Gwinnie grimaced. “Oh, that is coarse.”
Cassie nodded slowly. “Yes, but it was how I felt and still feel.”
“Not every man is like the Marquess was,” Gwinnie said gently.
“I know. I just… I just don’t want to chance it. I was so miserable.” Tears filled Cassie’s eyes.
“But you were even more miserable after his death! You said your depression was so deep they wanted to send you to an asylum.”
“The depression was not caused by losing Richard. The depression was due to what I experienced that night. And it was a depression fraught with fear, fear that it wasn’t over yet and, as we have determined, it’s not,” she explained.
“But what of yourself?” she countered to Gwinnie. “You are older than I and are not wed. And you are a duke’s daughter!”
Gwinnie sighed, her habitual ebullience falling away, and Cassie felt the veriest lowlife for saying what she did. “Lakehurst asked me that same question not long ago. Look at me,” she said, standing straight, holding her hands away from her sides. “I am large.”
“You are not fat,” Cassie protested.
“I didn’t say I was fat. I am large. Large boned. It is the way I am built.”
“But you have the curves men love.”
“On a smaller woman, they do. I am taller than most men in society or of a height. They do not want to look directly into a woman’s eyes or look up to her. It is that masculine thing again. They want a woman shorter than them, who can lay their dainty heads on their manly chests as they enfold them in their embrace, the big strong, ‘I’ll take care of you’man,” she declared, throwing her chest out and her head up like a warrior accepting his due honor.
Cassie laughed at Gwinnie’s play despite the seriousness of Gwinnie’s fears.
“Not one of them could pick me up should I swoon,” she said dramatically. “However, I am certain I could throw them over my shoulder and climb a flight of stairs,” she said, mimicking the actions.
“Gwinnie, you could tread the boards!” Cassie exclaimed, laughing harder. Though she laughed with her, inside her heart cried for her.
“What part should I play? Oh, I know, I could play the male roles when it calls for a manly man.”
Gwinnie collapsed onto the couch, biting her lip as tears spilled from her eyes and traced down her cheeks. “I am so lonely,” she said, her voice breaking.
Cassie put her arms around her and drew her close. “I am so sorry. I had no idea. I did not think… That is the problem. No one thinks.” She pushed Gwinnie’s hair away from her face.
“We all assume we know everyone else from what we think we see. But we don’t know their lives or the lies they might have lived.”
They were silent together as Gwinnie gently cried. Cassie thought her heart would break for her. The bouncy, ebullient Gwinnie hid a lonely young woman.
Was she hiding, too? Was the truth of her dismal marriage part of her depression and the fear she wasn’t worthy of love? She’d often wondered what was wrong with her that Richard did not love her. In her thoughts, she knew it wasn’t about her, that the fault lay within Richard; however, that did not help her heart, which cried against her unworthiness. Her declaration not to marry again was part of the fortifications she had built and was continuing to build around herself.
Women were so at the mercy of men.
Gwinnie straightened, wiping the tears off her cheeks. “Well,” she said with pseudo brightness, “enough of that now.”
“Has there ever been someone you would like to marry?”
Gwinnie laughed shortly. “Oh, several times,” she declared flippantly.
“That you thought you could love?” Cassie asked.
Gwinnie took in a deep breath and looked away. “Yes,” she said, “but we are so far apart in our backgrounds and lives, it would never work.”
“How can you say that? You are not a naïve debutant like those who fear your brother. A handsome face or purse does not sway you. You wouldn’t feel the way you do if there wasn’t some commonality.”
Gwinnie laughed slightly. “At least he is slightly taller than me.”
“Don’t let society dictate,” Cassie implored her.
