“R ight. You can help me practice my reel.”
Peggy looked at Cymbeline and shook her head. “I’m terrible at it.”
Cymbeline arched a disbelieving brow as they stood in the beautifully decorated long hall, with morning light pouring in through the windows all along the side.
Peggy laughed at Cymbeline’s expression, which seemed to suggest she’d take no nonsense.
Maximus’s cousin was the most delightful and innocent of young ladies. And Peggy hoped she would always stay that way. It was a beautiful thing to see someone so happy. It was also dismaying to realize how different so many girls’ lives could be in the East End if they had just been born into this family.
Cymbeline pursed her lips as if to say, Well?
“Dancing is not my strong suit,” Peggy insisted.
“I don’t believe that for a moment,” Cymbeline said. “You move nimbly, and you’re a thief, so you must be good at it.”
Cymbeline leaned forward and, with dancing eyes, dared, “By the way, would you teach me how to pick a pocket?”
“No. I will not,” retorted Peggy, fighting a half groan, half laugh. “I think your family would never forgive me. You really shouldn’t be with me at all, you know. I don’t think they would truly approve of us fraternizing.”
“Fraternizing?” Cymbeline echoed. “My father, Lord Ajax, told me to learn everything I can from you, and my mother hopes to have tea with you so that she can ask about the best way to sneak in and out of a room and escape terrible company. I absolutely think that they would approve.”
Peggy cleared her throat. What mad world had she fallen into? A wonderful one. Or so it seemed.
“My family has revolutionary ideas about most things,” Cymbeline continued blithely. “Except for having a revolution. My uncle, the duke, has no desire for that.”
Peggy threw her head back and laughed. “I suppose I can understand why. When one is a duke, one wouldn’t really want that dukedom to be gone, would they?”
Cymbeline nodded. “Exactly. I’m glad you understand.”
And then a bevy of young people began to enter the long salon.
“Oh, good!” Cymbeline clapped her hands delightedly, causing the pink ribbons in her hair to bob. “They’ve arrived.”
Peggy frowned. “Who has arrived?”
“My cousins.”
Peggy eyed the ever-growing number of finely dressed young people. “Those are your cousins?”
“Yes.”
She sucked in an amazed breath. “How many children have all of your aunts and uncles had?”
“Oh, a few,” Cymbeline said, winking. “And aside from the cousins born to my aunts and uncles, I’ve numerous adopted cousins. You see, my uncle Achilles and his wife traveled through war-torn Europe and began taking in children.”
“They’re just like family?” Peggy gasped.
Cymbeline’s brow furrowed. “They are family.”
She gaped. “I don’t understand.”
Cymbeline tilted her head to the side. “What don’t you understand?”
Peggy couldn’t explain it. Families in the East End were pulled apart by poverty. People often dreaded another child simply because they couldn’t feed them. But here? They not only added children, but they also bathed them with love and opportunity.
Oh, to be a Briarwood! It was as if utopia had found England in this small corner of the land.
Suddenly, Cymbeline cried out, “Oh, Anne, do come and have a dance with us! We’re going to do a reel. I’m still not very good at it, and Peggy here will help us. She will insist she’s not a very good dancer, but I don’t believe her for a moment, and she knows how to pick pockets.”
Anne, a dark-haired girl with obsidian eyes who wore a periwinkle frock, bustled towards them as she let out a laugh. “So do I. I learned when I was a little girl on the streets of my town.”
“I beg your pardon?” Peggy blurted.
Anne nodded and said without embarrassment, “Oh yes, I was picking pockets when I was five years old to buy bread.” She winked. “I also sometimes stole marzipan. But that all ended when Papa and Mama found me when I was about eight. I’ve been living with the Briarwoods ever since.”
“I see,” she mused. “And are you out in society?”
“I’ll come out with Cymbeline next year. We thought it would be a good idea for us to come out together. Several of the cousins will actually be coming out next year, and I will have to resist causing trouble. But I love all the family, so I will only cause a little bit of trouble.”
