Мэри Бэлоу: Someone to Romance

Her family, alas—at least the vocal part of it (which, interpreted, meant the female part)—saw things quite otherwise. Jessica, for all her advanced years, could not possibly be allowed to remain behind, since that would mean her returning alone. Poor Ruth, apparently, counted for nothing. All sorts of harm might befall Jessica in the form of footpads or highwaymen or rude hostlers at inns or wild beasts or broken axles or torrential storms.

“Besides which,” her grandmother, the Dowager Countess of Riverdale, had pointed out as though to clinch the matter, “it simply is not done for any lady to travel alone, Jessica, as you must be well aware. Even someone my age.”

Grandmama was well into her seventies.

Jessica’s protests had gone unheeded.

“You cannot possibly stay here,” Jessica’s mother had said at last, a note of finality in her voice, “as much as I understand your longing to spend more time with Abigail—and hers to have you. I cannot possibly remain here with you. The Season is about to begin and I will need to get ready for the removal to London. So will you, Jessica. Perhaps we can arrange something for another time.”

Jessica had cringed at the very thought of going back to London in order to participate in all the glittering entertainments of yet another Season—her sixth. Or was it her seventh? She had lost count. It was not that she hated balls and picnics and concerts and all the other parties and such with which the ton amused itself during the months of spring, while Parliament was in session. But these entertainments could very quickly become repetitive and tedious. And one tended to see the same people year after year and wherever one went.

Her continued single state was always more apparent in London than it was in the country.

“Oh, Mama,” she had protested. Aunt Matilda had been smiling sympathetically at her, but it was not sympathy she had needed. It was a defender.

That was when Avery—her brother, the duke—had come to her rescue. He had listened in silence to the family conference, sitting in one corner of Gil and Abby’s sitting room holding Beatrice, the newest addition to his family, while she sucked partly on her thumb and partly on one formerly pristine fold of his elaborately tied neckcloth. When he had spoken, it had been with what sounded like a sigh, as though he had found the whole proceeding excruciatingly tedious, as no doubt he had.

“I daresay,” he had said, “you would all consider Jessica both safe from harm and properly preserved from scandal if she were to travel home in the ducal carriage with her maid while Edwin Goddard followed close behind in another carriage, each conveyance manned with a coachman and a footman upon the box, and half a dozen outriders to serve as escorts.”

The Marquess of Dorchester, Abby’s stepfather, had chuckled. “All of them clad in the brightest ducal livery, I suppose, Netherby?” he had said.

“But of course.” Avery had raised his eyebrows as though surprised that the matter could even be in doubt.

“It is a splendid idea,” Anna had said, beaming at her husband and her sister-in-law. “Avery will send them whenever you are ready to leave, Jessica. How lovely it will be for you and Abby to enjoy some time together after the whirlwind of the celebrations during the past week.”

And that had settled it. Though Avery spoke only rarely during family gatherings, when he did speak no one ever seemed to question his pronouncements. Jessica had never quite understood it. He did not look like an overwhelmingly powerful man or even behave like one. He was of only average height. He was also slight and graceful of build, with very blond hair and a face of angelic beauty. He might have looked . . . well, effeminate. But he did not, and somehow he wielded a great deal of power without ever having to bluster or bully or even raise his voice. Jessica suspected that most people outside his immediate family feared him but did not understand why any more than she did.

The result of those few words he had spoken after the lengthy discussion that had preceded them was that now, three weeks after everyone else had left, she was on the road back to London, at the very heart of a cavalcade that drew astonished stares and awed scrutiny in every town and village or hamlet through which it passed.

Being a woman—or, rather, being a lady —certainly had its frustrations despite the luxury of cushions that wrapped her in comfort and the springs that made the passage of the carriage over English roads almost a smooth one. She knew she was being treated as a child, although she was not one. Mr. Goddard, Avery’s extremely efficient secretary, transacted all the business along the way, with the result being that Jessica had scarcely opened her mouth since the flurry of hugs and tearful goodbyes that had accompanied her departure that morning from Rose Cottage. Ruth was no real companion. Though excellent at her job and loyal to a fault, she had always insisted upon keeping a proper and respectful distance from her mistress. She never prattled on about anything and everything the way it seemed other ladies’ maids did. She rarely spoke at all, in fact, unless spoken to.

It had been a very quiet journey.

It had given Jessica far too much time to think.

She had never dreamed, growing up, that she would still be unwed at the age of twenty-five. Like most young girls, she had dreamed of growing up and falling in love and marrying and beginning a family of her own, all long before she was twenty. But when she was seventeen and within a year of making her longed-for come-out into society, the Great Disaster had happened. She always thought of it as though the words would have to be capitalized if written down. Her uncle, Humphrey Westcott, Earl of Riverdale, had died, and twenty-year-old Harry, his son, had succeeded him in title and property and fortune. Until, that was, the ghastly discovery had been made that Uncle Humphrey had already been secretly married to someone else when he wed Aunt Viola, Harry’s—and Camille’s and Abigail’s—mother, more than twenty years before. Aunt Viola’s marriage, unknown to everyone except Uncle Humphrey himself, had been bigamous. Harry was stripped of his title and everything else, and Camille and Abigail lost their titles and their dowries. All three lost their very legitimacy. They no longer belonged in the ton .

The whole of the Westcott family had been thrown into turmoil. But it had always seemed to Jessica that she suffered more than any of the others, except for Aunt Viola and Camille, Harry, and Abigail, of course. For Abby was her very dearest friend. They had always been more like sisters than cousins. They had dreamed of making their come-out together, even though Abby was one year older than Jessica. They had dreamed of falling in love and marrying at the same time, perhaps even in a dazzlingly grand double wedding. They had dreamed of living happily ever after, always as the dearest of friends.

The Great Disaster had put an abrupt and cruel end to those dreams.

Avery, Harry’s guardian at the time, had purchased an officer’s commission in a foot regiment for him, and Harry had gone off to Spain and Portugal to fight in the Peninsular Wars against the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte. Camille, in addition to everything else, had been rejected by her fiancé, the dastardly Viscount Uxbury. Abby never did have a come-out Season but went with Camille to live in Bath with their maternal grandmother. Aunt Viola had fled for a while to live with her clergyman brother in Dorsetshire.

And Jessica, untouched in all material ways by the disaster, had been left bereft. Alone and desolate, with crushed hopes and lost dreams. She had been uninterested in continuing with anything to which her privileged status as Lady Jessica Archer, sister of the Duke of Netherby, entitled her. She had lost all interest in a come-out Season of her own, in courtship, and in marriage. For Abby could not share any of the glitter and excitement with her but was rather incarcerated in her grandmother’s house in Bath. Incarcerated had not seemed too harsh a word.