Jilted Read Free Page A

us.’
    ‘Very true,’ agreed Sir Wilfred. ‘But I have a feeling that Eustacia might like to be left alone, at least for a time.’
    Upstairs, Eustacia allowed her maid to help her off with her wedding gown. It was very strange, but although she did not seem to have done a great deal, the emotional turmoil of what had taken place had left her feeling very tired.
    Like the butler, her maid Trixie looked very sympathetic and, as she helped her mistress into bed and laid a light cover over her, she said quietly, ‘He wasn’t good enough for you, miss, and that’s a fact.’

CHAPTER TWO
    Eustacia did not join the family downstairs again that day. To her surprise, for she had thought that she would choke on just one mouthful, she managed to eat a small portion of the chicken that Trixie brought to her room, accompanied by a large glass of wine, with Sir Wilfred’s orders that she was to drink it all.
    That night, she found herself quite unable to sleep. Eventually, in the early hours of the morning, after she had gone through the entire scene in the church several times and come to the reluctant conclusion that however she might have behaved, she would still have ended up looking ridiculous and pathetic, she decided to go to the library and find something to read. She would normally have had several books in her room, for she was a voracious reader, but all her things had been packed away ready to be taken on her honeymoon.
    On reaching the library, she went at first to the shelf on which the novels could be found. After a moment’s hesitation, however, she decided that the antics of fictitious persons held no interest for her at present. She could, she thought, tell a tale far more compelling than any of theirs.
    In the end, she picked up a copy of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman . Its title seemed to promise the kind of book that would be in keeping with her present mood.
    Her mother had purchased it whilst she and Sir Wilfred were in the throes of one of their rare disagreements. Her ladyship had swept off to York, with an air of affronted dignity, taking Eustacia with her. After a very tiresome shopping outing during which LadyHope had not been pleased by anything, she had eventually spotted the book through a shop window and had pounced upon it eagerly. ‘I will show this to him, Eustacia,’ she had declared, brandishing it before her daughter in the carriage as they returned home. ‘ Then he will see that I am not a woman to be trifled with.’
    Eustacia had accepted what her mother had said in silence. Indeed, she could not imagine anyone ever supposing for a moment that Lady Hope was to be trifled with.
    On their arrival home, Sir Wilfred had been waiting on the steps with a huge bouquet of his wife’s favourite blooms. ‘Forgive me, my dear,’ he had said, his hand on his heart, thus proving that his wife was not the only one of the family with an instinct for drama.
    ‘Wilfred, my darling, of course I will,’ Lady Hope had replied, giving him her hand. Eustacia had brought the forgotten book in from the carriage, and put it in the library. Now, she took it upstairs with her. Once back in bed, she began to turn the pages. Written and published just two years before in 1792, the book seemed to be saying things that were personally directed to her.
    Destructive, however, as riches and inherited honours are to the human character, women are more debased and cramped, if possible, by them, than men, because men may still, in some degree, unfold their faculties by becoming soldiers and statesmen .
    ‘Oh yes indeed,’ she said out loud in bitter tones. ‘I wonder what he would have said if I’d sent a note to him , saying that I was joining the army!’ She read on.
    But the days of true heroism are over…. Our British heroes are oftener sent from the gaming table than from the plow; and their passions have been rather inflamed by hanging with dumb suspense on the turn of a die,