The Second Mrs Darcy. Elizabeth Aston

mourning will be almost over by the time you arrive, and then, you know—”

      Octavia could finish the sentence for her. And then, you know, you might be so lucky as to find yourself another husband.

      Lady Brierley’s mind was indeed still running on husbands. “On the other hand, such matters can be dealt with by lawyers, and with the Ninth Foot due to be posted here, although of course soldiers are careful whom they marry—but still, even with a very modest portion, you are a Melbury by birth, and that does count for something. You were fortunate before; where so many girls return to England still unmarried, you quickly found a husband, and I don’t see why that should not be the case again.”

      What a lottery marriage was, Octavia reflected. Her father had married again, within ten months of being made a widower for the second time, and this time he chose better, in the eyes of his older children; the third Lady Melbury, herself a widow, was the placid daughter of a respectable squire, and her first husband had been a man of position and wealth. She had brought Octavia up without enthusiasm or much kindness, but she had a strong sense of duty, so that when Sir Clement was carried away by an inflammation of the chest, and his heir and his siblings made it quite clear they had no wish to take responsibility for their half sister, Lady Melbury had taken the eight-year-old Octavia to live with her in a pleasant house near Weymouth, in Dorset.

      Octavia’s half brothers and sisters had paid their younger sister little attention for the succeeding seven years, hoping merely that a fever or some childish complaint such as a virulent attack of measles would carry her off. But Octavia survived the dangerous early years of infancy and had grown into a tall girl, taking after her despised mother, with very few graces about her and a distressing tendency to speak her mind.

      Then, at the age of thirty-nine, Octavia’s stepmother had announced her intention to marry a Dublin physician, which was all very well for her, the Melburys said, quite good enough, and would mean that there was no longer any danger that a dowdy Lady Melbury might turn up unexpectedly in town and want to be introduced to their circle. But not even a mere half sister was going to be allowed to go and live in Dublin in such a household, not while she bore the name of Melbury.

      Since her brothers were Octavia’s legal guardians, they could impose their will on their despised half sister. Lady Melbury would have taken Octavia with her to Ireland, but she accepted the family’s ruling without argument and set off to her new life in Dublin as wife to Dr. Gregory without Octavia. After all, she told her stepdaughter, she was a great girl now, fifteen was nearly grown up. She would do better to keep up her connections with her father’s family than languish in Dublin.

      Octavia fought the decision, but Arthur was absolute, and so she stayed on in Dorset, in the company of a woman who wasn’t well educated enough to be called a governess, a woman of indeterminate age who drifted around the house in a cloud of melancholy and with a perpetual sniff that drove Octavia to leave the house and saddle her horse and gallop the fidgets out of herself on long solitary rides.

      When her brother Arthur found out about the rides, he put a stop to them by the simple expedient of selling her horse and leaving her with one old pony who could be used in the trap to take them to and from the nearby village when required.

      “One is expected to marry, of course,” said Octavia, watching a mynah bird with its comical yellow eye hopping about on the sparse grass in search of insects. “It’s considered the natural state for any young woman. And yet, do I want to marry again? I am not so sure that I do.”

      Lady Brierley pursed her lips. “You are still grieving for your husband, of course it is too soon to be making any plans of that sort, any definite plans, that is. However, one must look ahead, you will come out of your blacks, and you know, once a woman has been married, she is accustomed to the state. Even women with husbands a great deal less amiable than poor Captain Darcy find themselves wishing to marry again.”

      “Only I am tall, you know, and that does limit the possibilities.”

      Lady Brierley looked sharply at Octavia; was there a hint of laughter in her voice?

      “Nonsense, height has nothing to do with it. You are graceful, you carry your inches with style, and there are shorter men who prefer—”

      “Oh, I think I could only like a man I could look up to,” said Octavia gravely.

      At eighteen, Octavia had been summoned to London from Dorset, whisked away from one day to the next by an impatient Arthur, to be inspected and made ready for marriage by her sisters.

      One look at her, and they despaired. “She’s taller than most men, which is a grave handicap,” complained Augusta.

      “Built like a cart horse,” said Theodosia.

      “You’ll have to do your best to make something of her,” said Arthur with a shrug. “She is as ill bred as her mother, and you must break her of this habit she has of speaking her mind; that will never do.”

      And they tried, in their ruthless way. Muslined and crimped and scolded and directed as to just how to behave, Octavia must be meek, men didn’t like any forwardness in a woman, particularly not in one who resembled a bean pole. She must laugh, but softly, nothing merry or uproarious, at whatever jokes or pleasantries her partner might make; she must listen; she must hold her tongue and keep her thoughts to herself, no one was interested in her except as a wife of more or less suitable breeding and the possible mother of future sons.

      “At least she looks healthy enough,” said her brother disparagingly. “Perhaps some country fellow in town for the season might take a fancy to her, some man who is not averse to an Amazon for a wife.”

      Privately, her half sisters laughed at her prospects. “If she had a fortune … but even then, she is so very rustic.”

      Neither of them had had any great fortune, but they had been so beautiful as girls that each of them had swept more than one eligible man off his feet the moment she had come out, and had married, in turn, the richest and most influential of her suitors.

      At first, Octavia felt sorry for their husbands, at least for Theodosia’s husband. Augusta’s spouse, Lord Adderley, was a dark, brooding, unpleasant man, who looked at Octavia as though she were an insect; he and Augusta deserved each other, she soon decided. But Henry Cartland, Theodosia’s husband, was a kinder man, who seemed to have a gleam of sympathy in his eye when he heard her being harangued by one or other of her family. However, he made no attempt to intervene or stand up for her; he had been married to Theodosia for long enough to know that it would be a wasted effort.

      The season had passed in a whirl of dances and parties, with Octavia hating every moment of it, making no friends, and certainly attracting no parti, eligible or otherwise.

      “Perhaps we should have sent her to Dublin after all,” said Theodosia, in irritated tones. “Perhaps she would be better off in Ireland.”

      “In that company, in the house of a mere physician? She is our half sister, and is known to be so. No, no,” said Augusta. “I shall get Adderley to see about a passage to India, where let us hope she may snare a Company man or an army officer.”

      “Augusta is right, it’s the only thing to do with her,” Arthur had said. “The girl’s a liability. She’ll never get herself a husband here in England, unless some curate can be persuaded to take her on, to help in the parish. She may have an honourable name, but everyone knows her mother was a nobody; she can’t expect a good match, no looks, no fortune, nothing to recommend her to any man. And she makes no effort to attract, she is a hopeless case.”

      “And there is one great advantage to this plan,” Octavia overheard Theodosia say, “at the very least she will be gone two years, for the voyage takes many months, and we shall oblige her to spend at least a year there, to give herself a chance of finding a husband.”

      “The voyage may be dangerous, severe weather, you know, many ships are lost at sea in bad weather.”

      “And there are pirates, I believe, in some parts of foreign oceans.”

      “Yes,