Page 22 of A Gentleman’s Offer
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Meg was speechless. ‘I might…?’
Maria said urgently, clasping her hand, ‘Please hear me out before you fly up into the boughs, Meggy. I must tell you that I wasn’t consulted at all in advance about this match my father made for me; I didn’t have the least idea that he had any sort of scheme in mind. You know what he’s like, so you won’t be at all surprised. He didn’t even condescend to tell me himself – he informed my aunt, and she, poor thing, was obliged to pass on the news that I was to be married quite soon, to a man of my father’s choosing, and one I had never met. She was distressed for me, but she is so greatly in awe of him, and so dependent on him for the necessities of life, that she will never stand against him – I learned long ago that there is no point imagining she will.’
Maria paused for a moment, then went on with a little difficulty, ‘Aunt consoled me by pointing out that Sir Dominic is a great catch: one of the most eligible men in London, in fact. I must admit it’s true. He is not yet thirty, handsome, and rich, from a good family, has excellent manners, appears to be both intelligent and amiable, and for a wonder there is no breath of scandal attached to his name. How many other young gentlemen in society can claim as much? If he has had mistresses in keeping, which you’d imagine he must have done, he has been admirably discreet about it. Our father might easily have chosen many a worse man than such a paragon of perfection, Aunt said, and even in my shock and anger I could see that this was true. Someone old, like the man they made her marry, someone perhaps diseased, or otherwise highly disagreeable in person or reputation. I do not delude myself that Father cares a button for my wellbeing, since he loves nobody but himself. But still…’
She jumped to her feet and took a restless turn or two about the small, stuffy room. ‘I suppose I have always been so conformable to his wishes – or so he has always believed – that it never occurred to my father that I might object or cause the least difficulty. He doesn’t care, naturally, what I actually feel about the fact that he has the right to dispose of me, and my fortune as he chooses; I am a woman, and women count for nothing in his eyes. Less than nothing. It’s merely that he has a great dislike of confrontation – he would as soon argue with his horse, or a piece of furniture, as with any woman. And you know, Meggy, for a while, I actually thought I could do it. Marry Sir Dominic, with all that that implies. God knows I was eager enough to get out of that dreary house and away from my father.’
Meg said, trying to puzzle her way through this when she could see that there was still so much that she did not understand, ‘So you agreed at first.’
‘I did. I thought, Well, it will rescue me from my father’s control, not to mention his bad temper and selfish indifference to my welfare. It could hardly be any worse than the half-life I was living, and might be better. It was to be an old-fashioned marriage, of course, with no talk of love on either side. Sir Dominic would no doubt leave me in peace to live as I wished, once I had given him the child or children he must need to secure the future of his name. I could promise in good conscience never to present him with a brat fathered by another man, or give any such cause for gossip, and we would go our separate ways, live entirely detached lives, as so many couples do, asking nothing more of each other than public courtesy. A cold-blooded arrangement, but one I thought I might be able to countenance. So yes, I agreed when he came and asked me. On my father’s strict orders, my aunt was listening, to make sure I said all I should, and nothing I shouldn’t. But Father need not have worried, not then. It was all excessively civilised and barely human.’
‘What changed?’
Maria was standing by the small Tudor window, her back to her sister, gazing out through the thick, distorted ancient glass, and Meg saw that her hands were clasping the windowsill so hard that her knuckles stood out white against the old wood. ‘I could not bring myself to do it,’ she said at last. Her voice was constricted. ‘As the day of our wedding grew closer, the reality of it began to bite. They had me ordering up gowns and night-rails, and however discreet they were, my aunt and the shop woman between them, it was clear that they were designed to tempt him, to make him desire me. Dhaka muslin so fine you could see your hand through it, the woman was at pains to tell me. Your hand, indeed! And I realised, as I should have realised before, that I could not . I simply could not, however much sense it made. So I panicked and I ran.’
