blueberry yoghurt and honeydew with butterscotch and sprinkles
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: The Dowry
Rating: G/PG (mild language)
Challenge: Blueberry Yoghurt #15: just out of reach, Honeydew #11: drastic measures
Toppings/Extras: butterscotch, sprinkles
Wordcount: 2,757
Summary: Miss Isobel Bedford-Wells finds herself in trouble following the death of her father.
Notes: This is around 1614. Edward Ashdown is born 1616. Backstories ahoy! Final leg in BtS marathon. Ended up going on a bit. XD
How appropriate that it was raining on that particular day.
Face reflected in the streaming glass of the window, Isobel Bedford-Wells stared out at her garden, the long stretch of nourished grass and flowers. Or at least it used to be hers. Now it belonged to her uncle, all of it, and all because of some underhand trifling with the wills of her father that she did not wholly understand. The grass seemed to glow greener from the water of the rain, and the flower-heads bobbed and dipped as fat droplets bounced from them.
With her knuckles seeming tight enough to burst her pale skin, Isobel clutched the windowsill tight, the weak sunlight pushing the reflections of many pearls of rainwater over her face through the glass. Her face was expressionless.
There was a polite cough from behind her.
“Miss Bedford-Wells,” said the master of her household, Mr Dewer, politely. “It is an unfortunate situation that has befallen you.”
“Do you say so?” Isobel replied bitterly. “I have lost everything that is rightfully mine, and all to that heathen of an uncle of mine. He ought to be strung up and hanged.”
“He wants you out of this house by next month,” Mr Dewer said quietly.
“The uncouth bastard,” Isobel spat. She turned to face Mr Dewer with a fierce glare in her pale blue eyes. “I shall do all that it takes to fight my case, Mr Dewer-he forged those deeds, stole them from the place of safety where my father hid them.” A lot of her anger was self-directed: she had kept the deeds hidden thinking that she would be able to hold onto her household and go without marriage for longer if they were never found-but they had been stolen away by the treacherous Mr Thompson, the old butler of the household. Then he and her uncle had double-signed it as witnesses at her father’s deathbed; signed that all was to go to her Uncle Arthur.
“How will you pay to fight your case, ma’am?” Mr Dewer asked gently. He knew that she had no money, not now that Arthur Bedford had taken all that she owned. He believed Isobel’s insistence that they had been forged-Arthur Bedford was a shifty fellow-but there seemed nothing that could be done.
“I will use the money of my dowry,” Isobel said, lifting her pointed chin. She had already thought upon this. Mr Dewer tried to disguise his surprised intake of breath.
“M-Miss Bedford-Wells,” he stammered, “That is highly inadvisable...”
She knew that. It was all of the wealth she had left in the world: several generations’ worth of jewellery from her mother’s side as well as a thousand crowns. If she lost it, there was no hope of any future for her-without marriage she would fall from grace, and there was no likelihood of any gentleman marrying her out of love or affection. She was a tall, pinched woman, ugly by the standards of most, with colourless skin and narrow eyes. Although meek as a woman should be, she was all too quiet, and the sweet helplessness most men liked to see in a girl was not present in this cold, unyielding creature.
Of course, Isobel had no interest in marriage, but she knew that her dowry was all that she had left to her own name, and she intended to put it to good use.
“I shall do as I please,” she said, continuing to glare at the raining garden. Her garden. “I am sure you will make the arrangements for me. I was at my father’s side when he died, and know in all truth that he would never have left everything to his brother when it is rightfully mine: he resented his brother as much as I do.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mr Dewer said, sounding fearful, “It is a cruel trick, but there is nothing we can do now...”
“There is,” replied Isobel forcefully, “And we shall do it. Fetch all of my dowry from the vault and count up its total value. Uncle Arthur will pay dearly for what he has tried to do to me.”
“Miss Bedford-Wells...”
“Step to it,” Isobel snapped. He did so.
-----
Percival Ingram played the harpsichord, all day if he could get away with it. People described him frequently as reclusive, and they were right.
All day long the keys danced for him, sang for him; glimmering dully in the candlelight they rang beautifully around his dusty home. This talent with the wing-shaped instrument, the true love of his life, was what had earned him a place among the upper crust, and in the Royal Court of Queen Elizabeth. The one he owned in his home had been a gift from the virgin queen herself one frigid Christmas Day, created by the most coveted of all harpsichord makers: the Frenchman Pascal Taskin and his family.
Not that this crossed Ingram’s mind at all as he played. Where it came from mattered very little to him; the elegant golden embellishments upon the swirling reddish wood, polished to gleam like metal, escaped his attention entirely. All he loved was to play, every moment that he could.
