How to Impress a Gentleman

by Allie Borne

  It must be true. Otherwise, why would he not have written to explain himself? Why would he not have waited to sail out until her mother’s welfare had been protected? Sir Richard most certainly had offered to purchase a naval position in return for Charles’ corroboration on the commitment of her mother to Bethlem.

  Shaking her head free of her unsettling reverie, Lindsay noted the ballroom candles had burned down to half their original length. The night was wearing on and she was one of few debutantes who had not received any signatures on her dance card. Confused, she began glancing back at her grandmother who sat ensconced with a couple of similarly aged chaperones. Eleanor Beaumont’s neck showed flushed beneath her white, powdered face. Although she wore a placid expression, Lindsay knew her well enough to sense she was distraught.

  Excusing herself, Lindsay made her way to the powder room. She immediately crossed to a table with a looking glass and picked it up to study her face. Squinting into the small oval, Lindsay searched for any outward signs of imperfection.

  Staring back at her were the same dark blue eyes, small, snubbed nose, and pink, pouty lips she’d always found acceptable. Thanks to what her doctor called, “the threat of organic dust”, she had been indoors a great bit of the summer. As a result, her ivory skin was free of blemishes and freckles. Her cheeks, while stained a telltale pink, did not look unbecoming.

  Setting down the fragile mirror, Lindsay Beaumont sighed dejectedly. How could her fancies and expectations have gone so far awry? Dreaming of handsome beaus, breathless dancing, and stunning gowns had gotten her through many an endless evening at her grandparent’s country holdings in Warwick. Growing up with only one younger sister, on a relatively remote estate, Lindsay often had only books and daydreaming to stave off boredom and melancholy.

  Although she loved to walk and ride, horses, grass, and flowers had a tendency to steal her breath, causing her to limit these pursuits during certain times of the year. To make matters worse, Lindsay was the constant subject of her grandmother’s scrutiny. Eleanor Beaumont was a devout parishioner and rather controlling of her immediate household. To her credit, her commanding nature had saved both Lindsay and her sister, Leah from running feral. Without Eleanor, neither girl would have had any home life to speak of. They both would have likely wiled away their girlhood in a preparatory school, rather than on their grandparents’ quiet estate.

  Lindsay’s mother, a frail and sensitive creature, had not withstood the stresses of motherhood well. About six weeks after Leah’s birth, Elizabeth had attempted to drown herself in the creek. She never seemed to recover, often spending weeks on end in her bed and rarely joining the family for meals, much less public functions.

  After Charles left, having neglected to persuade her father to change his course, Elizabeth had been carted off to Bethlam Hospital for the insane. No amount of begging had dissuaded Sir Richard. Left bereft of her best friend and mother, Lindsay had folded in on herself. Living only with the goal of enriching her sister’s life, Lindsay had thrown herself into her womanly studies, determined to make a good match, so that she might arrange a love match for Leah. Someone in her family must escape the path of destruction her father wantonly wrought in pursuit of his own goals.

  Blessedly, Sir Richard’s pursuits made him a very busy man. He worked in London on the king’s business during much of the year. When he was home, he spent long hours working with the tenants on the estate. Thus, when the time had come for Sir Richard Beaumont to launch his eldest daughter into the ranks of the ton (albeit the lesser ranks), the only suitable female available to chaperone his daughter was his mother.

  Lady Eleanor Beaumont did her best to prepare Lindsay. She hired tutors and dance instructors. She picked out her trousseau. Despite her severity, she desperately wished for Lindsay’s security and happiness. Strict structure, a strong faith in God, and firm role models, she hoped, would overcome any possible “flighty tendencies” that Lindsay might have inherited from her mother. What neither Lindsay, nor her grandmother had anticipated, however, was the ton’s knowledge of Elizabeth’s condition.

  So, here she stood, within her great aunt’s powder room, hiding from the very debut for which she had so longed. It was a grand affair at a beautiful home. Linnie felt lucky to be included in the event. She was one of three kinswomen that were making their debut at her Cousin Samantha’s ball. Each girl hoped to attract a handsome husband, perhaps a second or third son of higher nobility.

