Karen Harbaugh

THE MARRIAGE SCHEME

Karen Harbaugh

Chapter One

It was not that I disliked being at Miss Angstead’s Seminary for Young Ladies, despite the other girls’ snobbishness, though that was what some might have thought. I even enjoyed my room, for I was a parlour boarder and had it all to myself, with my name, “Georgia Canning,” painted on the outside of my door. It was austere; its one concession to decoration was a half-length mirror on the inside of the door. I did not look at it much, for I knew what I would see: chestnut-brown hair, pale skin, and a light
(very
light, thank goodness!) sprinkle of freckles over my nose. My face was not classically oval like my mother’s, for I had a small pointed chin, and my eyes were as green as a cat’s. Mama often said my face was heart-shaped, but I think she was only being kind.

As for my clothes ... well, they were nothing to look at, either, for all of us wore the schoolgirl’s uniform of white, cream, or grey round gowns that covered us from neck to toe. Mine fit me only for the few months I grew into them. Then I would be given another larger one that would bag around my figure until I grew into
it.
I never paid much attention to fashion anyway, so I ignored my appearance unless it was untidy.

It was just that, as I grew older, I became more and more aware of Mama’s single state and how unusual it was. Other girls’ mothers were not as pretty as mine, but they were married. I watched Mama when I was home and kept note of her letters. The faces in Mama’s salons changed, but I noticed a persistent one—a man she called Sir Jeremy. Mama’s letters usually mentioned him once or twice. Finally, when I had just turned seventeen, a letter came that mentioned his name ten times. Nothing remarkable in the letter about him—merely that they had gone to the opera and then to someone’s ball, and some of his thoughts on Reform.

From my window at school, I saw the older girls depart Miss Angstead’s Seminary for Young Ladies to have their Season in London or giggle to each other when passing a handsome Hussar in the street. My thoughts turned—not unnaturally—to marriage, and the heretofore unthinkable idea came to me: Could it be possible that even at the advanced age of six-and-thirty, my mother might marry again?

This shocked me a little, for six-and-thirty was a great age: surely past the time of falling in love. It was difficult to think of my mother giggling behind her hand and flirting with her eyes in the way some of my schoolmates did when they had a
tendre
for some young man. Yet I heard of some of those same schoolmates’ widowed mothers remarrying, too, and they not much older than my own mother. I was determined to quiz Mama on this the next I saw her.

As Mama was preparing to leave my room at Miss Angstead’s after a visit, and after she mentioned four or five appointments with Sir Jeremy for the next month, I said bluntly: “Mama, are you going to marry Sir Jeremy Swift?”

She looked at me, startled, and blushed. “Good Lord, Georgia, how you take one up!” She fussed with her reticule and rose from the chair next to my bed.

I put my hand on her arm, and she sat down again. “Mama, I am seventeen now, no longer a little girl. You have increasingly mentioned Sir Jeremy in your letters, and now you have five appointments with him this month. If he might become my father, perhaps I should know.”

“I—I haven’t accepted him,” she said in a low tone. She turned her face away. “He comes from an old and well-known family. What could I bring to him, do for him? I merely have enough to support you and me, and my family was neither illustrious, old, nor rich. He
should
marry a respectable young woman who would do him credit—as I cannot.”

“How
can
you say that, Mama! I should think that anyone would be proud to have you to wife!”

She smiled at me with affection, but the wistfulness did not leave her eyes. “Thank you, my love. But you see, my father was a merchant—and not a rich one at that. I could not bear to have Sir Jeremy estranged from his family; your father and I loved each other dearly, but I know how much it hurt him to be cut off from his family. I do not want to have that happen again. You can understand that, can you not?”

I did and said so. I also thought Mama had too many scruples. If Sir Jeremy had no qualms about proposing to her—and I supposed he was old enough to know his own mind—I did
not
see why she should have any about accepting. But I did not think Mama would see it this way, so I said nothing.

“Besides,” she continued with a bitter laugh, “how am I to know he isn’t merely trifling with me?” She pressed a hand to her temple. “It is so complicated. I have been disappointed before. It is hard for me to trust anymore, I think. What if he was merely dangling the idea of marriage in front of me so that I would be less inclined to look elsewhere?” She closed her lips firmly, glancing at me, then let out a sigh. “Ah, my dear, I love him, but I couldn’t bear to think he would turn out like so many others.”

“Exactly.” I put my arms around her shoulders. “I feel it is my duty—since your father has died and Grandfather Canning has cast us off—as nearest kin, to see if this man is really fit to become your husband and my stepfather. After all,” I said, affecting a haughty pose, “we deserve nothing but the best.”

The trick worked: Mama laughed. “You are a funny one!” But her eyes were still sad. “You have been lonely, have you not? I have not done well by you, I think. I am a foolish woman, my dear.”

All my maternal instincts were born in that instant. Poor Mama—so wise and at the same time so foolish! “I don’t really care to make friends with the silly girls here at school—they can be tedious at times. I enjoy reading much more. And if I come home more often, both of us will be less lonely.” A scheme was growing in my mind in which I would be doing more than coming home, but I’d think of that later. “Tell me more of Sir Jeremy.”

“Oh, my love!” Mama hugged me in a rush of silk and perfume. “Well, if you insist—I believe you have met him once or twice.”

I nodded. To my surprise, I remembered him as one whom I liked more than the others. He took notice of me where the others did not, and he had been very polite. I hardened my heart against him, however; I would see what his intentions were regarding my mother first before being fooled by any charm he cared to exude.

I smiled. “Yes, I remember him. I hope I may see him again sometime.”

