Chapter One

Sir William Bromwich was an organised man. He took breakfast, lunch, and dinner, at precisely the same times every day. The business of running his estate was confined to the same specific hours, and even recreation was bound tightly to the ticking of the clock. His wife, Lady Anne, had become used to being in the middle of expressing some sentiment and looking up from her needlework to find that her husband had dashed off to his next task, before she had even finished speaking.

There was, however, one element of Sir William Bromwich’s life over which he had no control: his youngest daughter Maria. At four and twenty years of age she showed no signs of preparing herself to make a connection. She had a fine voice that her skill on the pianoforte matched, drew with exemplary steadiness, possessed both the French and Italian tongues (as well as the Latin and Greek Sir William advised her to feign ignorance of) , and composed very good letters. Greatest among her virtues was her beauty. She sported the most attractive wheat hued hair, and blue eyes. There was not an eligible man in society who did not want her for a wife, but alas, she appeared to want no man for a husband.

Of Sir William’s seven children, Maria was the only one who consistently failed to follow the path he set out. His other four daughters had married well, his oldest son was married and had two sons of his own, and his youngest son was at Cambridge. Despite the irregularities of her character Sir William doted on her as if she was still the same as she was when she was a young child that could be dandled on his knee. But he knew that his love for her would not keep her living in the style that she ought to after his decease. Sir William had long sensed an acquisitiveness in his oldest son’s wife. Once when she had come to visit, he caught her in his office searching through his private papers and reading them with great interest. Not wishing to start a quarrel with his son, he said nothing of the matter and pretended to accept her excuse that she was unaware of where she was and what she was doing, but from that day on he trusted her no longer. Another incident involving her often came to his mind, where she glowered at Maria at a ball he and Lady Anne hosted thinking she could not be seen. The great offence Maria had apparently committed was to stand by accident upon her train. He was quite sure that she would turn Maria out in the event of his death, no matter how well he tried to provide for her in his will.

Disheartened by Maria’s disinterest in marriage, and her dismissal of the effect not entering one would have on her future. Sir William eventually resolved to speak about the matter to the only person he thought could alter her thinking; her grandmother. Only she, in his mind, was wise enough to give good council, and steer her granddaughter away from a future as a spinster. At first his mother was reluctant to assist him because of her belief that Maria would eventually relent, sans intervention, but after she heard of an episode where Maria offended a suitor of considerable means, she agreed to intervene. She was convinced that she would be able to turn Maria’s thoughts to marriage with the aid of only a few discussions. Though this plan was not without its difficulties. Maria had always found her grandmother’s society to be pleasant, but would likely avoid it if she seriously raised the subject of marriage. Worse still, Maria might realise that he had conspired with her grandmother, and feel that she had been betrayed.

As he sat at his papers he thought about how he would manage the feat. Then he was struck with inspiration. His mother, though in rude health, could play the part of an invalid which would increase the frequency of Maria’s visits to her and also her inclination to forgive her grandmother for bringing up subjects that she disliked. Delighted by his sagacity he smiled to himself and decided that he would reveal his plan to his mother after dinner.

Lady Anne had a great love of young people. She felt that their vibrancy helped her to maintain the memory of her own. She was happy to hear about every amusement and fashion that captured their typically fleeting attentions.

Mr and Mrs Rowe, who lived but three miles from them, and had been married but a year, Mr Critchart the young parson, a Miss Bright, with her chaperone Mrs Lynn, and a Mr Cornwall who Sor William had quite forgotten meeting previously, joined him, Lady Anne, and Maria for dinner. Also there were, Miss Jane Hewitt, and Mr Robert Hewitt, her brother. Robert was a childhood friend of Maria’s, along with his sister Jane, but when he went away to school and then Oxford, the friendship faded in much the same way that salt loses its savour over time. Which was to be expected, as the worlds of men and women always diverge after they reach a certain age. In contrast, the relationship between Jane and Maria remained much the same as it had been when they were girls, and they were rarely apart, and could barely last a day without each other’s company or reading some correspondence written by the other.

Mr Critchart was another dear family friend who had come back to be the parson of their local church after a spell in London and the death of his wife and child. This led to a bout of what was rumoured to be exhaustion. Some malicious gossip followed him out of London about him being out of his wits but that soon died away with his swift acceptance back into the community. When Sir William heard the gossip he was shocked at how unmerciful some of the people in his acquaintance could be to a man who had lost so much.

The conversation at the table was so engaging that everyone apart from Sir William let their chops go cold, not wanting to cease talking for even a moment. Mr Critchart had a most curious talent for imitating others, and at times during the meal to the delight of the company he did some accurate, but still respectful impressions of most of their acquaintances. Including the local gossip Mrs Hartley who was a blight on almost everyone’s existence. There was not a person she had not spoken ill off, and almost everyone kept her in their circles because they feared that she would discuss them in the vilest of terms if they did not.

Having been so long in London, Mr Critchart was pleased to be back in his birthplace in the country, among good friends where he could show off his wit without excessive concern about whether it was fashionable enough or liable to cause terrible offence.

The ladies withdrew, leaving the gentleman to converse, and played at cards for a while.

When the ladies and the gentlemen reunited for music and dancing, Sir William decided he would quit the room for an early night. He was not as invigorated by the company of the young as his wife was. Despite this fact, something about the events of the evening pleased him, there seemed to him to be a flicker of warmth between Maria and Robert. Though Maria acted as a respectable woman should, and did not search for Robert’s gaze, she did not appear to be against the idea of him admiring her.

