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“Titania! I cannot impersonate your cousin! What if we are discovered?” Miss Tynte fluttered her hands in a gesture of dismay.
“If we are discovered, it will not be any worse than what will happen if I do not marry, and quickly.”
Her governess leaned forward and gripped Titania’s arm. Her face was ashen. “Titania, you do not mean...”
Titania gave an almost hysterical laugh. “No, you goose, I do not mean that.”
Miss Tynte sat back, a look of relief on her face. “Then what?” she asked.
“I went and saw Mr. Hawthorne, Father’s solicitor. He...he informed me that there has been another will found, negating the one we thought was valid. Father left all his money to a...to a...to some person.”
“A person? You mean a woman?”
Titania nodded, feeling her eyes fill with tears again. Who knew she was such a watering pot?
“Oh, you poor dear! That scoundrel. I know he was your father, Titania, but that was a terrible thing to do.”
Titania’s tone turned brisk again as she swept her hands across her cheeks, wiping away the moisture. “Yes, well, Father was not always so wise in his decisions, Elizabeth. Which is why I have to get married to a very, very wealthy man. And why you have to chaperone me; Aunt Bestley and I have already had a disagreement, so she will not help.”
Miss Tynte repeated her question. “But what if we are discovered?”
Titania recalled Miss Tynte had always fretted over propriety. She assumed her most guileless face. “Oh, but we won’t be; you are unexceptional in your manners and as genteel as anyone in the ton; you exhibit those ladylike qualities you required me to learn and that I still seem to have problems with.”
Such as flouncing around London unescorted, but Titania brushed that memory away.
“Can’t you see?” Titania presented the case again with an undisguised passion. “You must help me. Or else Stillings, and Cook, and Sarah, and the rest of them will be as destitute as Thibault and I are now.”
Miss Tynte stopped her anxious fluttering and looked at Titania with a gimlet eye. “Destitute? That is a very strong word. Is there something you are not telling me? Has Thibault been up to mischief?” She narrowed her eyes in her best governessy gaze.
Titania sat down on the sofa, pulling her friend down to sit with her. “Do you remember Tanner, the overseer?”
Her friend nodded. “He stole your father’s favorite stallion when he left Ravensthorpe so suddenly. We all heard enough about the loss of that horse. There was certainly more outcry about that than when Thibault got himself stuck down that well for the whole afternoon.”
“That was hardly the worst of it, although that was what made Father tear up to London. Tanner was a thorough blackguard.” Titania ticked off each action on her fingers. “He raised the tenants’ rents viciously—saying it was Father’s order—and then embezzled the money. He depleted the breeding stock, lied about receipts from the cattle auctions, and pocketed the unreported profits. He left bills unpaid and kept the allocated funds for himself. He even stole from additional funds my father authorized when Tanner insisted on the need to buy new stock and make costly repairs—stock which was never purchased, repairs and improvements which were never made.”
Her governess gave a grim smile. “One would think your father would have checked references before hiring someone he met at one of his clubs.”
“Anyone but Father would have done so. Father flew into a towering rage for the theft of the horse, but after that, he did not delve into the accounts themselves any deeper than ever he had before. It was only after Father died that Mr. Hawthorne and I discovered the true extent of the financial devastation. Ravensthorpe is barely beginning to recover. It will require years of prudent financial management. Thanks to Father’s impetuous nature, Ravensthorpe does not have those years.”
Her governess sat openmouthed as Titania related her subsequent efforts to ensure the credit of the family and the long-term husbandry of Ravensthorpe, not to mention the well-being of the many tenant families the family and farm had supported for generations. Titania had promised the tenants she would use virtually every shilling of their rent money for however long it took to restore the estate.
“My best guess,” Titania said as she finished her litany of recovery efforts, “is that it will take at least five years. Five years during which I had expected to have other funds on which to live. Other funds that are now out of my hands.” She turned to her friend, her hands held palm up in a gesture of supplication.
“So you see, there is no income. Not if Ravensthorpe is to survive. And we both know Thibault cannot help.”
Titania had made a promise to Ravensthorpe’s tenants, and she kept her promises. She would not follow the lead of so many other landowners and impose brutal rack rents on the tenants in time of war or personal misfortune. She had deplored that greed in the newspaper columns she had written for the Northamptonshire Gazette under her pseudonym, Agricola.
