Daphne had to admire her mother’s adroitness in leaving the impression, without going so far as to lie about it, that these menial tasks would fall to persons other than themselves. Sir Valerian said all that was proper and took his leave, promising to see them again on the following night, when he would hold the first of his meetings.
The door had no sooner closed behind him than her mother fell into raptures. “Oh, my dear! A baronet! Perhaps even a Member of Parliament! If only he should take a fancy to you, we could all be comfortable again! It would be just the sort of match you might have made if your dear papa had not died! You would be Lady Wadsworth, you know, and have a grand house in London where you should live during the Season, and whenever Parliament was in session—”
“Mama, pray hold your transports!” Daphne protested, laughing. “The man has only just laid eyes on me—never mind the fact that he has not yet secured his seat in the Commons.”
“I’m sure he could not fail to do so—such an air! Such address! Yes, I know you think I am very silly,” she chided her irreverent daughter, “but you cannot know how I have feared for your future, my dearest girl.”
In fact, Daphne had a very good idea, for she often experienced those same fears herself. Three years ago, she had been seventeen years old, and preparing to go to London for her first Season, where she had every expectation of making a good match. Her birth, though not aristocratic, was certainly genteel, and her dowry was respectable. As for her physical attributes, she was much admired in Lancashire, and it was unlikely that gentlemen in London would be less appreciative of glossy brown curls, speaking brown eyes, and a trim figure than were their Lancastrian counterparts. She was intelligent, without being a bluestocking; in fact, she was a poetess of some note, having even known the satisfaction of seeing several of these pieces published in various journals, from which she had even received a modest payment. Alas, now that she and her mother could have used the extra money, this source of income was closed to her: the poetry in which she had once taken such pleasure had taken a dark turn of late, usually addressing such subjects as the cruelty of fate and the blighting of youthful hopes. Unlike their sunnier predecessors, these had never seen print; in fact, they were no sooner penned than they were consigned to the fire. Quite aside from the fact that no publisher would release upon an unsuspecting public such works as must cast their readers into a fit of the dismals, Daphne had no desire for them to bring pain to her mother.
For with the death of Mr. Drinkard, a tragedy of another sort (albeit not unrelated to the first) had come upon the household. No sooner had he been laid to rest than it was brought home to mother and daughter that their situation was dire indeed. The sweet-tempered and somewhat bookish gentleman they had known as husband and father had proven to be nothing more than a façade behind which had hidden a very different man, one whose frequent trips on unnamed “estate business” had, in fact, been sojourns to Newmarket, Royal Ascot, and several lesser temples to horseracing, as well as shorter jaunts to numerous cockpits and prizefights. Mr. Drinkard was, in short, a hardened gambler. This might have been forgiven had he been even moderately successful at this dubious pastime, but he was not. He was an indifferent judge of horseflesh and a worse one of men, staking his ever-shrinking capital on the favorites of his younger days in blithe disregard for the fact that these former pets of the Fancy were now past their prime. Daphne’s dowry was long gone, and most of the assets that had remained to the widow and child of the deceased had been sold to pay his debts. Only the house remained, its conversion to a boarding house (demeaning though it was) being the only thing that had kept it, too, from the auction block.
As for Daphne’s approaching Season, it had never been spoken of again. It would have been impossible to have gone to London in any case, as she and her mother were now in mourning, and by the time they had put off their blacks, it had been made abundantly plain to that young lady, by now eighteen, that there was no money for such an endeavor, and it was unlikely that there ever would be. Orders for ball gowns, riding habits, and opera cloaks had been abruptly canceled, and most of the dresses that had already been delivered from the modiste had been stripped of their ribbons and lace, and the denuded garments dyed black. Only a few had escaped the vat: the two day dresses which she alternated wearing on weekdays (now three years old and beginning to show wear at seams and elbows); one walking dress which she wore to church on Sundays; a simple dinner gown which, according to Mrs. Drinkard, gave the boarding house an air of gentility when Daphne wore it downstairs for the evening meal; and a pink satin ball gown, never worn, still wrapped in its original tissue and tucked away in the attic where—unbeknownst to her mother—Daphne slipped away to visit it occasionally, furtively fanning the tiny ember of hope that, in the teeth of all evidence, refused to be utterly extinguished.
Yes, Daphne had every reason to fear for her future, which seemed to promise nothing but a life of spinsterhood and near-poverty. The husband she was to have found in London was destined to remain undiscovered (and might well have married another by this time, in any case), and her Lancashire beaux had all melted away as soon as her changed circumstances had become public knowledge.
Her mother’s thoughts
