She cleared her throat and proceeded with what she knew to be a very wicked untruth, but goodness, she had only the girl’s best intentions at heart. Thea and Mr Grayling were ideally matched, and if Thea had only a modestly acceptable dowry he’d be proceeding with a marriage offer. All he needed was a little prod to reinforce the fact that the unfortunate lack of dowry meant nothing when compared with her cousin’s abundant charms. Charms he’d never know unless he was persuaded to discover them.
She straightened and launched into her lie without a backward look. “He wanted to know whether you were possessed of passions that were aligned to his.”
“Cousin Fanny!”
“Don’t sound so shocked, cuz, these things are important,” Antoinette chimed in. Fanny was not surprised this would be a point of great interest to her wickedly daring sister. Antoinette had a wondrous love of the opposite sex and a vast desire to help any of her collective sisters who might benefit from a little matchmaking assistance from herself. “Poor Mr Grayling.” Antoinette shook her head sadly. “After his last disastrous foray into love, you can imagine he’d be very careful to ascertain he was courting the right kind of potential wife.”
“What do you mean ‘poor Mr Grayling’? I don’t understand.” Thea looked in perplexity from one cousin to the other.
Fanny had no idea what Antoinette had in mind, but Antoinette could credit fair success, so she let her sister continue. Of course, Antoinette had not Fanny’s keen intellect but she could be creative when it came to matters of the heart. Or anything of a sensual nature. Antoinette didn’t usually let either her heart or her head get in the way when it came to matters of the flesh. Fanny supposed she was simply a woman who took what she wanted without thought for the consequences—so it was a good thing she had an elder sister like Fanny to ensure she got away with what she did.
Though right now, Fanny was quite happy to defer to the younger, who went on, “Some years ago, Mr Grayling married a French woman. A beautiful French woman who showed every sign of loving him deeply but who turned cold the moment his ring was upon her finger.” Antoinette raised her eyes heavenward in a gesture of great sorrow.
“Mr Grayling is a widower?”
Antoinette nodded. “But do not ever speak of his late wife. It was a disastrous marriage, and a secret one, too, for she had no money and he knew his family would cut him off without a penny should they discover what he’d done.”
Fanny watched Thea’s eyes g
row large while she herself wondered where this story was going.
“They need not have worried, for there was no unworthy heir resulting from the match.” Antoinette shook her head. “The couple lived in France, where this beautiful but cold French woman, who had no tender feelings for him whatsoever and wanted only his money, refused him her bed for the entire year they were wed.”
Fanny saw the fiery hue that swept from Thea’s bosom upwards. She put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Do you understand what Antoinette is saying, Thea?” she murmured. After all, most young women didn’t have the liberal education in carnal matters mother had ensured they’d had. Fanny and Antoinette had been trained to use their bodies as lures for prospective suitors, to go as far as might entice a marriage offer, but on no circumstances to sully the sanctity of their greatest and perhaps only asset apart from beauty: their virtue. The fact that both girls had taken a great leap of faith and had succeeded in their marital aspiration was a reflection on circumstances and a liberal dose of luck—though cunning on Fanny’s part had been crucial, she reflected, while Antoinette had simply been fortunate.
In this instance, however, Fanny felt it necessary that Thea take that important next step. The girl probably didn’t even know the effects a passionate kiss or a little sensual exploration would have upon her, but the only way to draw Mr Grayling into her orbit was if she loosened up a little.
Thea was avoiding her cousins’ eyes—and little wonder, for Fanny was conscious of the undercurrent of prurient interest overlaid with suppressed amusement that must emanate from them.
Antoinette giggled as she settled herself on the arm of the settee. “What has Aunt Minerva told you to expect when you get married, Thea?”
Thea’s cornflower-blue eyes flickered away before returning to her cousin’s face. “Aunt Minerva told me nothing because she doesn’t ever intend that I shall get married,” she said crisply. “But I always remember Mama telling me before she died that after the marriage, the babies come before one knows it.”
“And why do you suppose the babies come?” Antoinette asked. “Your family kept a cow and some pigs and a couple of horses. Don’t pretend you don’t know, Thea.”
Thea looked away. “If having a baby requires doing what I’ve seen in the farmyard then I think I should prefer to remain unmarried.” Her shoulders shook and she began to cry. “Oh, I can’t believe that I let Mr Grayling think I should entertain feelings for him when I know I could never bring myself to do a thing like…that!”
Her dismay was so genuine that Fanny, who usually was the first to behave with an appropriately cool head, hushed her with a sympathetic hand on the girl’s back. “Well, you do know you cannot have a baby from just a kiss, Thea,” she told her. “And it’s wrong of you to blame yourself, for it was not you who let Mr Grayling kiss you. He was the one who instigated it through his feelings of passion. He told me of his overwhelming feelings for you when he sought permission to…get to know you better.”
“That’s right, because he wanted to ensure you weren’t like the cold, frigid, and loveless piece he married.”
Bertram whistled. “Gad, what a nobleman. To be married a whole year and to let one’s wife dictate whether one can get into her bed, much less into her—”
“Bertram!” Fanny held up a warning hand with a meaningful look at Thea who had raised herself and whose luminous, teary eyes looked as if they might pop out of her head.
“So Mr Grayling’s wife agreed to marry him but wouldn’t let him…?”
She trailed off and Antoinette asked wickedly, “Wouldn’t let him what, Cousin Thea? What do you think he wouldn’t let her do?” She put her arm about her cousin’s shoulders and grew serious. “Oh, we’re shameless and you must think we’re making the most terrible fun of you but we truly do want what’s best for you.”
“Indeed, we do,” Fanny agreed. “But as you’re an innocent, and because we’re shameless, we also feel it’s important to make you more aware of what was explained, or perhaps not explained, to you by your dear Mama and Aunt Minerva.”
“And the farm animals,” Bertram added.
Thea looked more nervous than grateful. “I know it’s necessary to lie in the same bed.” She shivered as if the thought appalled her. “It’s a woman’s duty, I suppose.”
Antoinette giggled. “There’s more to lying in the same bed to get a baby! Oh, do let me tell her, Fanny!”
Fanny glanced at Bertram and then Thea. “You can hardly do so with Bertram in the room.” She indicated the door to her brother with a nod. “Sorry, brother dearest, but there are some things a lady can’t share with a man.”