She would keep her promise to Thibault’s holding and to Ravensthorpe’s tenants, even if it forced her to sell herself. Her voice trembled as she spoke.
“I have no choice. I must have my Season, I must marry someone with so much money he can afford to save Ravensthorpe, despite my father’s actions.” Her face bore a fierce, determined look.
“I will do it, Titania,” Miss Tynte said quietly, convinced at last.
“Thank you. Perhaps this will save us.” Titania was thrilled she would be able to implement her scheme. Thrilled and appalled.
Titania tried to ignore the dampening reflection that success in the endeavor would yield a husband whose only important characteristic would be that he had buckets of money. Her governess’s voice interrupted her depressing thoughts.
“Titania, I am so sorry. It would have been your father’s fondest wish for you to find a suitable match, but I do not think that is what he had in mind when he wrote a new will.”
“If he had given it a shred of his attention, he probably would have thought I could find a suitable match at home—why, I would have had the very cream of the crop from which to choose.”
She felt her spirits lift a little as she rose to stand in front of her governess, hands placed demurely at her sides. She gave a wicked grin, then executed a flawless curtsy. Her friend nodded her head in response, an answering smile on her face.
“Why, there is Lord Atherton on only the next estate; of course, he is seventy if he is a day, and he does have a disconcerting habit of sniffing noisily as if there were an onion concealed somewhere on your person.”
“Onions are a lovely vegetable, Titania. How can you be so cruel?” Miss Tynte gave a condescending sniff as she joined the game.
“And,” Titania said, warming to her subject as she made another deep curtsy, “Squire Inchbald to the west quaffs brandy bingo at break of day and, they say, sleeps on the floor with his hounds. Lord Newbury to the north is of the opinion that ‘Damme! Eh, what?’ constitutes sparkling conversation. Not to mention Mr. Fripp, the vicar—”
“Or Lord Puddleby, who makes even Lord Delamore seem almost intelligent.”
Titania rolled her eyes at her friend in agreement. “No, dearest cousin,” she said with a wink, “I cannot believe I am so toplofty as to reject the myriad suitors found at home and must come to London to find someone with whom it would be worth spending the rest of my life.” She stood up straighter, showing an enthusiasm that was only partially faked.
“I must plan the attack! I have new gowns, a chaperone, an almost fashionable London abode; Alexander the Great could not have been more prepared for his campaigns than I am.” And with that declamation, Titania marched off to her room, brandishing her reticule like a sword.
***
TITANIA FIRED OFF THE opening salvo of her campaign that afternoon by paying a call on an old friend who had won her own battle by marrying a viscount a few years earlier. Claire, Lady Wexford, of Wexford House in May Fair, had been plain old Claire Smith when Titania had seen her last. Titania blinked as she saw the transformation from charming girl to fashionable society wife.
“Oh, Ti,” Claire sighed, her blond curls bobbing gently as she floated into the middle of the room, “how glad I am to see you again! You will never know how the London life wears one, and it will be good to have a dear friend with whom I can have a comfortable coze, not thinking about the next party or who has yet to call.”
Titania wagged a chiding finger. “But, Claire, I am here on that very mission, to attend all the parties and receive all the calls. And you promised you would be my guide. Do not disappoint me by telling me you wish to be back in the country with the hens and the horses.”
“For you, Titania, I will endure yet another Season, but I do so long for a simple life.”
She struck a pose that Titania thought was intended to look mournful, but really only made her look dyspeptic. And if Claire ever planned to return to the simple life she had hated when they were young, she had best forget about wearing diamonds to receive her morning callers.
“Claire—” she began, then broke off as Claire’s husband, Lord Wexford, entered. He was a barrel-chested man whose hearty voice filled up the room. “Miss Stanhope, Claire has been on pins and needles. Glad you’re here. Hope you brought a full wardrobe—Claire’s been planning outings and accepting invitations ever since she heard you were coming to town. So popular I have to make an appointment to see my own wife.”
Lord Wexford stopped and beamed at Claire, who ducked her head in an attitude of shyness. “Now, Wex,” she demurred, “you know I am only doing all this so Titania may enjoy London to the utmost. I have already had my Season. She must now be the belle of the ball. And,” she finished coyly, “if it should happen that she become engaged to some eligible parti in the course of her time here in town, well, then, that’s only for the best.”
