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Married Past Redemption

St. Martin's Press

The front steps of the house on Portland Place were of marble and, whatever the vagaries of London's weather, were kept immaculate. The front door, very tall and topped by a pediment, was flanked by stained-glass windows and boasted a brass doorknob so highly polished it seemed to puff itself out with its own consequence and sneer at any hand presuming to encircle it. The windows sparkled, the lace curtains were like snow, the iron railings protecting the steps leading down to the areaway were black and glossy, and the entire exterior exuded quiet and well-mannered affluence. So, to a point, did the interior. The ground floor rooms were gracious and the main drawing room, located on the first floor, was large and most elegant. Nor could any fault be found with the music room and three guest bedrooms, all most nicely appointed. Only the parlour, wherein family gatherings took place, showed signs of becoming shabby, although it was still a quite comfortable room.

Deterioration was more noticeable on the second floor. The bedchambers and connecting private parlour of Mr. Humphrey Van Lindsay and his wife Philippa overlooked the street and were a very good size, but more than a suspicion of wear was manifested in fading bedcurtains and carpets inclining to the threadbare. Here also were the three bedrooms of the children. As thirteen years divided the sons of the house, Timothy had shared the bedchamber only on the occasions when he came down from University. These past five years he had been building himself a fine record with his Regiment and was now in France with the Army of Occupation. Norman, aged sixteen, was thus left in sole possession of the room, a circumstance he extolled publicly and privately despised. From early childhood the eldest Van Lindsay daughter had required a private bedchamber (this demand resulting in a marked lack of opposition from her two sisters), but three years ago, in June of 1813, Beatrice had married Sir William Dwyer, whereby Lisette and Judith now also had rooms to themselves. In marked contrast to the elegance of the lower regions, however, these bedchambers were far from luxurious, the furniture being sadly past the stage at which reupholstering or repairs would have redeemed it, the carpets downright tattered, and the apartments spared from being dismal only by the inventive young minds of their occupants.

The top floor contained the schoolroom and the servants' quarters and was, to judge from the occasional pithy remarks of the housekeeper and cook, decidedly dismal.

On a rainy afternoon in early April, the large house was unusually quiet. Mr. Van Lindsay was in his study writing a speech to be delivered in the House of Commons, of which august body he was a Member of long standing; Mrs. Van Lindsay was laid down upon her bed, resting; Judith was at her dancing lesson, and a sulky Norman was exasperating his tutor by attempting to explain both his execrable failures in Latin and his conviction that not even when he reached the ripe old age of eighteen would he be able to pass Smalls. In the rear corner bedroom, Lisette Van Lindsay sat alone, head bowed as she ostensibly mended a lace tablecloth. Thick hair of a very dark brown, styled in one of the new shorter cuts, accentuated the beautiful shape of her head, which remained down-bent until a gust of wind drove raindrops in a busy pattering at the windowpanes. Lisette looked up then, revealing a heart-shaped face blessed with a clear, creamy complexion, a straight nose with just the suggestion of an upward tilt, and a full-lipped mouth, just now tragically drooping above a firm little chin. The grey skies outside were no greyer than the hue of Miss Van Lindsay's world; the raindrops no damper than the tears that fell with distressing frequency from great eyes, near-black, to wet her rather uneven stitches. At the advanced age of one and twenty her future stretched out bleak and hopeless; a spinster's existence. For she would, she thought grievously, never wed. Not now that she had been spurned, tossed aside like —

"Lisette! Lisette! Are you in there?"

An impatient scratching at the door accompanied that urgent enquiry, and the tablecloth was brought into play to dab hurriedly at the tearful eyes that then blinked down at the stitch to be set. "Come in," Lisette invited rather belatedly as the door burst open.

Judith Van Lindsay, a plump and tomboyish fourteen, exploded into the room, her long pigtails flying. "Only guess who I just saw!" she cried. "Only guess! You'll never guess!"

Bending to examine her stitchery — and conceal her somewhat reddened eyes — Lisette guessed dutifully, "The Duke of Wellington?"

Judith's round face sank. With a regretful sigh she admitted that her hero had not been the one observed, but then, her own dark eyes bright with importance, she divulged, "That dreadful Rachel Strand woman! She was with her brother — or at least Elinor said it was her brother. And I thought she was not so spectacular as everyone says. She's not near as pretty as you, and why that stupid Tristram Leith should have chose her is more than I — or Elinor either — could fathom! Oh, now I have made you prick your finger!"

"No, no," Lisette reassured. And thus provided with an excuse to look strained, as she knew she must, corrected, "The lady is now Mrs. Leith, Judith. Not Rachel Strand."