“Ah, you will. I shall make sure I invite him to dinner the next time you are home.” The clock on the wall chimed, and Mama jumped and looked at it. “Oh, dear, I must go or I shall not get back to London before Monday....” Tears came to her eyes again, and she searched for her handkerchief. She had left it on the chair, and I brought it to her. “You are too good to me, my dear. I do not know what I have done to deserve such an understanding daughter. Well. I must go.” I was hugged again, and after I gave her a kiss, she left in a rustle of skirts.

And so I set myself to planning how I would leave Miss Angstead’s Seminary for Young Ladies.

* * * *

In the end I had to simulate as many symptoms of an interesting decline as possible so I could go home immediately. Goodness knows I wouldn’t have been allowed to go home if I
asked—
it simply wasn’t done.

I would be cautious, I told myself. Too many girls had been caught play-acting an illness immediately after vacations and holidays. I did not want to risk anyone thinking I was play-acting, too.

Whenever the weather looked threatening, I took the opportunity to stroll the gardens around the school, saying—if anyone warned me that a storm was building—that the gardener told me his bones said otherwise. A lie, of course. Old Jake was always accurate about changing weather, but I quelled any feelings of guilt by reminding myself that this deception was for Mama and my future. A wetting did not work, however; I became soaked to the skin, received a scold from whatever schoolmistress caught me, and was forced to take a hot bath. I emerged from this with a heightened color—of health, not fever.

I progressed from lying to theft. I stole apples from a nearby orchard to eat first thing in the morning. Eating fruit for breakfast, guaranteed Miss Angstead’s cook, would cause the flux and promote influenza. I faithfully ate apples for a month and a half, but all I did was lose some baby fat and feel healthier than I had before. Looking in the mirror at my thick and glowing hair, shining green eyes, and daisy-fresh skin was almost enough to cast me into despair.

This would have been discouraging to a girl of lesser mould, but I was persistent and had the strength of conviction that in the end this would be for the good of all concerned. It came about— indirectly, however—that I owed my eventual appearance of decline to Emily Possett.

Emily was a likable girl who was not so high in the instep as to avoid my company. She was also an inveterate gossip: since she kept company with the “select” group of girls, I would hear of those in the highest circles of the ton. Emily, not having anyone else with whom to discuss these things, often came to me.

I was sitting cross-legged on the bed, reading Plutarch’s
Lives,
and was getting heartily bored of it. I had discovered a separate store of books at Miss Angstead’s when I first became a parlour boarder. It was a large, closet-like room, just down the hall from mine. It was never locked, and curious, I took it upon myself to peek within: primers on Latin, Cicero, Plato, Rousseau, and Wollstonecraft. I convinced myself that no one would notice one or two books missing, if I shuffled some others loosely together to cover the empty spaces.

Emily knocked at my door and came in. Sometimes I found the goings-on of the upper 500 somewhat tiresome, but this time it was a welcome change from the
Lives.

“Oh, Georgia, the most appalling thing!” exclaimed Emily, flinging herself at the bedpost and clutching it with all the fervor of a saint clinging to the cross. She rolled her eyes toward heaven, and I was reminded of a picture I once saw of the ecstasy of St. Agnes. I often thought that if the stage had been a respectable occupation for a lady, Emily would have been a female Kean. Her dramatic good looks and talent for histrionics were going to be wasted on a future society matron.

“Only think!” she breathed. “Lord Hawksley has
poisoned
his wife!”

I patted the bed beside me, and she somehow managed to fall upon it in a remarkably decorous manner. She supported her chin in her hand and gazed at me expectantly.

I lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “No doubt she ate something that disagreed with her,” I said.

Emily seemed somewhat daunted by this but persisted. “Oh, no! It was a definite case of poisoning. Lady Caroline told me so. She said that he only married Lady Hawksley for her money, and had fallen in love with another—some say it is Sophia Penningsley—and thus she was an Impediment to his Desires! Lady Hawksley, I mean.”

“And so poor Lady Hawksley exits this life unmourned,” I said flippantly.

Emily gave me a reproachful look. “Well, I don’t know. Caroline says she also was in love with someone else, so I suppose
he
must mourn her. Not that anyone
should
mourn her, because she isn’t dead.” She considered this for a moment. “Not yet, anyway.”

“I thought you said she was poisoned.”

“She was! Only, she suspected it and called the servants. She is only in a decline now. I suppose they must have given her ipecac to get the poison out,” she said knowledgeably.

“Ipecac?”

“It’s horrid stuff. My youngest brother had to take it once when we found he had the bloody flux. It made him vilely ill and he simply
retched
all over the place.”

“Really, Emily!” I said, nauseated. I had an odd feeling that something was important here, but I was too distracted to hunt down this idea.

“But it got all the poison of the flux out of him. That is why it works. It makes one give up one’s dinner, and the poison, too. Most households have it to take care of the disease, but one can use it for plant poisons, too.”

I shuddered. “No doubt.” I turned the subject, hoping Emily would take the hint. Having got a satisfactory reaction from me, she complied.

She chatted amiably on, and I floated off to other thoughts. She mentioned Sir Jeremy Swift once, and my mind came to attention, but it was merely in reference to his wealth. Apparently he, along with Lord Hawksley, moved in the highest circles. My mind kept insisting there was something important about Lady Hawksley, and groping toward that thought, I came to it—ipecac!

I turned the subject again, enquiring about Emily’s family. She talked cheerfully of her brother’s toothache and her mother’s Interesting Condition. I reflected aloud that it was fortunate her father was a physician and knowledgeable about these things. She agreed.

“I suppose that is how you came to know about the ipecac,” I said casually.

“Yes! Father is always telling me about remedies he uses. He thinks ipecac should always be available in case of need.”