Chapter 2: Two Councils

A council of war was convened in Dorwich House in London immediately after luncheon. Those present, in order of age and influence on the council were:

Minerva Raines Tarleton, Marchioness Stroud,
Deborah Tarleton Farnsworth, Countess Standish,
Lenora Walton Tarleton, Countess Dorwich,
Anne Tarleton.

The last named girl had no experience to offer the council, but was included as a courtesy since it was her Season which was being plotted.

Gatherings much like these were occurring all over England in the days leading up to the Season. Eligible girls of the aristocracy and parts of the gentry would make their debut. Anne, like most of them, was sixteen. Those who remained unwed at the beginning of the next Season were losers. They might even end up as spinsters.

“We shall give two balls again this year,” said Lenora, “I shall deliver well before our anniversary, although I may not be able to dance at that ball. I may deliver any day now. I suggest that each of you give a ball, as well. That will make four balls which Anne can attend, so to speak, at home. She can bathe and dress while the other girls are shivering in their carriages.” Her elders nodded.

“You and James can be her chaperones sometimes,” Lady Stroud said. “The constant presence of the mother tires others as much as it tires the mother. Perhaps Deborah and Brian can take on the task, as well.

“Listen well to your advisers, Anne,” Lady Stroud continued. “Lenora knows the way of dancing and giving balls. Deborah knows the way of fashion. Between your sister and your sister-in-law, you will be better advised than nine-tenths the girls coming out this year.”

“To say nothing,” Lenora noted, “of a mother who knows the aristocracy as well as anyone else in England.”

“The more proposals you receive,” said Lady Deborah after much other discussion had passed, “even unacceptable ones, the better. I really feel, Anne, that it would be better were you not to accept until the very end of the season. Play them along. Lenora accepted early, and she ended up married to James.”

“Slight aside, Anne,” responded Lenora, “I agree with your sister. The questions are different. The question was whether I should marry James or not. The question is whom you shall marry. We both want you to be happy. Deborah wants you to be a happy Deborah. I want you to be a happy Anne.”

“Deborah,” Lady Stroud broke in, “Anne wants to visit longer with Lenora. She will go shopping with you tomorrow. Would you be so kind as to drop me at Stroud House? I want to leave the carriage here for Anne.”

“Yes, mother. Certainly.” Lady Deborah waited until they were in her carriage to express her anger. “Just because she is carrying, am I expected to swallow the insult of that comparison she made?”

“Really, dear, you go out of your way to give a slight to Lenora. You cannot expect her to go out of her way to avoid giving you a slight. She is at least correct in half her comment. She does not try to fit Anne into her mold, perhaps because there is no-one quite like Lenora.”

“But the situation of her debut was completely unlike Anne’s. She was next to a nobody. The Waltons had no presence in the ton. Anne’s situation is identical to mine, except that she has an elder sister who can help her. We not only both come from old, well-connected, lineages, we come from the same lineage.”

“True, my dear. Your situations are identical. Your personalities are not. Who would know that better than I? I watched each of you grow up. Anne is not a younger Deborah. She will not grow into what you are.”

“Into what Lenora is?” Lady Deborah asked.

“No. But Lenora knows that. When Anne or I want James to extend himself on our behalf, we ask Lenora. Since James would be loath to please you, you need her friendship more than we do.”

“She only does what James decides. She is his shadow.”

“Lenora is no-one’s shadow. Even when her girth is less than it is just now. They do not argue in public; Lenora argues with him en famille only to amuse him, but James echoes Lenora as often as Lenora echoes James. Do you think those dinners for savants of the Royal Society are due to his sudden interest in natural philosophy? Do you think he named his daughter ‘Aphra’ because he has a previously unnoticed fondness for the writings of Aphra Behn?”

The subject of their discussion grabbed Anne’s wrist. “Here.” She held Ann’s hand against her abdomen. “Feel her?”

“Yes. Does that hurt?”

“It is not very comfortable. You and James enjoy it much more than I do.”

“I know that James is a father. It is hard to think of him that way.”

“A father, a son, a student. You know only the brother, I only the husband. In the beginning of the marriage, I heard all those stories about young James, his larks, and his misbehavior. I realized that there were many persons in that one identity, some of whom I would never know.”

“That is something like what you said about ‘happy Deborah.’”

“Yes. I hate to criticize your sister, but she lacks some forms of imagination. My choice was marriage to James or spinster instructress at l’Ecole Gallienne. I am much happier than I would have been under that other choice, but I would have been happy under it.”

“A happy spinster? Are there such?”

“Most of the spinsters I met there looked happier than half the married women I see in the ton. Do not mistake me either way. I am happier with James than I would have been at the school. You would never be happy there, even were you qualified.”

