldn’t allow Aunt Hermione’s grand but impractical notions of life to interfere with her work. After a moment she hit upon what she deemed an acceptable compromise.
“You may be right, Auntie. Perhaps I have been keeping too close to the house.” With a mischievous smile she swayed back to the table and poured herself another glass of champagne, raising it in salute to the old lady’s suggestion. “The debate on the Deceased Wife’s Sister Bill will begin in Parliament soon. Perhaps I’ll just go along to Westminster to watch the proceedings.” Her smile became a wicked little laugh. “And make sure the gentlemen members do the right thing.”
Hermione frowned.
“Oh, dear.”
Chapter Two
“Something ought to be done about that woman,” Sir Henry Peckenpaugh declared, drawing nods and murmurs from a circle of gentlemen seated in the noisy bar of the renowned White’s Club on St. James Street.
