Priscilla’s mouth fell open. “You can’t possibly mean—”
“It worked for me,” Grandmother said flatly.
Did it? Priscilla wanted to ask as she stabbed the fire iron into the coals to coax out more light.
“A package arrived.” Grandmother motioned a brown-paper parcel on the tea table. “For you. Is it from Mr. Middleton?”
Priscilla didn’t answer. Grandmother would have worked that much out on her own, either from the package itself, the footman who brought it, or the simple fact that this house had never received a letter from any man but Thaddeus.
Grandmother sniffed. “Marry him.”
“No.” Priscilla spun around to face her. “No husband. Why should I? You aren’t happy, and neither was Mother.”
“Your mother was too weak.” Grandmother made a face, her tone disparaging. “I knew it the day my son married her. I brought you up to be made of sterner stuff. Thicker skin.”
“You didn’t bring me up,” Priscilla burst out. “You stayed in this room for three-and-twenty years while I was left to grow up in another. And Mother wasn’t ‘weak.’ She was sad. Your son abandoned her within a year of their wedding day—”
“She knew who and what he was when she married him,” Grandmother said. “We all make our choices.”
“—and then she died of a broken heart.” Priscilla’s hands curled into fists.
“Died by her own hand,” Grandmother spat. “I told you. She was weak.”
Priscilla’s lungs struggled for air. No one had ever said those words to her before, but even at nine she’d known the truth.
She supposed she was made of sterner stuff, had been forced to be by necessity, or else be broken-hearted herself that leaving a frightened little girl behind hadn’t been a good enough reason for her mother to want to live.
“Strong,” she whispered. “I’m strong.”
“You’re slow,” Grandmother corrected. “I expected you married by now.”
“With what wiles?” Priscilla burst out. “I have no title, no dowry… I had to teach myself to read—”
“Men don’t want a clever woman,” Grandmother retorted. “They want her to be docile. They want regal. They want a woman who knows her place.”
“I don’t know mine,” Priscilla said, chin held high, “because I don’t intend to have one. I’ll spend the rest of my life off on adventure, waking each morn to a day full of wonder and surprises—”
“You hate wonder and surprises,” Grandmother said, her tone disparaging. “You claim to like the idea of the unknown, but have gone to great lengths to know and predict every single element in your environment.”
Priscilla’s breath tangled in her throat and she wrapped her arms about her chest. “I…”
“Even your wretched parrot can quote Debrett’s,” Grandmother continued. “You’re at Almack’s every Wednesday—”
“It’s the Marriage Mart,” Priscilla protested.
“You’re not looking for a husband,” Grandmother pointed out. “You’re attending the most predictable event in all of London. And where were you tonight?”
“Vauxhall,” Priscilla repeated. “And it was very, very surprising.”
“I doubt that,” Grandmother said with disdain. “They post upcoming events on every wall in London—”
“You’ve never even left home! How would you know?”
“You bring the bills home,” Grandmother said with satisfaction. “The maids have told me. Every bill, every ticket, clippings from every newspaper—”
Priscilla dug her fingernails into her palms and ground her teeth together. She could not admit that she’d been hoarding snippets of her life in an album meant for her Father.
When he came back and asked what she had been up to, he would be able to leaf through her life page by page. See everything he had missed. And then they would close that book and leave it behind because the rest of her life was something they’d share together.
