A Lady's Point of View Read Free

shall go back to Derby alone, after penning my apologies to Mr.
Brummell and the patronesses. Under the circumstances, surely no one will
condemn Angela for my actions. We might even be spared the expense of a ball,
and Angela can come out quietly at a tea party. Everyone will think we are
acting with discretion.”
    Lady Mary frowned as she
considered this notion. Meg hoped her mother would see it was by far the most
expeditious solution.
    Angela was not so easily
persuaded when they arrived home and told her of the night’s catastrophe. On
hearing of their contemplated course of action, she cried out, “You cannot!
Meg, how can you go to live with our cousins? The Barkers are a pair of old
grumbletonians. They’ll stuff your ears with Fordyce’s Sermons until you run
screaming down the street.”
    “I’ll never run screaming down
the street,” said Meg. “I would collide with a milk cart.”
    “You’re not so bad as that!”
objected Angela loyally.
    “To your beds,” said their weary
mother. “We’ll discuss this in the morning.”
    Seeing the sleepiness of the
little maid, Karen, who attended them in addition to her other duties, the
girls sent her off with assurances that they could make their own toilet. As
she allowed her sister to brush out her hair, Meg reflected that what she would
miss most was not the balls or outings to Vauxhall Gardens, nor boxes at the
Opera, but her family’s companionship.
    “Is it truly so difficult for you
to see?” Angela asked, gently untangling a knot in Meg’s curly locks.
    “In spite of what Mother
believes, I can’t simply force my eyes to function properly.” Meg toyed with a
pink velvet ribbon on the dressing table. “If only she didn’t insist it’s so
shocking to be seen with a glass.”
    “I can’t imagine what good it
would do,” said Angela. “I looked through Mrs. Pickney’s spectacles once and
they gave me the most frightful headache.”
    Impossible to explain to someone
with good vision how a few tiny lenses could open up a new world of sharp edges
in place of fuzzy ones, where furniture and faces no longer faded to obscurity,
Meg mused as she climbed into bed. How she longed for the simple freedom of
movement that others took for granted.
     
    Despite the silence that fell
over the premises, no one slept well that night in the Linley household.
    In the servants’ quarters, the
coachman spread the gossip he had overheard about the evening’s mishap. In
addition to their distress at Miss Linley’s fall from grace, the staff worried
that Lady Mary might retreat from London, leaving most of them to seek out new
positions.
    The maid, Karen, lay awake for a
different reason, one sufficient to overcome her exhaustion. She was concerned
not so much for her mistresses—what real harm could befall members of the
nobility?—but for how she might reach her childhood sweetheart, Peter, a valet
who worked in Liverpool. His master intended journeying to Canada, and Peter
had written to beg that she come and marry him so that they might go together.
But how was she to get north by herself?
    One storey below, Angela also lay
sleepless, hurting for her sister and trying not to dwell on her own
disappointment. How her young heart had swelled, the times she was allowed to
accompany her family to Vauxhall or Hyde Park, where handsome men doffed their
hats to her. Would she never dance in the arms of a beloved suitor?
    Lying beside Angela—for the
sisters shared a bed—Meg longed heartily to be done with the whole business.
She could bear even the Barkers’ endless sermonizing; at least she need not
fear that the least misstep would lead to disgrace. Perhaps in Derby she might
even acquire a pair of spectacles.
    As for Lady Mary, she had a
difficult decision to make. Since her husband’s death, she had been forced into
a situation for which her gentle birth and upbringing had never prepared her.
At each turning point, she discovered with amazement new sources