Chapter One
My name is Lady Eleanor Lorraine Cadburry. I am 17 years old. i am also the unwanted child of Lady Jane and Lord Edward Cadburry. See, they needed a son to be their heir of a rather large fortune and our manor, and everyone knows that girls cant inherit. I was their third child and second daughter, i was born three years after my sister Lydia. maybe the reason i feel so unwanted is because a year and a half before i was born, my parents had a son. However, he died from scarlet fever only weeks after he was born. we never talk about it. Every time it comes up, Mama starts crying. I was supposed to be a boy, a son to make up for their loss, but i was a girl, and no one needs a daughter. then, two years later, my parents finally had a son, that survived, my brother James. he was dotted on and spoiled because my parents were so proud of their son and heir. when my sister and i received dolls for Christmas, my brother got a horse, if we each got a book, he got three. you get the idea. i always thought " why do they love him so much, and why does he get all the attention?". I think that Lydia felt the same way. In a way, i always feel sort of bad for Lydia, she is twenty years old and absolutely beautiful. but she is also very smart, which for some reason men don't like, they do not want to be over shadowed by a brilliant, gorgeous wife. its just not what they like. Mum is always throwing her at the sons of rich lords, Dukes and politicians. But Lydia has made it very clear that she will choose her own husband. Mum says that it is a disgrace for someone to be twenty and not married. mum got married just after she turned nineteen and had Lydia a year later.
Now it is may 1st, 1912 and we are on the way to London for the season. I am being presented this year,in one month . every year, towards the beginning of summer we go to London for a couple months for the social season. We leave our manor, Cadburry house, and stay in our London house,. i like the season, but this is the first year that I can go to all the parties and enjoy all the fun. Mama wants me married as soon as possible but i don't know if i want to get married right now. i have told Mama numerous times that i will not marry unless its for love. I will not be given to some old man in order secure a business deal or to hold down a fortune. no, when and if i marry, it will be for love. A married woman's life seems awfully boring, for there is a house to keep and children to look after, and there are parties to throw. if you are married, i feel that life no longer has any meaning. i don't want a husband that thinks that my sole purpose is to bear hi an heir and who shows me off to his friends like a trophy won in a polo match. I would much rather be a so called old maid and be an author or a suffragette.
I am deep into my day dream about tea parties and balls when i hear Mum tell me to "stop slouching and look like a lady."
i sigh and do as I'm told. then i try to get back into my daydream. where was i? something about dancing with handsome men at balls. for some reason i cant get back deep into my fantasyland. that's the funny things about thoughts, one yo have broken them, its practically impossible to pick them back up. much like a broken vase. it is so easy to drop, but so difficult to fix that its not even worth trying. i simile as i recall a found memory. one day, last spring, my good friend Emilia and i took a picnic out into the garden. we were leaning up against a rickety old white picket fence and somehow began this very deep conversation about what we thought about the after life and what we thought happened after we died. we had been talking for quite sometime and then the fence broke under our weight and fell over. by the time we got someone to fix and sat back down continue our conversation, we had lost our profound thoughts and the conversation just wasn't same.
"Ellie!Ellie!!, earth to Ellie, snap out of it, we are the next stop!!" Lydia laughs waving her hand in front of my face.
"Goodness Eleanor," my mother sighs "just look at you! your hat is falling in front of your face and your dress is wrinkled. don't you care at all how people perceive you?''
"wouldn't want any of the Lords to see you with your hat titled the wrong way." James laughs
i glare at him."I'll bet that you wouldent want Alice to see you without your hair combed and your clothes stained from climbing trees all day." that will shut him up. Alice is one of the girls that lives nextdoor back in yorkshire. she is Jamess age and she and her older sister, Adeline, Ava, and Ariana tease him insesently. Lydia and I think that he secretly likes her, but that doesnt matter right now, we are in london and here is no Alice Manchester here.
Chapter two
"lydia, put the book down, james pay atention, and for goodness sakes Eleanor, look alive!" Mama tells us. we get off the train and i look down to make sure there isnt anything on my white lace dress with pink and brown bows. i straighten my brown hat with the pink bow and pinch my cheeks and bite my lips to give them a bit of color.