“It is harsh to think of untitled women having qualifications that I lack.”

“But it is true. For that matter, incest aside, you would never be happy married to James.”

“Now there I can agree with you completely.”

“One part of that is memory of his childhood japes. The James of our marriage is not at all that wild.”

“I am not certain. I was furious with him one day in three until he went off to university. But I felt a great fondness for him, as well. James never let his sisters get bored.”

“Nor his wife. There is that. But what sort of life does Anne want?”

“Not what sort of husband do I want?”

“Mercy, no. The first question is what sort of life. Do you want to be bored?”

“Not at all. Do you think Deborah wanted to be bored? Do you think that is why she married Brian?”

“No. You will never repeat this?” Anne assured her that she would not. “Brian bores me. Ten minutes in his company are like ten hours in a coach on a rainy day. I do not think, however, that he bores your sister.”

“He bores me, as well.”

“Well, we have our list. Your husband should not be like James, who infuriates you. He should not be like Brian, who bores you. There are what? Six hundred men in the ton. We are down to five hundred and ninety eight.”

“I would like him to be handsome,” Anne said

“A preference shared with every other girl this Season. Anne, Anne, when a woman is widowed at sixty, she does not say: ‘Well it was a good life; he was handsome when I met him.’ What sort of life do you want?”

“Is it selfish to want love?”

“Not at all selfish,” Lenora said. “I’m not certain that it is helpful. You have seen those pictures of infant eros firing his arrows. They pierce innocent bystanders. Going looking for love does not mean that you will find it. Not going looking does not mean that you will not find love. Perhaps no-one ever finds love; it finds you.”

“I want to love my husband. I want my husband to love me. I think the second is more important. You have that. How can I?”

“It is unfortunate that I met your brother before I met you. I was certain that I knew all about love back then. I know little about it now that I have experienced it.”

“Would your certainty have been correct about me?” Anne asked.

“There is that. It was not very accurate about me. I have a dear friend who tells me she fell in love several years into her marriage -- and fell in love with her husband. I have my own experience. My parents met in their Season, eloped, and shared a love until my mother died. Three patterns, almost nothing in common.”

“What should I do, then?”

“What your mother tells you to do,” Lenora said. “Take your Season, take your opportunities. My father accused me of hiding in the library waiting for Laird Lochinvar to come bursting in the window. I was not quite that bad, but he was right that it would be a ridiculous program. Mix with society; keep yourself attractive, both physically and behaviorally. If you want somebody to love you, do not pretend to be somebody else. If you do not love a man, do not refuse him for that reason. Deborah is correct; you have time to decide. And the time you take to decide might just be time you take to fall in love.”

“Did you take time to fall in love with James? I know that the story of his proposal and your acceptance leaves something out.”

“He proposed in my father’s library. We first kissed in my father’s library -- after the proposal. My father consented to allow him to propose in the library, and -- after he heard the proposal and my consent -- he permitted James to kiss me. Every word of that is true.”

“The story you tell is all true,” Anne said. “Is the truth you tell all the story?”

“Anne, dearest Anne, You have much of your brother in you. Anyway, there is no longer a question about my marriage. The questions are all about yours.”

Anne accepted the limit placed on her. In a family which reveled in its stubbornness, James was clearly the champion. His wife was far less flamboyantly stubborn, but her tenacity seemed to match his. Were Anne to push Lenora’s courteous refusal to disclose more about her courtship, the courtesy might wear thin. The refusal would not. Besides, she needed answers to other questions from Lenora -- questions which might be voluntarily answered.

“Everyone says that you are a remarkable dancer. Castlereigh said that he danced with you not three months after your baby was in the cradle, and you were the most graceful dancer in London. What is the secret? How can I be the second most graceful dancer in London?”

“Castlereigh wanted your father to mute his opposition in Lords. Compliments are the grease of society; they make the axles turn with fewer squeals. Little Aphra was nearly five months old when we had that waltz, and I was not the most graceful dancer on that floor, let alone London. That said, you brother taught me the secret of dancing the waltz. You have an excellent teacher, I am certain. I’ll wager he never missteps. When you are out on the floor, your partner may not be so excellent. Given the choice of following your partner’s lead or making the precisely correct steps, follow your partner’s lead every time.”

Anne resolved to try to follow that advice, which was not natural to her. Her father sometimes told her, “You are the most amenable of my children, also the shortest.” That was his suggestion that her stubbornness, like her height of five feet and eight inches, might not seem so small in other company than that of her family. She accepted this as true. She barely remembered Alice, and Peter’s five days of life had come and gone long before she was born. She had spent her childhood with two brothers who would respond to a “shan’t” by picking her up and taking her where they wanted her to go. After a few confrontations, she had learned that the better way to get what she wanted was to find a way to have others want it.

