Chapter 17
Her tea finished and her position in the Elliot family secure, Lucy set off on foot with her sister towards Halstead town. As a market town, it usually held something of interest for bright young women like the Elliot sisters.
‘It occurs to me, Lucy, that if you were to move to a room on the other side of the house, the moon would not trouble you nearly so much.’
‘A sensible suggestion. However, the change would trouble me enormously. I have had my room as long as I can remember and I am well settled there. Any benefit to avoiding the moonlight would certainly be outweighed by the downside of this disturbance.’
‘I had not considered that. You are certainly a creature of habit. A place for everything and everything in its place. I cannot help but wonder if the greatest adaptation you might have in being married might lie not in your companion, but in relocation to a new abode.’
‘And that is an aspect I shall admit I have not considered.’ Lucy frowned.
‘It is, I think, a most difficult balance to determine between what is correct and what is merely familiar. I believe one should forgive any quirks of architecture, as they can only be blamed on the occupants of the time. There is little to be gained in holding grudges against the draftsmen of previous centuries. Objectively then it should be the case that a building should not be a consideration in respect to matrimony.’
‘Only to the extent of practical concerns,’ said Margaret. ‘I am fortunate that the current taste is for high ceilings. I dare say I should not endure long in a home with low beams.’
‘That would entail a marriage to a short man of limited means. I should imagine such a match to be quite impractical.’
‘How so? We have known several tall men to marry short women.’
‘But a tall man may lift a short woman to kiss her.’
‘I dare say I should be quite able to lift a small man.’
‘Now that would certainly be inappropriate in company.’
‘It need not be done in company.’
‘And now we are veering into a topic I shall speak no further on.’ Lucy flushed, though she blamed it more on the sun than the topic. It was a warm spring day, and while much of the path was shaded, there were patches where their hats were welcome protection from the glaring midday sun.
‘Mother seemed focused on marriage options again this morning,’ Margaret mused.
‘It is to be expected. We are certainly well into marriageable age and the absence of any firm offers of courtship must be of concern to our parents.’
‘Not a total absence. There was Master Krippingworth.’
‘Oh, dear. That was something of a fiasco,’ Lucy sighed.
The Krippingworth family had spent a summer in the district some years prior, both parents social and confident creatures, and their son and daughter quite the opposite.
Perhaps having been unable to grow in the shadow of their elders, they were perfectly affable but without much direction of their own.
Lucy had at first been very pleased with Ben Krippingworth.
He was a slightly plain fellow, but had a pleasant smile and a fine form at dancing.
Their first conversation had been an engaging one, and Lucy felt an amiable similarity with the young man as they broached topics of interest. Over the following weeks, however, the charm began to wear off.
Lucy, sharp as she was, came to identify familiar patterns in their conversations.
He was well read and eloquent in any discussion, but never initiated a topic of his own accord.
No matter the subject, he seemed to agree with her.
She discovered, for example, that he knew a great deal about the history of roads in Britain, yet for all his knowledge he seemed to have no opinion about them.
‘Had I wished,’ Lucy pondered aloud as they walked, ‘I dare say I could have shaped him into precisely the man I imagined. But in the end I would have been a wife with an idea of a husband and little more.’
Lucy had begun to discourage his attentions, and any potential future melted away without obvious discomfort for either party.
In the end he married Olivia Coleridge, a kind-hearted but somewhat empty-headed heiress who bred roses.
By all accounts it was a very happy marriage.
On occasion Lucy imagined the couple sitting by the fireplace in contented silence, external and internal.
Lost in thought and conversation as they were, the Elliot sisters failed to consider what section of path they were on – one that veered closely to the farm owned by Mr and Mrs Birkenshire.
They were a wonderfully friendly couple with several children of equally pleasant disposition.
That the animals they kept were of a polar opposite nature perplexed the higher classes of the district.
Their chickens would go broody in local hedges, their horses were obstinate, their sheep were as ornery as goats, and their goats were even worse.
It was one such billy goat that the Elliot sisters now found blocking their way. It appeared to have staked a claim to a section of path where a narrow bridge crossed a stream.
‘Go on. Shoo!’ said Lucy, with a tone that might have struck aside any spring assembly dancer, but had little effect on the irritated farm animal. If anything, her words seemed to make it more determined, stomping the ground fiercely and letting out a threatening bleat.
Bleats, Lucy thought, should not be threatening.
‘This reminds me,’ Margaret said, ‘of that story Mother told us when we were little. With the goats and the bridge.’
‘This is quite different, Margaret,’ Lucy replied as she walked left and right, the goat tracking her in defence of his domain. ‘It was the goats who wanted to pass and a troll who wanted to eat them. And, frankly’ – she glared at the animal – ‘I shouldn’t mind if a troll ate you.’
As if offended by the comparison, the goat aggressively edged towards Lucy.
Margaret, though amused, had the protective instinct of an older sister and the determination to follow through when required.
Lucy was so confident a personality that such protection was seldom needed, but a farmyard-animal attack matched the criteria.
Margaret strode forward with a smooth swiftness and firmly took hold of the creature’s horns.
Shocked and defensive, he immediately tried to twist away and kick, but his stubborn nature was matched by the grip of Margaret Elliot.
She pushed the goat down, dropping to her knees on the grassy path, overpowering the animal with all the considerable strength she could muster.
To Lucy’s amazement the stunned beast seemed to give up the fight entirely.
‘I am going to release you now,’ Margaret stated in a gentle yet forceful tone. ‘And if you trouble us again, I shall throw you in the stream.’
Whether or not she was able to make good on her threat was not to be tested, the animal trotting meekly back to the safety of Birkenshire Farm.
‘That … that was utterly unmannerly, Margaret!’ Lucy exclaimed.
Margaret huffed. Her dress was scuffed with dirt and grass stains and her shoulders and part of her back had torn through as she exerted herself.
She was unharmed but flushed, with her hair considerably more disordered than it had been.
In addition, a faint but unmistakable scent of goat clung to her.
She was, as their mother might have phrased it, in quite a state.
‘Whatever should we have said if someone had come along?’
‘There is nothing to be done about it now, Lucy. Perhaps it will be an excuse for dress shopping.’
‘Surely you do not intend to continue to town?’
‘I most certainly do. I just wrestled a pugnacious goat for that exact purpose.’
‘You are utterly dishevelled. It would be quite inappropriate. It was quite inappropriate to lay hands on the creature at all.’
‘Sometimes there are things that must be done, Lucy!’ her sister snapped back.
‘Whatever rule or decorum you might cite, there are times when help will not come and you must take affairs in hand, sometimes literally. If it is poor manners to defend my sister from injury then I should be the rudest woman in England.’
Lucy paused as her next admonition evaporated into the warm spring air, and she felt the sudden urge to giggle. The quirk of her lips set Meg off too, and soon the quiet path was replete with laughter.
Gathering herself, Lucy slipped her shawl from her shoulders and passed it to her sister. It matched neither the colour nor style of Meg’s dress but it did a passable job of concealing the rips in her seams.
The remainder of their walk was mercifully uneventful.