The Seven Stepsisters: book 1, Elizabeth chapter 1

Well, I have 11 chapters and I shall be a pretty poor prune if I don't get the book completed in the next 11 days!
The premise of this series is that an impoverished mother of 4 girls [two of them her stepdaughters] is asked to be the chaperone to the eldest daugher of a widower with three daughters.  If all is satisfactory he hopes to retain her services for his other daughters.  Part of the offer is to bring her children out as well.  Naturally, the widow and the widower are also flung quite close together ...  In Elizabeth, the oldest stepdaughter has few hopes of attracting a beau, since she is not beautiful or wealthy, but she unexpectedly attracts the attentions of  a man who chooses to be less than frank with her.  Meanwhile, her mother's heavily moralistic [and unwelcome] suitor from Bath comes up to town and leaps to some damning and shocking conclusions.  The girls have to continue as though there is no scandal, aided by Elizabeth's swain. The year is 1812

Chapter 1

Leontina Ambleside gave the sort of unladylike squeal of excitement which would have called down a reproof on the heads of any of her four daughters at the day-school they attended. 

Strictly speaking, only the two younger girls, Jane and Anne, were Leontina’s daughters, since Elizabeth and Catherine were her step-daughters, but at two years old, and a few months old respectively, when she married their papa, Elizabeth and Catherine had known no other mother, and both called, and thought of, Leontina as ‘Mama’,

“Miss Pritchard says that squealing is unnecessary,” said twelve-year-old Anne.  “What is it, Mama, that you made poor Catherine spill her tea?  Ow!”

“Don’t criticise Mama like that,” said Elizabeth, having poked her sister.

“Did I make you spill your tea, Catherine?  I do beg your pardon,” said Leontina.  “I confess I was both taken aback and quite excited.  It is a letter from a man ….”

“Mama!” Elizabeth’s eyes twinkled.  “A billet doux?”

“Nothing of the sort!”  Leontina flushed. “Not that I am in any way too old for such communications, and as you know, I have received more than one offer since your dear Papa died, but … where was I?”

“Receiving a not-billet doux,” said Jane.

“Indeed, so I was,” said Leontina.  “Your grammar is execrable, Jane, and you with ambitions to be an author!”

“But you know what I meant, Mama,” said Jane, at fourteen, determined to live unwed on the proceeds of writing famous and serious books.

“Yes, but it’s hardly the point,” said Leontina, severely.

“I do not think I want you to remarry, Mama,” said Catherine.  “We are so happy as we are.”

“Don’t be so selfish, Cat,” admonished Elizabeth.  “And please permit Mama to tell us what this is all about, if it’s not another proposal from poor Mr. Buckley, which it is not, for the handwriting on the outside is quite different, and with far more personality.”

“Yes, we want to know,” said Anne.

“If you do not all permit me to tell you the whole, you shall remain quite in ignorance until we reach London,” said Leontina, trying to sound severe.

“Lon …?”  Anne clapped both her hands firmly to her mouth, to show she did not mean to interrupt.

“London,” reiterated Leontina.  “And we have your Aunt Agatha to thank, since she has recommended me to one of her husband’s relatives, a widower, who is looking for a chaperone and hostess to bring his oldest daughter out.  He is willing, Elizabeth, for you to come out with, er ….” She checked the letter, “With Diana, and for the rest of you to be company for Flora and Minerva, with the expectation, if all goes well, that I shall act for them in a like capacity.”

“You quoted that last sentence verbatim, Mama; too pompous for you,” said Elizabeth.

Leontina laughed.

“Perhaps, but do not say so to Mr. Attwood!”

“Never, I swear!” Elizabeth agreed.  “It is exceedingly good of him to permit me to come out alongside his own daughter; perhaps Aunt Agatha has told him that I am little and dumpy, and no competition, even when clad in fine feathers, for the clothes you make, Mama, are quite as fine, I wager, as any to be seen in London.”

“Well, not quite, my love, for we do not have the resources for the most expensive fabrics, like gold-shot and spangled muslins, or even embroidered muslins, though I did not do a bad job of embroidering the hem and bodice of that overgown I made you, if I say so myself … which is beside the point, and you are sidetracking me again.  We do very well with our gowns, though,” said Leontina.

“Such romantic names!” sighed Catherine.

“And romantic names are a trial when people cannot remember them, or make fun of you for them,” said Leontina, severely. “Having been inflicted with one, myself,  and having born being called “Sick Lion’ as one of the girls I knew in my youth said I sounded like some kind of disease associated with lions, I was very pleased to have girls with nice, ordinary names which are never outlandish, never governed by fashion, and do not make people stare.”

“Or make fatuous comments like Cat,” said Jane.

“I don’t believe you even know what fatuous means,” said Catherine. “You are always unkind to me, Jane,” and her eyes filled with tears.

