Chapter One
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,sixchildren?” Evelyn did not so much as glance up from the reticule she was embroidering, her needle slipping smoothly through the velvet like a knife through butter. “Surely you jest, Mama.”
Lady Brimwood did not jest.
She stood in the middle of the drawing room with her cheeks flushed and her bonnet utterly askew. Her gloves were still dangling from one hand as though she had burst through the front door and never quite finished the task of undressing.
“Evelyn, I am serious. Lord Wimberly is a most respectable gentleman. Wealthy, industrious, God-fearing, and yes, a widower but with an excellent reputation and even more excellent prospects still ahead of him. Your father has entered into a new investment with him. This union would solidify a most favorable alliance.”
“I have no desire to wed an alliance,” Evelyn said calmly, carefully tying off a pale gold thread. “Least of all one that requires me to memorize the names and dietary peculiarities of six children. Do they all reside in one nursery, or have they colonized the west wing?”
Her mother wrung her gloves. “You cannot keep refusing every sensible match. You are not getting any younger, and this… this is not just any proposal. Lord Wimberly is a solution, Evelyn.”
“A solution to what, exactly, Mama?” Evelyn raised a brow at her hoop. “The terrible scandal of an unmarried daughter who readsPamelawithout shame and wears last year’s silk slippers? Shall I hang myself in the orangery and be done with it?”
“Evelyn!”
“Well, you must admit,” she paused, tilting her head to examine her stitching, “it would be easier to manage than six children and Lord Wimberly’s nightly prayers.”
Lady Brimwood began to pace, her voice rising with each step. “He is kind. And generous! And he would make room for you in his household. You would have your own rooms. You would never want for anything—servants, respectability, a place in society again. You must be practical about this.”
“Iampractical,” Evelyn said with a smile that did not reach her eyes. “That is why I know precisely what I would become in that marriage. An ornament. A governess with embroidery privileges. A warm shoulder for Lord Wimberly to weep uponwhen he remembers his late wife and the horror of trying to keep young boys from setting fire to the stables.”
“You would have a home.”
“I already have a home.” She returned to her needle, voice maddeningly light. “A tolerable one though the mornings are rather noisy when Papa yells at the butler.”
Her mother’s face crumpled, the fight bleeding out of her. “You think you are untouchable, Evelyn. But you arealone. And you may think it amusing now to reject every gentleman who does not sparkle with poetry and grand declarations, but when the years pass, when beauty fades, when all the friends you have are married?—”
“Oh, Mama.” Evelyn sighed. “Do stop. You’ll frighten the footman.”
“I will arrange for Lord Wimberly to call on Tuesday,” her mother stated with her voice full of injured dignity. “I expect you to at least be presentable.”
“I shall wear mourning,” Evelyn said sweetly. “For my liberty.”
Slowly, like a woman surrendering something heavy, her mother crossed the room and sat across from her daughter. Her skirts whispered as she settled into the chair, and the silence between them stretched taut.
Evelyn felt it, a shift in the air. She looked up, needle paused mid-stitch. Her mother was staring at her, not with frustration nor the usual exasperated concern but something quieter, something that was worn and worn-through.
“I was eighteen when I married your father,” Lady Brimwood divulged. “I did not know him. I had spoken to him three times before the banns were read.”
Evelyn blinked. “You always said it was a perfectly respectable match.”
“Itwas,” her mother said with a tight smile. “He was the eldest son, and I was pretty enough, and my dowry was large enough, and that was enough.” She looked down at her gloves, twisting them slowly in her lap. “But I never loved him. Not truly. Not the way a girl dreams of loving.”
Evelyn felt her heart catch, but she knew that this was all a charade. It was not a tender moment between a mother and a daughter but rather an attempt to get her to do what was expected of her.
“And yet I gave him everything. My youth. My body. My children. I made a life with him because I had to. Because my father arranged it, and my mother wept with relief. Because it was what we did, Evelyn. We were not asked what we wanted. We did what was necessary.”
She looked up now. “You think I am cruel for urging you toward Lord Wimberly. I know you do. But I look at you, my clever,difficult girl, and I wonder if you understand how quickly time moves when no one calls you beautiful anymore. When people stop caring what you read or what you think or whether you’ve eaten breakfast. When the rooms get quiet.”
Evelyn listened. Her fingers stopped working.
“I want you safe,” her mother whispered. “I want you cared for. Not dependent on your brother’s charity when your father is gone or shunted into some relative’s attic like an old chair no one knows what to do with. I know Lord Wimberly is not a fairytale, but he is a man who will give you a household, a name, a place in the world. You will never be left behind.”
“I’m not you,” Evelyn said softly. “And I don’t think I’m strong enough to live like you did. To make do with enough. I want something more.”
Her mother gave a laugh that sounded almost like a sob. “Then you’d better marry a poet, darling. Or a fool. Because men who love like that are rare, and they don’t always stay.”
