Page 4 of Lady Like

Emily and Violet trek back to the Sergeant home arm in arm, walking so close that their skirts bunch between them.

Violet chatters inanely, attempting to fill the sad silence with complaints about how weary she is of both her husband and her baby.

“Am I horrid? You can tell me if I’m horrid,” she says.

“I’m sure I’ll warm to the child in time, but zounds motherhood thus far is a lousy business.

Do you know how long it has been since I slept a full night?

And Martin still hasn’t approved a nursemaid.

He is suspicious of the profession as a whole because his childhood nurse used to hold him by the ankles. He claims that’s why he never grew.”

Though Violet and Emily had written each other endlessly since Violet and Martin moved to London the year before, having Violet once again just down the road, same as she had been in childhood, while they spent the winter in Middleham with Violet’s widowed mother, had been a balm for Emily’s loneliness.

What would she do when Violet was once again a county away rather than at their breakfast table every morning, the baby handed off to Emily’s mother and the two of them left to chat and laugh like they had when they were young?

“Don’t go back to London,” Emily says, pulling her cousin closer to her side. “Stay here forever with me.”

“As dearly as I love you, there is nothing that could entice me to remain in this provincial hamlet a moment longer than is necessary.”

“You’ll come back for my wedding, won’t you?”

They have nearly reached the yard, but Violet stops suddenly and turns to Emily.

She reaches up as though to take Emily’s face between her hands, then seems to remember their recent activities and quickly drops them.

Though they had scrubbed at the pump, their palms still bear the faint aroma of farm.

“There must be something we can do to stop your marriage. If you were engaged to someone boring but tolerable like Martin it would be one thing, but Tweed is…”

“A villain,” Emily says. That, she has decided, is the simplest word for him.

“I’ll fear for you every day,” Violet says quietly. “Do your parents not hear your protestations?”

“My parents want me married.” Though her mother often says it’s for Emily’s sake, Emily suspects that seeing their daughter to the altar will make her parents feel like some of her residual shame can finally be shaken off. “And no one else in Middleham will have me.”

“Then you must cast a wider net,” Violet says.

“How?” Emily has never left Sussex. Everyone she has ever met lives so close she could walk to their house in a morning.

“There must be some way,” Violet says, “to find you a more suitable husband.”

Emily looks down at the drawing, which they had brought with them to throw in the fire lest anyone stumble upon it out in the fields.

Violet had been loath to waste a sheet of good watercolor paper on someone as worthless as Tweed, so she had done the rendering on newsprint.

Society pages from a London rag peer out from between the streaks of mud and paint, the page splashed with reports of parliamentary debate, a review of a lurid Drury Lane production of Macbeth, a series of salacious letters from a criminal conversation trial.

Midway down, just below the thickest blot of mud—most of which has now dried and caked off—is a list of the young, eligible noblemen who have come to London for theSeason looking for wives.

There are a half dozen names in the profile, which is a small hook to hang hope upon, but as Emily scans the list, an idea occurs to her suddenly with crystalline clarity. She seizes her cousin by the arm. “Take me to London with you!”

Violet’s face lights and she says at once, “Wait—truly? Are you in earnest?”

“If I go to London—if I find a husband there—where no one knows who I am or what I’ve done…

” Emily pauses, thinking. If she can snare a man who does not know the sins of her past but rather sees only the thin, beautiful, well-behaved woman she has worked so hard to make herself into, surely her parents will find it in their hearts to let her seek matrimony elsewhere.

Particularly if the alternate gentleman is richer or more titled than Tweed, and does not have it in his heart to pave over their ancestral land. What could they possibly object to?

“We can tell my parents you need a companion,” Emily says.

“I do!” Violet cries.

“Someone to help you with the baby and stave off loneliness.”

“ I do, ” Violet says more vehemently.

“But in reality—”

“You’ll be seeking better prospects than that swine.

” Violet clutches both Emily’s hands in hers.

“Oh this will be such fun! I can get you into all the parties and introduce you to my friends and hear music and go to galleries and they will all be lousy with eligible men for you to meet and marry! Of course you must come to London!”

“Emily!” A voice calls from the house and both Violet and Emily turn. Emily’s mother is stalking across the lawn toward them, a lace collar affixed to her throat that she had not been wearing when they left. “What happened to your dress?” she barks. “You said you were walking!”

“We got stuck in a bog,” Violet says quickly. “You know how fickle the paths are this early in the spring.”

“Sakes.” Emily’s mother presses a hand to her forehead, mouth pulled down, the personification of long-suffering. “Come inside and wash—quickly!”

“Why?” Emily asks as she hurries up the porch stairs. “What’s happened?”

“Mr. Tweed is on his way to see you.”

“Oh.” Emily stops. “Violet and I had occasion to—”

“Whatever plans you have can be rearranged!” Her mother is already bustling Emily into the house, waving farewell to Violet over her shoulder as she shuts the door behind them and turns to Emily. “It’s done.”

“What?”

“Mr. Tweed and your father have reached an accord. He’s coming here to make his proposal of marriage.”

A formality, Emily knows, not really a question, for there is only one answer though her stomach still drops. Everything is already arranged—negotiations have been in progress for months. All she can do now is let her mother press her up the stairs and to her bedroom to be made presentable.

The same way a body is before a funeral, Emily thinks, though there is only so much color one can add to a corpse’s cheeks. Dying can only be made so beautiful.

In Emily’s bedroom, her mother gathers a dress over Emily’s head.

“Remember,” she says as she arranges the material, “Mr. Tweed is quite shortsighted, so be sure you sit close to him. He must see for himself how keen you are. And try not to stand so straight. He is not so tall and you know how sensitive men are about a lady’s height.

