Chapter Eighteen

Eighteen

Miss Stella Hobhouse

The Vicarage

Fostonbury, Derbyshire

2 February 1863

My dear Miss Hobhouse,

I am grieved to hear of your difficulties. Who is this mysterious suitor? A local man? A man of property? I will not waste ink on telling you what you already know. A lady like you should be admired and celebrated, in London or Paris, or some other vibrant place. You are not meant for a backwoods existence, the wife of a villager or farmer in the middle of nowhere. (No offense to Fostonbury.)

How did I discover the name of it, you ask? It was simple enough. I merely mentioned it to Tom Finchley. He is a man of infinite resources. I had only to state the names of Derbyshire and Hobhouse and he was able to do the rest within the space of a week.

That is the reason my first letter didn’t reach you sooner. Not for lack of interest, or because of any unwillingness on my part to nurture the connection we forged in Hampshire, but because, when I had you before me, I was too caught up in the turn of your countenance to think about asking for postal directions.

Regarding the Finchleys, the answer is yes—I have met Ahmad Malik, on several occasions. I have even met his wife, who I little knew had the honor of being one of your close friends. I do not believe in fate or spiritualism or all that other metaphysical claptrap, but more and more I see the threads of our lives intertwining and connecting us. Can it be more than mere coincidence? I begin to wonder.

In all seriousness, you mentioned selling my portrait. I beg you would hold on to it. If worse comes to worst, I shall buy it back from you myself. In the meanwhile, do consider that I would not expect you to pose for my oil painting for nothing. Artists’ models are compensated for their work. When you come to London, and when you agree to my painting you, I promise that you will be well taken care of.

As for my experiences with Parisienne muses…

I will not say I have not had them. But the frozen starlit evening you are referring to cannot be counted among their number. To me it was a pleasure of a far more precious sort.

Your friend,

Teddy

Mr. Edward Hayes

Greyfriar’s Abbey

King’s Abbott, Devonshire

7 February 1863

Dear Mr. Hayes,

It had not occurred to me that models received compensation. Is it enough for them to live on? And I don’t mean a rented room above a rookery gin shop and a crust of bread for their supper. I mean live—truly live.

A lady in my position has little opportunity to make her own way. Not unless she has a fortune of her own. But to work, to really work, for a living and to be free to do as one wishes does indeed hold a profound allure.

Until now, my brother has had the management of my small inheritance. I do not dare approach him with questions about funding an independent existence. For that, I was obliged to meet with our village solicitor, Mr. Underhill. For a fee, he informed me of what I already know: that in order to afford food, lodgings, and the wages of a companion, I would have to give up the expense of Locket and her groom. It is something I would never do. Which puts me right back where I was when I returned home after Christmas—squarely at my brother’s mercy.

It is not so terrible, not so long as I refrain from speaking and not so long as I submit to accepting Miss Trent and her mother’s instruction and advice. They have so far refashioned all the arrangements of the household to their taste. Miss Trent has even put herself forward as my drawing master. (Her artistic style bears a striking similarity to that of my old governess, Miss Callis.)

My brother is in full accord with the Trents. He must be so. He and Miss Trent are set to marry in March. While they wait, I remain in the box room, which has begun to bear a striking resemblance to the Island of Elba.

You write of when I come to London and when I pose for you. How can you be sure that either will happen? Does your confidence know no bounds? As for me, I know full well that I cannot travel without a chaperone. And I will not leave my horse again. My only hope is that, once married himself, my brother will relent on the subject of taking me—and Locket—to London. We need not remain a week, only long enough to attend the ceremony. Lady Anne and Mr. Hartford have already sent invitations. Their wedding is set for the first day of spring.

If I attend, perhaps I shall see you in town?

11 February 1863

Dear Stella (if I may presume to address you so),

Of course, you will come to town next month, and of course, you will see me there. I shall be in Rotten Row the second day of spring, sitting along the rail, in full anticipation of encountering you on your mare. What do you require to make it happen? A servant to accompany you? Money for railway fare? A groom to escort your horse? Perhaps you ought to sell back my sketch to me after all.