“A little less unkindness from you, Jane, and no tears at the breakfast table from you, Catherine,” said Leontina. “Anyone would think you were being sent to boarding school, not offered a high treat!  And I am sure that I can ask Miss Pritchard to take any one of you as a boarder while the rest of us are in London, if you show yourself to be too immature to go, and to behave yourselves nicely in the home of other girls.”

This was a threat which silenced them all, and Catherine’s tears dried in an instant.  Leontina might lose herself in speech from time to time, but she had no trouble keeping discipline amongst her brood.

Leontina took herself to the study to write a reply to Mr. Attwood, and the girls exchanged looks.

“Is Mama being paid for this?” asked Anne.

“She’s bound to be,” said Elizabeth.  “It would hardly be worth her while, otherwise, unless it was a favour for someone she knew, which is entirely different.  And she does not speak of him as though she knew him.”

“I hope he won’t think her foolish, for her habit of falling into half-sentences, and decide he wants someone else; I’d hate to miss having a subscription at a London lending library,” said Jane.

“If he thinks her foolish, he is the fool,” said Elizabeth.  “Mama is as shrewd as can be under her rather fluttering exterior.  It’s because of the way she was taught by her governess to seem frail and helpless, not having the advantages of the education we have had, to be able to discourse, discuss and debate, and to write a good essay. But Papa never thought her foolish, or he would not have choosen her to be a mama to two infants.  I am sure that unless Mr. Attwood is quite idiotic, he will recognise that she is more than capable of launching his eldest daughter.”

“You make her sound like a ship,” giggled Jane.

“I suspect it’s almost as much trouble,” sighed Elizabeth.

“Do we know what this lady is like, Papa, who is going to be our chaperone?” asked Diana, apprehension lurking in her eyes.

“Not having met her, I cannot be entirely certain,” said Edward Attwood, curbing his urge to make a sarcastic comment to his less than self-assured eldest daughter.  “However, Aunt Agatha grants her the encomium of being efficient, which she  tempers with the comment that ‘dear Leontina is too soft hearted,’ by which one may assume that the good lady is not as daunting as one might expect to find someone dubbed as ‘efficient’ by Aunt Agatha.”

Diana shuddered.

“No, indeed!” she cried. “Oh, I know it is selfish, but I do hope that Mrs. Ambleside’s eldest daughter is not a beauty, or at least not graceful and accomplished, and likely to show me up!”

“If she is a beauty, and accomplished and graceful, you must remember that personality is more lasting than beauty,” said Edward, firmly, wishing that he had not sent the girls to school for a while.  Diana was at the gawky stage and was clumsy and he suspected that she had been the butt of teasing or worse to change from a happy-go-lucky tomboy into being so uncertain.   He added, “There is nothing wrong with your looks, you are very pretty.  You are a trifle heedless, which leads to clumsiness since you had a growing spurt, but you will grow out of it when you are used to being so much taller.”

Diana sighed.

“I know,” she said.  “If I only had to impress horses, not young men, I should be quite equal to the task.”

“You worry about it too much, and then get flustered,” said Flora, the middle Attwood girl, just a year younger than Diana.

“It’s all very well for you, Flo, you float across the floor like a zephyr,” said Diana.

“Gracious, I am glad I’ll be too young for all this,” interposed Minerva.  “Did you say she has younger daughters too, Papa?”

“Yes, she has four daughters, though I believe the two elder ones are stepdaughters,” said Edward.

“We must make them all feel welcome,” said Minerva, “And ascertain if the stepdaughters feel at all left out or ill-used, and be kind to them.”

“You read too many fairy stories,” declared Flora.

“But essentially she is right, we must make them all feel welcome as guests, and not mere adjuncts to Mrs. Ambleside,” said Diana. 

“I only hope they will not try to encroach or throw their weight about,” said Flora.

“Flo, leave the gloomy predictions alone; we shall find out what they are like when we meet them, and if you play off any haughty airs in anticipating trouble, they will respond in kind,” said Diana.

“There’s my wise girl; well said,” approved Edward.  “They are named Elizabeth, Catherine, Jane and Anne, so we shall not have two girls with the same name in the household.”

“Oh, dear, rather ordinary names,” said Flora.

“I should have preferred an ordinary name, that one cannot be teased about,” declared Minerva.  “Diana is not a name which excites much teasing, nor Flora.  But at school, just because I jumped once when I was startled, because one of the girls fashioned a bag out of paper, blew it up and burst it behind me, her cronies started calling me ‘Nervy’.  They hid it in front of the teachers by calling me ‘Minervy’ which the preceptresses thought was just country ways, but I knew what they meant.  And even my own set burdened me with ‘Minney’ and everyone though my baptismal name must be ‘Mary’.  And it’s the ugliest of all the pet names for Mary as well.  Why, an Elizabeth may be Lizzie, or Eliza, Beth, Betty or Betsey, as the mood takes her.”