Her brothers’ tutor had taught French and rhetoric while walking. “You speak while doing something else rather than while sitting at a desk.” After Mademoiselle Dufleuve arrived to teach her, Anne heard of that method and persuaded Mamselle to adopt it because the schoolroom was beastly hot in the summer. Anne, without ever staging an actual confrontation, had half of her education by ear, in French, and in the park and hallways of Stroud Hall. She knew more about Clovis le Roi than about King Alfred. Between those educational strolls and music lessons in the music room, she had spent relatively few hours locked in the stuffy schoolroom.

Follow her partner’s lead? Anne would be more comfortable leading him. On the other hand, she respected Lenora partially because she suspected that here was one Tarleton who could outdo even Anne in her chosen tactic. James, who had never yielded to anyone else, had no public confrontations with his wife and was committing far fewer escapades than he had committed before marriage. Lenora let behavior pass with a smile that the family would never have treated so tolerantly, but she experienced less of that sort of behavior in the last year than James had previously produced in a month.

“The curse of the Tarletons,” Anne said. “We are not good at following another’s lead. Each thinks he is correct.”

“But, like the waltz, the question often is less the correct steps than of following the lead. Carriages travel on the right hand side of Paris streets, on the left hand side of London streets. Which is correct? Well, it might be debated, but following either pattern in the wrong city would bring traffic to a standstill.

“Have you another question?”

Anne, who felt that she had many more but could not state them just yet, quickly ended the conversation. She rang and asked that her maid and her parents’ coachman be summoned. James, notified of her leaving, came down to see her out. He entered the parlor where Lenora still sat.

“Tired, m’love?” he asked.

“With some excuse for mental tiredness. But why should I be physically tired? I have moved less today since breakfast than you have since Anne rang.”

“Dealing with three Tarletons is exhausting, I know. On the other hand, it just might be dealing with the newest Tarleton which has tired you.”

“Quite likely,” Lenora agreed. “All through your courtship you could make my head spin. I should have known your get would have the same effect. By the way, Anne thinks that my story of your proposal is less than the entire truth. She wants love in her marriage. I think she feels that we have it.”

“We have not been trying to keep that secret, have we?”

“Not really. I think it is secret from Deborah, though. Come here.” She patted the cushion beside her.

“Deborah will never believe that you love me.” James said while sitting where he had been directed and embracing his wife across the shoulders. He did not want to put any pressure on her waist that month. “She does not believe it possible that anyone would. She will never believe that I love you, because she thinks me incapable of love.” Lenora lay down with her head on his lap. He combed her hair back from her forehead with his fingers. “Lovely hair.” They stayed like that until she grabbed his wrist. She placed his hand on her abdomen. “Healthy kick. When Walter wants his horse to gallop, it will gallop.”

“Or Bernice wants her horse to gallop,” she said

“Women, since they ride sidesaddle, should avoid the gallop.”

“Casuist! Your sister is correct. There is none in the entire world who could love someone like you.”

“Luckily, there is no-one like me. And, if you could not love a copy, you do love the original.”

“What makes you think that?” Lenora asked. But his only answer was to pat her belly. He continued to play with her unadorned hair for minutes afterward. Finally, she said: “Help me up.” He lifted her shoulders off his lap, and she managed to sit upright. “Book?” she asked. Waverly was on the end table. He found the ribbon marking his place and read to her until they were called to dinner. They did not dress for dinner nor invite guests other than immediate family in her last month. He got up and helped her to her feet. Her weight, which sometimes overwhelmed her, did not daunt him in the least.

“Father said the style reminds him of Scott,” she said. “I see no resemblance.”

“Some resemblance. Both the novel and the poems are set in an older, more romantic, age. He writes not one tenth as well as Scott, though.”

They ate at the same end of the dining table, ignoring one more convention for her condition and in their privacy. Then they bathed in their separate dressing rooms. She was sitting on her bed in a dressing gown and an old nightgown when he came in wearing a nightshirt. Roseanne left them. He bent over to kiss her. Then he rubbed his cheek against hers.

“Mmmm smooth,” she said. “It seems unfair to ask you to be shaven twice a day when I let myself go like this.”

“Like what? No corset? Hair not fussed into some vicious piece of statuary. I wanted my librarian, and now I have my librarian.”

“Did you really want me when you saw me in the library? When you came at me from the window?” She had learned to not ask whether he had loved her then. He said he had not loved her until they had spoken. Even that might be a little faster in the telling than in the events, but he loved her now -- that was what mattered.