The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton by Miranda Neville

Author:Miranda Neville [Neville, Miranda]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Contemporary, Fiction, Romance, General, Man-Woman Relationships, Love Stories, Historical, England, Historical Fiction, Regency Fiction, England - Social Life and Customs - 19th Century, Kidnapping Victims, Historical Romance, Amnesia
ISBN: 9780062023049
Publisher: Avon
Published: 2010-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

Gentlemen are not, as a rule, interested in young children.

Chantal, Diana’s maid, terrified Celia. The Frenchwoman was middle-aged, tiny, and dressed entirely in black. She had strong opinions and no compunction about expressing them. To Diana’s suggestion that Tarquin should be consulted about Celia’s attire she replied with a single French-accented word.

“English.” It emerged like an expletive and Celia took malicious pleasure in her scorn for the arbiter of fashionable London.

Draped, pinned, and poked, she watched her wardrobe take shape. Not even during her London season had she possessed such finery. Lady Trumper had dressed her in the youthful, pale garments of a debutante but not even the genius of Chantal could make Diana’s sophisticated gowns simple. Neither did she wish to. The maid agreed with Diana’s assessment that Celia needed to be dressed in rich colors.

The details of cut and trim baffled Celia and she accepted whatever Chantal and Diana suggested. But she loved the materials. She had a weakness for the caress of silk, velvet and fine muslins and linen on her skin. She mourned her yellow silk, lost when Constantine stole her possessions, the only evening gown from her London wardrobe she’d kept. Everything else she’d sold when her guardian’s death left her penniless.

Deeply grateful for Diana’s generosity, she couldn’t but remain uneasy at the uncertainty of her position. While wonderful to have found friends, it was humiliating to have nothing of her own. She kept wondering if she should have held Tarquin to his reluctant engagement. At least he offered security.

Or did he? Without knowing much about the law, she had the impression a wife had little power of her own. From the conversation of other girls in London she’d gathered two things about marriage among the upper orders: that a girl without a fortune found it hard to find a husband, and without a marriage settlement a married woman could find herself without pin money during her husband’s lifetime or a jointure at his death. With no guardian to act for her, no money to bring to the marriage, she could wed and be left a neglected wife and a penniless widow. To be on her own and know so little of English customs was infuriating. Low burning anger at her father flamed up.

As she knew only too well, reliance on the support of men didn’t always work out. Deliberately or not, one by one her father, her guardian, and her fiancé had abandoned her and left her helpless.

In the end, she suspected, she was going to have to find a way to support herself. Meanwhile she thrust her worries to the back of her mind and enjoyed the company of the Montroses.

The end of her engagement to Tarquin had been greeted with the same easy acceptance from the Montrose family as her unexpected arrival as his fiancée.

“I don’t blame you in the least,” Diana said. “Tarquin is much too unyielding in his habits to make a comfortable husband. Although,” she added with a tinge of doubt, “no one was more set in his ways than Sebastian when I married him.

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