  The ballroom was fabulous! Guild molding abounded and bees wax candles glistened. Perfumed and powdered dandies turned fine legs and ladies all looked like porcelain dolls in their make up and finery. Lindsay cared nothing for the fun and frivolity. What she had hoped for was to turn her fair face and graceful dancing into a smart match. What a difference an hour had made!

  Rehashing the past minutes, Lindsay tried to trace her lack of popularity back to its source. What had she done wrong? After tucking and pinning an ebony curl back beneath her elegant white wig, Lindsay began to examine her dress. She turned to see Eleanor step into the room.

  Eleanor drew Lindsay’s hands from the hem of her dress to clasp them tightly in her own. Lindsay became instantly attuned to her grandmother. Physical contact was rare and to be taken seriously in her family.

  “It has come to my attention that your mother’s frailty is common knowledge among the London set. Charlotte Reynold’s mother found it necessary to eliminate the competition for bachelors from the local gentry by warning their mammas that the Beaumont girls would make poor breeding stock.”

  Eleanor stated this course bit of information quietly and levelly as if she were saying, “They’ll be no scones for tomorrow’s breakfast.”

  Lindsay’s mind reeled. “So, you are saying I’ll likely not find a match among the country gentry?”

  “What I’m saying, Lindsay, is that you may not find a beau that will risk marrying you and having his heirs turn out like your mother. You may have to steel yourself for a tough, perhaps fruitless season of husband hunting.”

  “But I’m only seventeen! Surely some gentleman will risk partnering me for a dance without worrying they’ll be forced to marry me!”

  Lindsay knew her voice had taken on the whining petulance of a young child, but there was no help for it. She’d come here to get away, to escape the painful ghosts of her past, and, mayhap, have some fun, for once.

  God help her! Even in London, she was unable to escape her mother’s sullen shadow. For the first time, she tasted the same bitter disgust and resentment for her mother’s condition that so often coated Eleanor’s tongue.

  Suddenly, Lindsay’s lungs tightened up. Gasping for air, she felt as if she were peering down a long, dark tunnel. Her grandmother’s deeply creased forehead was the last sight she saw before collapsing in a dead faint.

  Slowly, Lindsay became aware of someone patting her hand lightly and rapidly. “Lindsay?” queried the deep, kind voice. “Lindsay? Lindsay, Dear, wake up. Ah, here she comes around, you see? I told you loosening her stays would help.”

  “Thank you, Doctor Evers. Oh, bless you!” breathed Lady Beaumont.

  Peering over at her, the cherubic Jonathan Evers smiled. “Are you feeling more the thing?” he queried. Lindsay couldn’t help but return his lopsided grin.

  “Yes, thank you,” she sighed, attempting to sit up on the chaise lounge in which she’d been placed. “I must have gotten overheated.”

  “Yes, well, I think it best you return to your room upstairs and get some rest.”

  Just then two young ladies entered the powder room. Gasping, one stated in a loud stage whisper, “You see! Just like her mother, having panic attacks and needing a doctor-and not even one full night in town, mind you,” as they turned back to walk out the door. Mortified, Lindsay turned to Eleanor for guidance.

  “Don’t worry about those two nitwits.” Eleanor chided. “They are just petty, jealous little things.”

  “That’s right,” Doctor Evers rea
ssured her, patting her hand gently. “You just head up to bed tonight, get a good night’s rest, and we will see you at Mrs. Reynold’s soiree tomorrow evening. My son will be there and will be more than happy to partner such a lovely young lady for a dance. What do you say?”

  “I’m no object for pity,” Lindsay replied stiffly, her spine straightening and her eyes brimming afresh with unshed tears.

  “Who said anything about pity? This is strategy, my dear. Currently you are the metaphorical social leper. Send a handsome fortune seeker into the realm to interact with you and come out unscathed and others will soon follow.”

  “You may be deemed brittle, my dear, but you come with a very attractive dowry. You are not too hard to look at, either. My son will be all too happy to pay you court, at my behest or no.”

  “So, what do you say? Will you choose to take fate by the nose or will it lead you where it will?”

  “I accept your offer, Doctor Evers, and I thank you for your sound advice. I am no fool. I know to accept a helping hand when I am in over my head. Thank you,” she said, hiding the truth of her stung pride by bowing her head in acceptance.

