The Last Suitor. A J McMahon
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She liked to see a man tremble at the thought of asking her to marry him, because, after all, she expected no less.
Now came Isabel’s favourite part, namely her refusal of the proposal. A well-made proposal deserved a gracious refusal; a proposal less deserving of her favour called forth a much blunter response. Percival, she decided, had earned a gracious refusal.
‘This is all so sudden and unexpected!’ Isabel gasped, unfolding her fan and raising it in front of her face. ‘I am caught by surprise. I do not know what to say.’
‘Say yes, sweetest Isabel,’ Percival urged her.
Isabel said immediately, ‘Oh, but you give me no time! Surely I may have time to think.’
‘You may have all the time in the world, sweetest Isabel,’ Percival told her, ‘for what are the minutes you take now, compared with all the years to come?’
Isabel noted that he had given her only minutes, which she thought mean of him; also, she couldn’t help but note that he had equated minutes with all the time in the world, which hardly seemed logical. She also couldn’t help but feel that the phrase the years to come had the slightly depressing connotation of a prison sentence to it, at least to her ears.
‘But how can I say yes when I do not love you?’ she said. ‘Surely it is on the foundations of love that marriage is built?’
Percival took this in his stride. He was prepared for this one. ‘Love will grow in time, sweet Isabel. We will grow to love each other as the plant grows towards the sun.’
Isabel approved of that line. It wasn’t too bad. ‘But in darkness the plant shrivels and dies,’ she said. ‘And what then?’
Percival was thrown by this. He had no idea what to say. He wasn’t prepared for this response. Isabel gazed wide-eyed at him while he thought this one over. ‘The plant is just a metaphor,’ he said eventually, obviously wishing he had chosen another metaphor. ‘Never mind plants. We will come to love each other anyway.’
‘Percival, you have granted me the greatest honour I could ever have wished for,’ Isabel said admiringly, in tones of the deepest sympathy she could reach for as she warmed up for the kill. ‘You have asked for my hand in marriage and by doing so you have gained my deepest attention and most ardent goodwill. Yet, I must refuse your proposal for I cannot see that we are to be together in the way that you seek. I must say no, Percival, no to the proposal which you have made. I refuse your proposal of marriage.’
Isabel looked at Percival, who looked back at her.
Percival opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again; he thought for a while, then opened his mouth as if to speak, then seemed to think better of it and closed his mouth again. Isabel watched all this with a certain disinterest. For her, the drama was all over, and it was time to wrap this all up and move on.
‘So, you are saying no?’ Percival queried eventually.
‘Exactly!’ Isabel said, careful not to say it too sharply. ‘I am refusing your proposal.’ In her experience, which was considerable, suitors very often refused to take no for an answer and pestered her to change her mind, and that was when she could turn nasty. But at this stage, a firm hand was usually all that was needed.
‘Well, naturally I am disappointed,’ Percival said. ‘I had hoped you would accept my proposal.’
Isabel couldn’t help but think that Percival did not exactly look heartbroken. He did not even look particularly disappointed. She wondered if he had ever really wanted to marry her at all. Perhaps this course of action had been urged on him by his mother and his financial advisers.
‘I have refused your proposal,’ Isabel told him gently, ‘and that is the end of the matter. I know you are such a complete gentleman that you will not press your suit further.’
‘Yes, quite,’ Percival agreed, but he did not yet look ready to give up. ‘I understand, of course, proposal, refusal, yet I cannot help but wonder if in the fullness of time there might come to be a change which, though gradual and imperceptible in the onset of its influence, might yet bring about such a shift as to render all my hopes fulfilled beyond all measure by that which is only a delay of our mutual happiness.’
Isabel’s hands had tightened on her fan during this speech. If Percival had been a more observant man, he might have recognised that as a danger sign, but Percival saw nothing. ‘I will not receive a second proposal from you, Percival,’ Isabel said gently, ‘so it is futile to hope I will change my mind. My mind is perfectly made up. There is nothing more to be said.’ She spoke so plainly as to be quite deliberately blunt.
‘Yes, quite,’ Percival said without moving. ‘That is just so. But if the ardour of my suit is to be tested by obstacles which must be surmounted, yet I assure you I am not daunted by any tests I may be obliged to undergo, no matter how plainly I am told these obstacles are impassable.’
Isabel took the tip of her fan in the palm of her left hand, which she held upright with the other end of the fan in her right hand as if it was a dagger. ‘I am starting to question whether you are a gentleman, Lord Breckenridge,’ she told him coldly.
This stung Lord Percival Breckenridge like a wasp up his nostril. He straightened up in his chair and said, ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Your suit is not welcome,’ Isabel told him with an edge of fierceness to her voice. ‘If you are a gentleman, then accept my refusal with decorum. If you persist in pressing your suit, I shall have no choice but to draw the only appropriate conclusion which can be drawn from the persistence of your unwelcome attentions.’
Percival looked as if she had just hit him several times, which in a sense she had. He was sitting rigidly upright now, his silver-topped walking cane motionless in his right hand. He looked quite pale. ‘Of course I will no longer press my attentions upon you if they are unwelcome,’ he said. ‘I only sought to make you an offer of marriage because of your wholly admirable qualities. I did not expect to be insulted in return.’
‘I do not insult you, Percival,’ Isabel told him gently, ‘but I refuse your proposal and I ask you as the complete gentleman which you undoubtedly are to accept my refusal of your proposal without further argument.’
Percival nodded several times without speaking. ‘Yes, quite,’ he said, but still to Isabel’s growing exasperation he made no move to get going. ‘I understand that you have refused this proposal. It is just that I wonder if you might accept another proposal at some future date.’
‘No, I will not,’ Isabel told him with a careful blend of three-parts severity with seven-parts gentleness. ‘I ask you not to be so discourteous as to trouble me again about a matter which is already settled beyond question.’
‘Yes, quite,’ Percival said, still not accepting defeat. ‘Yet I cannot help but hope even now, in the depths of despair, in the darkness of my disappointment, that a light may shine forth to guide me to our shared happiness.’
Isabel then lost her temper. She stood up, walked some steps away, turned to face Percival, and shouted at the top of her voice, ‘Your attentions are unwelcome, Lord Breckenridge!’
This public spectacle had the effect that she knew it would. The Eastons, Lady Breckenridge and Percival’s younger brother William, no longer looking bored, but his eyes alight with mischief and joy, all jumped up from their chairs and came running over to join them.
‘But what is the matter, Isabel?’ Lady Dacia Easton asked with concern.
‘Lord Breckenridge has proposed marriage. I have refused his proposal. Yet, he persists in continuing to press his suit. I am simply fed up with his behaviour. What kind of man is he to behave like this?’
Percival stood up because everyone else was standing around him, leaving him feeling dwarfed and said, ‘Ah, yes, I was merely suggesting that I might make a second proposal at some later date.’
‘That sounds very sensible,’ Lord Bentley Easton