As for your own sketches—never mind a drawing master. Your skill surpasses most I have seen. It will not be hindered by lack of instruction until you can find someone worthy to guide you.

15 February 1863

Dear Teddy (as I shall presume since you so presumed),

I could not take money from you, not even for the return of your portrait. What kind of lady would do so?

19 February 1863

Dearest Stella,

An enterprising lady. A determined lady. In short, you.

26 February 1863

Dear Teddy,

I do not feel very enterprising. Indeed, since your last letter, a certain sense of finality has settled over me. My brother’s wedding is scheduled for the tenth of next month. He has taken rooms in the village in the meanwhile. It would not do for him to stay in the same house as his betrothed while the banns are being called. I wish I might remove to the village as well, but I have been commanded to remain at the vicarage with Miss Trent and her mother, a mere figurehead of a hostess with no actual power over the household any longer.

The Trents are so keen to be rid of me that they have, on two separate occasions, invited my erstwhile suitor, Squire Smalljoy, back to the vicarage for tea. Under their persuasion, he has become convinced that my unfortunate outburst at dinner was due to a temporary bout of ill health brought on by too long a stay in London. He suggests that he might forgive me, given minimal encouragement. Did I mention that he’s the variety of gentleman who takes breathing as encouragement?

4 March 1863

Dearest Stella,

Squire Smalljoy? Are you making that up? Your time in Fostonbury sounds more and more abysmal. Meanwhile, my holiday in Devon continues apace. I have completed two (two!) more seascapes, and am as unsatisfied with the results of them as I was when I started. I require a model for my portraits, and only you will do.

How is the view from Elba?

Please tell me that your miseries have weighed in my favor.

9 March 1863

Dear Teddy,

Is it a misery? There are people in the world who have it far worse than I, certainly. Here on Elba, I at least have food to eat and a roof over my head. Perspective is all. Or so I keep reminding myself.

As I do so, I am practicing being small and quiet. It is not as difficult as you might imagine. I was already quite a good listener to begin with. All that has changed is that, now, all I do is listen.

Two more seascapes? What will you do with them? Are they for keeping or for selling? I should like to see them one day, even if you are dissatisfied with them.

Would you really prefer painting portraits? How could a lady—any lady—ever compete with the sea?

13 March 1863

My dear Stella,

You may as well ask how the stars can compete. The answer is, there is no competition at all.

How was your brother’s wedding? And how are you, now that he and his bride have settled into the vicarage? Are you still practicing being small and quiet? What a deplorable state!

I trust that you have made progress on your plans to come to town next week. We are preparing to travel there ourselves on the sixteenth. You may write to me care of Mrs. Jenny Finchley in Half Moon Street. I shall be staying with her and her husband until I can find rooms of my own.

The search for suitable lodgings will be an interesting one. My needs are quite specific, as you can imagine. The perfect place will be both home and studio, and must be accessible for my chair. You shall see the premises yourself when you come to pose for me.

I expect you there, if not at my studio, then certainly in London. Do not forget—the second day of spring in Rotten Row. Look out for me on the rail.

Stella slowly refolded Teddy’s latest letter. Tucking it back into its envelope, she placed it safely inside the brass inlaid walnut box where she kept the rest of her treasures. The velvet-lined interior held her parents’ yellowed wedding lines, a lock of her mother’s hair (brown in color), a few brief, affectionate notes her father had penned to Stella when she was a little girl, and now…a whole, ribbon-tied stack of Teddy Hayes’s letters. His sketch was folded inside, too, a bittersweet reminder of her unmet potential.

Those distant days in December, Teddy had drawn her as something like a goddess. But Stella hadn’t felt very deity-like in the weeks that followed as she’d dutifully trudged through her days in Fostonbury, every hour becoming smaller and smaller under the oppressive weight of Daniel’s disapproval and Amanda’s unending criticism and advice. There was little joy in sketching any longer. Even Stella’s rides on Locket had begun to feel lackluster. It was beyond worrying. If riding didn’t raise her spirits, what on earth ever could?

