My fingers stop moving. “He was…polite.”
Mama seems positively delighted by my comment, though I’m not sure why. “I suppose there are worse things a young man can be.”
“I suppose there are.” Slowly, my fingers start to work again, and I rock in my chair. The sounds of the chair against the wood floor fill the room.
“Sit still, child,” she says, her voice low but firm. “We need to talk.”
A strange sort of feeling fills the air, but I don’t know what it is. Tension, maybe. Worry. Dread. I sense something is coming, but I have yet to figure out what it might be.
“Thomas Bingham’s family is decent,” she says softly. “He would treat you well. Keep you close to us, until Foxglove becomes yours.”
I turn my head slowly. “I’m not yet ready to marry, if that’s what you mean.”
“I don’t know if anyone is ever ready.”
I study her, and there’s that odd feeling again. “Were you ready when you married Papa?” She must’ve been. They’re so happy. Not at all like other parents I’ve seen in the village.
She lets out a long breath, setting her knitting down on her lap. Her eyes meet mine, warming, but when she speaks, there’s something heavy in her tone. A truth, a wisdom that feels like a secret. “You’re nearly fifteen, Mary. Growing up. And with that comes responsibility.”
I frown. “I am responsible. I clean and cook and help Papa with the animals. I mend our clothes and help Anna with her reading.”
“All of those qualities will make you a brilliant wife.” She pauses, leaning back in her seat. “And mother, someday.”
I don’t dare argue, though my hands are icy, and my stomach feels like the time we were all bedridden with sickness, when only the warm whiskey Mama prepared would stay down.
I know it’s coming, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready.
“There’s more to it than that,” she tells me, her voice gentle and low. Her words carry a weight that I feel in my chest, like she’s covering me up, tucking me in. “Being a Wilde woman comes with its own set of responsibilities, you know. This house and everything that comes with it is a part of who you are, my darling. And it will be yours—to protect and to tend to—someday. Whatever man you marry will have to understand that.”
She picks up her knitting again. “You’ve seen how the village treats your father for his choices. You shall need a strong man to stand by your side just as well.”
I open my mouth to ask if she thinks Thomas Bingham could possibly be that husband. I don’t see it—he’s rather nervous if you ask me, not all like Papa—but she holds her hand up and I go quiet. Her eyes lock onto mine, and I get that feeling again that tells me she can see straight through my thoughts, can split the earth and pierce stone.
“There will be others. Suitors who come to court you. Men who will say kind things, sweet things. Many of them will promise you love and safety. Some of them may mean it. You will be the lady of the house, and you will leave Foxglove—and me—to build a life with the man you choose. But you must listen to me, my love, and remember what I’m telling you.”
A shiver crawls up my spine like a line of ants, and I tremble at her words. The way she’s looking at me now, I feel as if nothing will ever be the same. Whatever she says next,Iwill never be the same.
“No man can ever know what we know. About Foxglove. About her secrets.”
Though she’s never said it outright, my mother and Gran have both hinted at variations of this. The secrets of our house belong to Wilde women alone. “I know the rules.”
“You think that it has been hard, keeping the truth from your father, but wait until it is the man you love from whom you must keep secrets.”
“But why do we have to? Don’t you trust Papa?”
She stops knitting again, this time clasping her hands together in her lap. “It is not about trust. Or even love. I know it is hard to understand, but you must. You must understand.Foxglove has rules, rules that came long before you or I were ever thought of. If you break the rules, if you tell anyone outside of our blood—any man especially—you will pay a price.” She pauses, letting the words wash over me. “And so will they.”
Bewilderment passes through me. What she’s saying can’t possibly be real. It’s like the bedtime stories she once told me to keep me in bed at night, meant to scare me from wandering the house. “This all sounds like rubbish,” I admit. “Unfair, even if it is true.”
Her eyes go distant, her gaze softening as though she’s looking right through me, though her face hasn’t turned away. “Foxglove chooses us. Protects us. Keeps us, and us alone, safe from the world outside. A world which has not always been kind to women like us. And because of that, as a thank you for that, we protect her secrets. Fair or not, that is the life you have been given. The burden and the blessing.”
“What if I don’t want to stay here? What if the man I marry has a grand manor, or a whole estate—like Joan’s husband?”
Her eyes darken with something old and fierce, something that frightens me, seems to frighten her. “When I am gone, you and your sister will decide how to protect Foxglove. I trust that you will do what is best for the both of you. And your families. But, Mary, there have been men in the past…men who thought they could hold our hearts and therefore Foxglove herself. Her power. Her secrets. Our ancestors, the Wilde women who came before us, some of them thought love would be enough.”
She looks down, and I know this isn’t going to be the happy ending I was hoping for.
“People in this world get consumed by power. By greed. Even the men we love. Even we ourselves. The very magic that keeps us safe can be a curse in the wrong hands.”