‘He is so repulsive to you?’
‘He is a man.’
Meg leapt to her feet, feeling sick with distress, and went to her sister’s side. ‘Oh, my dear, you have been hurt, I had no idea and I am so sorry?—’
Maria laughed in what appeared to be genuine amusement. ‘I promise you I haven’t. He has done nothing to give me a special disgust of him, poor man, and nor has anyone else. I have not been outraged or assaulted or anything of that nature.’ She turned and looked Meg in the face and said bravely, ‘He is a man, my sweet sister, and I am not made that way. I’m not like you, and I cannot pretend to be.’
Much that had been unclear now made perfect sense to Meg, and she felt a fool for not realising the truth of it before. She ought to have been quicker, because she knew – her mother had made sure she knew and understood – that people did not always find love with the people the Church and the dictates of so-called respectable society told them they should. ‘Jenny…’ she said slowly.
‘Jenny, and half a dozen others, I dare say, when I was at school,’ Maria replied with a fine show of carelessness. ‘I have been a sad rake, Meggy, a Sapphic rakess, and I fear I have left a trail of broken hearts in my wake, though I have met my match now in Primrose. She… she knows who she is, Meggy! Perhaps you have seen that in her, though your acquaintance has been so brief. She is very strong and good and determined, and I need that strength and goodness. I would be lost without her – I was lost, before, and courting disaster. We love each other, and you are to wish us happy, if you please. We plan to live together, to make a life that suits us both in a house of our own, far from my father and her family, and with your help I believe we can do it.’
‘Of course I wish you happy! But why didn’t you tell me? Marie, why didn’t you?’ She put her arms around her sister and hugged her, and after a moment of stiffness Maria relaxed into her embrace, and they held each other in a blessed moment of silent sharing. ‘Oh, if you thought I would be disapproving, and that is why you did not tell me, now I really will be angry with you! I promise you, I am not so censorious. Whatever you think of Mama, do her the justice of believing that she would have never brought me up to believe in the conventional morality that has caused her – and us – such unhappiness. You must remember that about her, surely!’
‘I didn’t think you’d be disapproving, but I… I meant to tell you a hundred times, I began to write the words, but when it came to it, I could not set them down on paper. If I had been able to see you, to tell you in person, it would have been different. Of course I remember Mama’s views, and her writer friend Miss Spry, who has lived with Lady Louisa Pendlebury for so long. But this is me , not some stranger. My life. Meggy, I think when I began to enjoy myself with girls, at school, I decided to say nothing of it because… Because if I didn’t actually have to explain it to you, I could choose to think it was mere trifling that had no greater significance. For some of them, probably most, it was nothing more than that. An interlude, a safe way to gain pleasure and release without putting oneself in danger.’
‘I can understand that,’ said Meg, thinking of Will.
Maria smiled wryly. ‘I thought you might. But as time went on, I realised it was much more than that for me. That it is nothing more or less than the way I am made, and cannot be changed. I suppose it had not truly occurred to me that grown women outside school might live their lives that way, or at least try to. I should have known that, I had reason to, but somehow I could not apply it to myself and to my own future, until I was obliged to face it at last. With Jenny – it was so exciting! We had been flirting for months, little stolen glances, caresses as if by accident, her hand brushing my neck, or straying a little as she laced my gown for me. The night she first came to me in my chamber, my God… We took so many risks, if we hadn’t been living with such imperceptive people as my aunt and my father, we would have been found out a dozen times. I felt so alive, and I knew I wasn’t just passing the time before some man came along.
‘And then Primrose… We had been no closer than friends at school – she had seen what mischief I was about, and wanted no part of it. But at last she declared herself, and gave me an ultimatum: I could sport with half the girls in London, or I could have her, but not both. I had thought, and so did she for a while, that marrying Sir Dominic might be the answer to our problems, if I could only be patient and endure it. Perhaps one day, in a couple of years, she could have come to live with me as my friend and companion, and nobody would have cared or thought it in the least odd. But I realised in the end that it was not possible, that I could not endure to live a lie till then, with all the disagreeable intimacy that it would entail, and naturally she could not wish me to do violence to my feelings. I would not ask such a thing of her if our situation was reversed.’