  ~ ~ ~

  Just outside the city, the walls of Bethlem Hospital rose no higher than Lindsay’s chest. The sanitarium looked quite civilized, not at all the dilapidated house of horror she had oft times envisioned. Yet, the very orderly, contained presence of the monstrous edifice bespoke of a carefully constructed social corrosion.

  In the country, sick people were not sent away. All people were individuals with faces and names and problems to be dealt with. It might be messy, dealing with the cotter William’s tirades or Great Aunt Bess’s many invisible friends, but it was handled and grumbled over and joked about by those who knew them and loved them and cared about their fate.

  Here, if you did not fit in or act your part, you could be locked away so that all of polite society could look at this attractive building and not the unattractive truth of a hurting spirit, or a damaged soul.

  For years, those that dared to peer beyond Bedlam’s orderly surface, to laugh and point and chide at those suffering within, need only step up and pay a penny. Did it make them feel superior in some way? Lindsay wondered. Nothing in the wide world could entice her to set foot in the cursed place, nothing but this all-consuming yen to connect with her mother.

  Thus resolved, Lindsay strode forward. Whitney, clutching painfully to her elbow, had to be dragged along. “Please don’t do this, Miss Lindsay. I beg you not to torture yourself so. What’s done is done and seeing for yerself cannot make it better.”

  “You know I have to, Whitney,” Lindsay muttered through chattering teeth. Reaching into her reticule, Lindsay produced two pounds and walked forward to gain admittance as a “patron”. By offering a “donation” and explaining that she was a conscientious supporter of the mentally infirm and would like a tour to, “properly ascertain the opportunities for improvement that my women’s missionary group might explore,” she was ushered in and left to her own devices.

  The quiet, sparseness of the gardens without gave forth to a haphazard cacophony of stimulation within. A dingy, yellow light seemed to hang suspended in the air, clinging to the smells of blood, feces, and rotting flesh. Aproned nurses with mop caps bustled past, unconcerned with Lindsay and Whitney’s presence. Long hallways lined with doors ran to the left and to the right. Each door sported a tiny, barred window, into which meandering voyeurs might have peered. A human menagerie, Lindsay whispered to herself, her whole body taking up the tremors of her chattering teeth.

  Had her father even stepped foot in this place to which he’d sent her mother? Surely, he must have, for he’d taken Elizabeth to London in the carriage, seeing to the necessary paperwork and payments...Whitney surreptitiously approached a door and then scuttled back when a course voice screeched obscenities in her direction.

  Lindsay walked past them all, not bothering to look at what she knew to be an outward manifestation of some soul’s inner suffering. Instead, she strode to the end of the hall and up the stairs, towards the women’s ward.

  One door, the second to the last on the right of the stairs, stood open. Lindsay’s skin chilled and her lower lip trembled. Lindsay had received one letter from her mother, after she had been sent away. In it, among the scrawled accounting of her accommodations and treatments, Elizabeth had mentioned that, “My room is the second from the end and, on a clear day, I imagine I can see all the way to Warwick, where another, larger window stands tall, encasing my two beautiful daughters in glorious warmth and light.”

  Lindsay rushed towards the open doorway, desperate to catch a glimpse of her Mama, nestled in bed, a book of plays propped up on her too thin lap. Skidding to a halt outside the narrow door, Lindsay choked back salty tears. Another too thin frame lay sightless, mouth ajar with a frail arm extended to the doctor within. Just as the balding physician sliced the vein above the crook of the stranger’s elbow and lowered the sallow appendage to drain into the basin on the stone floor, Lindsay’s breath stilled. Blessedly, her vision closed in, and she toppled into the black abyss.

  Lindsay woke up within a rocking carriage to a very perturbed Whitney. “It was a nigh thing getting you out of there, Miss Lindsay. I told you not to go in, but, nay, ye had to force yerself to suffer and breath that fowl air and mess with yer humors. Give thanks to God I can talk the streak off a pole cat. Else wise that doctor would ‘ave thought you a patient, with all that unladylike running and gasping and fainting. I explained how delicate and heart stricken you are and active in the church work, and so on and so forth until he couldn’t wait to bustle me out.

