Chapter Text
~Isabel~
Isabel Beaumont is the eldest of the eight children of Charles, Lord Beaumont, and his wife Caroline, and the birth of each sibling had seen to the shrinking of her future dowry and inheritance. Her dear papa was no spendthrift but neither was he a penny-pincher, and despite his care and a fortune large enough to sustain a family of 10 he does worry that after his death even her considerable settlement might disappear for one reason or other and that his daughter will be left a penniless spinster without a husband to offer any sort of financial security. But in these moments of concern he reminds himself that his girl is well-loved, nay, adored (for they both love and worship her), by her siblings. They will care for each other, he tells himself as he watches a parade of young men show little interest in a young woman who can easily outsmart them and as he shoos away the young men keen on breaking the wildness they see in her in hopes of reducing her to a tame and docile young beauty, a decoration to cling to their arm and keep in a pretty cage.
She climbs trees and rides horses with reckless abandon, she reads too much, thinks too much, and talks too much about all the wrong things, and still her parents indulge her. There are, however, times when her father mutters curses at his wife’s hot-blooded grandfather, a Spanish admiral turned wayward ambassador who left a trail of scandal as he fled back across the Bay of Biscay after the seduction of an English earl’s daughter, for surely he is to blame- it is from him that The Honourable Isabel Beaumont has inherited this vivacious and wildly inquisitive spirit.
As he shoos away yet another suitor Lord Beaumont reminds himself that The Admiral is not the only one to blame for his daughter’s possible future as a spinster, most of the blame can be placed squarely on his own head.
Isabel and her brother Henry, only a year her junior, had been inseparable nearly since the moment of the boy’s birth and, when Henry had been old enough for his education under the supervision of tutors to begin, his darling girl had demanded that she be educated with her brother. Of course her father, unable to deny her anything, had relented and so together with Henry she had been educated in all manner of subjects, tackling Latin, Greek, the Classics, mathematics, and more. If he had been more like other fathers he would not have to be so concerned about his lively girl but, if pushed, he will admit that he would not change a thing about his eldest if given the opportunity; and so he learns to despair less and less with each young man who finds her wanting (and who she finds them falling short of her own high expectations).