A/N:Hi all! I'm sure most of you were expecting an update of A Country Courtship. Don't worry, I haven't abandoned the story. It was jsut getting a bit too heavy for me and I needed a break from the angst! I have written most of the next chapter and will hopefully update it in the next week or so, but I really needed a break from it... so please don't be too upset with me!
Soooooo, I have decided to write a light-hearted romp just to clear my head a bit. I had this idea floating around in my brain for a wee while now and this past weekend had a massive burst of inspiration. Basically, two weekends ago, I read Georgette Heyer's (F***ing LOVE Georgette Heyer) Bath Tangle and could not stop thinking about it! If you haven't read it or any of Georgette Heyer's novels, then I highly recommend that you do. She is THE QUEEN of the Regency romance and her books are always well-researched, meticulous in its detail and fun. I loved this book so much that I wanted to write my own, very loose, more modern version of it. Not a carbon-copy of the plot at all, but the ideas are there and so is the location of Bath.
There will be a bit of mystery and intrigue, lots of ballroom scenes and more suitors for our dear Sookie. Pam will also make an appearance as she is missing from A Country Courtship. Not sure how hot and heavy the lemons will get, but I will definitely try to squeeze them in where I can!
So, I hope you enjoy it - let me know what you think! If the response is positive then I will definitely carry on! R&R...
Disclaimer: I do not own SVM or True Blood nor am I affiliated with HBO in anyway. SVM and True Blood belong to Charlaine Harris, Alan Ball and the good people at HBO. I am only using these characters for the purpose of this story.
Chapter 1: The Speculation
'It cannot be,' Mrs. Stackhouse said, shocked. 'It would be most improper.'
'Nonsense,' said Lady Marksby. She was not a woman to waste time or to waste her words. 'It is the only thing. That should be quite obvious.'
The two ladies sat side by side on a very shabby sofa at one end of the large parlour of Hill Grange. They were sisters and had been known before their respective marriages as the handsome Hale girls. The resemblance between them was strong, although Lady Caroline Bellefleur, Countess Marksby had become sharp-faced while her sister, Adele Stackhouse, was plump and billowing. Lady Marksby was dressed in the height of fashion. Her morning dress of Indian mull muslin with coquelicot ribbons caused a great envy in her sister, who was as shabby as her son's house and whose granddaughters were only saved by their youth from looking equally forlorn.
The three young ladies sat at the pianoforte at the other end of the parlour, where they were singing a glee. Since their music master had been dismissed, their father had directed that part of their mornings to be spent in practice, knowing that otherwise their grandmother would keep them busy about the house. They made a charming group in their plain white muslin toilettes, but never were three girls so different.
'I can understand that you can only afford to take one, sister,' Mrs. Stackhouse said plaintively. 'But by any standard of decorum it must be Hettie. She is eldest.'
Hadley, or Hettie as she was affectionately called, was a good-looking girl, considered by most to be a beauty. She was tall and graceful, pale, with dark blond hair and fine brown eyes. In the critical view of her aunt, however, there was a certain languor in her manner, a lack of vivacity and sparkle very allowable in a lady of fashion, but it would not do to catch the eye in a ballroom crowded with many pretty girls.
The youngest girl, Arlene, now crowing with laughter over her failure to manage her part and scattering her music on the floor, was like her deceased mother, red-headed and silly – vivacious it was true, but far too much so. Lennie was a romp. Her aunt dismissed her as a bride for a simple country fellow.
But the middle girl, who had been playing the pianoforte with brilliant execution and taste, caused her aunt to gaze with approval. Such beauty, elegance and distinction all together were rare indeed. Even with no portion at all, 'We might just bring it off,' Lady Marksby said meditatively.
'You are partial to Sookie,' said Mrs. Stackhouse, very cross, not at all concerned that the music having stopped, her granddaughters could now hear her words plainly.
Lady Marksby's glance, as she observed Sookie, was less like that of a fond relation than that of a horse dealer at Tattersall's. She took in the girl's carriage and air, her superior figure, her long golden hair fashionably dressed by her own hands, her elegantly arched brows and sweeping lashes over shining bright blue eyes set off by a complexion not fair, not too rosy, but lightly golden and exquisitely clear, with so very much the lady in it – no one would consider that this girl was country bred.
'Susannah, sister,' Lady Marksby corrected. 'A lady of quality cannot be known by such a strange pet name as Sookie. And yes, it must be Susannah,' she pronounced.
Mrs. Stackhouse was silent.
