The Magnificent Marriage

Chapter One ~ 1879-2

It was Dorinda who had tried in the past year to make Lefty’s marriage seem something exciting, am event that she must look forward to.

“Think how wonderful it will be to live always in sunshine,” she would say to Letty on a dull day. “Think of what flowers there are in Singapore. I believe you can have a whole garden filled with orchids. And there are lovely birds, Letty, brilliant and colourful. You will love them.”

‘I might have known,’ Dorinda thought now, ‘that Papa would break the news to Letty so tactlessly and upset her.’

“I am not – going away,” Letty was saying. “I am going to stay – here with Dorinda and you – Papa. I love you! I am very – happy. I don’t want to be – married!”

“But Letty, think what glorious clothes you can have,” the Earl coaxed, “and fabulous jewellery. Maximus Kirby will be able to give you far finer diamonds than I have ever been able to buy for Mama and, of course, pearls. There are marvellous pearls in the East and I am told one that can buy them there more cheaply.”

“I don’t like pearls,” Letty pouted.

The Earl looked hopelessly across the table at his wife.

“I think, Hugo, we had better leave Dorinda to talk to Letty about the journey,” the Countess suggested diplomatically.

“I have to send Kirby a cable,” the Earl remarked. “He is expecting Letty to sail on the tenth of January.”

“I am not going!” Letty shouted, getting up suddenly from the table. “I am not going away! I am going to stay here! You don’t love me – you don’t want me – but I am not going to leave – leave whatever you may say!”

She burst into tears as she spoke and ran from the room, looking so lovely and graceful as she did so that her father stared after her with a look of admiration rather than of anger in his eyes.

“You will have to persuade her, Dorinda,” he confided finally.

“Surely Mr. Kirby does not expect Letty to travel to Singapore alone?” the Countess questioned.

“Of course not,” the Earl replied. “He says in his letter he is sure that we will wish a companion to accompany her and that he has asked Lady Anson, wife of the Lieutenant Governor of Penang, who will be travelling on the same ship, to chaperone Letty.”

“A companion?” the Countess exclaimed. “Now who can we possibly find who we know well? A lady whom Letty will like and who is willing to go to Singapore.”

“There must be somebody,” the Earl said with a note of irritation in his voice.

“Of course there must be,” the Countess retorted, “but I cannot imagine who. Is Mr. Kirby also paying the fare for a lady’s maid?”

Again the Earl consulted the letter.

“Yes, indeed, he says that he has sent a Chinese woman well experienced in her job on a ship that has already left. He has apparently made arrangements with the Shipping Line so that she will be on board The Osaka at Tilbury when Letty embarks.”

“I must say he is very considerate,” the Countess said in a mollified tone.

“Well, it would not have been convenient to send one of our own maids and anyway Letty will have to get used to Chinese servants.”

“I believe they are excellent,” the Countess stated with a touch of envy in her voice. “Honest, hard-working and loyal to their employers.”

“Then there is no problem about the lady’s maid,” the Earl remarked. “But what about the companion?

Obviously Letty will have to have someone with her who can keep her in a good mood.”

“I will have to go with her, Papa,” Dorinda suggested quietly.

The Earl seemed startled.

“You, Dorinda? Surely that would be – ”

He paused as if choosing his words.

“ – embarrassing,” his daughter completed the sentence. “Yes, of course it would be, Papa, if I went as myself. But I shall not do that. I shall simply go as Letty’s companion and nobody will know that I am really her sister.”

There was a silence while her parents were digesting the idea until Dorinda added,

“As soon as Letty is safely married I will then return.”

“Alone on a ship?” the Countess exclaimed.

“I will be quite safe, Mama,” Dorinda said with a touch of amusement in her voice.

“Yes, yes, of course,” the Earl agreed in an embarrassed manner. “Equally it is hardly the behaviour anyone would expect from a daughter of mine.”

“No one will know I am your daughter,” Dorinda said. “I will just call myself ‘Miss Somebody-or-Other.’ Any name that sounds quiet and unobtrusive will do. I can keep Letty happy. If I don’t go, I doubt, when she does arrive, if she will marry Mr. Kirby.”

There was a silence as if all three of them at the table were remembering how awkward and difficult Letty could be if it suited her.

Her fear of being married was the result of a very unfortunate incident that had happened two years previously.

Because Letty was so beautiful and because the Earl wished to show her off, he had taken her to a Hunt Ball when she was not quite sixteen.

It was not an unprecedented act because quite a number of the younger members of the Hunt who had not yet made their debuts did attend the Hunt Ball with their parents. In fact several girls of Lettice’s age were to be present.

Wearing a new gown from London with a wreath of white roses in her hair, Lettice outshone every other woman in the room, whatever her age.

The ball had been the usual frolic and unfortunately the Earl enjoyed himself so much with his hunting and racing cronies that he could not be persuaded to leave when his wife suggested it.

In some way that the Countess could never quite account for, Letty had become separated from her and a rather dissolute young sportsman who had imbibed too freely had kissed her.

In his defence it might be said that he found Letty’s vacant stare and the fact that she did not protest at the first overtures he made to her a convincing proof that she was not unwilling.

He did not realise that she was completely unaware of his intention. In fact at first she did not even understand what he was saying.

Then she was so paralysed with fear that she was unable to move or speak.

