“Good.” His father studied him. “I want you to marry Miss Heyward.”
“What?!” William exclaimed, rising to his feet.
“You’ve already said you enjoy her company. The match will be advantageous to me financially. What surprises you about the suggestion?”
“I enjoy her company, but that doesn’t mean I love her.”
“We’re speaking of marriage, not love,” his father said with contempt.
“Father, I—” William heard a roaring in his ears. “I cannot marry her. I’m engaged to someone else.”
If he’d expected shock, he was to be disappointed. “To the Pierce girl? Yes, Reynolds told me, and it was trivial to discover her identity. A secret engagement is not legally binding, in any case, and as it’s not public—there can be no public repercussions to breaking it off.” His father leaned forward, resting his hands on the desk. “William, it’s absurd to think of you marrying her in any case. She’s not an appropriate bride for a man of your background.”
“You don’t know her,” William persisted stubbornly. “She may not be wealthy, but she is a good person. I believe that will contribute more to my happiness in the long run. I don’t need to marry for money, in any case.”
“You are correct in that; you do not. But does she?” William said nothing. “I’ve met this girl’s father, the elder Mr. Pierce. Never have I met anyone more determined to raise himself above his current station. Do you truly believe he’s made no suggestions to the girl that if she married you, her life would be much easier?”
“I cannot believe that of Harriet,” William said, but even he could hear the resolve wavering in his voice.
“Then think of Miss Heyward, instead. Is she not lovely and kind? All I’m asking is for you to give her a chance before you decide to marry a girl who might well ruin your life. And if you refuse her…” He paused portentously. “Think of what will happen to such a sweet girl when war breaks out in the south. You know as well as I do that it’s inevitable. Heyward is willing to consider her marriage to you for one reason: her safety can only be assured if she’s far away from her current home when the war reaches them. You can be sure, otherwise he would never consider your suit; even I, after this conversation, am forced to consider you in many ways beneath her notice.”
He did enjoy Lavinia’s company, and William himself had feared what consequences the coming war would wreak on her. “Very well, Father,” William surrendered. “I will consider the match. I promise nothing more than that.” His heart broke at the thought of abandoning Harriet—but maybe if he went along with this farce for a few weeks longer...
His father stood, rounded the desk, and clapped a hand on William’s shoulder. “Thank you, son. Perhaps it is not too late after all for you to make me a proud father.”
* * *
Every threat in the night seemed somehow more harsh, the second time Harriet wove her way through the streets to the bar where she’d agreed to meet William. Everyone seemed to be watching her.
She ducked into the same booth where they’d sat before, shaking her head nervously whenever the barmaid approached to ask whether she wanted anything to drink.
Even more than the previous time, every moment seemed to take hours to pass. Other patrons wandered in and out of the bar, and occasionally one approached Harriet. She shrank back into the seat when they did, pulled her cloak tight about her, and hoped desperately for them to go away. Eventually, all of them did.
And eventually, Harriet had to face the fact that William wasn’t coming.
As it got later, the clientele became more and more disreputable—not to mention louder and ruder. A man leered at her and grabbed at her arm when she finally decided there was no point in staying longer; William would not expect her to stay where she was uncomfortable, and undoubtedly would send her a note the next day explaining why he had been prevented or detained from coming. She avoided the man’s arms and choked down a sob as she escaped into the night.
She lay awake in bed all night, rolling William’s ring between her fingers. The sounds of the house creaking around her, normally soothing, made her wonder whether William, too, was lying awake listening to the sounds made by his home. Or was he sleeping soundly, with no idea of the agony she was experiencing because of him?
It wasn’t until the next morning, of course, that she got her answer, but she didn’t have to wait long.
Emerging bleary-eyed from her room, after a wakeful night, she found her father sitting at the kitchen table, their day maid serving the simple breakfast to which they’d become accustomed. He greeted her distractedly, his attention mainly on his toast and tea, and on the newspaper he had spread across half the table. He’d always insisted that being well-informed was important for anyone who wanted to rise above his station.
“An interesting marriage notice in the paper today,” he said absently, and shoved a page towards Harriet. “Didn’t you have a flirtation with him recently? I suppose it’s no surprise that he went for an heiress rather than a Pierce, though I say it speaks poorly of him.”
Harriet froze. At the top of the announcements, a name she recognized jumped out at her as though it had been printed in blood red.
Mr. William Dumire, son of Mr. John Dumire, it read, of New York; to Miss Lavinia Heyward, daughter of Mr. Bennett Heyward, of South Carolina.
Miss Lavinia Heyward. That must be the blonde woman Harriet had seen William speaking to in the garden. She told herself she had known, even then, that his assurances were lies, but in truth she had accepted his word, because she didn’t want to admit that she had been taken advantage of.
“May I take the paper upstairs?” Harriet asked, her voice shaking. Her father didn’t seem to notice.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Take a pot of tea with you, if you intend on reading it in your room.” He smiled without looking up, and Harriet fled to her bedroom.
