Toni was fairly sure that whisky wasn’t the answer, and she wasn’t about to get excited about amaybebook deal. It was a pie-in-the-sky plan, as her mother used to call such things.
Wouldn’t Lilian have loved it if it worked? If I did something so likehim,and it panned out?
A bitter sting hit Toni then, the odd feeling of mourning someone who wasn’t dead. The Lilian Darbyshire Toni knew and argued with made fewer and fewer appearances these days. There were moments when Toni saw her mother, and they knew each other, and everything felt normal—or as normal as it could be. They’d never been close, but that didn’t change the sense that Toni wanted them to be.
And it’s too late, now.
As much as Toni had longed for the sense of friendship she saw people build with their parents, she’d never have that. Her grifter father was dead, and her mother was lost to an illness that made her disconnected from reality. Knowing the impossibility didn’t undo that gnawing desire to be that kind of connected. Aunt Patty was the only one who had ever accepted Toni, and she was long gone, too.
Leaving me in this mess all alone.Although in fairness, Patty had cleaned up after her brother for so long that it was probably a blessing that she wasn’t here to see the mess he’d left for Toni—or to see how lost Toni’s mother was.
Lilian Darbyshire was a woman whose dreams of fame were cut short by an accidental pregnancy in her mid-thirties and a quick marriage to a man who traded on cons his whole life. She’d had a career about to blossom, until him, until the pregnancy. And she’d been fool enough to love him so much that she surrendered her own dreams.
Like so many women throughout history.
He’d loved her in his way. Toni could see that now. It was just that his way of loving was no good for anyone. Not his wife. Not his daughter. Not his sister. Not even the countless mistresses he took. He was a charmer, but charm wasn’t the same as substance or hard work.
If there was a racetrack in the afterlife, Anthony Darbyshire was sidling up to some gullible mark with a plan.
Or he was still being conned out of his last set of winnings.
And back here in the land of the living, his widow was likely yelling at someone for letting him know where she’d stashed her money. That was the peculiarity of Lilian’s memory slips. They weren’t always the sort that made her fall into her bad years with her husband, but most of the times with him were so similar in the yo-yo of their fortunes that Lilian’s sense of what she thought was “now” were good moments in a range of bad to worse to decent years.
And all of them were with her con man husband exasperating her.
And people wonder why I avoid relationships.
The curious part of her parents’ marriage, to Toni, at least, was that no matter what the timeline was in Lilian’s reality, she always had an underlying fond exasperation, as if she found her husband’s haplessness with money endearing. No matter that she’d had to surrender dreams of a singing career, and then later drop out of college as an older adult.
All because of him.
No matter what plan Lil had had to turn her life around, to build something stable, Anthony Darbyshire found a way to ruin it.
Growing up in the mess of his mistakes hadn’t felt “endearing” to Toni, and her years with her Aunt Patty—when her parents were too broke to look after their only child—were really the only ones that had offered any semblance of stability. Now? Now Patty was gone, and Toni’s dad was gone, and the adult version of Toni had to figure out how to fix the latest catastrophe on hand.
Honestly, the fact that she was more inclined to academia and workaholic tendencies than addiction and destruction felt like it was a victory—even if more than a few therapists called her workaholic path another kind of addiction. She never gambled. She didn’t smoke or use drugs. She strictly limited shopping, drinking, or excess.
There was one exception to her rules.
Just the one.
From her teen years until recently, Toni had coped with feeling lost or overwhelmed by bed-hopping like it was an Olympic sport. Her therapist spent more than a few sessions trying to get Toni to address her commitment fears, but it wasn’t a huge mystery. Her mom trusted her dad, and look where she was now. That was a fate Toni would never endorse.
Better to count on herself—and find a bit of comfort in willing women.
Her gaze drifted over the people here again, hunting for the one she’d bed and forget next. Her gaze jumped right past the desperate-eyed ones with visions of U-Hauls dancing in their minds.
Toni wasn’t interested inforever.She was only interested infor tonight.
She skipped the coupled-up women, including the one with the body language that spoke of discontent. Rebounds were fine, but only after they were single. The tall woman in overalls was a maybe. So was the primly dressed one shooting bold looks her way. Women in all their shapes and sizes were amazing. Toni had only a few simple rules: No hookups with colleagues. No “I’m bi-curious and can my husband join” women. No students. No one already in a relationship.
What Toni needed was a simple, no strings, no complications temporary connection with a woman who wouldn’t walk away thinking that one night meant anything, and she’d had to put that urge on hold too often during her dissertation and job hunt. She was well overdue for…
Well, hello, there.
A real-life Lady Godiva, complete with both the near-nakedness and the waterfall of hair, stood in the doorway to the bar. She wore a thick braid of golden-brown hair that reached clear down to her hip. She was shivering, probably because she was wearing what looked like a Victorian nightdress and not much else. Pristine white cotton with a ruffle at the ankles, it was a shapeless sort of thing—but it was illuminated by the fire in the pub, and Toni was far from the only woman noticing the stranger’s hourglass figure… and obvious lack of a bra. She could also see that the stranger had Victorian drawers under her nightdress, and those were made of thicker fabric, enough that Toni couldn’t tell if they were historically accurate.
Is she actually wearing historic drawers?
