Chapter 1
But while Louisa maintained and frequently revised her list of the rich bachelors of the realm, she rarely thought of the almost mythical Lord Wrenworth.
He was an abstract concept, too lofty and perfect to figure into the calculations of a pragmatic girl under no illusion that she was good enough for The Ideal Gentleman.
To begin with, the Cantwells were poor. Louisa, her four sisters, and her mother subsisted on an annuity that had been settled on Mrs. Cantwell long ago. Once Mrs. Cantwell drew her last breath, the Cantwell girls would have little more than the clothes on their backs.
In addition, the family was somewhat scandalous, due to the late Mr. Cantwell having once been a fortune hunter.
He was not particularly evil: When he realized that his pretty new wife was nowhere near as wealthy as he had thought, he shrugged and made peace with his failure.
But Mrs. Cantwell was not received by her family and old friends as long as her husband lived.
And while her daughters were respectable, their respectability was as threadbare as some of Louisa’s petticoats.
And even if a prospective bridegroom could overlook both Louisa’s empty purse and her dubious parentage, he must still deal with the fact that she was something of a bumpkin.
She could not paint, play the pianoforte, or speak a foreign language.
She had only the faintest grasp of art, history, and literature.
And of her penmanship, the less said the better.
Her lack of fortune, pedigree, and accomplishments did not particularly bother Louisa. She was, however, greatly frustrated by the fact that for someone who needed to marry a great deal of money, she was not a singular beauty—as great a handicap as setting out on safari without a working firearm.
Her two elder sisters were both exquisite, but Frederica had not left her room since becoming mildly pockmarked after a bout of smallpox, and Cecilia was determined to kiss only her best friend, Miss Emily Milton.
Of her two younger sisters, Julia was of completely the wrong temperament for the wooing of gentlemen, and Matilda, dear, dear Matilda, was an epileptic and therefore out of the question.
All the other Cantwell sisters were able-bodied, capable of working as governesses or ladies’ companions to support themselves—even Frederica, Louisa was sure, would abandon her reclusive ways if she were actually starving.
But Matilda must be looked after at all times.
She needed a man of means. Since Matilda could not handle the rigors of a London Season herself, Louisa had to be the one to try.
On the day Louisa realized this, when she was sixteen, she walked three miles from her house so she could despair without anyone seeing her. She gave herself one hour. Then she returned home, opened her notebook, and turned to the last page.
Everything I want.
A small cottage
Books, as many as said cottage can hold
A good telescope
Messier’s Catalogue
A tutor in higher mathematics
When it had seemed that both Frederica and Cecilia might make brilliant matches, Louisa had dreamed of being a happily independent spinster. But dreams were for girls who could afford them—and she was no longer one of them. She crossed out the list and started a new one.
Everything I need to win a man with five thousand pounds a year.
* * *
Louisa would have liked to win that rich man when she was nineteen—Lady Balfour, Mrs. Cantwell’s cousin, had promised to sponsor one of Mrs. Cantwell’s daughters to a Season.
But first Lady Balfour had to marry her own daughters; then she had to refrain from going out in public during her mourning period for Sir Augustus, her husband.
When Louisa finally arrived in London, in the spring of 1888, this was how the list looked.
Everything I need to win a man with five seven thousand pounds a year.
(Being impecunious herself, Louisa had quite underestimated the kind of expenses a man with a large income would have, as well as the number of relations who depended on his largesse.)
Bust improvers
Recipes for shiny hair, bright teeth, and soft skin
An understanding of fashion, fabrics, and the styles and cuts of garments that best flatter figure
Familiarity with French, as commonly seen on menus
The ability to dance passably well
Deftness at flattering a gentleman
Deftness at flattering said gentleman’s mother and sisters
The understanding that no matter how much interest a man professes in a young lady, he is still more interested in himself
The understanding that if a young lady is seen to be having a good time, she is much less likely to be thought of as scheming
A coherent strategy before the beginning of the Season and tactics in place before each engagement. Time is limited. Preparation is critical.
The understanding that—God help me—I must not fail
* * *
By the time Louisa walked down the grand staircase at her first ball, she was twenty-four, well past the first bloom of youth.