She tore the notice from the page and read it again, hoping to find that her eyes—and her memory—had betrayed her. The words remained unchanged, though they blurred from the tears in her eyes.
Harriet pulled William’s ring from her pocket, and wrapped it in the piece of newsprint. She tucked the small parcel into a drawer of her dresser. There, she thought; a reminder to never be so gullible again.
She spent most of several days sitting listlessly at the window, staring outside and wondering where William was. Moving with his wife (she detested the word, and made herself repeat it over and over as punishment) to their new home? Holding her as they lay in bed each night? Thinking of her, and experiencing even a twinge of regret? Or never thinking of her as he and Lavinia settled into their new life together?
Though she and William had few friends in common, eventually she learned that he and his wife had settled in Pennsylvania. It was the last news she had of him.
By then, she told herself she no longer cared. She had already sworn never to let herself be vulnerable like this again. But moreover, she had sworn to make her fortune; to be the kind of woman William would regret having lost.
And if she ever had the opportunity, she vowed, she would make him regret it.
Thirty Years Later...
When the house was quiet and still, Harriet always found her gaze drifting to the jewelry box she kept in a dresser drawer.
She had another jewelry box, an intricately carved thing her niece Frances had given her as a gift, shortly after moving into the venerable old mansion Harriet had bought as soon as her finances allowed it. It was already too late; anyone she might have impressed with her address had long ago left the city.
“Old maids like us should have some pretty things to enjoy,” Francie had teased, and Harriet had teased her back, though inside she hoped her niece—still young and pretty, however old she thought herself—would not end up an old maid like her, still longing for the days of her youth, unable to tear her thoughts away from the past.
She had achieved her revenge in the way she’d vowed to
herself that she would; she’d made her fortune, and become the kind of woman who held the power, respect, and—sometimes—fear of almost everyone she met in New York Society. But it was an empty achievement, in the end. She’d never seen William again after that day in his garden, and she had to assume that he and Lavinia had happily grown old together, perhaps raising several children along the way. She, however, was alone, except for Francie, who had already been an independent adult before she came to live with Harriet.
She felt like a child sneaking into her parents’ room as she slid the top dresser drawer open, wincing at every creak, and lifted the lid of the box, removing the trinket she still kept inside.
William’s ring was now tarnished, never having been polished over the past three decades. The fingers that held it were thinner, and beginning to wrinkle. Still, holding it, she felt like a young girl again, and briefly remembered simple joy.
It was not that she’d led an unhappy life. Harriet had had many triumphs, and many contented moments. But the simplicity of the emotion she’d experienced when William had first slipped the ring into her hand—that was gone forever, destroyed by his betrayal.
A sound downstairs had Harriet hastily returning the ring to its hiding place and slamming the drawer shut. She was just in time; moments later, Francie pounded up the stairs and knocked on Harriet’s bedroom door. She breathed deeply, trying to slow her heartbeat, and swung the door open. As always, the sight of her niece’s face made her feel both proud and sad.
“I brought the mail,” Francie said, handing a pile of envelopes to Harriet. “There’s one thick letter from a Chisolm. A relation?”
Harriet inspected it quizzically, and it was some moments before realization struck. “A cousin,” she said. “I haven’t seen Susanna often since she married and moved farther from the city. She had several children…”
She ripped open the letter, curious what could have caused such a thorough missive to come her way.
“Oh, my dear,” Harriet breathed as she read the letter. Francie shifted impatiently, but did not ask for details. Harriet looked up. “Her husband was severely injured, and she’s written to ask for help.”
Francie scowled. “She doesn’t write for decades, and then calls on you when she requires money?”
Harriet opened her mouth to protest, but stopped short when her attention was caught by a particular passage in the letter.
My heart breaks, too, for my daughter Sadie, a young lady now, upon whose shoulders our burden weighs heavily. I had hoped for better things for her, but she has few prospects here in our small town…
Harriet’s heart seemed to contract. She immediately felt for this Sadie, a young woman she had never set eyes upon. Perhaps she, as Harriet once did, had a sweetheart—and perhaps she, too, would be kept from him by the turn of her family’s fortunes.
“She has a daughter, a young woman,” Harriet said to Francie to explain her sudden silence. “A poor girl in a small town—her options would necessarily be limited.” She paused. “Perhaps,” she said slowly, “I should invite her here to stay with us.”
Francie quirked an eyebrow. “You’ve given up on marrying me off, and now you need a new project?” she joked. Harriet gave her a look.
“It would be good for us, too,” she mused, “to have company, instead of rattling around in this big house by ourselves. What do you think, my dear?”
Francie shrugged. “I will welcome any guest of yours to the house, of course, aunt.”
Harriet cleared away the debris on her desk and settled down to write a response to the letter. She enclosed a few bills to ease them through their immediate troubles. But it was not the main intention of the letter.
She wrote, But there is something more I can offer you, or rather, your daughter Sadie...
Thanks for Reading!
You've just read "End of the Engagement," a short story prequel to the Miss Pierce's Protégées series. I hope you enjoyed it!
There will be four full-length novels in the series. Read on for an excerpt of the first, Planning on Passion.
