Chapter Fourteen
“Hazel, if you scold me one more time about posture, I shall faint right here in the middle of the roses, and then where will you be?” Matilda asked playfully.
“Unbothered and victorious,” Hazel replied primly, sipping her tea. “And I would let you stay down until your spine realigned.”
Laughter broke out among the small gathering of women in the sun-drenched garden. Cordelia sat beneath the shade of the wide oak, her skirts spread around her like spilled silk and a hand pressed to her mouth to stifle another giggle.
“I feel personally attacked,” Matilda added with mock indignation, adjusting her bonnet with unnecessary precision. “I’m perfectly upright.”
“You’re sitting like a terrified governess awaiting a performance review,” Hazel shot back, and Matilda gave her a scandalized little gasp.
“I was not?—”
“Ladies,” Cordelia interrupted in a warm and melodic tone of voice, “if this is how you behave in society, I fear I’ve doomed Caroline by association.”
The group turned to look at Isabelle, who had been bestowed with the name Caroline Langley. She sat among them with a delighted smile and cheeks tinged with color from laughing too hard. Her hands were wrapped delicately around her teacup, and a half-eaten lemon tart rested forgotten on her plate.
“I have never had this much fun while being insulted,” she said brightly.
Hazel lifted her brow. “That’s because you’ve never met us before.”
“Clearly, my social education was lacking,” Isabelle returned, and the table erupted in another round of good-humored laughter.
This moment… it was perfect.
Cordelia leaned back on her hands, feeling the warmth of the sun on her face. The garden felt like a dream painted in soft greens and pale pinks, a place just slightly removed from the real world, and at the same time, a space made for women like them, who had lived too long under expectation and silence.
Just as Cordelia had expected, Isabelle fit and effortlessly so. She had spoken little at first, but now, she laughed just as freely, teased just as boldly, her words quick and clever and gentle. When Matilda had mentioned her own small greenhouse, Isabelle had lit up, offering to trade recipes for rosewater and balm. Hazel, predictably, had asked after her family, and when Isabelle said she had three children, the elder two of whom were a bit too fascinated by the compost heap, Hazel had declared her excellent mother material and that had been that. She was accepted.
Cordelia watched them with her heart aching in that strange, lovely way that joy always did when it wasn’t quite stable inside her. She hadn’t known how much she needed this, how much they all had.
“Cordelia,” Matilda said suddenly, leaning closer and placing her teacup down with a purposeful clink, “your face has gone far too thoughtful for such a sunny afternoon. What are you scheming now?”
“I’m not scheming,” Cordelia said innocently though she didn’t quite meet her friend’s eyes.
“Then what’s the faraway sighing for?” Hazel asked. “Is it the Duke?”
Cordelia flushed instantly. “No.”
“Oh, it’s definitely the Duke,” Matilda said under her breath, hiding a smirk behind her fan.
Cordelia shook her head, cheeks warm. “It’s not him, truly. I just…” She looked at Isabelle then, and her voice gentled. “I was thinking how glad I am you all came today.”
Isabelle blinked, startled, and then smiled the kind of smile that bloomed slowly and then stayed.
“I am, too,” she said.
The wind stirred through the garden, brushing against the linen tablecloth and tugging playfully at the corners of napkins. Bees rested lazily on the petunias. In the distance, the manor’s bell tolled softly, signaling mid-afternoon.
The tea had been mostly drunk, the pastries all but devoured, and the sun had dipped into its golden afternoon glow when Matilda clapped her hands once, far too excitedly.
“Games,” she announced. “It’s far too beautiful a day not to play something entirely silly.”
Hazel rolled her eyes with great theatricality. “Only if it does not involve running or blindfolds.”
“You are no fun,” Matilda declared. “We could do charades! Or questions and consequences?”
“Iloatheconsequences,” Hazel muttered, rolling her eyes.