“I hardly think—” Titania began to say, smiling, when a loud, insistent knock at the door below interrupted her. Claire and Lord Wexford’s eyes showed matching panic, and after a moment, Claire crept to the window.
“Wex, it’s them again,” she said, obviously agitated. “Make them go away.”
“Yes, yes, dear,” Lord Wexford answered, and, ignoring the bellpull, scurried out of the room. Titania heard him give an angry shout down the hall.
Titania was too polite to ask, but her face must have shown her curiosity. Claire plopped down on the sofa, a disgruntled look on her lovely face.
“These cent per centers! Tired of waiting for Wex’s father to stick his spoon in the wall. Can I help it if he persists in continuing his wretched existence? They simply don’t understand that there are so many things one needs, and when one needs them, then one does not put off getting them until the next quarter’s dividend day. I just had to have a new opera gown, and my morning gowns were in tatters. As for Wex, he is widely admired for his ability to judge horseflesh; he cannot very well go tooling about in the new phaeton with no-goers.”
Titania murmured some sort of sympathetic response, not that she understood much of Claire’s London slang. She considered confiding in her friend about her own financial state of affairs when something made her pause. Claire’s affect had changed since last they were together; there was a brittle brightness about her now. Perhaps she wouldn’t understand after all.
“So, my dear,” Claire began afresh. “Would you like to go shopping? I saw the most clever little bonnet the other day that would just suit you.”
Only if the clever little bonnet came with a tiny little price; it would be fun, though, to pretend to be a normal, carefree debutante for just a few hours.
“Certainly, but should you not be at home during your at-home hours? That is the point of them, is it not?” Titania laughed as she spoke, but her friend did not seem to find Titania’s gentle ribbing amusing.
Claire’s lips twisted into a pout. “At home to those nasty bill collectors. No, I would rather go out.”
Titania waited while Claire gathered her things, idly wondering if her friend was going to find even more diamonds to put on, and if so, just where she would find to put them. She looked down at her own deep-blue gown, contrasting it with the embellished, embroidered, and altogether extraordinary confection her friend was wearing.
Titania’s gown had not seemed plain in Northamptonshire; it had precisely one bow, no frills, and no embroidery. Compared with Claire, Titania appeared almost austere.
At least it was not white; Titania had put her foot down when the local dressmaker insisted all debutantes wore white. White, she knew, made her look like a particularly vapid flake of snow.
“Are you ready, Titania?” Claire stood at the door, a fetching little hat placed just so on her curls. Titania envied those curls as much as she had ten years ago, when the girls were thirteen, inseparable, and beginning to notice boys. Titania’s own hair would not curl at all, even if threatened with a pair of scissors. It seemed her hair was as stubborn as she was.
“You know, Claire, I would barely recognize you—you have become so fashionable as to be intimidating.” Not to mention so festooned in jewelry any other light was almost redundant.
Claire gave a simpering smile. “Yes, well, Wex likes me to look my best. He is such a dear man. I have a reputation as a leader of fashion to uphold, and he is very proud of that.” As they walked outside, Claire assured Titania it was not a long ride to Bond Street.
It was the longest carriage ride in Titania’s memory. There was indeed much to learn in London, she thought, such as the amount of time one woman could talk about herself and her clothes. She was contemplating ripping one of the many bows from Claire’s gown and stuffing into her own ears when she felt the horses slowing.
Thank goodness, she thought. Another few minutes and she would have flung herself out onto the road. And she still had more hours in Claire’s company. Was this to be her future? A society lady filling up her hours with idle pastimes and an even idler existence?
Despatch from the battle front, March 1813
In battle, one must trust one’s companions in arms implicitly. Winning the war requires tactical maneuvering, a clever, multifaceted battle plan, and, above all, a solid, united front.
So ladies, remember that as you march into Almack’s.
The enemy—otherwise known as the eligible bachelor—will notice if there is dissension in the ranks and will despise where he once admired. If his opponent can be so shrewish to her comrade, he wonders, how will she be when her castle is stormed by him?
Pettiness, jealousy, malicious gossip; all treason, and subject to the worst of punishments: spinsterhood.
A Singular Lady