Lucy’s cheeks flamed, but she held her gaze. “I understand why Mama sent me here, but I will not play into the life she wants me to lead. I have a plan. I am good at this.”
“Enough, Lucy. I will not permit it. Stop this pursuit, and for once… listen. Attend to your own duties, your own proprieties, and leave these flights of imagination behind. You will find that the world rewards caution far more than ambition.”
Lucy did not answer at once. Her hands, which had been clasped tightly together, loosened slowly. She could feel Selina’s gaze on her in that moment, like she was waiting for her to say something in response. But Lucy intentionally remained quiet.
Only then did Selina exhale, shutting her eyes in a bid to calm herself.
“Lucy, you must understand,” she continued in a softer tone. “One of the reasons your mama sent you here, to the countryside, is because of the trouble you have caused in the past. Your impulsive choices, your quarrels, the foolishness that seems to follow you. She believed that time away, reflection, might temper your inclinations. I believe so, too.”
Lucy lifted her chin then to meet her aunt’s gaze. “Inclinations, Aunt Selina?”
“Impulses, Lucy. Recklessness. You must know yourself. You have, on more than one occasion, acted without regard for consequence. That is precisely why you are here.”
Lucy’s lips pressed together. Deep within, she felt no remorse for the choices that had brought her here. Those so-called mistakes had shaped her courage and her resolve. She was not sorry for the woman she had become, even if her mother wished she were someone else entirely.
She met Selina’s eyes again. “I understand why you wish me to reflect, Aunt Selina. But the choices that brought me here… they have made me who I am. I cannot regret them.”
“Then you have learned nothing!” Selina said sternly. “Mark me, if you attempt this again... this meddling, this daring… I shall have to employ measures to ensure your proper occupation!”
Lucy did not flinch at the sharpness of Selina’s words, though they struck deeper than she cared to show. Her composure held, but something inside her tightened all the same, a familiar ache she had learned to carry in silence.
It seemed, at times, that no one truly listened to her. Not her mother, not her aunt, not anyone who claimed to know what was best for her life. They heard her words only to correct them, to redirect them, to remind her of her place. What she wanted was always treated as a phase, a stubborn fancy to be outgrown rather than a conviction to be understood.
She had been an only child in a house where silence often spoke louder than affection. Her mother’s presence had been constant and exacting, her expectations laid down like rules that could not be questioned. Approval was rare, disappointment frequent, and freedom almost entirely absent. As for her father, he hadexisted more as an idea than a presence. Away on business, away in spirit, away when she had most needed someone to stand between her and her mother’s relentless judgment.
Lucy had learned early that compliance brought peace but never contentment.
Now, standing before her aunt, she felt that same familiar weight pressing upon her chest. Selina spoke of reflection and correction, of proper occupation and measured conduct, yet never once asked Lucy what she wished to become. Never once considered that her determination might be more than mere defiance.
She lowered her gaze to steady herself. It hurt more than she would admit that even Selina, whom she admired whom she had learned so much from, saw her ambition as nothing more than trouble waiting to happen.
Still, beneath the sting of rebuke, her resolve did not waver. If anything, it sharpened. Lucy knew herself too well to believe that silence or obedience would make her whole. She had spent too many years being shaped by other people’s expectations to surrender now.
Selina turned toward the door, her hand already upon the latch, as though the matter were settled beyond appeal. Yet she did not leave at once. Instead, she paused, her back to Lucy.
“This...” she said without turning, “... is not why you were sent here, Lucy.”
Lucy remained still.
“I do not know how many times I must repeat myself before you hear it,” Selina continued. “You were not sent to live with me to busy yourself with schemes or to learn my work. You were not sent here to do what you could not be trusted to do in London.”
She turned then, fixing Lucy with a look that allowed no evasion. “Here, you are meant to learn restraint. Reflection.”
Lucy felt the words settle heavily, each one pressing upon a place already sore. Still, she did not look away.
“You are here for a reason,” Selina said firmly. “But every step you take away from that reason only proves how little you have learned.”
For a moment, Lucy said nothing. Then she lifted her chin. “What if I have found something that gives me purpose?” she asked. “If, for the first time, I have found an occupation that engages my mind rather than confines it. Would that truly be such a failure?”
Selina did not answer.
Lucy went on, unable to stop herself now. “Is it so wrong that I wish to be happy in the work that I have set out to do? That I wish to be useful in a way that suits me, rather than merely acceptable to others?”
Her hands curled lightly at her sides. “Would it truly disappoint you, Aunt Selina...” she asked quietly, “... to know that I might excel at something I love?”
Selina held her gaze for a moment longer, her expression unreadable, then turned away without reply. The door closed softly behind her, the sound final in its restraint.
Lucy remained where she stood, the silence left in Selina’s wake pressing in on all sides. She did not know whether she had asked too much or whether she had, at last, asked the right question, but of the wrong person.
