Courtship by Combat

Chapter 1: The Colorful Coquette, the Red-coated Rogue, and the Dowdy Dependant

The drawing-room of Darnley House was furnished in a style that had a decade ago drawn admiration, yet did not now, in June, 1814, contrast favourably with its fashionably advanced Hanovour Square neighbours. The cluttered chairs and tables were cumbersome and scratched, the wall-paper dull, the carpets coupled with the curtains, arching windows overlooking cobblestones and green, were frayed and faded.

   A shaft of spring afternoon sunlight glorified the beautiful features and elegant attire of the apartment's single occupant and centre piece, a damsel reclining upon a  sofa. Beneath a halo of flaxen curls, china blue eyes stared out, closely perusing a newly bound volume that reposed on her lilic taffeta lap. The slight furrows of concentration above the delicate eyebrows were relieved by the amused twitching of her red, dimpled mouth.

   The damsel did not glance up when the door opened to emit a middle-aged woman. A lace cap encircled a face imprinted with illness. She sat down on a high-backed chair opposite the younger lady and brandished a chicken skin fan.

  "Dearest Amelia, must you forever burry your nose in a novel?" the matron protested. "Another Mrs Radcliffe?"

   "Oh, no, Mama, merely the diverting new publication Mansfield Park which is all the rage," Amelia replied, without lifting her eyes from the page. "The author is, I grant, also a woman, though nobody knows whom she is except Mr Murray, the publisher patronised by both Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron."

   "If this Mr Murray prints the poems of that scoundrel Byron, I am not surprised he accepts the works of this strange creature. Any woman bold enough to become an authoress can only be highly improper!"  

   "No such thing! This is not precisely a romance, but really quite different from anything else I have ever read, though there is a certain likeness in style to Madam D'Arbley," Amelia announced, abandoning her book with a sigh. "She has remarkable penetration into the human character. Moreover, I was advised to read it by Cousin Eleanor."

   "Well then, in that case, I trust it to be unexceptional. I am glad you are reading something improving for once, for those horrid Gothic novels and the trashy romances too frequently borrowed by young ladies and school boys from these Circulating Libraries are not at all the thing."

   "Well, as Papa does not disapprove, I'm persuaded there can be nothing amiss in the pastime," Amelia countered, "for you know that in general he is just as much a high-stickler as Cousin Eleanor."

   "Unfortunately your father is too often blinded by his partiality for you into indulging your whims without adequate consideration as to every aspect of a situation. To be sure, only last week he would not attend when I informed him about that—"

  "Oh, stuff! George Lennox was not making love to me," her daughter refuted, puckering up her mouth. "His conduct was perfectly gallant."                 

  "Do not be impertinent, child! To judge from what I observed, he was positively dangling after you. I wish you would not encourage him. I cannot think otherwise but that Dear Hilton—the Marquess, I should say—must dislike your passing him over for Lennox. Lord George may be the sion of the Duke of Richmond, but he is not an eldest son who stands to inherit as does the Marquess. It would not serve to put Lord Hilton's back up. That you will receive such a splendid offer again is highly unlikely!"

   "Is not that somewhat premature, Mama? My Lord Hilton has not once even referred to marriage."

   "Nevertheless, my love, I am confident that he soon shall! Recall that we have been acquainted with the Galvins for close upon two months now. Is not that sufficient time for a young man to come up to scratch? I am only surprised that he has not done so long ago. You must know that your papa offered for me before we had known each other a fortnight."