Cymbeline laughed. “Which will cause a great deal of fun. It’ll be a marvelous Season. They won’t know what hit them. I shall wear breeches.”
“No, you won’t,” Anne said.
“Why not? I think it would be marvelous.”
Anne rolled her eyes. “Only if you wish to cause so much scandal that you have to move to America.”
“I want to move to America,” Peggy put in.
“You do?” Anne said, surprised. “How could you possibly wish to go away from Heron House? It is the happiest place in the world.”
“Well, it’s not my home,” Peggy said firmly, though much to her horror, she felt a raw ache when the words slipped past her lips. That was not good. Not at all.
“Not right now,” Cymbeline said, “but it could be. I’ve seen the way my cousin looks at you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Peggy returned. “Gentlemen like that don’t marry women like me.”
“Don’t be insulting,” Anne said with a playful cluck of her tongue.
Peggy frowned. “What?”
Anne gave a dramatic sigh of wounded horror. “You’re insulting me. Are you saying that no gentleman will wish to marry me?”
“That’s not what I meant at all,” Peggy rushed.
“Are we so very different?” Anne asked plainly.
Peggy swallowed and said without thinking twice, “Yes.”
“And how is that?” Anne asked. “We both have histories as thieves.”
Peggy paused, considering how best to say this. She folded her hands together, then began carefully, “Perhaps you were picking pockets, but you have been taken in by the Briarwood family. You were adopted by them. They have made you theirs.”
Anne and Cymbeline both stared back at her.
At last, Anne said gently, “You don’t realize it. Do you?”
“What?” she asked.
Cymbeline reached out and placed her hand over Peggy’s folded ones. “You’ve been adopted.”
Peggy blinked. “No, I haven’t. I…”
And then her voice began to die off. She had been brought to the house. Her grandmother had been brought to the house. Her mother had been brought to the house. They had been living here now for days upon end as if they were…family.
Cymbeline smiled as she spotted the moment understanding hit Peggy.
Anne nodded her agreement. “Grandmama must have decided it the moment she saw you. She always knows when people belong here. And, of course, Maximus too. He must have known.”
“Known what?” she gasped.
Cymbeline beamed. “The family legend.”
“What family legend?” she asked warily. “That you all are delightfully mad?”
“Well, that’s one of the family legends,” Anne said, her lips turning in a smile. “Though I’m not related by blood, so I’m not as worried about that for myself. But you see, the legend of the Briarwood family is that they always meet the one, and when they meet the one, they know it. Isn’t it marvelous? It’s like something out of a play or a story.”
“Or a nightmare,” Peggy cut in. “Doesn’t that mean one’s chained to their fate?”
“What a wonderful fate though,” Cymbeline gushed, placing her hand over her heart, but then she pursed her lips.
“But I’m rather dreading it,” Cymbeline admitted. “Because I’ll have my first Season next year, which means I’ll meet the one relatively soon, and I don’t want to get married early.” Her brows drew together. “I suppose I could try for a few Seasons. That might work. Maybe I won’t meet the one until I’m almost a wallflower.”
Anne snorted. “You’ll never be a wallflower, Cymbeline. You like to talk and dance too much.”
Cymbeline laughed. “One never knows!”
“I wager you’ll win a duke,” Anne added.
“I hope not! There are already too many dukes in this family.”
Anne waggled her brows. “Can there be too many dukes?”
Peggy gulped, suddenly overwhelmed. “I think I need to sit down.”
“No, you don’t,” Cymbeline assured brightly. “You need to dance, and you need not be worried about any of the silly nonsense you are saying about not being like us. You are meant to be here. That is clear.”
“Just like I’m meant to be here,” Anne said.
“And me,” another declared as she popped next to Anne. “I’m Josephine,” she added as she linked arms with Anne.
Josephine was a red-headed creature with fiery eyes, freckles all over her nose, and a pert grin. She looked as if she was about seventeen years old.