  “Did ye know there are only ten men and women that staff that devil’s den? Two-hundred and sixty patients and ten people to care for the like of them all? No wonder it stinks to high heaven!”

  Lindsay sat up, opened the carriage door, and amidst Whitney’s frantic pounding on the roof and ordering the carriage to stop, she rolled out onto her hands and knees and vomited the contents of her stomach.

  “Oh, it’s that sorry I am, Miss,” Whitney cajoled tutting and reaching into her decolletage to pull out a handkerchief for Lindsay to wipe her mouth. “T’will all be just fine, ye’ll see. Yer just riddin yerself of those foul humors ye’d built up. Did ye good to face yer demons and ye’ll rally. I’ll see to that, I will.”

  Gathering Lindsay into her arms, Whitney hugged her tightly, scowling at the driver when he cleared his throat impatiently. Bundled back into the carriage, Lindsay allowed herself to be rocked and petted as the tears ran, unchecked, down her cheeks and into Whitney’s voluminous skirts. “Momma,” she cried, “Momma, Momma, Momma,” as the truth of her mother’s death sank its carnivorous teeth past sinew and gristle, devouring the last remaining soft bits of her heart.

  ~ ~ ~

  Standing erect and alone along the edge of the ballroom, Lindsay was grateful for the thick, white powder that coated her face, covering the telltale signs of her grief. She could hide behind the elaborate wig and gown and make-up. She need not feel anything or be anyone while safely hidden behind a simpering, smiling facade.

  The second night of Lindsay’s season began much like the first. Cool eyes assessed her from the matron’s corner. Despite herself, Lindsay found her own eyes searching for her old childhood acquaintance, Charles Donovan. She knew she searched in vain.

  Well, good riddance, she thought miserably as her eyes picked out a tall figure making his way towards her. As promised, Dr. Ever’s son, Aiden, made his appearance at her side. “Will you do me the honor of this dance?” he queried, after being introduced and giving her a courtly bow.

  He cut a dashing figure in a green and gold waist coat and cued wig. As he raised his chiseled brow, Lindsay appreciated the masculine black arcs and intelligent flash of jade green eyes. She was transfixed.

  “Oh, uh, yes, thank you, I will.” Blushing deep pink beneath her pale powder, she followed Aiden out onto the dance floor for a country dance.
The piece was well chosen, as it had Lindsay in contact with many other men. Twirling and smiling at each partner, Lindsay felt as if she were floating on air.

  The bright blue walls and intricately laid wood floor swirled about her, mixing with the golden light from the chandelier and numerous candelabras. Looking up at the ceiling’s intricately carved molding and angelic mural, Lindsay felt that this must surely be how it felt to dance in heaven.

  Soon, she had two more signatures on her dance card. Lindsay did not see Aiden, once he returned her to her grandmother’s side, but she often dreamt of him in the weeks to follow.

  Dr. Evers had been right. Once Aiden had broken the ice, more young men, mostly second and third sons, found Lindsay’s face and dowry enough incentive to pay her some attention. None courted her exclusively. However, Lindsay survived her first season without being black listed or dubbed a total pariah.

  Thus, she and her grandmother left for the Beaumont estate feeling as if there was hope for her yet. In Lindsay’s young heart lay a secret seed of desire, one that she had been watering with fancy and sunning with daydreams. In her maiden’s fancy, she fully expected Aiden Evers to return to her side, to sweep her off of her feet and carry her away from her uncomfortable home in Warwick.

  Chapter Three- A House Party

  Warwick, England

  Summer, 1777

  “Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.”

  ~Samuel Johnson, 18th Century Man of Letters

  “A house party is in order, I believe,” the Baronet, Stuart Beaumont, declared at breakfast the day following the family’s return to Hartford Glen.

  One glimpse at her short and portly grandfather told Lindsay that her grandmother had explained the series of events resulting in her current lack of suitors. A situation that might have been a less pressing concern for a young woman with brothers as heirs, was of imminent concern to the eldest daughter of a knight with no sons. With her mother’s condition making possible matches scarce, the pressure was two fold. Lindsay must produce an heir and do so without losing her senses.