You must do nothing to discourage him.” Emily starts to turn so her mother can do up her buttons.

Emily stares at her own reflection in her vanity mirror. The pale lilac material makes her feel like a bruise. “Do you think,” Emily says tentatively, interrupting her mother’s humming, “Mr. Tweed is the sort of man you would wish to be your son-in-law?”

“Son-in-law!” Her mother clucks. “Good gracious, how old it makes me feel to think of him as such.”

Likely because Tweed is older than her mother, though neither of them say it. Emily smooths her dress against her thighs as her mother fusses with the frills on Emily’s sleeve until they lie flat. “But…”

The cold panic is climbing up her spine again. The thoughts of going to London with Violet and of Tweed on his way here to ask her for her hand rattle inside her like knives in a drawer, each sharpening itself against the other. She swallows, then tries yet again. “Do you not find him—”

“I find Mr. Tweed to be a gentleman established in our community who will give you a good life,” her mother interrupts.

“Will he?”

“A life better than you would have alone.” She pinches Emily’s cheeks so firmly Emily yelps. “You’re wan. Now show me your hands.”

“I shall be wearing gloves!” Emily protests.

“Hands,” her mother says again, and Emily places her hands atop her mother’s for inspection.

“Your hideous nails.” Her mother clucks, then tugs at the back of Emily’s dress.

“And this is still too large in the bust. Here, let me show you a secret.” She digs around in Emily’s dressing table and comes up with a ribbon and a silver ring, which she squints at.

“Is this sentimental?” she asks. “I’ve never seen it before. ”

It is easier to pretend she forgot she kept the ring, rather than it is something she stares at daily in her jewelry box.

Thomas had given it to her, and since everything between them had to be secret, she had worn it on a chain around her neck, savoring the illicit thrill every time she felt the cold metal between her breasts.

He had told her he stole it from the Prince of Wales himself, when the prince regent’s carriage had broken down on the rough road from Brighton to London, and he had luncheoned with the workmen to prove what a man of the people he was.

Thomas had always told her stories like that, and Emily had never known how many to believe.

The ring had barely fit her littlest finger—she could not imagine it would fit the prince’s large hands.

More likely he had found it while digging on Tweed’s crew, and conjured a story to impress her.

And she had been so impressed by everything about him.

Even now, she can’t recall those days with him clearly enough to know what was real and what was distorted by the hazy veil of new love.

“No,” Emily says. “It is not sentimental.”

“Perfect.” Her mother reaches down the bodice of Emily’s dress, pulling the material through the ring and tying it off with the ribbon so it gathers in a way that looks intentional, rather than like she’s trying to reduce the size of the garment without paying a tailor.

“There.” Her mother comes to stand beside Emily and together they stare at Emily’s reflection in the mirror.

Emily is struck as she often is by how little she can see of her own face in her mother’s.

They have been told they look alike, but she can never see the resemblance.

Shared blue eyes and fair hair do not make them the same.

Emily’s mother’s face has always been long and lean, while Emily’s small features and pointed chin once drew her comparisons to a leaf.

Their laughs sound the same, though—at least, she thinks they do. She can no longer recall.

On the drive outside, carriage wheels rattle. Her mother squeezes Emily’s shoulders, then rests her cheek against Emily’s.

“I received a letter this week,” her mother says suddenly, as though she cannot contain the words any longer. “From Amelia.”

“Amelia?” Emily watches in the mirror as her own brow furrows. “Aunt Amelia, your sister?”

“Who else?”

“You haven’t spoken since…” Emily trails off as her mother’s grip on her loosens, and she finishes instead, “What did she say?”

“That she had heard rumor of your impending marriage to Mr. Tweed,” her mother says. “And the resort is doing well and might your father and I visit her in Brighton before the end of the summer.”

“And will you?” Emily asks.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Because she stopped speaking to you, Emily thinks, but bites the tip of her tongue to stop herself from saying it.

Amelia had been one of so many who had excused themselves from the Sergeants’ lives in the wake of The Night That Ruined Everything.

But could Amelia be blamed? Could any of them?

Emily suspects that, had it been someone else’s daughter fallen from grace, the Sergeants would have shunned them too. It was simply what was done.

“That’s wonderful,” is all Emily says at last. “I’m glad you’re corresponding with her again.”

“I never stopped,” her mother says, running her fingers through the ends of Emily’s hair. “She simply never wrote back.”

Below them, Emily hears the front door open. Heavy footsteps in the hall. She turns to her mother again, thinking this time— this time— her mother will see the fear in her eyes.

But her mother takes Emily’s hands between hers and says, “Thank you for doing this. For me. For all of us.”

Shame, her familiar companion now for so many years, cuts an unexpected path through Emily.

And here she thought she knew all the routes it traveled.

For what she had done that led them here, but now too for the dread in her heart when she thinks of being wife to Tweed.

She has already put her family through so much and let them down in every way.

Her single choice had cost them the same as it had her. She cannot let them down again.

She considers telling her mother of her plan to go to London with Violet and find herself a better prospect.

The kind of man Aunt Amelia would be desperate for association with.

Everyone would. The whole town would come crawling back to her, begging for her favor with the same zeal with which they had once turned their backs.

But then, from below, her father’s voice calls, “Martha? Is Emily with you? Send her below, please.”

Her mother leans in and kisses Emily on the cheek. “It will be better,” she says firmly. “It has to be.” Then she pinches Emily’s cheeks once more for good measure before she runs to the door and calls down, “Give her just a moment to collect herself!”

She need not tell her mother about London, nor her plot to find a different man to wed. I will find myself a respectable husband, Emily promises herself. For us all.