Page 25 of Lady for a Season
Maggie bobbed another curtsey and followed Joseph back to the nursery rooms.
Edward was standing by the window and turned as the door opened, Joseph backing away, leaving them alone. “Did she frighten you off?”
Maggie shook her head. “You asked for me to be by your side while you find a wife,” she said, “and I will be. I will do whatever will help you find happiness.”
“Is that what marriage will do?” he asked in a low voice. “Make me happy? Make me well?”
“I don’t know,” said Maggie. “But it might. If you had a good wife by your side… someone you… love.”
He gave a small unhappy laugh. “I am not sure that is how thetonviews marriages. It is a cattle market. Best breeding and most money wins the auction.”
“Theton? What is that?”
He threw himself down into an armchair, legs under him, shoulders hunched, his old posture. “The rich and powerful. The finest society. The people with whom we shall be forced to spend our days in order to secure a wife my mother and the rest of society deems appropriate to be a duchess. You’ll see when the social season begins.”
“The social season?” All these new words, new meanings, things she had never heard of, which tripped so easily off Edward’s tongue. A world of which she had known nothing at all.
“It is when thetongoes to London and sets up its marriage market. Young ladies are presented at court, available for sale to the highest bidder. Endless balls, picnics, walks, dinners, luncheons, social calls, house parties at estates like this one, until at last everyone is sick of one another and returns to their homes to wait out the summer months and go hunting, before starting all over again.”
“Not in the summer?” asked Maggie, trying to imagine what he was describing.
“It begins in the autumn, September to November, that is the Little Season. Then home for foxhunting and Christmas. The season proper begins again from January, although the greatest crowds form in March, since there is better weather for picnics and pleasure gardens. By July it is done, the marriage bargains have been struck or one is left on the shelf for another year and considered a failure if you are a woman, or a promising rake ifyou are a man.” He sighed. “It is supposed to be the time when the gentlemen sit in Parliament, which follows those timings, so their families accompany them to London. That is how it started, I suppose, but it has now turned into a marriage mart. That is what I will be facing to find a bride. I am not sure there will be room for finding love.”
Maggie nodded. What could she say by way of comfort? The picture he had painted was bleak. “At least you will be out in the world,” she tried.
“At least I will have you by my side,” he replied. “You will keep me safe, Maggie.”
“I will do my best. You forget that I must pretend to be a lady. I am not sure I will succeed.”
“Then we will both be pretending. I to be sane, you to be a lady. We will have to help one another.”
She held out her hand. “It is a bargain,” she said, trying to make him laugh, but he took her hand in his and shook it, eyes serious.
“A bargain,” he repeated.
Food was brought by Joseph at noon, a large tray containing soft white bread, good butter, thickly sliced ham with a salad of fresh leaves, as well as baked apples served with cream. With it came a teapot and cups, as well as fresh cold water.
“Your cook is very generous,” observed Maggie.
Edward tilted his head at Joseph. “Is Mrs Barton still the cook?” he asked Joseph.
“She is, Your Grace.”
“Will you ask her to send up her seedcake tomorrow? And her bread pudding.”
“Are those delicacies from your childhood?” asked Maggie. It was the first time she had seen Edward respond with enthusiasm to something from his past.
“She was very kind,” said Edward. How often he had escaped his father’s rages or his mother’s icy silence by creeping down the back stairs to the servants’ dining hall and the great kitchen, where Mrs Barton would stand him on a chair and allow him to stir her seedcake mix, or let him layer slices of bread in a dish, ready to pour a custard mix over it, foods which would later be served in the nursery for dinner.
“Her Grace has asked that you both join her in the drawing room after you have eaten,” said Joseph.
The warm apples and cream went dry in Maggie’s mouth and it was hard to swallow, but she tried to smile and nod as though this were a delightful summons, mindful that she must not let Edward’s fears rise up. He had already put down the dish from which he was eating, his appetite gone as quickly as hers.
The drawing room, grand and spacious as it undoubtedly was, made Maggie feel as though she could not breathe. She sat stiffly by Edward, facing the Duchess, Joseph and the maid. Joseph was better dressed than Edward, who sat barefoot and hunched in his working man’s clothes, wretchedly uncomfortable beneath his mother’s cold gaze.
“What did you say your name was again?”
“Maggie Stone.”