It was a terrible thing to be an unwanted third. Daniel and Amanda had each other. They were forming a life together. Refashioning a home. There was no room in it for Stella. Day by day she became more invisible. Soon, she feared, she would disappear altogether.

Closing her box of treasures, she slid it back into its hiding place under her sagging mattress. The box room was cold and damp as ever. She had no fire in the hearth to warm her, only an extra pair of socks and a thickly woven shawl. Twisting the latter more firmly around her nightgown-clad figure, she climbed into her narrow bed.

A single taper burned on her bedside table, its flame flickering valiantly in the draft from the unlit fireplace. Stella blew it out. Darkness consumed her.

This was why women gave in. Why they ended up married to men who didn’t suit them. Didn’t love them. Men who wanted only the raw materials of some untried young lady to fashion into their idea of a conformable wife.

But weary as she was, Stella wasn’t yet ready to cede the fight. She was still one of the Four Horsewomen. Still one of the Furies. And Furies didn’t give up or give in. They fought .

It was exactly what she intended to do.

This afternoon, she’d taken the first step. During the second of her daily gallops on Locket, she’d ridden to Fairhook Station and purchased a railway ticket to London.

She would be attending Anne’s wedding on Friday. And nothing and no one was going to stand in her way.

?The next morning, at breakfast, Stella informed her brother of her plan.

Daniel dropped his fork to his plate with a clatter, leaving the remainder of his eggs and toast untouched. His narrow face tightened with weary anger. “Are you trying to ruin yourself?” he asked. “Or is it my reputation you seek to blacken with your wild antics?”

“I’m trying to support my friend,” Stella said. “She expects me at her wedding, and I’ve promised to be there. Since you refuse to accompany me, I have no choice but to—”

“I’m a newly married man! I can’t be boarding a train to London at the snap of your fingers!”

Amanda sat across from him at the table, a frilly matron’s cap pinned over her flaxen curls. She paused in the act of pouring his tea. “Pray, don’t let her behavior draw you into anger, husband.”

“How else to react, my dear? We were wed less than a fortnight ago and already my sister demands to be taken to town. How is such selfish behavior to be borne? As if I would abandon my bride for—”

“It’s a day’s journey each way, that’s all,” Stella said. “Hardly akin to abandonment. It isn’t as though I intend to remain for another season.” On the contrary, she’d be returning directly. She’d have to, or else risk Locket pining for her again.

“Can you afford it, sister?” Amanda asked with deceptive sweetness. “I should have thought, with the expense of your horses and your groom, you would be at pains to economize.”

“Naturally she can afford it,” Daniel said. “She isn’t obligated to expend her capital in a more responsible fashion. Not with me subsidizing all the necessities of her life.”

“Obligated, no,” Amanda said. “But one would hope that Christian duty might compel her to spend her resources on other than her own pleasure.”

“I am sitting right here,” Stella said. “You needn’t speak over me as though I were invisible.”

“I wish that you were,” Daniel retorted uncharitably. “Instead, every day brings a new misery. Arguments over ordering the coal, instructing the servants, and the manner in which I receive guests in my own home. My wife is daily at pains to placate your whims, and Squire Smalljoy himself has said—”

“Not Squire Smalljoy again,” Stella objected.

“A man who would provide a happy solution to our current troubles if you would but rid yourself of the ludicrous notion that remaining unmarried is a choice.”

“It certainly is a choice,” Stella said. “Though what it has to do with my being a bridesmaid in Lady Anne’s wedding—”

“Had you a husband, he could take you to London,” Daniel said.

“Or not,” Amanda murmured. “Indeed, sister, the wisest scholars teach that true contentment begins at home. It is to her own household a lady should direct her attention, not to the dubious pleasures of the outside world.”

Spoken like a person who had never galloped in Rotten Row, danced among the colorful lights of the Chinese pagoda at Cremorne Gardens, or thrilled in the giddy company of a group of like-minded friends.

Stella opened her mouth to say as much, let the consequences come as they may, only to have her tart reply forestalled by the unmistakable sound of carriage wheels on the gravel drive outside the window.

Daniel shot an accusing look at her. “Did you summon a cab to take you to the station?”

