Her mother winced, but nodded her head slowly. “Are you going to the conservatory, my love?”
“I was planning on it, and grabbing a glass of wine while I was at it,” Gwen said plainly.
“Alright, well, just let him know that you’re going.”
“Just come with me. We don’t need his permission.”
A wave of laughter carried from the ballroom. Perfume and heat rolled through the doorway with the swell of violins. Somewhere, a gentleman barked out, “One, two, three. Mind your turn, Madam.”
The ordinary gaiety of it made Gwen’s heart ache.
“Look at me, Mama,” she said softly.
Her mother did.
Beneath the gilded edges of her mask, Gwen saw the woman her mother had been before grief and fear had taught her to fold herself smaller: beautiful, eager for life, braver than she knew. She had loved her first husband with a fierceness that warmed a room. She loved badly now—clutching nettles to save the imaginations that had once saved her.
“We are not required,” Gwen said gently, “to forgive the lash as it falls.”
Cordelia’s mouth trembled. “If I object, if I push, it means that I’ll make it worse for you. You know this.”
Indeed, they both knew the arithmetics of Howard’s temper.
Gwen’s gaze flicked, unbidden, to the pale underside of her mother’s wrist, which the glove did not fully cover.
No marks tonight. Thank God.
“Then we’ll just have to be more clever in our defiance,” she coaxed. “And quiet. And quick.” She squeezed her mother’s hands.
“Gwendoline…” Cordelia trailed off, shaking her head.
“I shall get some air,” Gwen declared, her voice even and calm. “The smells in this room make me dizzy.”
Howard, bored and monarchic in his command of their small province, had already turned away to greet a baron of only slightly more impressive consequence than himself. He gave a small nod when the message reached him:ten minutes.
“Be careful,” Cordelia whispered.
“Always,” Gwen murmured, before turning and moving through the crush.
Arabella rose on tiptoe and lifted a hand.
After the briefest hesitation, Gwen shook her head.Not now.
If she told them she meant to take the air, Arabella would insist on coming along, Eleanor would calculate the risks… and a small war would erupt in whispers.
She did not need war. She needed a moment in which she could remember what it felt like to belong to herself.
The terrace doors opened as she approached, a couple sweeping out in pursuit of privacy and starlight. Gwen slipped out in their wake and let the darkness envelop her.
The garden calmed her. Everything about it. The hedges clipped to perfection, the gravel beneath her feet, the scent of the blooms and the fresh fountain water.
She let her shoulders fall the inch she had denied them all evening and closed her eyes.
Alright, count to ten. Or twenty… one hundred.
Whatever it took to force her heart into sensible strides instead of this skittering bolt of a hare.
Onefor her infuriating stepfather, whose laugh had sounded like the first strike of rain on summer dust.
