love between the classes

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Tea with Cordelia

The Duchess of Haverford had formed the habit of holding an afternoon tea early in the Season for the current year’s debutantes. It gave the girls an opportunity to meet one another away from the endless manoeuvring of the marriage mart and out from under the thumbs of their mothers and chaperones, who were having tea in another room down the hall.

It also allowed Eleanor, the duchess, to discover likely protégés and possible problems. Every year-group of debutantes had them. The girls who had the potential to join the ranks of the ladies whose work for diverse charities contributed so much to the wellbeing of the country their husbands governed. The girls whose sole focus was themselves, and who would tear others down in order to promote their own interests.

Eleanor circled the room, attempted to speak to each girl in turn. “Let me see,” she said to the latest, a very pretty young little lady with light brown curls. “You are Miss Cordelia Milton, are you not.”

The lady lifted her chin proudly and somewhat defensively. “I am, Your Grace. I am the daughter of Josiah Milton.”

Eleanor nodded. No shrinking violet this one. “I am acquainted with Mr Milton. We serve on some of the same committees.” Mr Milton was a self-made man, rising from humble beginning to become one of the richest men in the United Kingdom. Miss Milton was his only child.

Miss Milton’s face lit up with a lovely smile. “My father has mentioned you, Your Grace. He has nothing but praise for your influence as a trustee of the orphanages he also supports. Also the asylum for women.”

A safe haven for wayward women, facing the consequences of the lifestyle many had not adopted out of choice. The world they lived in was not kind to women who had children out of wedlock, no matter how they arrived at that unhappy state.

“Do you also have an interest in such causes, Miss Milton?” Eleanor asked.

The girl nodded with another of her delightful smiles. “My father says that we have been blessed with more than our share of riches, and that we ought to share what we can in a way that will do the most good.”

An excellent attitude, and one that was rare among the aristocracy. Mr Milton clearly intended his daughter educated to marry into the upper sort. She certainly had had the education, and was ladylike in appearance and manners. No one would sniff, either, at her dowry or her beauty.

But whether the young men currently on the market could get over the young lady’s working class connections was another matter. Perhaps someone from the gentry would be less likely to look down on Miss Miller for her antecedents.

Eleanor resolved to do what she could to smooth the girl’s path.

***

Cordelia is falls in love with the son and heir of a marquess, and their road to happiness is marred by the snobbishness that Eleanor derides.

 

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Family disapproval in WIP Wednesday

They talked for a few minutes more, and when Spen mentioned that he was showing Cordelia around the house, John asked if he could come.

“I am tired of seeing the same rooms over and over,” he said. “I won’t be able to come down once the guests arrive, even if the marquess is not expected home until later in the week.”

That was a curious thing to say. Did John mean he was not allowed from his rooms? Perhaps the marquess was an overprotective father, but nothing in the little Spen had said about him fitted that conclusion. Indeed, Cordelia had the impression that Lord Deerhaven was harsh and demanding.

Eventually, no doubt, her curiosity about the man would be satisfied. She shivered again at the thought. “He will not be happy about us,” Spen had said. “But what can he do? I shall reach my majority in five months, and if we have to wait, then that’s what we’ll do.”

As they retreated back down the stairs and out into the public rooms of the house, Cordelia put the marquess out of her mind and asked John about his schooling, and what activities he liked best. They arrived back on the floor where she and Spen had started, and turned away from the guest wing to go in through a door and across what looked like a drawing room. “One of the parlours,” Spen said, dismissively. The other side of the room had a long row of doors. Spen opened one near the middle. “These fold back to join the two rooms together,” he explained, as he led the way into yet another drawing room.

John was explaining the relative roles of heavy and light cavalry—it was his ambition to be a dragoon officer. He stopped on the threshhold. “Are you going to show Miss Milton the picture gallery, Spen?” he asked.

“I thought we’d start there,” Spenhurst said. “I wanted to show her the portrait of Mama.”

The enthusiasm had drained from John’s eyes.

“Wait for us here,” Spen suggested, but John braced his shoulders and followed them through the door.

This room had two doors on the opposite wall, and Spen opened the one on the left. It led to a long gallery, with statues between narrow windows on one side, and portraits all the way along the wall on the other.

It was very like the room in Cordelia’s dream and to her eyes, the unsmiling people in the paintings looked as unhappy with her presence as she anticipated. Do not be foolish, she scolded herself. You are an invited guest. Lady Deerhaven was welcoming and John is a delight.

John was eyeing the portraits with less enthusiasm than Cordelia felt—even with apprehension. If Spen noticed, he showed no sign of it. He led them two thirds of the way along the room, and stopped before a little portrait that was squeezed between two large ones. “Mama,” he said.

The countess had a kind face, Cordelia decided. She was portrayed seated on a stone bench, with a garden behind her, and a boy leaning against her knee. Cordelia didn’t need to ask whether he was Spen or John. Cordelia knew the shape and colour of the lady’s eyes, because she looked into their likeness whenever she was with Spen and dreamt of them when she and Spen were apart.