“Don’t be absurd,” Stella said. “I’m not leaving until tomorrow.”

He turned to his wife. “Are you expecting someone, my dear?”

Amanda’s mouth curved in a smugly satisfied smile. “Perhaps it’s the squire?” she suggested, all innocence. “He mentioned something about coming to look at that gray mare of yours.”

“That gray mare of mine ,” Stella corrected automatically as she rose from her chair. “And if he did, you had no business encouraging him. I’ve already given him my answer on the subject.”

“You were in a temper,” Amanda said. “I knew that, when your ardor had cooled, you would see the sense of his proposition. One wouldn’t wish to cause a rift with an esteemed neighbor. Not over something so trifling as his interest in a horse.”

“It’s no trifling matter to me.” Stella moved to the window. She drew back the curtain to peek out at the drive. The carriage that had rolled to a stop at the front of the house bore no crest on its door. On the contrary, it appeared to be a hired cab, of the sort one could find at the railway station in Fairhook.

“It’s not the squire,” Stella said. “It’s…”

Her voice trailed off as the door to the carriage opened and an imposing gentleman in a black overcoat leapt out. He was tall, dark, and broad of shoulder, with a sinister scar traversing the right side of his face.

Good Lord, it was Julia’s husband, the notorious Captain Blunt!

And he hadn’t come alone. He turned to gently assist Julia out of the cab. She was garbed in a dark blue traveling dress and matching cloak. As she paused to fluff her flounced skirts, she caught Stella’s stunned gaze in the dining room window. Julia’s face spread into a mischievous grin.

Stella’s mouth pulled into a swift smile in return.

Daniel stood from his chair. “Who is it?” he demanded.

Stella let the curtain fall. “It’s Mrs. Blunt and her husband.”

“Captain Blunt?” Daniel’s face turned ashen. He was aware of the captain’s black reputation—a reputation inspired as much by rumors of Blunt’s brutal conduct in the Crimea as it was by the fact that he brazenly housed three of his bastard children under his roof at Goldfinch Hall in Yorkshire.

If that wasn’t enough to shock, the circumstances of his scandalous elopement with Julia would surely have done so. Last summer, while Stella and her brother were in Exeter, Captain Blunt had carried an ailing Julia away from her parents’ house in Belgrave Square, stoking rumors that he’d abducted the vulnerable young heiress in order to compromise her and force her into matrimony.

It wasn’t strictly true, not according to Julia. But Stella’s brother and sister-in-law didn’t know that.

Amanda was at once on her feet, the very picture of offended modesty. As a pious young lady, newly wed to a vicar, the very idea of a man of Captain Blunt’s ilk visiting her home was enough to spark her outrage. “What have they come here for?”

Stella strode out of the room to greet her friends, tossing an answer at her disgruntled sister-in-law as she went. “I believe,” she said, “that they’ve come for me.”

Julia retained both Stella’s hands in hers as she drew back from kissing her cheek in greeting. “You didn’t truly believe I’d let you miss Anne’s wedding, did you?”

“I scarcely imagined you would come to fetch me yourself,” Stella said.

“Who else but me? You wouldn’t permit Anne to know of your difficulties. And Evie and Mr. Malik could hardly travel all the way to Derbyshire from London, not with his court dressmaking commissions to think of. Besides,” Julia added in a portentous whisper, “it’s my husband who’s needed here.”

Captain Blunt stood in the entry hall, looking so fearsome that Stella might have swooned herself if Julia hadn’t confided how loving and tender the man was to her. “I shall take full responsibility for Miss Hobhouse’s welfare while we’re in town,” he informed Daniel after the introductions had been dispensed with. “You need have no fear for her reputation.”

Amanda uttered a strangled laugh. “No fear for her reputation, sir? When she’s traveling in company with you ?”

Captain Blunt ignored the insult. “I’ve reserved a suite of rooms at Brown’s Hotel,” he said to Daniel. “We’ll be staying a fortnight.”

Julia’s eyes shone. “What a merry time we shall have! Anne will shortly be leaving on her honeymoon, but Evie will be in town. The three of us can ride every day.”