‘Jenny was jealous of Primrose as you grew closer,’ Meg realised among all this tangle of emotion.
‘Yes, that’s why she left my aunt’s employment. And I think perhaps Lady Purslake…’
‘Goodness.’
‘But perhaps not, since she has left there too. I don’t know. But in any case, I realised I could not marry Sir Dominic, and Primrose and I are determined to find a way to be together without having to wait in suspense and uncertainty for years. What if I did not give him an heir, what if I could not have a child at all? It was too bad to be thought of. And there is my fortune, left to me and not to my father, if only I can lay my hands on it and use it.’
‘I quite see why you cannot marry Dominic, and I will do all I can to help you, but to take your place, that is quite another matter, Marie! What about my feelings?’
‘Really? So you are telling me now, Meg Nightingale, that you do not care one whit for Sir Dominic, though I notice he is simply Dominic to you already, as he never was to me? You have only been in London a few short days, and yet you have become so shockingly and so swiftly intimate with him! I must say, I am delighted to hear it.’
Meg was blushing furiously again. ‘I have not the least notion how you can claim to know whether I do or I do not care for him, or speak of intimacy. Even if I did… did like him, you cannot have known that I would when you conceived this crazy scheme! And yet you talk of me taking your place with such breathtaking ease! I do not mean to be unsympathetic, but you do take a good deal for granted!’
‘Meg, perhaps I do, but it is not so mad as it sounds. I knew – for you had told me so often in your letters – that you dream of a life outside of Mama’s house, and I cannot wonder at it. You want to travel the world, have adventures, meet interesting people, and write about it all. Have people read what you have written. But you will never be able to do most of those things as long as you stay in Somerset. You no longer spend time with Will, which I must say is just as well, but you will never become acquainted with anyone you would care to marry, living in that tiny village and seeing the same dull people year in, year out. What is to become of you? I thought if my aunt brought you to London, if you took my place, at least you would have a chance to look about you and perhaps, just perhaps, you might see the sense of a match with Sir Dominic.’
Seeing that her twin was gazing at her in mute astonishment, Maria went on persuasively, ‘All the excellent reasons my aunt evinced for me to marry him do not apply to me, and you now understand why, but Meg, they do apply to you! I realised as soon as I made his acquaintance, and you must see that I was right!’
As her sister still made no response, but only stared, a frown creasing her brows, Maria continued, ‘Is he not all the things I said – handsome, rich, eligible, intelligent and amiable? Is he not even – though I was in no mood to appreciate it – amusing? For I know you set great store by that.’
Meg said faintly, ‘Yes, he is all those things.’ And so much more, she thought but did not say.
‘I could not know, of course, that you would be attracted to him, but I confess I hoped you would be, and now I see by your blushes that my plan has worked much better than I could ever have dreamed, and that you are strongly drawn to him! And he to you, I would wager.’ Seeing her sister’s embarrassed face, Maria asked gleefully, ‘Have you kissed him? Oh! I see you have wasted no time, you wicked jade, and that you have! Well, then. I make you a present of him, and all you have to do is thank me politely and say you will take him, and we may all be comfortable. How excessively well it has all worked out, even better than I could have hoped! Primrose will be delighted; I cannot wait to tell her!’
Meg spluttered, ‘“Thank you politely!” You can’t just… just pass me a man as though he were a parcel of cheap muslin or a pair of gloves that’s been misdirected and say, “Take him, for I don’t want him!” He must be supposed to have some say in the matter!’