The little boy was dressed as a gentleman of the previous century, in breeches almost the colour of his eyes, and a matching coat over a pale brown waistcoat. His shirt had a wide lace trimmed collar, with a narrow dark blue ribbon around the v-shaped neckline under the collar and tied in a bow at the bottom.

“How old were you when this was painted?” she asked him.

“Six,” he said. “Perhaps six and a half.”

Cordelia moved closer, putting a hand on the frame as she examined the painting. “She died when you were ten,” she commented, remembering what he had said. She looked away from the painting in time to see a frown exchanged between John and Spen.

“We lost her when I was ten and John was three,” Spen confirmed.

A panel in the wall a few yards away swung open, and a woman in a maid’s gown, cap and apron poked her head out. “Master John!” she said in a loud whisper. “His lordship is coming. Quickly!”

Spen tensed and cast a glance down the gallery towards the door in the far end. “The marquess is home?” he questioned. The maid nodded.

John was already at the panel door. He stopped to look back at Spen. “Do you want me to stay?”

“No,” Spen said. “Get back to your room before he sees you. I’ll come once we’ve seen him and let you know what happened.”

John climbed through the panel and it closed. “Do not be afraid, Cordelia,” Spen said. “He will probably shout, but I will not let him hurt you.”

Cordelia’s alarm was climbing. “Spen?” Her questions were tumbling over themselves, jamming up in her brain. Why did the maid come to fetch John? Would he be in trouble for being out of his chambers? Certainly, he had looked frightened, and then as determined as a knight errant when he offered to stay.

Why did John think she might be afraid. Why would the marquess shout? Would he try to hurt Cordelia, a guest in his house? Did he know she was his guest? How could Spen stop his own father if the man was intent on violence?

She lifted her chin. Did Spen think she was a frail damsel who fainted at a harsh word? She wasn’t.

At that moment, the door at the far end of the gallery was flung open so violently that it crashed against the wall and a bulky shape loomed in the doorway.

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Tea with Lalamani and Philip

Haverford House was built to impress, every room at more than human scale, every surface glittering with evidence of wealth and power. As Lalamani and Philip followed the butler up staircases and down halls, the ducal ancestors frowned down from painted and sculpted portraits, and even the occasional landscape appeared to disapprove of the intruder who had infiltrated these august surroundings.

Lalamani clung tighter to Philip’s arm, and resisted the urge to inform a particularly contemptuous portrait of some duke’s favourite horse that she had been invited.

At long last, the butler opened a door to a comfortable sitting room, still built on the grand scale but somehow transformed by the placement and choice of furnishings into a welcoming place that was a fit setting for the lady who awaited them.

“Lord and Lady Calne, Your Grace,” the butler announced.

Lalamani had been presented to the Duchess of Haverford once, at one of her balls — the same ball at which Lalamani had met the Earl of Calne. Three minutes in a receiving line, with a long queue of people waiting behind, but in those few moments, Her Grace had given Lalamani her complete attention and made the rank outsider, the merchant’s daughter, feel welcome.

And now the duchess’s smile of welcome was repairing the wounds to Lalamani’s self-respect inflicted by the house. “My dears, do come and take a seat. How did you find the walk through this dreadful house? Such a long way, and so much clutter. Tea, Lady Calne?”

She spooned leaves from a small tea chest into a waiting tea pot and handed it to the hovering maid to be filled from an urn.

“Thank you.” Lalamani settled herself on a small sofa, sweeping her skirts to one side so that Philip could sit comfortingly close. Though he had grown in this world no more than she, still he was born to it and had spent more time there, besides.

The duchess beamed. “I was delighted when my friend, Lord Henry Redepenning, mentioned that you and your husband first met at one of my balls, Lady Calne. Lord Henry will tell you that I like nothing better than a love match, and if I did not have a hand in this one, I am at least pleased to have provided the venue for its inception.”

“It is a love match,” Philip assured her, gravely, and she smiled.

“Yes, and it annoys you, I think, that Society is calling you a fortune hunter and your lady a social climber. It would annoy me, too, even were it true. And I can see for myself, now that I see you together, that the two of you are deeply in love, as Lord Henry assured me.”

The great lady’s frankness steadied Lalamani. It seemed the duchess had a mind to support them. What could she do, though? Lalamani repeated the wisdom of her Aunt Hannah. “Nothing can be done about gossip and scandal, except to live it down.”

Her Grace laughed. “I would not say ‘nothing’, my dear. Milk and sugar?” She added a little of both to the cup the maid handed her, then gestured for it to be brought to Lalamani.

“I am not without resources to replace one set of stories with another, Lady Calne. I invited you here to discuss what gossip about your courtship you would find most pleasing. The discovery of the hidden Calne treasure? The rescue of a beleaguered widow? A true romance that seemed fated to be unfulfilled, because of the poverty of the hero and the class of the heroine? You shall decide, and I shall make sure that Society takes you into their hearts.”

Lord Calne’s Christmas Ruby is a Christmas novella, released last month. Follow the link for blurb and buy links.