But all her extra years of practice—she didn’t simply make a list and consider her task done—had paid off and London was quite taken with her.
Or rather, with the Miss Cantwell she presented to Society.
She was warm but not overfamiliar, sweet but not cloying, and appreciative of her moment in the sun without the least whiff of graspingness or, worse, desperation.
Best of all, Miss Cant well, it was generally agreed, was a beauty.
For a beauty, one hauled out a different set of adjectives.
Her neck was praised as sylphish or swanlike.
Her eyes, hitherto simply blue, were now either azure or aquamarine, and sometimes nothing less than cerulean.
And apparently no one in London had ever heard of that decent, hardworking word brown.
Her admirers insisted her hair was mahogany, chestnut, or any other arboreal hues that struck their fancy.
A few, bent on ever more poetic rubbish, called it Titian or coppery, preferring to give emphasis to the flecks of reddish gold embedded therein.
All this linguistic extravagance sometimes made Louisa laugh at night, under her blanket.
And it sometimes made her quake—for surely the illusion couldn’t last the entire Season.
Soon people would realize that her hair was glossy only because of all the mayonnaise she’d put in it over the years, that her trademark closemouthed smile was to hide several crooked teeth, and that, of course, the bodices of her dresses would look awfully concave if it weren’t for the artful and stalwart bust improvers in her wardrobe.
But all in all, things were going very well for this early in the Season.
Gentlemen flocked to her, as attentive and eligible a group as she had hoped for in her most ambitious dreams. Perhaps too much so: Among them were a number who paid court to popular girls by habit; a few were in her vicinity simply because it was where their friends gathered.
This crowding of the field worried her, as the two gentlemen she most wished to encourage were not forward enough to compete with the more exuberant swains who did not interest her, and she dared not be any more obvious in her encouragement when surrounded thus.
Viscount Firth and Mr. William Pitt, the latter heir to Baron Sunderley, were her choices.
Both were prosperous, kind, solid country gentlemen.
Both were earnestly looking to settle down.
Lord Firth was in his midthirties, more rugged than handsome, but not displeasing to view.
He was, by all accounts, an excellent fellow, if rather straitlaced in his views.
But he seemed to be of the nature to be open to a woman’s persuasion, provided he believed that the woman essentially agreed with him.
Mr. Pitt, bespectacled and a bit rotund, was an even greater favorite with Louisa. In him she sensed a much more malleable nature. His income would be less than Lord Firth’s. But in the end, what mattered most was not the gross amount, but the percentage she could command.
Mr. Pitt would make a supremely acceptable spouse, Louisa was certain.
Unfortunately, he happened to be a most awkward suitor.
He didn’t dance, lacked a commanding presence, and was minimally accomplished at the art of small talk, which relegated him to the periphery of her circle, a place he uncomfortably yet obdurately occupied.
Her heart rather went out to him. There was much she could do to help him better negotiate a crowd, if she were his wife.
Or, once they married, they could settle in the country and he wouldn’t have to socialize at all, if he didn’t wish to.
But before any of those ameliorations could take place, she must become his wife.
So toward that noble goal, she redoubled her effort on the night of Lady Savarin’s ball. “Will we have a wet summer? What do you think, gentlemen?” she asked as thunder boomed audibly in the distance.
“That won’t be fair,” a young fop protested. “Rain, if it must come, might as well come in winter, when it’s miserable anyway. The English summer is short enough as it is.”
“Right-ho,” his friend seconded. “A crying shame.”
“What do you think, Mr. Pitt?” Louisa reached out to her quarry. “I understand that you take a keen interest in meteorology. Have you observed any signs of soggy months to come?”
Mr. Pitt cleared his throat with flustered happiness. “As a matter of fact, I have. I have been going over some records. The current atmospheric conditions, I believe, combined with…”
“What is this? A session at the Royal Society? Did I stumble upon the wrong gathering? But lo and behold, Miss Cantwell, it is you. Why do you let fellows bore you with such trivia? Who gives a tuppence for atmospheric conditions?”