History

Tansy Robarts was born in 1859 to Winnifred, the daughter of a Welsh businessman, and Julius Robarts, a member of the gentry and the prominent Robarts banking family. Tansy's younger sister, Violet, would follow about a year and a half later, and their close ages meant that the girls were particularly attached to each other from the beginning.

The family spent a good deal of time at Sutton Court in Herefordshire, the original seat of the Kinkade family and Robarts clients, who had sold the property some years prior. This connection ensured that the Julius Robarts family was invited to every holiday party and picnic thrown by the Viscount Hereford at Eywood. The three Kinkade boys and two Robarts girls were playmates from a young age, although Tansy gravitated toward Augustus, the eldest, and his always-visiting friend from Eton, Luc Wynn. They three were of an age and naturally fell into a friendship that would last them all the length of their lives.

Luc was very unlike the Kinkade brothers, or really any young man in Tansy's acquaintance: He felt a safe haven from the moment they two met. Their friendship would prove particularly strong and well-grounded, and at the age of twelve and looking down the barrel of deportment lessons so as to be most eligible in the marriage mart, they entwined their pinkies and made a solemn vow: Should they both remain unmarried by the ancient age of 30, they would then marry each other and be done with it. Neither of them expected to need to call in the promise, of course.

Tansy and Violet debuted in consecutive seasons, and the sisters, naturally vibrant and expertly flirtatious, quickly became popular among the social circles of the ton. Neither felt overly pressured to marry despite being constantly circled by bachelors because of their large dowries. At age nineteen, Violet began a secret flirtation with one of the up and coming footmen at the family's London house — A flirtation that Tansy warned her from, to little avail, although she could not have foreseen the depth of feeling her little sister would develop for their servant. Not a year later, an item appeared in one of the more popular gossip columns and was quickly picked up by others: A naughty Robarts debutante and a lowly footman, spied wickedly indisposed by a most reliable witness, a member of that very household. Tansy, unable to argue what she understood to be truth, took upon herself the only option she could fathom: She confessed to the love affair herself, for the article had not specified which sister had been so caught, and salvaged some of her sister's reputation whilst collapsing her own. Her parents, appalled, sent her away to Cornwall to play companion to her father's widowed aunt, Bridget. Tansy was twenty-two.

Renowned as a battle axe, Bridget proved difficult but savvy, demanding but the sharpest person in Tansy's acquaintance. She was old, she said, and therefore had earned the right to be troublesome in her particular preferences. Bridget's opinions were loud and immovable, but she asked Tansy for her own thoughts all the same, and chastised the girl if it seemed she was being untruthful or yielding in her declarations. Tansy wouldn't have called her time with Bridget pleasant, but nor would she now make any complaint: With Great Aunt Bridget, she was able to travel to America and all over the Continent, and had driven into her the values of independent thinking and courage of convictions. With time, the women even became friends of a sort, even if their strict hierarchy was never in question. Tansy was not entirely sure when Bridget began suspecting that Tansy had taken the fall for her sister, but Bridget was a shrewd woman, and with time it became obvious that she knew the truth of the thing.

During this time with Great Aunt Bridget, Tansy began the practice of documenting the details of their trips and her own fancies about the passing faces they encountered in their travels. She discovered a fondness for the process of not simply creative writing, but the arranging of stories in the most impactful manner. Having read a few of Tansy's scribblings, Bridget recommended more discipline, and it is on this particular point that Tansy continues to chip away with the hopes of one day producing a diamond.

To no one's particular surprise, Great Aunt Bridget passed away in the spring of 1886. To everyone's incredible surprise, she also left Tansy ownership of Tile House, one of her properties in Buckinghamshire, along with enough of an annuity that the young woman could make a modest life for herself if needs must. Tansy is not rich by any means, but she can keep her new house and afford a part-time housekeeper.

The trouble is, Tansy remains technically unmarried despite being well-set for a spinster's future. Her parents, still ignorant to the truth of their eldest's reputational demise, insist that she marry or secure her own companion. For a woman to live alone was unthinkable. Violet married and would have no patience for a country life regardless, and in support of the outcome they would rather Tansy pursue, her mother and father have declined to supplement her income to pay for a live-in companion. And so at 28, living again with her parents, Tansy faces the prospect of rearranging her finances to afford a companion and a housekeeper, to find a bachelor of reasonable means who is not put off by her past, or to live her days forever under her parents' roof.

Or, there is always that pinky promise.