1. A Compromising Marriage


    Date: 9/7/2015, Categories: Historical, Author: curvygalore, Rating: , Source: LushStories

    Helena waved off the happy couple as they departed down the rutted driveway in the somewhat old fashioned carriage and as she went indoors she felt a sense of dread falling upon her. The preparations for her sister’s wedding, modest though the occasion was, had distracted her from the consequences of that match. She looked around the shabby drawing room, now empty of revellers as they were still outside chattering. Despite the floral tributes she had arranged in honour of the celebrations, the empty room looked tired and ill-cared for. She sat heavily in the one good chair, ignoring the fact that the stuffing was escaping the cushioned seat and pondered over her fate. It was all very well for Miss Mary Wollstonecraft to have expounded on the on the vindication for rights of women in the dying years of the 18 th century. But some 15 years later such modern-minded theories did not apply to rural gentlewomen in the depths of Wiltshire. Despite being five full years her junior, her sister Catherine had married before her. This very fact was something that was somewhat frowned upon in the polite society their family clung to the fringes of. However the main problem was that Catherine has married purely for love and a complete disregard for money. In any other gentleman’s household this would not be regarded as disastrous, after all she had married respectably enough to the son of a nearby gentleman-farmer. However all this domestic bliss this left Helena is a very tenuous ...
    position. The bleak reality was that her own family faced financial ruin; not a discreet and gradual slide into genteel poverty but precipitous disaster. Her father and her oldest brother were both cursed with the disease of gambling. Again, this was not an unusual habit of the times, especially in the great houses of the land and she had heard tales of the scions of many a noble family who had squandered thousands of guineas in one night at the tables. However her family’s means were comparatively modest and her father’s and her brother’s extravagant habits had reduced them to penury. While her mother had been alive she had tried to keep some control over the spendthrift ways of her menfolk, but her final illness had stopped even those modest economies and now they were facing what was popularly known as an execution in the house; the threat of bailiffs coming to take away their worldly possessions, shabby as they were. She thought of her farewell with Catherine, the bride’s face glowing with happiness under her bonnet as she kissed her sister’s cheek and whispered her hope that one day Helena would be as happy as she. The irony was, that in choosing to marry her true love and childhood sweetheart, Catherine had actually robbed away Helena’s chances of choosing a marriage partner for affection’s sake. If both daughters of marriageable age had wedded a modest fortune then the family would be back on its feet again, at least temporarily, but as Catherine had chosen to marry purely for ...
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