He didn’t talk much, but most people didn’t mind as long as he showed respect and kept on playing, which he would do without complaint. Nothing more than a mere entertainer in the widely-frequented and bustling court, he was a shadow dressed in black, there only for creating a pleasant noise scarcely audible over the constant waffling of the upper class.
The court was a desirable place for the ambitious, yet Ingram was not like that: he sought nothing but to play, and to be given his money so that he could live in relative comfort. People liked the sound he made when he played-he knew this and felt fortunate.
Today he played again, fingers falling liquidly over the keys, pale eyes lowered. The noise emanating from the harpsichord wove in and out of the gathered courtiers, underlined the uproarious jokes of the fools of the court, punctuated the gossip of the nobility. The chapelmaster, who had been stood nearby to assure that the music continued playing well, walked away to go and co-ordinate the fiddlers, wherever they had disappeared to (a flirtatious bunch, he always said). The moment he was gone, he felt a near-spectral presence over his shoulder.
“Percival,” said a familiar voice. He continued to play, but let her know that he was listening by raising his head somewhat. “It has all gone wrong.”
No more words were spoken until he finished the tune, and then he let his hands come to rest upon his thin lap, his fingers looking lost without their keys. After a moment, he turned on his circular stool to look at Isobel Bedford-Wells for a long moment.
“What has?” he asked. He had a very soft voice with a faint lisp.
Isobel was staring past him, her face glum and lips pale. Her marble-like blue eyes seemed in another world altogether. She never dressed very grandly, often choosing very dark colours, especially as now she was in mourning for her father: a rippling velvety black dress covered her modestly, the skirt of which dragged on the floor around her feet. Under the bodice was a white smock with a collar high on her neck, and her sleeves-ending in dainty lace-came far upon her wrists, the elongated backs longer than her hands. There was no jewellery or superfluities. No flourishes for Miss Bedford-Wells.
“I am using my dowry to pay for the lawyers and specialists needed to fight for my property, but it seems unlikely to succeed. As my dowry does not cover all of the costs, the firm has decided that if the case is lost, I am to marry their eldest son, a naval officer whom I have never met. If the case is won, part of my father’s property is to go to them.” She paused for a heavy moment. “It is likely the case will be lost due to that awful traitor to my family, Henry Thompson.”
Putting his fingers back to the keys, Ingram began to play.
“Do you not care at all?” asked Isobel, long-suffering.
“You know I do,” he replied quietly, and bowed his head over his keys again. Of course, it wasn’t a good idea to speak too often in public-Isobel turned and walked away from her lover, wondering if a problem shared was a problem halved after all.
She would face the consequences-whether the case was lost or won, she would fight tooth and nail for her father’s property, her birthright.
-----
The first time she met him was a fortnight from that day.
James Ashdown was a dull, grey-faced man: very tall and very serious. He did not speak much, and in that sense reminded her of Percival Ingram-but not enough. With Percival, there were so many colours deep within his mind and his soul that it leaked out without his meaning to. James Ashdown had no such colour. The greyness penetrated every cell.
He was polite, of course. Pleasant enough. Isobel was the serious kind too, rarely lively and never one for jokes, but she despaired at the man that could be her future husband. What had her family come to! The Bedford-Wells bloodline was an exclusive one, an exquisite one filled with lords and ladies... and now she could end up married to someone who worked for a living.
But had she not quietly fantasised in her most secret moments of marrying the intensely intelligent Percival Ingram? A member of the lower class, far more so than the Ashdowns. She knew that the Ashdowns had been noble once, but highly doubted their title would ever be renewed. They were old news, and none of their ilk had done anything remarkable for generations.
For a man who took part in so many sea adventures and escapades, Ashdown had very little to say. He did not seem entirely pleased with her, either: Isobel knew that she would never be beautiful, or even attractive for that matter, but her plainness never seemed to have bothered Ingram. But of course, Ingram was different. Always.
His father, John Ashdown, was even worse than his son. A slimy, toadying man of the law, eyes shrivelled from staring at numbers in ledgers and his wig noticeably tatty.
“I am so glad that we have managed to come to an accord, Miss Bedford-Wells,” he slimed at her as he shook his hand at the end of their meeting. Her attendant, the faithful master of her household Mr Dewer, was looking at him with clear distaste. Suddenly, Isobel was very thankful for his presence. Mrs Dewer, his wife, was her lady-in-waiting, and their families had had close ties for many generations.
I’m not, Isobel had thought with distaste as she stared dispassionately at James Ashdown. All she saw in him was an endless monotonous life: lifeless, colourless.
