Passage to Love

Chapter One ~ 1818-1

Chapter One ~ 1818“Did you enjoy the ball last night?” the Countess of Harsbourne enquired.

Lady Imilda looked up and replied,

‘“Yes, it was quite amusing, Stepmama, but much the same as all the balls I have been to this week.”

“Did you have a proposal of marriage?” the Countess asked.

Lady Imilda looked at her in surprise.

“A proposal of marriage!” she exclaimed. “I only danced with one young man whom I had met before and, quite frankly, I found him dull.”

The Countess frowned.

“I think you are being rather tiresome, Imilda,” she replied sharply. “After all let’s be frank and say that the sooner you are married the better.”

Lady Imilda’s eyes opened wide in astonishment.

“I cannot think why you should say that. I have no intention of getting married unless I am in love. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with a man who I have no interests in common with.”

The Countess made a sound of irritation and then retorted,

“I have been meaning to speak to you for quite some time now, Imilda. I don’t think you really understand that you are very fortunate to be a debutante with a rich father who is also very important in Society.”

She paused for a moment and then went on positively,

“You are having two balls and in consequence everybody in the Social world invites you to their parties. But that is something that will not continue for ever.”

“I cannot think why not,” Lady Imilda objected, “and for me to rush into a marriage is surely a mistake.”

She was thinking, as she spoke, of two girls who had been her friends at school, although they were older than she was.

Both of them had married when they were still debutantes and had been very unhappy in their marriages.

Imilda had made up her mind long before she had come home from her Young Ladies Academy and Finishing School that she would have to be seriously very much in love before she married anyone.

It never occurred to her that her stepmother would have other ideas.

Now she said a little tentatively,

“Surely you and Papa do not want to get rid of me so quickly?”

“It is not a question of getting rid of you,” the Countess said, “but it is my duty as your stepmother to see that you make an important marriage as soon as possible after you have reached the age of eighteen, which you are now.”

“I am sure that my mother, if she was alive, would not think like that,” Lady Imilda said quietly.

“I am quite certain that she would,” the Countess contradicted her flatly. “I have talked it over with your father, who agrees with me that girls should all marry when they are young if they are to make a good marriage with the approval of both their families.”

“But suppose that I want to marry someone you don’t approve of?” Lady Imilda asked provocatively.

“That question will not arise,” the Countess snapped, “and, if it does, your father will then deal with it.”

Lady Imilda sighed.

She had never cared much for her stepmother and had been desperately unhappy when her mother died.

They were two very different people and she now recognised even more the difference between them.

Her mother had been someone who always found the best in everyone so that for her the world was an enchanting place, almost like the Fairytales that she had read to Imilda.

She had followed these with the stories of the Knights of the Round Table and the poetry of the Troubadours.

After that came the plays of Shakespeare, all of which Imilda found entrancing.

She could hardly believe it when only a year after her mother had died her father married again.

Her stepmother was a very beautiful woman, but, as Imilda’s old Nanny had muttered at the time, ‘beauty is only skin deep’.

The new Countess was practical, energetic and enjoyed organising other people’s lives.

She had managed to make her husband undertake a great number of activities that he had never contemplated before.

This had undoubtedly increased his standing in the Political and Social world.

Imilda now thought with horror that her stepmother intended to manage her too.

She was quite certain that if she was not careful, she would find herself being led down the aisle by some young Peer she hardly knew.

That he had a title, a large estate and was rich would be all that mattered.

She had learned, however, from experience that it was a very great mistake to fight with her stepmother if it could be avoided.

Now she said in a much more conciliatory tone,

“I am sure, Stepmama, you are doing what you think is best for me. But I do beg you to understand that I want to find the man of my dreams, the Prince Charming I have read about in books, before I marry.”

The Countess pressed her lips together.

She made her face, beautiful as it was, somewhat hard and unpleasant.

“I was talking to some of the Dowagers last night,” she said, “and they all agreed that you looked the most attractive and the prettiest girl in the ballroom. Surely one or two of the men who you were dancing with told you so.”

“They did indeed pay me compliments,” Imilda admitted.

“What about Lord Cecil, whose father is a Duke? What did he say to you?”

“He talked only about his horses and obviously has no interest in anything else.”

The Countess frowned.

“And what about Lord Renishan? He is certainly a very good-looking young man.”

“I think from what I can remember of his conversation,” Imilda replied, “he was mostly concerned as to which pack of hounds he would hunt with next winter. In fact, now I recall it, he asked me a great number of questions about the Hunt that Papa belongs to.”