Her sister shrugged and replied ruthlessly, ‘He was content enough to marry me, when we scarcely knew each other and there was not a spark of interest between us. If you and he like each other, which I well perceive you do, why should he not marry you instead? He needs an heir, of course, which was my great concern, and if you are to tell me that the getting of one with him would be a grievous hardship to you, as it must have been to me, I must say that I shall not believe you! Why, I daresay you are halfway there already.’
‘Maria Nightingale, we are not!’
‘But you very easily could be. Come now, would this not be a great deal better than sneaking around in draughty barns with a farmer who – at best – would tie you to the village forever and have you spend your precious life in labour for which you are excessively ill suited? Sir Dominic will ask no such sacrifice of you! And take it from me, Meg, swiving is much, much more comfortable and enjoyable when performed in a bed, at leisure, without an audience of farm animals! You will be a lady of great consequence in the world besides, if you care for that, you will be able to do all the things that you have been dreaming of and more; you will even have time to write, without the disagreeable necessity of making a living by it, which you have so often told me is almost impossible. I have had very little proper conversation with him, it is true, but I know he does not in the least disapprove of women writing, for he told me so once. He spoke with genuine admiration of Madame D’Arblay and her works – said she was a good friend of his father’s. For your purposes, I consider him close to perfect. All you have to do is decide forever more to be me, and I will be you. What could be simpler?’
Meg found her voice at last in the face of all this torrent of persuasion. ‘I had understood that you wanted me to marry Sir Dominic instead of you. I didn’t realise that you actually wanted me to… to take on your identity, and for you to take on mine!’
‘But of course! It makes perfect sense, and nothing else would serve half as well,’ Maria said with terrifying casualness. ‘I am the elder daughter, and heir to our grandmother’s fortune; you are not. I have made my come-out in society; you have not. Nobody knows you, and therefore not a single soul will ever notice you are not me. If Maria Nightingale marries Sir Dominic De Lacy, everyone will be delighted. Nobody will care if soon afterwards humble and impoverished Meg Nightingale goes off to live quietly in the country as Lady Primrose’s companion. I will share my fortune with you, which indeed is what should justly have happened to it in the first place, and we shall be happy and free of both our parents. What could be easier? It is quite our father’s own fault, for giving us these ridiculous names, which I dare say is what put the idea in my head. When you are married, all you need to say in church is “I, Maria Margaret” instead of “I, Margaret Maria”. If you stumbled over the words, even, and said your own name, I dare say nobody would notice. You must admit, it is an excellent scheme!’
It was a highly alarming scheme, and all the more so because Meg could see that Maria was right – it could so very easily work. They were all but identical still, and she, as the second, poorer daughter, was much more obscure as far as the world was concerned. There ought, she thought, to be many, many rational objections she could raise, and the fact that she could not at the moment think of any more than one scared her more than all the rest.
‘It would be living a lie,’ she said unsteadily. ‘Asking Dominic to live a lie too, for that matter. Deceiving his family, his friends…’
Maria smiled a little sadly at her words. ‘Well, you see, I have been doing that for a while, and must do so for the rest of my life, even if Primrose and I do contrive to be together, so perhaps it does not seem at all out of the way for me. Tell me truly, is the idea of marrying Sir Dominic displeasing to you? For despite all my joking and my strong desire to persuade you, I can quite see that if it is, I cannot be so selfish as to ask you to do it. You might wish to kiss him, and do a great deal more, he could be ideal for you on paper, and still you might have no desire to marry him and live with him for the rest of your life and have his children, I quite see that.’
‘No,’ Meg said after a moment. ‘No, I cannot say in all honesty that it is displeasing. I am attracted to him, and yes, he is attracted to me, even though we have known each other for such a short time. It would be idle to deny it. And although your scheme seems crazy – is crazy – I can see that it could work, and nobody would ever be any the wiser. But quite apart from anything else, I have not the least reason to think that he would agree to it. Why in heaven’s name should he?’
‘Why don’t you ask him?’