He kissed her passionately and had only released her when she had fallen at his feet in a dead faint.

The Countess had been sent for to receive a somewhat incoherent apology and had taken home a half-insensible terrified Letty to turn her over to Dorinda’s ministrations.

With any ordinary girl such an episode might easily have been forgotten or become a joke but on Letty it left an ineradicable scar. It made her wince away even from the quietest and most innocuous young man lest he would assault her.

“You cannot be frightened of so-and-so,” Dorinda would say. “He is the most unassuming man.”

“I don’t want to – dance with him,” Letty would reply. “I don’t like men to touch me.”

“But Letty, dear, they are not going to hurt you.”

“They – look at me! They say things – ” Letty would protest.

“They are only telling you how beautiful you are,” Dorinda explained. “You like being beautiful, Letty, you know you do.”

“I like you and Papa to think I am beautiful. But I don’t want men to – look at me.”

“It’s ridiculous, Dorinda!” the Countess had said not once but a dozen times to her elder daughter. “She must have grown out of such childish ideas by now.”

“We will have to give her time, Mama,” Dorinda remarked soothingly.

In her own mind she realised that Letty was not finding it any easier as she grew older to be in the company of gentlemen, in fact rather the opposite.

“Surely,” the Earl asked now with a note of exasperation in his voice, “Letty is not really going to back out of marrying Kirby?”

“You heard what she said, Papa,” Dorinda answered.

“Well, she cannot do it,” the Earl said firmly. “For once I am going to put my foot down. Girls marry whom they are told to marry and there is no argument about it.”

He paused for a moment and added,

“Why, the Duke was saying only last week that he had no nonsense with his daughters and after all he has seven of them. He has married them all off to wealthy Noblemen and I wager he did not have to put up with this sort of flapdoodle!”

“The trouble is, Hugo, you have spoiled Letty ever since she was a child,” the Countess said accusingly.

“Dammit all! How was I to know that she was going to behave in such an abnormal manner?” the Earl asked angrily.

He rose from the table, pushing back his chair almost aggressively.

“God knows,” he stormed, “it’s bad enough not having a son to inherit! But to have two daughters, and both of them peculiar, is more than any man could endure.”

“Really, Hugo,” the Countess expostulated, “how can you speak so unkindly of poor Dorinda?”

The Earl’s eyes glanced for a second towards his elder daughter, but even before he could say anything Dorinda said,

“It’s all right, Papa, I quite understand. You owe Mr. Kirby money, do you not? So Letty must marry him!”

“Hugo!” the Countess cried. “Is this true?”

The Earl walked across to the fireplace where a log fire was burning brightly in the grate.

“Well, as a matter of fact, my dear – ” he began.

“How could you?” the Countess interposed. “To be in his debt before Letty even has the ring on her finger. It is too humiliating.”

“Well, I was short at the time,” the Earl replied, “and, as he had taken six of my best horses, I had to have some money.”

“What happened to the money that he paid you for the horses?” the Countess enquired.

“Need you ask?” the Earl replied bitterly. “The duns were at the gates, curse them, as you would have known if you ever listened to anything I told you. It was either a case of cutting down to bare bones and giving up the house or touching Kirby.”

The Countess pressed her lips together.

Despite her undoubted good looks she always looked cold and austere. Now she appeared almost formidable as she asked harshly,

“How much did you borrow in the confidence that as your son-in-law he would not ask you to return it?”

There was a pregnant silence before the Earl responded,

“If you want to know the truth, ten thousand pounds!”

The Countess gave an exclamation of horror and then without another word she went from the room.

Dorinda looked at her father.

“I am sorry, Papa. Mama should not have said that.”

“There was nothing else I could do, Dorinda,” the Earl replied. “The debts had piled up and Kirby was only too glad to let me have the money in return for the promise that Letty would marry him.”

Dorinda gave a little sigh.

“If she refuses now, Papa, you will have to give it back.”

“But you know as well as I do that I cannot possibly do so. You have seen the accounts. They are no secrets from you.”

“Yes, I know, Papa, and I agree that you could not possibly find ten thousand pounds unless you sold the house and what is left of the family pictures.”

“I doubt if even that would bring in ten thousand pounds,” the Earl remarked despondently.

“I am sure you are right,” Dorinda sighed.

The Earl walked from the fireplace across to the window to stare out at the garden white with snow.

“I thought that once Lettice was married it would be easy to suggest that I buy horses for Kirby to ship to Singapore or anything else that interested him. He is rich enough to be able to afford the little profit I should make on such transactions and it would mean a great deal to me.”

“I know, Papa,” Dorinda replied. “So somehow we have to persuade Letty to marry him. I did not want to say anything in front of Mama, but she has told me over and over again that she would rather die than be touched by a man, whoever he might be.”

“Good God!” the Earl cried. “I ought to have murdered that swine who kissed her!”

“If we are honest with each other,” Dorinda said quietly, “we both know that if it had not been him it would have been someone else. Letty is not like other girls.”

“But she is beautiful, Dorinda. The most beautiful creature one could imagine. Surely she must have some normal feelings? Women want to be loved. They want to be married.”

“Not all women.”

“She will like it when she gets used to the idea,” the Earl said as if trying to convince himself. “All you have to do, Dorinda, is to persuade her that Kirby will be kind and gentle with her and tell Kirby that he has to be.”