Sylvia Or The Moral High Ground Read online

  SYLVIA

  OR

  THE MORAL HIGH GROUND

  by

  CATHERINE BOWNESS

  Copyright © 2016 Catherine Bowness

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1539311263

  ISBN-10: 1539311260

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  With love and gratitude to:

  Sophy and Ben for invaluable technical and emotional support

  as always

  And to

  Janis, Caroline, Lyn, Aysen and Victoria for their endless patience, helpful advice and continuing encouragement.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 1

  The atmosphere in the Sullington household in the spring of 1819 could have been described, with little exaggeration, as feverish. Miss Sullington was about to make her come-out; dresses had been ordered, invitations written, dance steps rehearsed, additional servants engaged, the London house opened and the Holland covers removed.

  As well as those servants without whom Lady Sullington could not contemplate the rigours of the Season ahead, the governess was, as it were, to be parcelled up and transported to the metropolis. This was a late decision because, now that Miss Sullington was deemed ready to exchange the schoolroom for the drawing room, Miss Holmdale was no longer required for the purpose for which she had originally been engaged. Lady Sullington had been on the point of laying her off, considering even the small outlay which constituted her wages to be money which could be saved.

  This laudable economy was, however, scotched by the damsel herself, who had conceived a deep affection for her teacher. She flew into the boughs and threatened to succumb to a prolonged fit of the dismals if her dearest Miss Holmdale should be forced to leave before she, Melissa, was married. Indeed, Melissa expressed the hope that her ‘dearest Miss Holmdale’ would remain as part of her household almost for ever and would, in due course, take over teaching Melissa’s children.

  Sylvia Holmdale herself attempted to reason with the girl, pointing out that, even were her charge to be married by the end of the year, and even if she should produce her first baby within another year, it would be quite some time before a governess would be needed for the child and she was by no means certain that Melissa’s husband would wish to keep an under-employed governess hanging around for such a protracted length of time.

  Melissa laughed. “Why, yes, of course he will, if I ask it of him.”

  Sylvia, abandoning the argument, said pacifically, “We shall see. In the meantime, I am touched that you place such a high value on what I can offer and shall enjoy seeing you all dressed up and breaking hearts.”

  Miss Sullington saw nothing amiss with this bloodthirsty ambition and replied with a sunny smile, “I own that I am looking forward to it immensely but all my pleasure will be at an end if I am obliged to leave you behind. There is nobody in the world who listens to me in the way that you do and nobody else of whom I shall feel able to ask advice as to which gentleman I should settle for.”

  It was Sylvia’s turn to laugh. “I will certainly engage to listen to everything you have to say but I shall find it difficult to offer advice on the relative merits of one gentleman over another since I will not, myself, have met any of them.”

  “Oh, but you will; I shall make sure of that. I am certain Mama will not wish to accompany me all the time; she is bound to grow bored and then you will be obliged to chaperone me.”

  Sylvia took leave to doubt this. It was true that Lady Sullington, during the first seventeen years of her daughter’s life, had not shown a great deal of interest in either her daughter’s opinions or her ambitions; whether this was due to boredom or to her insistence upon the girl doing as she was bid, Sylvia was not certain but suspected the latter. Her ladyship did, however, attach vast importance to the girl’s pastimes and accomplishments. Melissa had been subjected to every sort of instruction in addition to that given her by Miss Holmdale: she had received piano and singing tuition from a proper musician and dancing lessons from a dancing master. No expense had been spared to equip her to attract an offer from a gentleman of the highest rank and Sylvia did not suppose that such expense and attention to detail would result in her ladyship’s permitting her daughter to choose her own husband, nor to allow the governess to voice an opinion on the matter, unless of course it coincided exactly with her own.

  This conversation took place a few days before the party was due to leave the wilds of Lincolnshire for the sophistication of the metropolis. It was immediately following Miss Holmdale’s acquiescence that Miss Sullington approached her parent and threatened to cause a scene of such mighty and damaging proportions that Lady Sullington was compelled to concede. The governess would, after all, not be laid off immediately.

  The extracting of this promise was followed by a summons for the governess to attend her ladyship in the green saloon. Sylvia, familiar with her employer’s ways, did not keep her waiting. Never, in all the seven years of her servitude, having allowed milady’s humour to distress her, she was perfectly composed when she entered the room.

  Lady Sullington was not much above forty but she looked older, her face betraying her nature in the deep longitudinal creases, which ran from nose to chin, and the fine network of lines around her mouth; these last were the result of her habit of continually primming her lips, a practice which had become ingrained during the more than twenty years that she had been married to Lord Sullington. They had not been happy ones but this misfortune could not, in all fairness, be laid entirely at his lordship’s door – although he was not without fault and indeed had a good many glaring ones – for her ladyship’s nature was one that found something amiss with everything and everyone.