"And not a lady," Judith said pertly. Her sister's frown caused her to hurry on. "But do you not think her daring to venture into Town with her shocking reputation? I could scarce credit it. And you would never think her a notorious woman, for she is angelically fair —" She broke off to add loyally, "but nowhere near as pretty as you!" In need of sustenance after all this excitement, Judith then bounced onto the bed and produced from her reticule a sticky glob from which she began with great concentration to remove some much wrinkled and not too clean paper.

Such a procedure would normally have ensured her immediate banishment, but watching her ebullient sister unseeingly, Lisette murmured, "So she really is a beauty."

"In a blond way, I suppose." Judith licked her treasure happily and went on, whenever her tongue was not otherwise employed, "She must have all the looks ... in the family, for I heard Mama telling Papa that her sister ... Charity, is a plain little dab of a thing."

Attempting to be objective, Lisette set another stitch and remarked that she'd heard Charity Strand did not enjoy good health. "Have you seen her, also?"

"No. But I saw the brother, and he certainly could not be said to be even slightly handsome. Oh, he's a good pair of shoulders, were they not so bony, and straight legs, but —"

"Judith!"

The bold young miss giggled. "Well, he has. But he is so thin, Lisette! And his face is brown, which makes his eyes look positive weird!" She licked again, then paused, her mood changing as she observed, "Poor soul. I know how he must feel. Look at me. Fat and plain. And this hair!" She gave one thick rope a deprecatory tug, then pulled a face as her fingers adhered to the long strands.

Lisette groaned in exasperation and went to the washstand. Wetting a cloth, she returned and handed it to her sister. "If you would not eat so many sweets, Judith, you'd likely put off some of those extra inches. But it is just puppy fat, after all. I suppose by the time you reach fifteen you will be slim, if only you are a little more careful. Now give me that horrid stuff."

Relinquishing her prize with a martyred sigh, Judith dabbed at her fingers and mourned, "Even if I do manage to become thinner in the next year, I shall never have your looks, dearest. You could have wed any bachelor in London, and you know it, had you not set your cap for —"

"What fustian!" Lisette intervened hastily. "I shall never marry, because I do not wish to be wed." With a prideful tilt of the chin, she added a reinforcing, "I am much too modern to submit to a man's will! And — and as for Leith" — oh, how hard it was to say his name! — "only think what a narrow escape I had, for he must have very little sense of family obligation or pride to wed into so unacceptable a house. Indeed, my heart quite goes out to his poor father for —"

"Not — marry?" gasped Judith, who had been momentarily struck dumb. "But, Lisette, you must marry! Papa told Timothy we are pinning all our hopes on your making a brilliant match. And with your looks. ... Only recall that fellow who kept writing those odes to your eyes." She gave a squeak of laughter. "Remember the one that went: 'Great eyes that glow like dusky pansies ...'?"

"Yes." Lisette sat on the bed and giggled. "And as though that were not bad enough, he finished it with, 'Despair to every hope of man's is!' Dreadful!" Briefly, they both succumbed to mirth. Still smiling, Lisette asked, "How do you know that Papa told Timothy I was the hope of the family? Did Tim tell you?"

"No. It was in a letter Papa was writing. I saw it when I was sent to his study to be punished for putting water in the bottle with Norman's silly model ship."

"Judith!" gasped Lisette, much shocked. "You never did?" Judith's chin set mulishly. "Well, he will never finish it, and it was all droopy on one side at all events!" She brightened to a redeeming notion. "Now he can say it sank!"

"I didn't mean that. You read Papa's letter? That is dishonourable!"

To receive such a scold from the sister she both adored and admired, and to realize the justification for that rebuke, was crushing. Her face reddening, Judith said defiantly, "Well — well, look at what you're doing! Darning that old thing! Mama would be properly in the boughs did she see you."

"I know, but someone must do the mending, and Mrs. Helm is always saying she has not the time because she is so short of maids. Poor Sandy has her hands full, trying to take care of Mama and me. So who else is to do it?"

"There would not be so much to be done if Mama did not persist in using lace tablecloths. Someday she will have to admit we are poor, instead of forever pretending we are better than everyone else."

The criticism was well based, but stifling a sigh, Lisette said, "You must not forget, dear, that we are of a very old house. Mama is proud of being a BayesCopeland. And Papa —"

"Papa is proud of Mama, and tells his cronies that 'Poor Norman' could not go to Eton because he is too frail. Frail! The great monster is sturdy as any bull, and had we the ready, would have been —" She broke off with a guilty start as the door opened to admit her mother's regal figure.

Mrs. Van Lindsay swept into the room with a shushing of silks and a breath of expensive perfume. In her youth, Philippa Van Lindsay had been a great beauty. At seven and forty, she was still a handsome woman. She had long ago determined she would never allow herself to become a fat and indolent matron, with the result that she was, if anything, rather too angular, but she had a clear skin, the luxuriant dark hair that marked all her children, and the same big, dark eyes that enhanced Lisette's lovely face. "So you are back, Judith," she observed redundantly. "Did you get your feet wet?"

