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“I told her that one of my daughters would be happy to come and—”
Before I can protest, Catherine blurts out, “Lydia should go.”
“Me? But I—”
“I don’t think it would be right for me to go,” Catherine hurries on. “I don’t want to start any fresh rumors about running off to Boston after Mr. Pierce.”
Mother doesn’t see the look of smug exultance that Catherine flashes me, and my heart plummets into my stomach as I realize what she’s doing.
“Catherine should go,” I say obstinately. “She’s the one that’s always going on about New Oldbury not being grand enough for her. She’s wanted to go back to Boston since the first day we arrived.”
“Oh, and you don’t? Just the other day you were complaining about how there are no bookshops here, and before that it was how much you missed the ocean.”
I feel my footing start to slip out from under me. “But...” I protest feebly. “But Mr. Barrett is calling on Friday and—”
“If Mr. Barrett were going to call on you he would have by now,” Catherine snaps, relishing the knife twist all the more because she knows it’s true.
“ENOUGH!”
The single word slices through our bickering like a knife. Mother closes her eyes and massages her temple, her flush of outrage receding just as quickly as it came on. “Lydia, you’ll go to Boston. Catherine, I don’t know what’s gotten into you but I agree, I want you home where I can keep my eye on you.”
I open my mouth to tell her what Catherine’s doing, that it’s not fair, but Mother holds up her hand to silence me, shattering my last fragment of hope. “As for Mr. Barrett,” she says with finality, “he can wait.”
27
BOSTON GREETS MEwith a sharp, gusty wind carrying the tang of woodsmoke and fresh-caught fish. The coach bumps and rumbles over cobblestone streets, past the market with pyramids of cabbage heads and silver cod where Emeline and I used to explore. Nothing has changed since we left; Boston has awakened and slumbered just the same without me. Even though the woods of Willow Hall are my home now, where Mr. Barrett lives just out of sight, where Emeline roams by night to find me, I can’t help but feel a melancholy prick of betrayal that my old city has not missed me.
Mother hadn’t cared when I pleaded with her to let me stay until Friday, that I would go anywhere she asked if I could only see Mr. Barrett first. “I think you would do well to get away from Willow Hall for a little while,” she had said with a cryptic look that I didn’t understand. Her eruption of anger had drained her, leaving her reclining by the fire and coughing into her handkerchief. When she raised her eyes to mine, they were so tired, so resigned that I had swallowed the rest of my argument and went upstairs to pack my trunk and write a letter to Mr. Barrett. I explained that a family emergency had arisen and I’d been called away to Boston, but that I would be back soon, and I was very much looking forward to his call. It was a pleasant, formal letter, the kind one writes when one regrets that she won’t be able to call for tea. That was Tuesday night, and I’ve spent every minute of the two-day coach ride regretting my empty words to Mr. Barrett, Catherine’s voice echoing in the back of my mind:happiness doesn’t just fall into your lap, you need to go out and take it.And what about Emeline? My chest tightens when I think about her, searching Willow Hall only to find me gone. If I can somehow help her, it certainly won’t be all the way from Boston.
Aunt Phillips is waiting outside the neat brick house on Acorn Street when I climb down weary and dusty from the coach. She’s leaning heavily on a crutch, her foot bandaged up to comic proportions. Like Father, she’s short and well built, and has an inordinate interest in everything that can be measured in currency, and what things cost. Unlike Father, she is perpetually talking and moving, a whirlwind of pleasantries and endless questions that catch me off guard after my long journey.
“Lydia, Lydia, Lydia,” she says with both hands outstretched, the crutch clattering to the ground. “Come here, child.” She kisses my cheeks with a force that almost knocks me over, and shouts for the butler, Blake, to come and take my case. Tall and crooked as he is ancient, Blake has been a fixture at Acorn Street since my earliest memories of visiting here as a child. He hefts my trunk up over his shoulder as if it were nothing, and with little more than a nod of recognition, leaves me to Aunt Phillips.
“You must be exhausted! Those coaches are terrible contraptions. So crowded and bumpy and they never stop at the good inns. Well never mind that now, you must come inside and have a cup of something hot to drink.”
I’m installed in the parlor in front of a roaring fire, my head already throbbing from Aunt Phillips’s steady stream of questions and chatter. She and Mrs. Tidewell would probably get on famously.
“Oh, but am I glad to see you. It’s been so lonely here since your uncle has been in New York. Has it really only been five months?” Aunt Phillips shakes her head, tight curls bouncing out at the edges of her lace cap. “Tch, you’ve gotten too thin. It must be that horrible country food. I’ll see if I can’t get that good-for-nothing cook to put something together for you.” She pours out two steaming cups of tea and hands one to me. “How is your poor mother doing?”
“Well enough,” I lie.
“That’s good to hear.” She sounds a little disappointed. “To lose a child that age to such an accident...” She trails off, gesturing helplessly into the air. “Of course your uncle and I were never blessed with children of our own, but unfortunately one grows accustomed to hearing of infants dying as a matter of course. It’s when they make it past a certain age only to be snatched back that you can’t help but feel it unfair.”
A lump forms in my throat, threatening to rise up and spill into tears. I push it back down. “Yes, of course it is. I’ll tell Mother you asked after her. Thank you.”
She sighs. “And this business with Catherine...well, I won’t speak of it,” she says with a distasteful little wave. “But it’s enough to break any parent’s heart what your family has had to go through.”
If she only knew the half of it. I just nod, staring into the depths of my cooling tea.
“And what about you, my dear?”
“What about me?”
“Well,” she says, putting her tea down and leaning across to my chair. “Has your mother said anything about getting you settled? Surely it’s time, and I can’t imagine she’s willing to wait until Catherine is married. Do you have your eye on some young man?”
I jerk my head up, unable to mask my surprise at the question. It might be different if she was asking me a week from now, in a world where Mr. Barrett had already left me with some understanding. Even if I had just had a letter from him, anything so that I knew what he wanted to tell me last week in the road. “No,” I say, hoping she doesn’t catch the slight quaver in my voice. “There’s no young man.”
She arches a questioning brow at me and sits back. “No? What about...what was his name... He used to work with your father. Started with anS... Silas? Or maybe it was aC.”