  This was Sylvia Holmdale’s first job. When she had arrived she had been extremely young – indeed barely out of her own schoolroom - but, resolved to find a position as quickly as possible, had been indifferent to her employer’s nature or the conditions of service. Nothing that Lady Sullington could say or do penetrated the armour with which she had surrounded her heart.

  It was not until some months had passed that she discovered how many governesses had come and gone and how rapidly the departures had followed upon the arrivals. Melissa had been ten at the time. There were two older boys, already at Eton but home for the holidays, and two younger ones, whose early education she had also been expected to oversee.

  The reason so many previous governesses had left in such haste was not the poor behaviour of the children but rather the peevishness of the mother. She was hardly capable of speaking cordially to anyone, even her own children, and it was not long before the little Sullingtons became attached to Miss Holmdale.

  As she went into the green saloon the morning after Melissa ha
d confided that she was, after all, to go to London with the family, Sylvia dropped a respectful curtsey. Her employer was sitting on a sofa, her back as straight as a ramrod, her feet neatly aligned with the toes just peeping out from beneath the hem of her dress.

  “You are to come to London with us,” her ladyship said in the curiously high voice in which she spoke. Sylvia sometimes wondered if she pitched it so high in order to depress pretension.

  “I am very grateful, my lady,” Sylvia replied, executing another little bob.

  “Yes, well, you have Melissa to thank for that. I would not deny that you have instructed her perfectly adequately in most academic subjects. However, it has not escaped my notice that you have failed to teach her to heed her mama without engaging in heated argument. She enacted me a Cheltenham tragedy yesterday when I informed her that we would not require your services any longer. Indeed, so hysterical did she become that I feared she might lose her reason altogether. It is on account of that - and my wish to see her married as soon as possible - that I have acceded to her request for you to accompany us to London. It seemed the lesser of two evils.”

  “It is very good of your ladyship,” Sylvia murmured, controlling with difficulty a distressing tendency to smile at being classed as an evil, even if it were only the lesser of two.

  “I shall expect you to uphold my authority,” her ladyship continued in that high, grating voice. “Whatever my daughter thinks, you are employed and paid by me and you will do my bidding. I intend her to make an excellent marriage and I will not tolerate her forming an attachment to an unsuitable gentleman. There will no doubt be several fortune hunters and I shall expect you to play an active part in depressing their pretensions. Have I made myself clear?”

  “Yes, your ladyship. You may be assured that I shall do my best to protect Miss Sullington from gentlemen interested only in her fortune.”

  “Good. When an eligible suitor presents himself, I will inform you of my wishes and shall expect you to encourage her to look favourably upon him. I would prefer her to form an attachment to her future husband and that is where, in spite of the expense of keeping you on for the next few months, I believe your continued presence in the household may prove to be of benefit. Do you understand what I am asking of you, Miss Holmdale?”

  “Perfectly, your ladyship.”

  “Good. In view of your changed role in our household, I shall expect you to accompany my daughter on any outing where I may be too busy to keep my eye upon her. I don’t doubt she will welcome that. You seem to have engaged her affections.”

  “Thank you, my lady.”

  “That will be all. We leave in a week’s time.”

  “Yes, my lady.” Sylvia dropped another curtsey and left the room, shutting the door carefully behind her.

  She was angry but not shocked. During the past seven years she had had ample opportunity to form an impression of her ladyship’s character as well as her ambitions for her daughter. It was to be hoped that Melissa would indeed form an attachment to the right gentleman but Sylvia took leave to doubt it. She knew, however, as did Lady Sullington, that the girl would be more likely to be guided by her than by her mother, so far as it was possible for anyone to guide a girl when she falls in love for the first time.

  The next week was spent packing. This did not take long in Sylvia’s case; she had not a great many garments, no jewels apart from a pearl necklace left to her by her grandmother, and few possessions to which she was attached.

  When the carriages finally left Sullington Hall, Sylvia found herself seated beside Melissa, her ladyship having decided at the last minute that the girl’s chatter would give her the headache.

  “I own I am excessively excited to be going to London at last,” Melissa confided, wriggling joyfully upon the seat.

  “It is exciting and marks a great change in your life.”

  “Yes. I suppose I shall only come back here for occasional visits from now on.”

  “You must not assume that you will be married by the end of your first Season, you know. You may not have met a gentleman to whom you will have formed an attachment.”

  “I hope I shall for I am afraid that Mama fully intends to be rid of me by the end of the summer,” Melissa observed placidly.