“It’s a merry crew, a wild one, and the best in all the world.” Josephine gave a quick, cheeky curtsy. “Welcome. We’re all misfits, you know. Most of us adopted ones, that is, come from the strangest backgrounds. My father was a baker. My mother was a seamstress. My town was attacked by the French. Both of my parents were casualties of war.”
Josephine said this so calmly that Peggy was shocked. She didn’t seem wounded. She seemed happy, loved.
Was that the power of the Briarwoods?
She was beginning to think so.
Anne nodded. “Yes. My parents were lost to illness they caught due to displacement from Napoleon’s armies. And I was left completely alone to fend for myself on the streets. Most of us children were in terrible states, but we couldn’t be happier now. Papa and Mama wisely didn’t try to replace our parents. They never have. They just let us be who we are. They love us. The whole family loves us. And if you let them, they’ll love you too.”
Peggy choked back a cough, refusing to believe that her throat was tightening out of emotion. It had to be dust. Or the fresh air and all the flowers outside.
The truth was she couldn’t imagine such a thing. Her own mother and grandmother had been consumed by such sorrow and dismay that they could barely show her love. At least, not the kind of love that went beyond mere survival.
This was like being swept into heaven.
“Here, have a macaron,” another golden-haired girl in a yellow gown said as she shoved a plate with pink macarons on it at Peggy. “My name is Emily. These are the best. I swear the only reason Margery married Nestor was because of these pink macarons. Try one.”
Emily shoved the plate at her again, her yellow skirts swishing about.
Peggy felt quite stunned, as if suddenly enveloped in a sea of pastels and kindness. She’d never been around so many females like this, but she did as she was asked. She reached out, took the macaron, and took a bite. The spun sugar burst in her mouth. Her eyes flared.
Emily bobbed up and down happily. “Perfect bliss?”
“Yes,” she confessed. “It is.”
Like the whole family. Like this whole place.
But then she suddenly felt sick. This wasn’t right. She didn’t belong. This couldn’t be happening to her because it was surely all going to be taken away in an instant. She’d never known this sort of happiness.
“What are you all doing?” called out a male voice she knew too well.
Maximus.
She turned, struck by relief that he was there. And another feeling. One she couldn’t name, but it swallowed her up.
He strode up to her, stared at her, and his lips curled. “You look magnificent,” he said.
And then he lifted his thumb and stroked some crumbs away from her lips. She felt her cheeks heat with embarrassment.
“I hope you’re enjoying every morsel,” he rumbled. “It looks like it tastes divine.”
“Would you like a bite?” she asked.
He gazed down at the macaron in her hand, and then he nodded.
The girls giggled and raced off, forming lines at the other side of the room.
Carefully, her breath catching in her throat, Peggy popped it into his mouth.
Slowly, his eyes locked on hers as he devoured the macaron. He licked his lips. “Delicious,” he said.
And she knew he meant more than just the macaron.
And then someone in the corner, a young man, began banging at the pianoforte.
“Our lines are not straight! Look about you and fix this,” Cymbeline demanded, clapping her hands. “We have a party tonight, and we’re all going to dance magnificently.”
“A party?” Peggy exclaimed, shocked.
“Yes. Didn’t my mother tell you?” he asked.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Don’t worry, I’ll be upstairs and won’t bother anyone.”
“No, you won’t,” he countered. “You’ll be at the party on my arm.”
“That’s a terrible idea.”
“Why?” he teased. “Are you going to pick someone’s pocket?”
She narrowed her eyes. “The party’s not necessary, is it?”
“Well, you wanted to see my world in exchange for you waking me up. So…”
“I didn’t mean like this,” she said.
“Yes, you did,” he whispered. “You did. This was exactly what you wanted. You wanted to feel something other than what you’ve always known.”
She narrowed her eyes. Was it? Was it what she wanted? To experience such wonder, such joy, and then have to leave it all behind? Because she was going to have to.
Her mother was right about one thing.
This wouldn’t last. Things like this never did.