A Lady's Guide to Fortune-Hunting(3)
‘… We will have to leave? But this is our home.’ Harriet’s lip wobbled. As second youngest, she yet remained more sensitive than Jane, who had at least stopped playing to sit quietly on the stool, watching.
Kitty did not have the heart to tell them that it would be worse than just leaving. That the sale of Netley Cottage would barely cover their debts, with nothing left after to support them. With nowhere to go and no obvious means of income, the future would be a dark place. They would have no choice but to split up, of course. She and Beatrice might find some employment in Salisbury, or one of the larger towns nearby, perhaps as housemaids – or lady’s maids if they were truly lucky. Cecily – well, Kitty could not imagine Cecily being willing or able to work for anyone – but with her education she might try a school. Harriet – oh, Harriet was so young – would have to do the same. Somewhere that would provide room and board. And Jane … Mrs Palmer in the town, singularly mean-spirited though she was, had always had a sort of fondness for Jane. She might be persuaded to take her in until she was old enough to find employment, too.
Kitty imagined them all, her sisters, separated and cast to the wind. Would they ever be together again, as they were now? And what if it was far worse than this already-bleak scenario? Visions of each of them, alone, hungry and despairing, flashed before her eyes. Kitty had not yet wept a tear over Mr Linfield – he was not worth her tears – but now her throat ached painfully. They had already lost so much. It had been Kitty who had had to explain to them that Mama was not going to get better. Kitty who had broken the news of Papa’s passing. How was she now to explain that the worst was still to come? She could not find the words. Kitty was not their mother, who could pull reassurances from the air like magic, nor their father, who could always say things would be all right with a confidence that made you believe him. No, Kitty was the family’s problem solver – but this was far too great an obstacle for her to overcome with will alone. She wished desperately that there was someone who might carry this burden with her, a heavy load for the tender age of twenty, but there was not. Her sisters’ faces stared up at her, so sure even now that she would be able to fix everything. As she always had.
As she always would.
The time for despair had passed. She would not – could not – be defeated so easily. She swallowed down her tears and set her shoulders.
‘We have more than four months until the first of June,’ Kitty said firmly, moving away from the window. ‘That is just enough time, I believe, for us to achieve something quite extraordinary. In a town such as Biddington, I was able to ensnare a rich fiancé. Though he turned out to be a weasel, there is no reason to believe the exercise cannot be repeated, simply enough.’
‘I do not think any other rich men live nearby,’ Beatrice pointed out.
‘Just so!’ her sister replied cheerfully, eyes unnaturally bright. ‘Which is why I must travel to more fruitful ground. Beatrice, consider yourself in charge – for I shall be leaving for London.’
2
It is not uncommon to encounter persons who are in the habit of making outlandish claims. It is rarer to meet persons who are also in the habit of fulfilling them, and it was to this second group that Miss Kitty Talbot belonged.
Not three weeks after that gloomy morning in the parlour of Netley Cottage, she and Cecily were rattling in a stagecoach on their way to London. It was an uncomfortable journey of three days spent jiggling in their seats, accompanied by an assortment of persons and poultry, the Dorsetshire countryside fading slowly from view as they passed through county after county. Kitty spent much of the time staring out of the window – by the end of the first day, she was the furthest she had ever travelled from home.
Kitty had known for a long time that she would have to marry rich, but she had quite counted upon being able to do so whilst remaining close to Biddington, and to her family, with the Linfield match plotted and executed with her mother. In the weeks and months following her mother’s death, she had been all the more grateful to have already wrapped up her future so neatly with Mr Linfield, who lived nearby. In the darkest of times, to know that she did not need to leave her family’s side for a single moment was a gift indeed, and yet now she had left most of her sisters far behind. With every mile the stagecoach put between them and Biddington, the anxious knot in her chest grew larger. This was the right decision – the only decision – Kitty could make for her family, but it felt so very wrong to be without them.
What a fool she had been, to trust in Mr Linfield’s honour – and yet she still could not understand how he had so quickly fallen out of love with her. Miss Spencer was pretty, yes, but dull as a fish; it did not make sense for it to have happened so quickly. Besides, she had thought that the rest of the Linfields had not been overly fond of Miss Spencer. What was Kitty missing?
‘What a fool,’ she said again, out loud this time. Beside Kitty, Cecily shot her an affronted look, and she added, ‘Not you, me. Or rather, Mr Linfield.’
Cecily returned to her book with a huff. Once the heavy tome given to her by the vicar had been found, she had insisted on bringing it with her, despite Kitty pointing out that a book of its size and heft might not be the choicest companion on a hundred-mile journey.
‘Do you want me to be miserable in every way, Kitty?’ Cecily had asked her dramatically. The honest answer at that moment – standing hot-faced over her sister’s hulking case – was yes, but Kitty had capitulated and was resigned to lugging the absurd cargo all the way to London. She cursed again her father’s ridiculous and expensive decision to send Cecily to be educated at the Bath Seminary for Young Ladies for two years. It had been entirely motivated by a desire to keep up with the local gentry – the Linfields in particular – and all Cecily seemed to have gained in her time there was an inflated sense of her own intellectual superiority. Yet despite her passionate defence of the book, Cecily had not been paying it much attention; instead she bothered Kitty with the same questions that had obsessed her the whole trip.