  Sylvia did not reply. She knew that Melissa was right and it pained her to hear it, for what daughter wants to know – or should know – that her mother wishes to dispose of her?

  “Have you been to London before, Miss Holmdale?” the girl asked a little later.

  “No, I own I have not and feel some trepidation about going to such a large city.”

  “I am afraid of becoming lost,” Melissa admitted. “I daresay all the streets look the same and I shall not be able to remember their names.”

  “You have nothing to fear for you will not be wandering about them by yourself.”

  “No. Will you?”

  “I am not sure. I suppose I shall have a little time to myself and there are a great many sights to see in London. I believe I shall try to visit St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey. There is the Tower of London too.”

  “Will you not go to any shops?”

  “I daresay I shall, although I cannot think what I would buy.”

  “Cannot think what you would buy? But there are millions of things to buy. I am certain the London shops will be positively stuffed with all sorts of wonderful things that one would not be able to find in Lincoln.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Sylvia agreed, “but I shall do my best not to notice them because, if I did, I might be sorely tempted.”

  “Is it because you do not have a great deal of money that you will try not to look at the shops?” Melissa asked.

  “It is partly that but, you know, however much one has, one is bound to find that one has not enough to buy all the things one would like.”

  “I suppose not. That is why Mama wishes me to marry a wealthy man, although of course I shall have quite a lot of money of my own once I am married. But Mama has emphasised that it would be better to marry someone who is also well provided for; otherwise, she says, he will probably only be marrying me for my fortune and that would not be a good thing.”

  “I hope you are not intending to marry him for his money, for that would not be a good thing either,” Sylvia said quite sharply.

  “Do you not think so?”

  “No, I do not. It would be no more fair to him than his marrying you for your fortune would be fair to you. Whomever you marry, you will be obliged to be married to him for the rest of your life and, to my mind, the most important thing is to find him congenial.”

  “Do you think so? But we will not have to live in each other’s pockets precisely, will we? Mama says that it is one’s position in Society that is most important for that will outlive any partiality one may initially feel – or not feel - for one’s husband.”

  Sylvia began to wish that she had been dismissed for how in the world was she to reply to this? She was employed by Lady Sullington to promote that lady’s views whilst holding very different opinions herself; she was attached to Melissa, whom she saw as an innocent being led inexorably to the slaughter. She wanted to shout, ‘No, you cannot marry without at least a degree of partiality for your husband,’ but did not dare.

  She said carefully, “Your mama is right that your position in Society is important and unlikely to change unless your husband should have a gaming habit. He could, you know, run through several fortunes within a remarkably short space of time if he is given to that sort of thing. She may also be right that any partiality either you or he may feel for each other could prove to be short-lived. All the same, even if that should prove to be the case, liking should endure and often, I believe, flows from initial partiality. And,” she went on, warming to her theme, “I think the greatest danger that you run in marrying someone to whom you have not formed an attachment is that, in time, you may form one and, if it is not to your husband, you will be quite dreadfully unhappy.”
/>   She must have spoken more passionately than she had intended for Melissa’s brows drew together and her eyes flew to her governess’s face. “You speak with such feeling on the matter, dear Miss Holmdale. Did you – have you been in love with someone yourself and was he – unavailable? I have often wondered why you have not married for you are excessively pretty.”

  Sylvia, looking into the trusting blue eyes fixed upon her face, felt tears prick her own. She turned away to look out of the window, hoping that the girl had not seen them, and managed to say, after a pause which she knew was too long to be unremarkable, “When I was your age I thought myself in love, but it turned out to be nothing – just a girl’s fancy.”

  “But what happened? Did he not love you?”

  “No, I do not believe he did – or not enough to suit my exacting standards.”

  “But,” Melissa said, reaching for her governess’s hand, “you have worn the willow for him ever since, have you not?”

  “Of course I have not; that would have been absurd.”

  “I do not believe you. What has happened to him? Is he married now?”

  “I have not the least idea but it would be odd if he were not. He is probably the father of several hopeful children by now.”

  “And you never met another gentleman whom you liked so well?”

  “I never met another gentleman at all; at least, that is a ridiculous thing to say for of course one meets gentlemen every day, but I never met another who might have considered me a suitable partie.”

  “Was that why you became a governess?” Melissa persisted. “You must have been very young for you are not too old to marry now, are you? I think you ran away and came to us because you wanted to avoid gentlemen - and being a governess is tantamount to going into a convent, is it not?”

  Sylvia smiled. “Not quite, but, so far as meeting eligible gentlemen is concerned, I suppose not altogether unlike. I think we have spoken quite enough about such an ancient and tedious subject. I shall not answer any more questions about my silliness when I was a girl.”