Adele has always been obstinate, Lady Marksby thought. After she herself had made a fine marriage to Lord Andrew Bellefluer, fifth Earl of Marksby, a man of good fortune and extensive property only slightly encumbered by a family of three children from his first wife, Adele had disobliged her family by marrying rather beneath her. Mr. Earl Stackhouse had been a handsome, learned, pleasant young man of decent family. He had no fortune, however, and his only maintenance was the living of Hill Grange – a very poor living, but with a fine and commodious manor house and two hundred acres of land. At that time, he had had some hopes of preferment and his bride had even more. These hopes had come to nothing, and upon his death, the living and house had passed on to their only son Corbett.
Adele Stackhouse now regarded the Grange, which once had seemed so pretty and desirable, as a detestable place. Hill Grange, set in low-lying meadows, was full of fog in the damp weather and lowering to the spirits. She blamed fortune and not herself for her disappointments. Her husband had died, leaving her land rich, but virtually penniless. As the land was entailed, they could not even sell it to bolster their meager living. All her hopes were pinned on her mild, kind son Corbett. Unfortunately for Adele, Corbett took after his father in more than just appearance. It soon became clear to all and sundry, that Corbett lacked the necessary ambition needed to rise above one's station, preferring his books and gentlemanly country pursuits. He grew more and more unworldly as the years passed. He had done relatively well to marry a girl with an adequate fortune, but that money was to be settled upon Jason, her only grandson and heir to Hill Grange, once he reached the age of majority, leaving very little for the girls. To place her son and grandson in the world, Adele had to stir herself mightily, but now she had to appeal to her childless sister for some help with securing her granddaughters' futures.
'You know how it is with me, sister,' Lady Marksby said firmly. 'We live well, but I don't have much at my disposal. Lord Marksby has given me funds for one Season, enough to take a good house and to keep my carriage in Bath, and I can manage the clothes from what I have put by. But the one Season will be all. Lord Marksby hates Bath almost as much as Town, and you know how pressed he is by his own boys' gambling debts. I can only go to Town myself if I stay with his pinch-purse sister in Kensington.'
She sighed, for she longed to take her place among the first-rates, but it could not be done from that unfashionable quarter. An old friend, a Mrs. Hawes, had a house on Brook Street and she wondered if that lady might be induced to invite her for a long stay that winter. But she turned her mind back to the matter in hand.
'This is a – a speculation, sister. We must try to be sure that all is not lost. Settle one girl and she can take her sisters into company.'
'But to bring the youngest forward,' Mrs. Stackhouse moaned, forgetting young Lennie as people mostly did.
Two of the three sisters sat and listened with mouths agape. Sookie, with the breeding that her aunt admired, had quietly left the room and could be seen from the open window, equipped with hat, gloves, and secateurs, tidying up the dying flowers that were blistered by the August sun.
'And not so young,' Lady Marksby said bluntly. 'Twenty years old. And Hadley is–'
'Pray don't, sister.' Mrs. Stackhouse felt it vulgar to mention that Hadley was almost twenty-four.
'I don't blame the girls,' Lady Marksby said with a shrug. 'You don't take them into company.'
'How can I, keeping no carriage,' her sister fretted. 'We can only go where we can walk. The girls learned to ride horses borrowed from the farms. And there is no house for miles around superior to the merest farmhouse. Sometimes Lady Bonham, Sir Giles' widow, asks us to dine with the older girls and send her carriage, but only if she has no other company. She has five girls of her own.'
'If I'm to marry off a portionless girl,' Lady Marksby said with finality, 'it will be Susannah. Otherwise, you must manage alone, sister. A gentleman with a decent maintenance is all we can expect, though we will aim a little higher. But I think I can promise that you will not have her back on your hands this winter. And after all,' she tried to be comforting, 'Hadley has had an offer.'
'The merest curate with no living, nor any hope of one,' Mrs. Stackhouse said and groaned.
'Poor gentlemens' daughters marry curates, what else can you expect? Cherwell?'
The name sprang to her mind as that extremely eligible but elusive nobleman who had been almost the sole subject of talk in Town that spring during Lady Marksby's all too short a stay. The scene made by his mistress, Mrs. Pamela Ravenscroft, at Almack's was beyond the pale. But such Town scandals meant nothing to her country sister and so she went on.
'If Susannah marries a man of property, he might have a living in his gift, so look more cheerful, sister, and let us consider it settled. Susannah comes with me to Bath in September. And I hear that young Jason has his cornetcy at last.'
'Yes, my dear Jason, and he is to be made a lieutenant soon, we think. But then he will be sent to that dreadful campaign in the Peninsular, I have no doubt.' Mrs. Stackhouse was all gloom. 'I have no luck, Caro, no luck at all.'
'Well, my dearest Addy. I think your fortune is about to change,' said Lady Marksby, looking to Sookie once more with a calculating smile.
So? Love it, hate it, indifferent?