“I had no idea you felt so deeply about it,” said Edward.  “I am sorry to have given you a name you hate, though the more I hear and guess about that dratted school, the more I regret sending you girls there with what sound like a nasty bunch of girls.”

“Oh, I do not mind being Minerva as a general thing, and at home, Papa, now you have said I might leave school and learn housewifely skills now Diana is Out,” said Minerva, hastily.  “And it is nice to be named for a goddess of wisdom.  And one of her epithets is Coria, the maiden, and Cora is a good name if I want a change.  Some of her epithets I can’t even pronounce, though, and lots of them are ugly.  Who’d want to be ‘Coryphasia’ after all!” she giggled.

“Do you know what it means?” asked her father.

“Yes, Papa, it means, ‘of the head’, because Minerva was born from Jupiter’s head fully armed.  That must have been a monumental megrim he suffered right beforehand, though.”

“Good girl,” said Edward.  “And believe me, it’s nothing to the headache any papa has when his girls are all grown up!”

“Papa!”

They all laughed, and Edward sighed.

“Your schoolfellows are silly girls to spoil your name so.”

“I confess I’ve called her ‘Min’, Papa,” said Diana.  “When she’s called me ‘Di’, when she was too young to understand me punning on ‘dye’ by saying ‘what colour’ to her.”

“And I don’t like being ‘Flo’, but you all call me it,” said Flora. “I have a lovely name encompassing a huge garden of names, and I wish everyone would remember it.”

“We shall endeavour to do so, and to make sure that our visitors recall it too,” said Diana, since her sister was starting to pout.  Flora could sulk, given an excuse.  “How old are they, Papa?”

“Elizabeth is your age, Diana,” said Edward.  “Flora is next in age, at a year younger.  Minerva and Catherine are of an age at sixteen, and Jane and Anne are only fourteen and twelve respectively.”

“Mere children, then,” said Minerva, in some satisfaction. “The will not be likely to be too much trouble then.”

“Unless they are spoilt and allowed to tease their stepsisters,” said Flora.

“I cannot imagine anyone who is both efficient and soft-hearted permitting that,” said Edward, mildly.  “Moreover, Mrs. Ambleside wrote to me to accept the position and spoke of ‘my four dear girls,’ so it is apparent that she makes no distinction between them.  You do read too many fairy stories, Minerva, my dear, to have imagined that and worried Flora. Still, at least in doing so you have improved your French.”

“Oh, Papa!  I never really believed in wicked stepmothers,” declared Minerva.  “It’s all a hum to allow for silly plotlines in novels as much as in fairy stories.  Anyone who is ready to take on the care of stepchildren must be a caring person who loves children, or loves their stepchildren’s father enough to try hard with them for his sake.”

“What a romantic child you are,” said Flora, scornfully.  “Some women marry widowers for their titles of money and do not care about the children. “

“Any man who has not watched a prospective bride with his own children to see how she acted with them, and what the children thought of her, would surely have rats in his attic,” said Minerva.

“You’re used to having a clever Papa,” said Diana. “I fear too many men will take an attractive woman at her own estimation, and believe that she dotes on children.”

“That was catty enough for Flo, Flora, I mean,” said Minerva.

“Well one must be realistic,” said Diana.  “Marrying for love is an ideal, but one has to compromise ideals to be comfortably situated.  We are fortunate to have the likelihood of comfortable existence even if we all dwindle into ageing spinsterhood, but if Mrs. Ambleside needs to be paid to be a chaperone, then her daughters are not so fortunately situated.”

“You don’t think this Elizabeth will set her cap at Papa do you?” cried Flora  in lively horror. 

Diana laughed.

“Not for one moment had that thought entered my head,” she declared. “I was just reflecting that I was fortunate compared to Elizabeth, who needs to make the most of her season, whereas I can afford not to ‘take’, so my clumsiness is of less moment.  I expect Elizabeth will be glad if anyone offers for a girl with no dowry, even if she is ravishingly beautiful.  The Gunning sisters are still a legend because their story is so unusual, two penniless but beautiful girls each marrying a duke.”

“I see what you mean,” said Flora, trying not to preen over her own effortless grace.

“I do hope, Diana, that you and Elizabeth will be friends, not rivals,” said Edward. 

“I have not made an enemy of one of my own sex yet,” said Diana. “I’m too lazy to want a rivalry.”

“You are to amiable for anyone to dislike you,” said Minerva.  “Even if some of those rotten girls teased you about your clumsiness.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Diana.

“And we, your sisters, will watch out to make sure these girls do not attempt to undermine you,” said Flora.

Edward laughed.

“Just wait and see what they are like,” he said.