“You were supposed to make a match your first season,” the lecture began.
“Mother, shush,” Kitty hissed. “We’re in a ballroom. Anyone could hear you.”
“We spent more money than we could afford to outfit you in the finest fashions,” Mother continued, unabated. “We even let it be known that the one asset our family owns—your great-grandmother’s gorgeous plot of land in Wales—was to be your dowry.”
“I know, Mother.” Gladys ducked her head. “I’m very grateful.”
“You’re incompetent,” her mother snapped. “Your one and only job is to find a man willing to marry you. Despite four straight years attending England’s one and only week-long matchmaking fair, in which every single gentleman is in want of a bride, you have thus far failed to even find someone willing to stand up with you for a single dance.”
“I know,” Gladys managed, the words strangling in her throat.
How could she possibly not know? Gladys was the one who had spent seven days in a row, year after year, standing against the wainscoting in the vain hope that someone, anyone, would notice her.
No matter how much her feet hurt and swelled from holding the same position for eight solid hours of the night, Gladys never took a seat with the spinsters and the chaperones, lest she be lost among them and miss her chance when it finally came.
“We cannot delay Katherine’s come-out any longer,” Mother continued. “Kitty could have come out last year, but tradition holds that the eldest daughter must marry first. It is your fault she missed a year already.”
“I know,” Gladys whispered desperately.
Mother could not fathomably believe Gladys was delaying a life of love and happiness on purpose. Gladys would do anything—anything!—to be seen, to be chosen, to be wanted. After every ball, her mind replayed each minor interaction or lack thereof, struggling to make sense of where she’d gone wrong, and how she might appear more attractive the next time.
She wasn’t even choosy about potential husbands! Prince, pauper, tall, short, fat, skinny… All Gladys cared about was to find a man happy to be with her. Who noticed her. Who spoke to her. Who spent a moment or two in her company of his own free will.
“This is England’s largest matchmaking festival,” Mother continued, “and our last resort. Unlike London routs, to which we are not invited, this gathering is not limited to the aristocracy and the fashionable. Literally every unwed person in Marrywell this week has come to make a match. If you cannot scrounge up a suitor here…”
“Then there is no hope for me anywhere,” Gladys muttered.
“Your father would have no choice but to reallocate your dowry to your sister, so that Kitty can have her best chance,” Mother replied, not unkindly.
That was the worst of it. Mother wasn’t trying to be cruel. She was being practical and plain-spoken.
Their ancestors had once been wealthy landowners, but over successive generations the Bells had become shabby-genteel. Good blood, empty pockets. Four people on a rundown farm, far off in the country. Still tolerated at public festivals like these, yet not so fashionable themselves as to have been granted entrée to Almack’s, the famous marriage mart of the beau monde in London.
Not that Gladys would have presented herself to better effect surrounded by daughters of dukes and earls and actual royalty. Mother was right. If Gladys couldn’t scrounge up a suitor here in rural Hampshire, then she couldn’t do it anywhere.
“For once,” Mother continued, “the odds are in your favor. Every bachelor in the shire is on the hunt for a bride. Forget about the lords. At this point, even a wealthy merchant would do. Find someone, Gladys. Anyone. Because if you do not…”
Gladys’s stomach dropped at the visible pain and sorrow in her mother’s eyes.
“You’ll banish me from home?” Gladys whispered in horror.
“Good gracious, darling, not that.” Mother took Gladys’s hands and squeezed them. “You may stay with us until you are old and gray, for as long as we are alive and able to offer you shelter. But remember, our cottage is entailed and will go to your uncle upon your father’s death. The only reason we have the land in Wales at all, is because it was my dowry. We haven’t enough money to build on it, but renting the land to farmers paid for the gowns you and your sister are wearing.”
“What aren’t you saying?” Gladys asked with trepidation.
Mother let out a breath. “I’m saying that a husband is paramount. Marriage is the only sure way to provide for your future. And mine, to be frank. If I outlive your father, I’ll have nowhere to go either. Therefore, I’m hoping to come and live with you.”
Gladys swallowed hard. As if the pressure to attract a suitor had not been intense enough already! Now the fate of her mother also rested in Gladys’s clammy hands.
“If you fail to find a husband by the time the festival ends…” Mother dropped Gladys’s trembling fingers and caressed Kitty’s cheek. “Then we will have no choice but to give your dowry to your sister, instead. Perhaps she will have more luck.”
Not perhaps. It was a certainty. If Kitty had a dowry, she would be betrothed by the end of tonight’s first dance. Truth be told, Kitty probably didn’t even need the dowry. By now the ballroom was twice as full as before, and almost every gentleman to walk through the door had given Kitty a second or third glance.
It was Gladys who needed extra bait to dangle. Once her dowry was gone, she would have no hope of attracting anyone at all. A life of unending loneliness would stretch before her. And her mother… Gladys could not allow either one of them to become homeless. Nothing mattered more than family.
“I understand,” she said.
Mother gave her eldest daughter’s sleeves one last fluff. “Then please try to look approachable.”