The court case was in another three weeks.
-----
Just before the court case, she was invited to stay a night at her despised uncle’s house. She took the opportunity, seeking to perhaps discover a way of changing his mind. Almost upon the instant of her carriage passing through his iron-wrought gates, she regretted it.
His manor house was at the top of Islington, overlooking the slums but distanced far from it by an insulating layer of grassy knolls and a massive wall caging everybody within. She had always hated family reunions, and today would be messier than ever: her despised uncle and his wife would be there as well as Isobel’s irritating older sister, her husband and their son.
“Isobel,” Arthur Bedford said with false warmth as she stepped from her carriage, Mrs Dewer holding an umbrella dutifully over her head. Two footmen bustled from the house to fetch the bags she had packed from the night-in the doorway lurked the shadow of their old butler, Mr Thompson. “At last. Now we can begin with our dinner.”
Glaring at him haughtily, Isobel strode past him and towards the dining room. Mrs Dewer hurried after her, nearly tripping over her skirts in her haste to keep up with the woman. Somewhere behind her, Bedford’s large feet slapped the masonry as he followed at his own pace.
As could be expected, dinner was horribly stilted. Isobel narrowed her eyes at her uncle every time he looked at her. Her older sister, Ophelia, wanted to speak of nothing other than her smug-faced six-year-old son’s achievements, and her husband Thomas Christchurch pushed his food around his plate in a most distracting manner. Arthur Bedford, a broad-jawed gentleman with jowls upon his greying jowls, had false cheeriness blustering about his features; but she could see the iciness beneath. His wife was a narrow-shouldered, permanently trembling woman whose long white fingers were constantly clenched upon her lap. Isobel had a feeling that one day she would be just like her Aunt Juliet: silent and extremely unhappy.
“Let’s not ignore the elephant in the room, shall we?” Isobel suddenly barked, dropping her fork onto her plate with a clatter. Six-year-old Robert Christchurch’s eyes nearly popped out of his head in shock. “My inheritance, Arthur, and you trying to swindle it away from me.”
“I have the documentation, Isobel,” Arthur Bedford sighed as though she were being extremely childish. “Signed by myself and a close member of your household, the butler, Mr Thompson.”
“The lying swine,” Isobel snarled. Ophelia looked shocked. Even Thomas Christchurch looked up form idly playing with his food. Aunt Juliet bowed her mousey head. “My father hated you. He would not have left you a single jot... besides which, I was there with him on his deathbed! I was there when he died, not you!”
“Can you prove that?”
“Of course not!” Isobel scowled at him mightily. “You know that, but if you were any sort of a decent man you would stop this petty lying and give back to me what is rightfully mine...”
“I really do think you are playing a ridiculous game, my dear,” Bedford sighed. “Wasting your dowry on an empty case? Who are they going to believe, Isobel, pray tell me? An honourable member of Queen Elizabeth’s court who has been faithfully in her service for many years, or you... a twenty-year-old spinster clinging to the house she grew up in because she has nowhere else to go?”
“How dare you...!”
“It’s a pity, Isobel, because I would have put a sum aside each year to support you somewhere small if only you had asked. Perhaps I would even have been able to find you a husband to look after you, and in that case you would have had your dowry to carry you through. But no, you intend on throwing it all away...”
“That property is mine by law,” Isobel said in a quiet, dangerous voice. “My father wanted me well provided-for until the day I married, if I ever did marry. And you have taken from me everything that I have...”
“You are a ridiculous, headstrong girl,” Bedford replied before leaning back in his seat. “You will never win this court case: you are throwing your precious dowry away, and then you will have nothing.”
“I am to be married if I lose,” she said, throat constricting. “I will be provided for. Either way, I will leave with my pride-something you can never do, Arthur, knowing you have stolen a young girl’s title and livelihood away.”
“You do that,” Bedford said with a sardonic smile. “I hope you enjoy your convenient marriage.”
“Who will you marry, Belle?” asked her sister, desperate to interject some pleasantness into the conversation. She was even trying to smile, but the outcome was just a mad-looking twitch of the lips. “Anyone that I know?”
Isobel flinched.
“James Ashdown.”
“The Ashdowns!” Bedford roared with laughter. “The only thing you have left is your name, maid, and you’re going to throw it away on common swill like that?”
“They were great once,” Isobel said dully.
“And never again,” Bedford snorted. “The lawyer’s son-well, I never. Very fitting. I suppose they are after your family ties? Because let me tell you, if that’s the case, they are going to be disappointed.”
-----
She lost the case, of course. Isobel Bedford-Wells was not a girl that cried often, but at that point in proceedings she broke down utterly.