“Well, all I can say,” the Countess admonished, “is that you cannot be trying to attract a young man the way that you should. I had three proposals in my first Season and all of them from gentlemen of distinguished families and I was not as fortunate as you to have an Earl for my father.”

Imilda knew quite well the pleasure it had given her stepmother now to have an Earl for a husband.

She had been married before to a rather dull Baronet who was very much older than she was and when he died of a heart attack, she was still young and beautiful enough to attract men.

There was no doubt that she had picked out the Earl of Harsbourne as the most important man available.

She had made herself seemingly indispensable to him.

Imilda could understand that her father had felt very lonely and rather helpless without his wife.

He had been very glad to find a woman who apparently not only loved him but admired everything that he did. She had also flattered him into making him believe that he could play a more significant part in his world.

It would be unfair to deny that she had been successful in proving this.

It was only, Imilda felt, that she had no wish to have her stepmother interfering in her life as well.

She was not in the least concerned as to whether a young man she was dancing with was blue-blooded and was to inherit a prestigious title.

As her mother had, she liked people for themselves.

If she was honest, she had so far been disappointed in the men she had met at dances.

Granted they were all very young.

The older unmarried men would avoid debutantes and their ambitious mothers like the plague.

They spent their time either with attractive married women or with the alluring Cyprians who were the toast of St. James’s.

Imilda thought secretly that it would be exceedingly difficult to compete with them and she could understand that men found them much more interesting than shy and rather gauche debutantes. They had hardly been allowed to meet any men until they left the schoolroom.

As it happened, Lady Imilda was extremely intelligent.

Her mother had said so often,

“You ought, darling, to have been a boy. It would certainly have pleased Papa to have a second son.”

Imilda’s brother, the Viscount Bourne, was at the moment abroad.

When they were growing up as children together, she had shared his Tutor with him.

When he went to Eton and on to Oxford University, she had deliberately kept up with his studies at both places.

She had insisted on discussing the subjects that he was interested in in the holidays.

Her brother, William, had often said to her,

“You are far cleverer than I am, Imilda. We ought to change places, you the boy and me the girl.”

They had laughed at the idea.

Imilda had, however, enjoyed being proficient in Latin and Greek as well as French in her schooling and she had a greater knowledge of the Classics than William.

She had been disappointed when she was presented at Court and became a debutante that William was not there.

He had been very apologetic because he loved his sister, but, as he had said to her,

“I shall never get a chance like this again, so how can I possibly refuse?”

The chance was a visit to India with the son of a new Governor and the possibility of a great deal of wild-game shooting.

Of course Imilda could well understand why he wanted to go.

Now she wished desperately that William were here with her.

He would be able to think of the right arguments for her to persuade her stepmother that she was not to marry precipitately.

The Countess seemed to be able to read her thought and then said,

“I know you are thinking of William and looking forward to his return to England. But you must be aware that sooner or later William will marry and so his wife will certainly not want you hanging around him as you always do and sharing with him everything he does.”

“I love being with William, Stepmama,” Imilda said. “I find it such fun to discuss things with him and argue over subjects that hardly any young men and no girls will know anything about.”

“Well, I think it is a lot of nonsense,” the Countess asserted. “Let me make it very clear that no sensible man wants a wife who is cleverer than he is and keeps on telling him so.”

She hesitated for a moment before she went on,

“Tonight we will be at another ball at which I hope you will be more successful than you have been at the others.”

She paused a short while before she continued,

“On Friday we are going to the country for the Steeplechase that your father organises every year. I have not yet had a list of the men taking part but I will go and look it over and see if I can persuade your father to include at least one young man who might offer you his heart.”

Then she went from the room leaving Imilda alone.

Imilda jumped up and walked over to the window.

She gazed out at the small garden that lay behind the house that her father owned in Park Street.

She wished that she was in the country.

At least then she could do what she always did when she had a problem, go riding.

There were horses in the Mews on which she and her stepmother rode in Rotten Row in Hyde Park.

But it was not the sort of riding that she enjoyed when she was at Harsbourne House in Hertfordshire.

There she could gallop over her father’s large estate.

She could jump the hedges and the fences that he had erected.

“What am I to do?” she asked herself. “It is an absurd idea of Stepmama’s that I must get married immediately.”

It had never struck her that for a debutante that was considered the crowning glory of her Season in London.

Now she looked back over the plans that had been made for her and she could see how determinedly her stepmother was using her organising powers to get her to the Altar.

‘I shall have to fight this every inch of the way,’ Imilda told herself firmly.

She wished again that William was with her now.

That evening her father joined them before they went upstairs to dress for dinner.