Chapter 24
“The Countess of Hargrove has sent a card.”
Her mother held it aloft between two fingers, reverently. She set it on the breakfast table beside two others that had arrived in the morning post.
“We have never received a card from the Countess of Hargrove,” her mother continued. “Not in three Seasons. Not once. And now here it is. Look!”
Louisa reached for the teapot. The sapphire caught the morning light and threw a faint blue spark across the tablecloth. She poured without looking at it.
“Lady Cresswell’s luncheon on Thursday. Mrs. Ansell’s afternoon tea on Saturday.
And the Countess.” Her mother arranged the three cards in a row and studied them as a general might study a map of favourable terrain.
“I shall write acceptances for all three. You will need a new spencer for Thursday. The green one has been seen twice, and Lady Cresswell will most certainly notice.”
“The green one is perfectly serviceable, Mama.”
“Serviceable is not what an engaged woman wears to Lady Cresswell’s table.” Her mother rose from her chair and gathered the cards against her chest. “People will be watching you now, Louisa. You must give them a reason to keep looking.”
She left the room humming. Louisa picked up the nearest card and turned it over.
The Countess’s hand was elegant, the ink still faintly glossy.
Warmest congratulations on your engagement.
We look forward to welcoming you. Three Seasons of invisibility, undone by a sapphire ring and the right man’s surname.
She set the card down with a sigh.
The knocker sounded at half past four that afternoon. Louisa was in the parlor rereading a passage from Guizot’s treatise on rural education when the maid showed Frederick in. She closed the book and slid it beneath a cushion before he reached the doorway.
“Good afternoon.” He crossed to her and bent to kiss her hand. His lips were brief against her glove. “You look well.”
“Thank you. Sit, please. I shall ring for tea.”
He took the good chair, the one her mother had reupholstered in blue damask for exactly this purpose, and settled into it as though the room had been designed around him. He was wearing a new coat, dark green, well cut, and he smelled of starch and bay rum and satisfaction.
“I have been reviewing the household accounts,” he said, before the tea had arrived.
Louisa folded her hands in her lap. “Your household accounts?”
“Ours, soon enough.” He smiled. “My housekeeper is competent but disorganized. I shall want you to take over the management of the household once we are married. I have given the matter considerable thought, and I believe a weekly schedule will serve us best.” He reached into his coat and produced a folded sheet of paper covered in his careful, upright script.
“Mondays for correspondence. Tuesdays for kitchen accounts and menu planning. Wednesdays for linen inventory and staff review.”
He held the paper out to her. She took it and unfolded it across her knee.
Every day of the week was accounted for.
Every meal categorized. Social obligations ranked by importance and annotated in the margin.
A column for household expenditure, another for charitable giving, modest and subject to his approval.
A footnote at the bottom, in smaller script, regarding the appropriate frequency of visits from her family.
“You have allotted my mother one visit per fortnight,” Louisa said, trying to keep the shock from her voice.
“I think that is generous. More frequent visits become intrusive, and your mother, though a dear woman, does tend to linger.”
“She is my mother, Frederick.”
“And she will remain so. At a fortnightly interval.” He said it lightly, dismissively, and reached for the biscuit plate. “I have also outlined the dinner rotation. We shall entertain on alternate Saturdays. Formal dress. Eight courses for guests of consequence, six for ordinary company.”
The maid returned, carrying the tea tray. Louisa watched her set it down, pour, and withdraw, and used every second of the interruption to fold the schedule along its creases.
“Have I offended you?” Frederick asked.
“No. I… It is merely that I was not expecting a schedule.”
“You will grow accustomed to it. Most women find they prefer structure once they see the benefits.”
Louisa set the folded paper on the table between them. “And if I do not prefer it?”
He looked at her, mildly startled, the biscuit halfway to his mouth. “I beg your pardon?”
“If I do not prefer the schedule. What then?”
“I am certain you will.” He bit into the biscuit and brushed crumbs from his waistcoat. “Now. I wished to ask your opinion on the conservatory. Glass panels or sash windows? I have been going back and forth for a week.”