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Sir William was sure that with careful effort and cultivation from his mother that the warmth would increase and blossom into a betrothal. It was a fine enough match too, with Robert’s income and his closeness to the family meaning that he and Lady Anne would still see their daughter regularly in their dotage, and that Maria would not be too distressed and alone.

“I am afraid that I must leave you all in the care of the lady of the house and bid you goodnight.” Said Sir William, who was eager to go and speak to his mother.

“Father, don’t leave us.” Maria said, in the hope that for one evening her father would give in to jollity and set duty aside. Sir William saw the look of dejection on her face and then agreed to stay with everyone for another half an hour, but only that and no more.

Lady Anne passed him a Bilbocatch, and said “It would interest me to see how well you fare at this game, Maria and Mr Critchart have managed over a hundred catches.” Sir William was not sure if it was the softening effects of the candlelight, but in his wife’s eyes he saw something of the look she gave him when they first met at a ball during the London season. This flash of liveliness made him happier than he had been in many years of doing what he thought he ought to do rather than what increased his happiness and the happiness of those around him. He failed so completely at Bilbocatch, that he was glad when Maria sat down at the pianoforte to play. One dance seemed very achievable to Sir William though he was not sure if his body in all of its current stiffness would remember the fluid movements of his youth. But his fears were allayed as soon as the music struck up.

Lady Anne danced with the verve of a girl of nineteen, and Sir William did his best to match her. While they, the Rowes, Robert Hewitt, Miss Bright, and Mr Cornwall danced, Jane who had no partner because of the leaving of Mr Critchart went to speak to Maria while she played.

“Oh dear Maria, I do wish that my parents were as happy in each other’s presence as yours seem to be.” Said Jane.

Maria’s fingers tripped across the keyboard as she played a particularly fussy cadenza, “Your parents seem to be quite agreeable to each other when your father is taking his morning paper and your mother is knitting.”

“Yes, very agreeable indeed until either one of them speaks.”

She looked up at Jane and said “Then war breaks out, and you and Robert must run and hide.”

Jane laughed slightly, in a way that sounded as if there was a filament of sadness in it. Maria laid down the final chord with a touch that seemed to Jane to be as light as gossamer. For the many years of their friendship, envy and love sat next to each other in Jane’s feelings about Maria. Impossible to sever from each other.

Sir William and Lady Anne went to sit down still in a good mood if not a better one than the one they were in previously. There would be no more dancing for them. Sir William looked at the clock, more than half an hour had passed but he had no desire to leave as he had promised to.

Looking at the faces of the expectant dancers Jane said, “Let us play a duet, you will have to choose something simpler for me to play with you with any success. I do not share your talents.”

Maria looked through the box of music manuscripts and found something suitably unchallenging, so unchallenging in fact that she worried that in choosing it she would insult her friend. She also fetched another stool which she set at an angle in front of the pianoforte.

“Ah this will suit.” Said Jane, glancing at it. “Shall we begin then?” Maria nodded in agreement, disguising the fact that she was looking at Robert.

She could not understand why so often when she was in his presence her speech was often stopped up at inopportune moments and she suddenly experienced a sense of restlessness.

When the duet was done, with the addition of a fair few fumbling mistakes of Jane’s, the dancers were tired and wished to leave.

Lady Anne sensing their weariness and feeling a great deal herself, tidily concluded the evening with the grace and wit of an experienced hostess and not the slightest suggestion of awkwardness. All went away satisfied, and wished each other to have a goodnight with the arrangement of their next meeting at the forefront of their minds.

Maria made her way up the winding stone steps to her rooms, with the memory of the movements of her fingers across the keyboard still running through them. If she could play everything she had played again without being a nuisance to everyone in the now quiet household she would. Where all of this energy she had came from she could not tell, but it both delighted and terrified her, and though she was usually sensible, she felt now that she could not be sure from one day to the next what she would think or do.

She decided that she would not call her maid to help her prepare for bed, she could do without the fuss for this evening. Maria took her hair down, uncoiling the twisted sections and unplating the plaited sections, then she put her sleeping cap on, and changed into her nightgown. She then laid her evening clothes over the chair that sat in the corner of the room. Removing the crisp white counterpane from her bed she put that too on her chair and went about coaxing some light into a scrap of candlestick wishing to write by it.

Before she went to sleep she almost always wrote about the events of the day in her diary, and worked on a few lines of her horrid novel. The existence of both manuscripts was only known about by Jane, though Maria had only read to her from her novel and never from her diary. On this particular day she wrote in her diary about what she thought of Robert, “still handsome and still amusing,” and her excitement about meeting Jane’s cousin Miss Uxley who lived in London in great style. Maria would walk with Jane and Miss Uxley the following day and she intended to show the visitor the best that the grounds and the library of her family had to offer. Then she set her diary down and made a start on the next part of her novel. Her heroine had reached a very critical moment in her story where she thinks she sees apparition on the stair, white as muslin with a look of hunger in its eyes. Shivering slightly, Maria adjusted her sleeping cap so it covered more of her ears and drew her shawl around herself more tightly. She thought she heard a creaking sound and started and went to see what it was, but predictably she found, as her own heroine soon would, that it was a combination of the abyssal darkness and her own wanton imagination that had led her to believe that something or someone was out there.

Maria took herself back to her bedroom, put her novel away in her drawer and blew out the candle. She could not delay sleep to indulge in constructing fancies anymore, so gave herself over to restful dreams about the good things that she knew that she would see and hear and do with the misses Uxley and Hewitt on the morrow.