Judith, who had sprung up respectfully, now replied in the rather scared voice she invariably adopted towards her parent that she was perfectly dry, thank you.

"Well, I must say your lessons seem to become shorter and shorter. I would by far prefer that you go to Madame Coutrain. Your cousin Matthilde moves with such grace, and I am assured it is only thanks to the Coutrain woman, for her mama was of most indifferent upbringing. However, your grandmama would have Alexis is more the thing, so ... Well, that is neither here nor there." She folded her hands, her eyes slightly frowning as she reflected that since her mother was paying for the lessons, there was little she could do about it. That vexed gaze came to rest on the lace tablecloth that Judith's plump form did not quite conceal. Her frown deepening, she demanded, "Lisette, whatever are you about?" and, seizing the tablecloth without waiting for a response, eyed the hanging thread and needle with disapprobation. "How many times have I told you, child? You are not a seamstress!"

Lisette, having also come to her feet, said anxiously, "No, but someone must mend them, Mama, and we do not have a seamstress or anyone who —"

She quailed into silence, for her mother's fine eyes held a formidable flash as they rested upon her. "We may not, just at the present," admitted Mrs. Van Lindsay in a voice of ice, "be enabled to procure such servants as we would wish. We are, nonetheless, of such consequence as would forbid us to engage in menial tasks. If you have no sense of your own pride, Lisette, you might do me the courtesy to consider mine!"

"Y-yours, Mama?"

"Mine! How bitterly humiliated I would be did the servants spread the news that one for whom we had once entertained such brilliant hopes was reduced to spoiling her pretty fingers by hours of drudgery."

Lisette lowered her lashes to conceal the tears that, these days, sprang to her eyes so readily. Judith saw the painful flush that stained her idol's cheeks and, with unprecedented courage, proclaimed, "Lisette still has brilliant hopes, Mama! She may be one and twenty, but she is quite the prettiest girl in all London, and has lots of beaux! You should only see how the gentlemen stare when we walk out. She'll likely find a far better catch than that old Tristram Leith! And who wants him, anyway, with his face all scarred as it is since Waterloo."

For a moment there was an awful silence, Mrs. Van Lindsay regarding her youngest child in outraged disbelief; Lisette, pale and awestruck, gazing at her sister, and Judith, aghast at her own daring, now suddenly all great eyes and terror, so that for the first time her mama was brought to the realization that her youngest was beginning to show signs of the family looks. Slightly mollified by that hopeful thought, she demanded, "Open your mouth at once, Miss Insolence!"

Trembling, Judith obeyed.

Mrs. Van Lindsay peered inside and drew back with an exclamation of disgust. "Purple! Good God! Are you run quite mad? On top of having the temerity to address your mother with all the abandon of a bourgeoisie, you must stuff your stomach with rubbish! Do not ever let me discover you to have been so thoughtless again! If you start throwing out as many spots as a dog has fleas, your poor parents will very likely find themselves with another daughter they cannot fire off, year after year!"

At this dreadful denunciation, Judith burst into tears, and Lisette found it necessary to turn away, a hand pressed to her mouth. Mrs. Van Lindsay advised Judith to repair to her own room at once where she could entertain herself by writing, "I will not Curdle my Insides with Rubbish" two hundred times.

Judith fled, shattered. When the door closed behind her, Mrs. Van Lindsay crossed to put a consoling arm about Lisette's shoulders and draw her down beside her on the bed. Kindness was the one quality well calculated to break the floodgates, and Lisette's grief overflowed. Holding her through the storm and in her dignified fashion attempting to comfort her, Mrs. Van Lindsay at length drew a handkerchief from her pocket and began gently to dry the wet cheeks. "Hush now, child," she said. "I comprehend that your affections were deeply engaged. How wretched of Leith to jilt you! And of all people, for that disgusting Strand woman! Quite insupportable. I wonder if Timothy should come home and call him out."

"Oh, no — no, Mama!" quavered Lisette. "Truly, there was never anything between Colonel Leith and me, save ... save friendship. Only — after Mia Buchanan married Hawkhurst, he seemed to — to turn to me. And I did hope" — A sob hiccuped again, and she could not go on.

"It was a sad disappointment, for I'll own I myself had fancied Leith's attentions fixed on you. Although, whatever he has done, he is very much the gentleman and he never did address your father in the matter, so I suppose — Had he not been recalled to active duty for that wretched Waterloo — Still, there are plenty more eligible bachelors in town, and you are an uncommonly fine-looking girl, you know."

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Excerpted from Married Past Redemption by Patricia Veryan. Copyright © 1983 Patricia Veryan. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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