She recognized the gesture for what it was. He had offered her the smallest possible question, one whose answer could not challenge him, and presented it as consultation. Glass or sash. As though the choice of window in a room she had not been asked whether she wanted constituted partnership.
“Glass,” she said at last. It did not matter in the slightest, but he didn’t notice—or care to.
“I was leaning toward glass myself. Excellent. We are in agreement.” He looked genuinely pleased.
Louisa swallowed. Was this how their marriage would proceed?
He would present decisions already made and ask her to confirm them, and he would call the confirmation agreement, and they would both pretend the word meant what it was supposed to mean.
Louisa picked up her teacup and held it without drinking. The porcelain was warm against her palms. “I finished a novel this week,” she muttered, and he looked surprised at the change in subject.
“Did you?” He set down his cup. “Which one?”
“Evelina. I had read it before, years ago, but I found new things in it this time. Burney writes brilliantly about the difficulty of being watched and judged before you have had the chance to speak.”
Frederick nodded. “I have not read it myself. I find novels rather unreliable. They give women peculiar expectations.” He brushed a crumb from his trouser leg.
“Now, regarding the gelding I bought. My stable master insists the animal is sound, but I watched it favor its left foreleg twice during the morning ride, and I told him plainly that I will not tolerate incompetence in my stables.”
She set her cup down and looked down. Frederick’s voice faded to a low hum as he continued talking about the gelding for another ten minutes.
He described its breeding, its temperament, and the specific failures of his stable master so thoroughly that Louisa could have drawn the horse from memory by the time he finished.
He did not return to the novel, or to Burney, or to the subject of being watched and judged.
He did not ask what new things she had found in a book she had read before.
At the front door, he took her hand and held it. “I am glad we understand each other, Louisa. A good marriage requires order. My parents had it, and they were contented for thirty years.”
“Were they happy?”
The question surprised him. She could see his features rearrange, his composure briefly stalling before it recovered.
“They were contented,” he repeated, as though the distinction were irrelevant. “That is the more durable condition. Good evening, my dear.”
She closed the door behind him and leaned against it. The schedule sat on the parlor table where she had left it, folded in thirds, full of answers to questions he had never thought to ask her.
She only saw him again four days later. Frederick collected her in his curricle for a drive through Hyde Park. The weather was warm for June, the park busy, and Frederick handled his greys well, guiding them past a slower barouche near the Serpentine bridge.
Louisa was silent, simply gazing at everything around her. There was no point, she thought, in attempting to speak.
They passed Mrs. Ansell’s landau near the bridge. Mrs. Ansell leaned forward and waved, her face alight. Louisa waved back and held the smile until the carriages drew apart.
“Mrs. Ansell is a gossip,” Frederick said pleasantly. “But a useful one. Her husband controls two borough seats.”
Louisa glanced at him. “Is that why you smiled at her?”
“I smiled because she waved. The borough seats are simply a happy coincidence.” He flicked the reins, and the greys quickened past a slow-moving phaeton.
Near the water, a group of children played on the grass under a nursemaid whose patience had clearly been spent hours ago.
Two boys chased each other in widening circles while a girl sat apart on the bank, absorbed in a picture book.
She held the book close to her face, squinting at the illustrations.
Louisa watched the girl until the curricle carried them past.
“I should like to have a son or two,” he announced as though it were something she could control.
“If there is a daughter, I suppose it would be acceptable. But a son, to be my heir, would be your most important duty.”
She looked up at this, not bothering to hide the frown forming between her brows.
“Duty?”
“Well, of course,” he answered her question. “It is the duty of any wife to bear children. And you do want children. You’d make a capable mother.”
She swallowed, then shook her head. “I would like a daughter,” she said softly, and her gaze drifted to the girl again.
Frederick did not notice. “I have been thinking about the autumn. I should like us to retire to Langley Park directly after the wedding. London is tiresome in September, and I want the household settled before Christmas.”
“I had assumed we might stay in town through October. Eleanor is here until November, and my mother has her annual charity auction in Kensington.”