Book 2, Depths of Desire, will be available in June 2016.
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Planning on Passion
Book 1 of Miss Pierce's Protégées
Chapter 1
Marrying a rich man is the solution to untold numbers of financial problems, but it’s easier said than done in a town of fewer than a thousand people, most of them farmers. Sadie sat in a corner of her parents’ parlor, wondering how to salvage a plan for one’s life when even the most basic steps were impossible to achieve.
Here were the undeniable facts:
Her father could not work; in fact, he couldn’t get out of bed.
Her mother was not making enough money to support all five of them.
Evelyn and Jimmy were too young to work.
Sadie herself had few useful skills, beyond cleaning or cooking for someone too desperate to pay for better—neither of which were in much demand in her small hometown.
Five people ate an awfully lot of food.
Food cost money.
Sadie sighed. No matter how she added it up, the result came out the same. Either she learned to do something someone would pay her for, or she found someone to marry who was willing to support not only her, but the rest of the family. And that meant someone almost absurdly rich, someone for whom buying produce sufficient for two growing children was barely a blip on the account sheets.
Her current circle of acquaintance, however, provided a distinct dearth of rich men upon whose pity she could throw herself—or even tolerably employed or incomed ones. She stared out the window and tried to figure out an equation that didn’t equal all of them starving in a few months.
The view out their living room window was one of the most familiar sights in Sadie’s memory, along with the faces of her parents and siblings. Raymond’s home, which he lived in with his grandmother, was just visible down the lane. Gently rolling hills, thriving green and brown weeds, trees swaying in the strong breeze. She couldn’t imagine seeing anything else out of her front window. But it was a sacrifice she’d have to make for the sake of her family.
“Sadie,” her mother said softly from over her shoulder. She looked up and smiled, trying to erase the tense look from her brow. “Worrying again?”
“Nothing to worry about,” she lied glibly, knowing that her mother would never believe her, but not wanting to add anything else to her mother’s own store of worries if she could avoid it. Her mother had probably thought, twenty-some years ago, that all of her worries were over, when she married a young, strong man with plenty of savings to his credit. She never could have imagined this: that with an adult daughter and two dependent children, she’d be mopping floors to support her husband, felled by an injury and a fever that the doctor couldn’t confidently say would ever go away.
Her mother’s expression softened, anyway, and Sadie suppressed the urge to squeeze her tight, as though she was no older than Jimmy. If her mother could be so stony, Sadie had no excuse not to follow in her mold.
“I received a letter today,” her mother said, changing the subject. “I’d like to talk to you about it.”
“A letter?” Sadie asked wonderingly. She glanced at Evelyn and Jimmy, playing with jacks in the middle of the rag rug, their voices soft. Evelyn was old enough to know that Jimmy needed distracting and their mother couldn’t always do it, and Jimmy was old enough to know to always keep his voice down, inside, since loud noises caused their father even more pain. They didn’t react, lost in their game. “Is it bad news?” She couldn’t imagine why else her mother would want privacy to discuss it.
“Not bad,” her mother clarified. “Just…” She trailed off, looking at Evelyn and Jimmy herself. “Let’s go for a walk,” she suggested.
They bundled up against the March weather. The frost on the grass had not yet melted in the morning sun, and made Sadie’s stockings damp as it melted.
“Is it Papa?” Sadie blurted out before they’d even moved away from the front door. That was the no thing none of them could plan against. His injury could take a turn for the worse at any time. Already he’d faded from the bright, robust man they’d known to a grey shadow of his old self.
“No,” her mother said, drawing out the word in a peculiar way. She didn’t look at Sadie as she spoke. “Have you heard me speak of my cousin Harriet?” She was holding a piece of paper in one fist, clenching it tightly.
“The name is familiar,” Sadie hedged, unable to recall anything else.
“She is my mother’s cousin, and we were close once, until she moved to New York.” New York City—just the phrase brought sparkling visions to Sadie’s mind, of bright lights and rich people and expensive clothes, not to mention crime and filth and crowding. “I’ve kept in touch with her by writing now and then. Once a year, at most. She knew about you children…” Her mother paused. “I’ve been writing to her more… recently.” She didn’t need to fill it what was left unspoken: since their difficulties had begun the year before. “In my last letter, I told her how difficult things had become, and I’m not ashamed to admit I begged for her help.”
“You shouldn’t be,” Sadie assured her mother, who smiled wanly.
“To my embarrassment, she sent some money, which…” Her mother gripped the letter until it nearly crumpled. “Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. She also sent a question for you.”
“For me?” Sadie asked, astonished. “But I’ve never met her.”
“You haven’t, but she’s heard about you. Every year since you were born. She said she feels as though she knows you already.”
“What is the question?”
“She says that, given your age, she can imagine that this… situation is causing you difficulties of a personal nature.” Her mother hesitated again. Clearly, this subject was one she would prefer not to broach. “She offers to have you come and stay with her, in the city, and promises that she could arrange for you the acquaintance of any number of wealthy and eligible young men, in the hopes of making a match.”