Page 2 of The Last Debutante
FUNNY HOW SMALL, chance moments could alter one’s world so completely. Daria Babcock had never really thought of it until now. She wasn’t generally one to contemplate fate or the meaning of life; she’d never engaged in such lengthy introspection. But then again, she’d never found herself on the side of a road in the Scottish wilds, utterly alone, until today.
Well. Notutterly,as there was a dog, but she hardly counted him. After her initial fear of being mauled when he’d wandered out of the forest, she’d quickly discovered him to be completely useless. He was black, with spots of white on his paws and his chest, and presently had folded his legs to lie beside her trunk, his head propped against it, his eyes closed, as if he had no more pressing issues to attend to than his nap.
Mr. Mungo Brodie hadn’t seemed particularly concerned when he’d deposited her here—he’d mentioned only that her destination was “just a wee bit up the road, then.”
That “road” was little more than a rabbit trail. Into dark woods. With not a soul in sight.
Daria glanced up to the treetops and the robin’s-egg-blue sky. She guessed it was the middle of the afternoon, which meant she still had a bit of time before it turned dark.
Which in turn gave her more time to study the ridiculous twists of fate that had brought her here. For her current predicament—side of road, all alone—clearly deserved some study. “I wish I knew the moment that everything changed,” she said aloud.
The dog’s ear twitched.
Perhaps it had begun a month or so ago, when she was feeling rather cross. It had seemed to her that a veritable explosion of births had occurred in and around Hadley Green, and that scores of pink-cheeked cherubs in carriages were being pushed about by their nurses as their gurgling laughter drifted in through open windows.
On one particularly sobering afternoon, she’d attended tea at the Ashwood estate, where she’d been gobsmacked at Lady Ashwood’s coy announcement to the assembled group of Hadley Green ladies that she was expecting her second child.
“Achild!” Lady Horncastle, the grand dame of Hadley Green, had swiveled her silver head around to squint at the fair-haired Lady Ashwood through her lorgnette, clearly as stunned as Daria. “But you were onlyjustdelivered of your son, my dear,” she said, as if Lady Ashwood might rethink her pregnancy with the startling news that she alreadyhada child.
Lady Ashwood had blushed and laughingly said, “I remarked the same to my husband, but I think he will not be happy until every room at Ashwood is occupied by a child.”
“That isquitea lot of children,” Lady Horncastle had sniffed. “Your husband is surely aware that if one desires a herd, one may invest in cattle. It is really much simpler.”
The announcement had made Daria quite cross, too. She desperately wanted a baby of her own, even a herd of them. Every time Daria held a baby she felt an uncomfortably deep tug in her chest. She would like to be married, to be a mother, a wife, to have some purpose other than to attend teas. Yet in spite of having spent the last three years endeavoring to put herself in every conceivable avenue of society, she had not even a whiff of a proper marriage prospect. That wound was being liberally salted by the fact that all of her close acquaintances were now married and bearing children, and on that particular day, it had sent Daria drifting onto a sea of melancholy.
She was the last debutante of Hadley Green. The last one of her social circle, the last one without an offer.
Daria had drifted home on that sea, but it was no better there, for she had the misfortune of living with two constant reminders of what was missing from her life. Her parents were like two cooing doves, forever in each other’s company, content with their own society. Daria often felt as if even she were intruding on their secret little world. At times she was touched by their devotion to one another, but at other times, she was annoyed by it.
When Daria had arrived home from the tea, she’d found her parents huddled together before the hearth in the salon against the chill of an early spring day, their heads bent together over a letter. Daria had thought nothing of it.
“I will admit,” she said, holding up one gloved finger to the dog, “that there are times I am entirely distracted by my own pathetic state of being.”
He gave her a single thump of his tail.
It wasn’t until supper that Daria had even noticed the subtle change in her parents. The evening lacked their typical effusive commentary on their blissful day.
So Daria had filled the air with a recitation of events from that afternoon, eager to relieve herself of her vexations. However, she was not rewarded with an appropriately commiserating response to her complaints of having no prospects or hope for a future. She’d sighed loudly to demonstrate her exasperation as Griswold, their butler-groundskeeper-footman-valet, lumbered about the table, removing their soup bowls.
“Is anyone listening?” Daria demanded.
“Of course!” her mother said. “You were saying, dearest?”
“That my life is not to be borne, that’s what,” Daria said a bit missishly. “And that you and Pappa might take me to London for the Season,” she added hopefully.
“Oh, I think not,” her father had said, his attention on the plate Griswold placed before him.
“Why not?” Daria had asked, stung by the swiftness of his dismissal. “It’s not as if I have any prospects here.”
“We are not suited to London,” her mother said. “And you do have prospects, darling. Lord Horncastle is very attentive to you—”
“I should rather perish than marry Lord Horncastle! I am aware that Horncastle is the only gentleman in Hadley Green with a fortune, but it does not make up for his odious tendencies to drink and pout!”
Yet her mother had smiled thinly and said with great condescension, “You will find a nice young man when the time is right, dearest.”
“The time is far pastright,Mamma. I am one andtwenty! Am I to waste away in this tiny little village without an occupation? I feel restless and useless.” She could almost hear her good friend Charity Scott whispering in her ear:“The point is that here in Hadley Green, you are without true society. There might be members of the Quality milling about from time to time, but therealsociety is in London. Youmustgo to London.”
“You are very useful to us,” her father had objected.
