Hidden in the Heart

Andrews

Chapter One

AN AWKWARD BUSINESS

‘Pink satin! It must be pink satin - with cocquelicot ribbons.’

Louisa’s cheeks were alarmingly hectic, her mouth a thin line of mutinous determination. It was plain to Lydia that, if they were not careful, one of her sister’s famous tantrums was about to break over them.

‘Muslin is less expensive,’ Mama suggested hesitantly, ‘and white is quite the thing for a young girl in her first season.’

‘Oh Mama!’ Louisa wailed. ‘It will be but too shabby. I shall look a veritable pauper.’

‘We are not precisely wealthy, my dear,’ Mrs Bramwell reminded her eldest daughter.

‘Punting on River Tick,’ Lydia added, ‘in a decidedly leaky vessel.’

‘For Heaven’s sake, mind your tongue, Lydia!’ Her mother pressed a hand to her forehead in exasperation. ‘Such cant terms are not at all the thing, and never used by persons with the least pretension to gentility.’

Louisa sniffed loudly. ‘Lydia cannot open her mouth without something vulgar coming out of it.’

‘I am sure I do not sound half so vulgar as you will look in that pink satin horror you wish to wear,’ Lydia protested. ‘People will take you for some dreadful creature from the stage.’

Louisa’s face turned a shade remarkably like that of the dress she so desired. ‘Why you stupid little—’

‘Enough!’ Mrs Bramwell’s unusually stern tones halted her before anything too shocking could issue from her lips. ‘The pair of you will drive me to bedlam yet! My nerves cannot endure any more of your quarrels.’

‘What does Lydia know of fashion, in any case?’ Louisa hunched up a delicately curved shoulder. ‘I am sure the only color she cares for is blue - as her stockings must be.’

‘It would do you no harm to read something more edifying than La Belle Assemblée,’ Lydia retorted, stung by the condescending accusation.

She glared at her elder sister, who was twirling about in front of the gilded mirror in their small parlor. Louisa, she considered, was a pretty ninnyhammer. Blue eyes, pink cheeks and golden hair she had in abundance. However, beneath the gold was a mind which never bothered about anything but fashion and frivolity.

On the other hand, Lydian acknowledged that perhaps she was guilty of envy where her sister was concerned. The family was generally considered to be very good-looking, but Lydia knew herself to be the plainest of them. Her hair was mouse-colored rather than golden; her retroussé nose might be considered charming by some, but was scarcely out of the common way. And as for her grey eyes, if they sparkled at all, it was usually with contempt at the follies of those around her.

‘You should not speak so to your sister, Lydia,’ Mrs Bramwell interrupted her thoughts. ‘Louisa knows what she is about. Book-learning is all very well, but it is of little use in catching a husband.’

‘But suppose,’ Lydia countered mischievously, ‘that one does not want a husband?’

‘It is as well if you do not,’ Louisa answered her. ‘You would have a hard enough task getting one!’

‘I see no ring on your finger yet,’ Lydia answered back, poking her tongue out at her for good measure.

Louisa returned the favor, adding, I’ll have a rich husband by the time I return from London. You may be sure of that.’

‘It is essential that you marry well, dearest,’ Mrs Bramwell said - somewhat grimly, it seemed to Lydia. ‘How else are we to restore the family fortunes?’

Lydia frowned at this. ‘I think you must be mistaken, Mama.’

‘I assure you, Lydia, I am not! Louisa must make an advantageous match. And,’ she conceded, eyeing her eldest child indulgently, ‘I am convinced that, with her looks, she cannot help but achieve her goal.’

‘So I shall!’ Louisa asserted confidently.

‘That was not what I meant,’ Lydia explained.

‘Then what did you mean, brat?’ Louisa snapped.

‘It is just that you said we must restore the family’s fortunes.’ Lydia shook her head. ‘That implies that we at one time had a fortune to be restored. If anyone in our family ever had any wealth, I certainly never heard of it.’

It was Mrs Bramwell’s turn now to frown. Her daughter’s practical observation clearly did not sit well with one whose ambition was to attain social distinction for her daughters, even if she could not procure as much for herself. The Bramwells were quite a respectable family, after all, and looked up to in the village as some of its most ancient inhabitants. There had been Bramwells at Laburnum Lodge for as long as anyone could remember. If they had little wealth, they had a certain degree of distinction. The present occupant was a solicitor, and of considerable standing in his small community. However, this was not enough to satisfy the mistress of the house. Her husband might be content with an obscure and quiet life in the country, but she was determined that her children should not be allowed to decline into mere bumpkins.

