Lucy’s voice softened. “Then you of all people should understand why I wish to begin now.”
“No,” Selina said firmly. “I understand why you must not.”
Lucy’s hands curled at her sides. “You think I should be thinking of my own prospects instead.”
“I know you should,” Selina replied. “You are at the age where choices harden quickly into expectation. You will not be afforded the indulgence of eccentric ambition. Society will ask what use you are, and it will expect the answer to be marriage.”
Lucy shook her head. “So, you would have me surrender before I have even begun?”
“I would have you be sensible,” Selina shot back. “I would have you protected. I did not fight for my position only to watch you make yourself vulnerable in pursuit of a dream you do not yet understand.”
“Please, Aunt Selina,” Lucy said. She drew a slow breath, as though gathering herself from the wreckage of the argument. “May I say something without you correcting me before I have finished?”
Selina hesitated. Then, with visible effort, she inclined her head. “Say it.”
Lucy folded her hands together. When she spoke again, her voice had lost its heat. “I have spent my entire life being told what is sensible,” she said. “What is appropriate. What is expected. I lived under my mama’s roof and under her rule, and she was… not unkind because she wished to be cruel but because cruelty was the only language she knew how to speak.”
Selina’s expression shifted, her mouth tightening though she did not interrupt.
“She did what she thought was right,” Lucy continued. “She controlled because she did not know how to trust. Somewhere, buried beneath all of that, I believe she loved me. But love, when it is twisted, still leaves marks.”
Lucy lifted her eyes then, meeting Selina’s gaze fully. “I was never allowed to choose. Not my hours, not my interests, not my hopes. Everything was confined, measured, decided for me before I ever opened my mouth.”
The room felt smaller now, as though the walls themselves had leaned closer to listen.
“When she agreed to send me here,” Lucy said softly, “it was the first time she ever loosened her grip. I do not believe it was accidental. I think there is a reason I am here. I look at you, Aunt Selina, and I see a life shaped by choice. By intention. You are not defined by the decisions my mama made for herself nor by the ones she would have made for me. You stand apart. For the first time, I thought, perhaps, I might, too.”
Selina was very still now. After a moment, she spoke more gently than she had all afternoon. “Do you not wish to marry, Lucy?”
The question landed softly, but it landed all the same.
“Do you not wish for a household of your own?” Selina went on. “For children? For companionship, shared burdens, shared joys? You have foiled every one of my attempts to give you this.”
Lucy considered her answer carefully. “I have thought about it,” she said. “I would be dishonest if I said I had not. Dorothy, my dear cousin, and I used to speak of such things endlessly. But that was before,” she continued. “Before I understood that wanting something does not always mean it is meant for you. I have made my peace with the idea that marriage may not be my path.”
Selina’s eyes searched her face. “You are content with that?”
Lucy nodded. “I am content with the truth. Right now, what I want, what feels right, is to help others find what I may not seek for myself. To bring order. To give people permission to be brave with one another.”
There was a long pause, and the room fell silent. Then finally, Selina sighed, a sound more like surrender than exhaustion. “Very well,” she said, crossing to a small cabinet beside her desk. She opened it, retrieved a folded letter, and turned back to Lucy.
“This arrived this morning,” she said, holding it carefully between her fingers. “I had intended to address it myself, but I suspect someone must intervene.”
“Intervene?” Lucy asked curiously.
“There is something about the letter that I don’t quite understand,” she answered.
Lucy’s pulse quickened. “May I see it?”
Selina handed it over. Lucy took the paper carefully, turning it over in her hands. The handwriting was neat, precise after a fashion that seemed almost deliberate, almost careful beyond measure... but there was a subtle unevenness, a strange rhythm to the strokes. Some letters wavered slightly, others pressed too hard into the paper, leaving faint impressions that one could feel more than see. The words themselves were polite, formal, yet the phrasing was curious, stilted in places, oddly phrased, as if the writer were trying to appear wiser or more assured.
Selina watched Lucy’s face closely. “Do you notice it?” she asked softly. “The phrasing… the style?”
Lucy nodded, frowning, her brow furrowed. “It feels… peculiar. Polite, yes. But there’s something unusual.”
Selina gave a faint, almost imperceptible nod. “Exactly. I cannot tell if it is caution or inexperience. Deliberation or misunderstanding. That uncertainty is what makes it… difficult.”
Lucy smiled softly. “It’s as though the writer is trying very hard to be taken seriously. Perhaps they are nervous? Perhaps the gentleman wrote the letter a thousand times before deciding to send it?”