“I can’t ride without Locket,” Stella said. “And I couldn’t leave her for an entire fortnight. Not after—”

Julia silenced Stella with another reassuring squeeze of her hands. “My husband will see she’s brought to London. He has our groom riding Cossack there as we speak. Perhaps if your groom did the same?”

“Turvey can’t ride Locket,” Stella said. “She’s too dangerous for him. He’ll have to lead her by stages. It will take some doing.”

“Jasper?” Julia gave her husband a hopeful look.

“Leave it with me,” Captain Blunt said.

“There, you see?” Julia beamed at Stella. “My husband can solve any problem in our path. All that’s left is for you to pack your things, and then we’ll be off.”

“Not with my sister, you won’t.” Daniel moved in front of the door, barring the way. “I won’t allow it.”

Stella felt a rush of mortification. Must her brother be such a confounded stick in the mud? It was bad enough that he refused to take Stella to London himself, but to insult Julia and Captain Blunt when they were attempting to do so exceeded all limits. “You’re not being very gracious, Daniel,” she said. “Our guests will think you rude.”

As if they didn’t already! Neither Daniel nor his new bride had invited Julia and her husband to sit down or offered them any refreshment. The message was clear. The Blunts weren’t welcome.

“They may think what they like.” Daniel looked to the captain, only a faint flinch betraying that he was in any way intimidated by the man. “I won’t permit my sister to return to London in your company, sir. The scandals surrounding your life, and your recent union, are such that the mere association with you would be enough to taint—”

“Daniel,” Stella interrupted in a mortified whisper. “How can you?”

He shushed her with a violent wave of his hand, his attention still directed on an increasingly stone-faced Captain Blunt. “I don’t seek to give offense, but my sister’s good name is in my keeping. I won’t allow her to go with you under any circumstance.”

Stella stiffened with unexpected anger. It wasn’t just about the inconvenience of accompanying her, was it? It was about control. About forcibly shaping her to be something she wasn’t. Small and quiet. An obedient spinster sister with no thoughts or opinions of her own.

“I am going,” she informed him. “I don’t require your permission.”

“You do,” Daniel returned. “So long as you live under my roof, you will abide by my rules. If you insist on defying me, you needn’t come back.”

A spark of satisfaction glittered in Amanda’s eyes. This was her doing. All the weeks of syrupy comments and helpfully expressed concern, every one of them designed to pit Daniel against his sister. And here at last was the result of it. The culmination of her malicious campaign.

Julia drew Stella closer, as though she might protect her. “I’m sure you don’t mean that, Mr. Hobhouse.”

“Oh, but I do,” Daniel replied acidly. “I have reached the limits of my patience.”

“Be reasonable, Daniel,” Stella said, making one last attempt to appeal to her brother’s better nature. “It’s only a fortnight. And you couldn’t wish for a better chaperone for me.”

Amanda snorted.

Julia glared at her with ill-disguised indignation before returning her attention to Stella’s brother. “The two of us are to be in Lady Anne’s wedding,” she explained to him as though he was a petulant child. “Our bridesmaids dresses have already been made. The whole of fashionable London will be in attendance.”

“What care I for fashion when my duty and honor as a clergyman are at stake? No.” Daniel shook his head. “My mind is made up, Stella. If you defy me to go with your friends now, you must go your own way entirely. My house isn’t a stopping ground between your revelries. This is a home—a sober, quiet home—and going forward the ladies in it will behave accordingly.”

Julia flashed her husband a look of dismay. Stern and silent, he, in turn, looked to Stella, waiting for her to render her judgment on the situation.

The final grains of sand in the hourglass of Stella’s fate fell to the bottom. She understood that this moment, standing here in the vicarage hall, was to decide the course of the rest of her life.

She gathered her courage. Her future loomed ahead of her, empty as one of the blank pages in her sketchbook, both frightening and exciting by turns. She didn’t know what it held. Perhaps she would impose on her friends for a time. Perhaps she would seek genteel employment.

Perhaps—just perhaps—she might pose for a portrait or two.

“Very well, Daniel,” she said at last. “If that is what you wish, then so be it. Henceforward, I shall go my own way.”