Mrs Bramwell had a cousin in London with her own pretensions, who had graciously consented to assist Louisa with her presentation into polite society. For this long-anticipated event, Mrs Bramwell had been saving and planning many years. Now at last the time had come. Louisa was almost nineteen. Who could tell how long it might take for her to attach an eligible gentleman? Time, as all women knew, was not their friend in such matters. Better to strike while youth and beauty still had power to entice those who looked no deeper than the surface of things.

Lydia could not see the thoughts jostling about in her mother’s head, but she had wits enough to guess most of them. However, she had little expectation of any great match for her sister. Wealthy and influential men, she considered, rarely allied themselves to penniless nobodies from the country - however pretty they might be.

Still, she looked forward to visiting London - a place she had heard much about but never seen. It would be quite an adventure. Alas, for her it was not to be.

* * * *

The very next day, a letter arrived. This was an event unusual enough to capture Lydia’s interest. She observed her father pay the charge before carrying the folded and sealed paper into the parlor to examine its contents, and immediately followed him to see what she might learn.

‘Who is it from, Papa?’ Louisa was quite as curious as Lydia. They rarely received mail. When they did, papa had been known to mumble words which his children did not comprehend but which surely were not kindly. Without a frank, one had liefer not hear from one’s relations rather than having to pay for the privilege of reading their almost illegible prose.

‘Is it from my sister in Sussex?’ Mrs Bramwell asked her husband.

‘So it seems.’

Lydia eyed both her parents suspiciously. Papa’s head was bent over the missive, so that she could perceive how the hair on his crown was noticeably thinner than that which fell across his brow. That same brow was furrowed now in the effort of concentration, and his lips compressed.

‘Is it what we have been waiting for?’ his wife persisted.

‘It is what you have been waiting for, my dear,’ her husband answered wryly. ‘I, like Pilate, am eager to wash my hands of this awkward business.’

‘What awkward business?’ Lydia demanded before Louisa could ask the same question.

‘Lydia, my dear,’ Mrs Bramwell hesitated a trifle, ‘you know that our poor resources will be stretched to their absolute limit by Louisa’s presentation.’

‘I am amazed that they can stretch as far,’ her youngest daughter admitted bluntly.

‘Indeed.’ Mama seemed strangely pleased, rather than pained by her perspicacity. ‘You do understand, don’t you, dearest child?’

Lydia stiffened at once. Mama never referred to her as her ‘dearest child’ unless she was about to do or say something particularly unpleasant. On all other occasions, it was plain that Louisa was her favorite - just as Lydia knew herself to be papa’s favorite child. Not that either of her parents would have admitted as much, of course.

‘What is it, Mama? What is wrong?’

‘Wrong?’ Mrs Bramwell giggled nervously, fingering her lace collar and looking in every direction at once, save in the direction of her daughter. ‘Nothing is wrong, dearest. But you must see that, in the circumstances, it is impossible for all of us to go up to London.’

‘Lydia is not coming with us?’ Louisa squealed with malicious delight. ‘Oh, that is too bad!’

‘Try, if you can, to stifle your grief, Louisa,’ Lydia answered.

‘I’m afraid it is a matter of strict economy,’ Papa said, his tone displaying more real dismay at the prospect.

‘That I can well believe,’ Lydia admitted.

‘I am sure you do not mind,’ Mama said reassuringly. ‘You do not care so much for balls and parties as Louisa does.’

‘True, true,’ papa put in, with a proud glance at his youngest. ‘You have a head on your shoulders, my dear.’

‘And what have I, Papa?’ Louisa demanded. ‘A cabbage?’

‘A cabbage might be more to the purpose,’ Lydia said sweetly, ‘in our impecunious state. At least it would be edible. And most cabbages, I warrant, would have more sense.’

‘Now do not start quarrelling again, girls,’ their mother said with weary perseverance.

‘Indeed I envy you, Lydia.’ There could be no doubt of Mr Bramwell’s sincerity. ‘I should much prefer the pleasures of Sussex to the noise and nothingness of London.’

