A Time for Honour

Chapter 2

Later that night, after everyone, including their guests had gone to bed, Cassie had plucked up enough courage to talk to her sister. During the evening, doubt about her assignation with Major Ellington had crept into her mind. She needed advice, but she knew that she could not fully confide in her sister and tell her exactly what she had agreed to do. Her sister would advise her not to meet him, worse still, she might insist that she could not go. Therefore, Cassie had decided to ask her about love instead and gauge her opinion in a roundabout way.

'Do you believe in love at first sight?' She had asked Verity in a whisper, just before her sister was about to blow out the candle. That night, to accommodate their guests, the sisters were sharing a bedchamber and were sleeping in the same bed.

'No Cass,' Verity said emphatically after initially avoiding the question, 'I do not believe in love at first sight.'

Cassie, from a very early age, had always believed in romantic love, and that magical moment when you first made eye contact with the man you would eventually marry. However, cloistered away from the world in a school for girls' in Bristol, she had never even had the chance to meet any eligible young men, let alone have a chance to look them in the eye to discover if they were "the one." Recently, she had come to realise that her future at the school as a teacher, just like her sister, was a bleak prospect. Therefore, before her seventeenth birthday, Cassie had taken the momentous decision that she would leave the comfort of the school and find a position as a governess.

Then a week before her father's death, just days after her birthday, a suitable position had become available, far away from Bristol; all the way in Scotland. It had not been a difficult decision to make, and she had jumped at the chance to leave the school. For many years, she had watched her sister with frustration, waste the best years of her life. At the grand old age of four and twenty, Verity was still a schoolmistress, at the same institution she had attended as a pupil. And that was the problem with Verity, she never had any ambition for her own life. She did not want to better herself, or even further her career. She would be satisfied remaining in Bristol, for the rest of her life, doing the same tedious job with the same tiresome people. It was no wonder that she did not believe in love at first sight, she had become far too dull and set in her ways.

She had asked her sister, earlier that evening before Major Ellington's arrival, about her opinion on her own marriage prospects. 'Would you not like to marry someday and have a family of your own? Cassie had asked her sister as they sat by the fire in the drawing-room, listening to the storm raging outside.

'Not really,' was the unsatisfactory answer Cassie had received, 'I have never given it a second thought.'

It was now clear to Cassie that Verity wanted neither love nor marriage. She was content remaining where she was; teaching History and French to rather ignorant schoolgirls in a second-rate school in Bristol. So that evening, when her sister had warned her that desire and love were different and had told her to be careful not to get them confused with each other, Cassie was not at all certain that her sister had been speaking from a position of authority. Verity had also warned her about the fragile nature of a woman's reputation, especially one in their position, without the protection of male relatives. She had told her that she had to be beyond reproach, pure and spotless; like the driven snow. But, Cassie thought to herself, where was the excitement in that. How could anyone find a husband, if one did not take a few risks?

Verity had even gone as far as to say that gentleman, referring to Major Ellington, would never marry someone like them. 'If they marry,' Verity had said, 'it will be a woman with money and position. A woman whose family will be able to help them further their chosen career. Women like us, with no wealth or connections, can only be a diversion.'