“It’s all right to want something different,” Aunt Genevieve says, giving Mother and Father a pointed look while squeezing Rosalie’s hand.
Rosalie sighs and squeezes back, clenching her eyes shutbefore meeting her mother’s gaze. “It wouldn’t feel like it was my life, if I married a man, if I bore his children. I’d be living his life. I know that’s what you wanted for me, what you’d planned for me, and I’m so sorry, but I don’t want it.”
“Rosalie—” Mother starts, but now that she’s begun, she can’t stop the words from coming fast and sure.
“I have always... felt the way you said I would about a man about women. And now with Catherine—I know what it’s truly supposed to feel like when you meet someone you want to spend your life with. And I know—I know it isn’t the life that would make you proud,” she says, meeting Father’s eyes. “And I know it isn’t the life that will make society happy,” she adds, looking to Mother.
“We—” Father says.
“And I am sorry. If I could change myself, I would have, just to make it easier, but I can’t. And I don’t want to anymore. I’ll do as much as I can to help, and find a way to fix what I’ve broken, but I can’t—I can’t—”
“You do not need to be fixed,” Father says loudly, stopping her tirade, the words hitting her chest like a punch. “You do not need to change, nor to fix anything. To hell with Lord Dean.”
“George,” Mother exclaims with a laugh.
“He is a mean old man,” Father says, turning to Mother. “You heard what he said in the Pump Room about Mrs.Pine. Who’s to say he wouldn’t say the same about us, or Rosalie, in a moment of inhibition?”
“It was horribly indelicate,” Mother agrees.
“Even if Rosalie wanted to marry that boy, I’d have had quiet reservations. But as it is, I’m glad you won’t be marrying him,” Father says, looking back at Rosalie. “And we shall help you and MissPine, whatever you need.”
“Really?” she asks, breathless.
“We have not spent our entire lives developing an impeccable reputation, gathering all this power and wealth and social influence just to crush your spirit,” Father says, as if it’s the simplest thing in the world.
As if it’s a given.
That wretched fiery indignation rises again. “Just like that. After all these years—all the etiquette lessons, and all the time spent making me into the perfect little wife—all the lectures aboutwhat we do—it’s perfectly all right that I don’t want to marry?”
She winces as it comes out loud and rough, but her parents don’t yell back. Instead, Father turns to look at Mother, almost imploring. There can’t be more family secrets. Rosalie glances at Christopher, who stares back, equally at sea. Can there?
“You might not be as alone as you think,” Aunt Genevieve says.
Rosalie turns, looking up at her aunt, one of her very favorite people in the world. Desperate, shocking yearning rises painfully in her chest.
“Do you—have you felt like this?” Rosalie whispers.
Aunt Genevieve gives her the softest smile she’s ever seen. “No, darling, I haven’t,” she says, her voice achingly gentle.
It does nothing to stop the painful, stabbing feeling in her stomach. She didn’t know shewantedsomeone else to feel like this. Didn’t know what the hope of having someone to talk to would feel like. Even fleetingly, it was wide and wonderful and absurdly comforting, and its loss hurts almost as much as Mother walking out of the water closet earlier in the night.
“But I have.”
Rosalie turns slowly to find Mother staring back at her, eyes wide and brimming. It can’t—she can’t—
“I was so angry at myself earlier,” Mother says.
“Angry at—” Rosalie starts, breath bated, hope and that raw, wounded pain pushing at her chest.
“That you felt you had to hide this from me. That you didn’t think you could talk about it. That I never sat you down and told you—” She breaks off, using her free hand to wipe at her cheek.
Mother has felt like this for a woman? And she never said? All this time, all of the courting, all of Rosalie’slifethey could have shared this, and she never said?
Mother blows out a shaking breath as she meets Rosalie’s eyes. “It didn’t seem fair to burden you with a secret so large,” she says, her voice cracking.
“I wouldn’t have told anyone,” Rosalie says, unable to keep the hurt from bleeding through.
“Nor would I,” Christopher adds beside her, his arm coming around her shoulders. “It’s not what we do,” he adds, voice sharp.