‘I am to stay with Aunt Camilla?’

‘She has graciously offered to take you in for the next eight weeks,’ Mrs Bramwell elucidated.

‘Offered!’ Mr Bramwell’s snort indicated that this was not precisely the way he understood the matter. Lydia easily - and quite correctly - inferred that the idea had been entirely her mother’s, and that it had taken a great deal of persuasion before her aunt would consent.

‘Poor Lydia!’ Louisa shook her head in mock sympathy. ‘But when I am married,’ she added with conscious superiority, ‘you shall often visit me in my London house.’

‘Not very often,’ Lydia muttered grimly, only just managing to refrain from reminding her that both her marriage and her London house existed only in her imagination.

‘Perhaps my sister may be able to arrange a brief visit to Brighton,’ Mrs Bramwell suggested.

‘Brighton!’ Louisa was not so elated at this. Brighton was the most fashionable resort for sea bathing, and a haunt of the Prince Regent himself.

‘That would be pleasant,’ Lydia said, enjoying a momentary elevation which her father promptly brought down to earth.

‘Most unlikely, I should think,’ Mr Bramwell observed to his wife. ‘Your sister is not precisely plump in the pocket herself, my dear, and can scarcely afford such extravagance.’

‘Poor Lydia!’ Louisa repeated, her good humor restored.

* * * *

It was a disappointment, to be sure, but Lydia was determined that it should not oppress her spirits. She was young enough still to find any change of place an adventure and any new acquaintance interesting.

London might boast a myriad of attractions, but beyond the circulating libraries and Ackerman’s Repository, there was little to regret in not journeying thither. And who could tell what might await her in Sussex?

She could not recall meeting her mother’s half-sister, Camilla. Although she was, in fact, mama’s nearest relation, they had never been very close and seemed perfectly content not to see each other more than once in a decade.

They were quite different in age, of course. Their mother, Agnes, had the felicity of being twice married: first to Mr Thomson, which union had produced Mama; and, upon that gentleman’s demise, the enterprising Agnes had married Mr Denton, a much older man. Camilla was the child of this second marriage, and had been born when her sister was already a strapping girl of thirteen.

Miss Thomson became Mrs Bramwell only five years later, and had moved to a different part of the country near London. Agnes passed away when her second daughter was a child of nine years; Mr Denton, now much stricken in years, followed her to the next world ten years later. Camilla inherited his estate, which was not large. It included her small cottage in the village of Diddlington near the banks of the Ouse, and an income sufficient to live comfortably but not with any pretension to luxury or profligacy.

Though she had passed thirty summers, Camilla Denton remained unwed. This, more than anything else that she knew of her aunt, made Lydia uneasy. Why had her aunt never married? Was she a bitter and mean-spirited old maid?

She hoped that her aunt would prove to be amiable, though she was doubtful of the possibility. Someone so stricken in years was more liable to be crotchety and cross, she surmised.

With a sigh, she lay her head upon her pillow and fell asleep, content to let the day’s trouble be sufficient.

Chapter Two

A PERILOUS JOURNEY

If adventure was what Lydia sought, the journey from London via the black and maroon Royal Mail coach provided an ample portion. Papa and mama could not afford the most expensive seat, and so she found herself perched precariously atop the roof, spending most of the journey clinging to a conveniently placed rail as they lurched and lunged their way along the roads of the southeast of England.

She had eaten a hearty meal before the coach departed, since there was no guarantee of further sustenance until the end of her journey. With strict instructions not to hobnob with her fellow passengers, there was little to do but to observe them in stolid silence.

Beside her was an elderly dame whose countenance was so criss-crossed by fine wrinkles that it appeared like some fantastic map of the streets of London, with her nose rising up in the middle like the dome of St Paul’s. Several times, when rounding a particularly sharp bend in the road, she had clutched at Lydia to save herself from tumbling off the swaying vehicle. Other than that, she betrayed no interest in her companion.

Across from them were two gentlemen at the rear. One was a rotund fellow with a balding pate and unusually small ears. The other appeared somewhat cadaverous, with large dark eyes and a pronounced beak which would have put Wellington’s to shame. They were both of advanced years - fifty at least - and were generally too preoccupied with keeping themselves in their seats to give Lydia more than a smile or a wink of encouragement. In