Learn to Play Billiards.
At their annual country retreat just outside of London, she’d often seen or heard her brother and his friends playing billiards. It seemed a very loud game. Bending over the table couldn’t be comfortable.
Be Unchaperoned with a Man.
Marianne pursed her lips. Aside from her brother, the only man Marianne was alone with on rare occasion was Sebastian and she doubted that a pleasant conversation with the door open was what Claudia had meant.
Fill My Dance Card.
“We were wallflowers,” Marianne muttered. “How did you intend to pull that off?”
Find Out What Boxing is All About.
Boxing! Great Lord. It wasn’t that she hadn’t heard of the rare female fighter. They were somewhat of a rage right now, with shocking announcements about their fights put in the paper from time to time. But she knew their exhibitions weren’t seen to be fit for a lady’s eyes. The idea of coming into a…a ring? Wasn’t it called a ring? Well, whatever it was, then swinging around trying to hit people? It was nearly enough to make a lady faint dead away.
Experience a Perfect Kiss.
There Marianne paused and her heart began to throb. As much as she wanted to dismiss these things as wild and unbelievable to desire, this one hit her in a much deeper place. A perfect kiss. Oh, hadn’t she dreamed of those. Fantasized about being the kind of woman who would experience such a thing.
Play Faro in a Hell.
She and Claudia had loved to play cards together, so she supposed she understood the draw with that one. A hell had to be different than playing a friendly game with low stakes with other ladies, though.
Have a Love Affair.
She shivered at the idea. A love affair implied something outside the bounds of a marriage. Had Claudia truly dreamed of something so scandalous? And why did it make Marianne tingle all over when she imagined the same?
That was all the list, thank goodness.
“What in the world were you thinking, Claudia?” she whispered to herself as she stood with the paper in hand and paced to the fire.
She stood there, staring at the list and then the flames. Part of her said that Claudia had written this inventory of shocking things to do in a moment that was probably the height of her desperation. She had been ill, close to dying, though she had hidden that fact from Marianne for almost a week before admitting how serious her condition was. This list was nothing more than a fantasy of a troubled mind and burning it was a kindness so that no one else would find it somehow and judge Claudia as frivolous or foolish for her wild thoughts.
But there was another part that kept the list in her hand instead of in the flames. A part of Marianne that kept remembering the scant few uncaring souls who had bothered to come to her friend’s funeral. People who would likely not even remember her in a few months’ time. And why? Because Claudia had never done any of the things on her list. Claudia had followed the rules, always and forever.
Just like Marianne did.
They had both been labeled spinsters, though for different reasons. Claudia had come out during a Season with several of the most beautiful women in Society. Everyone had flocked to them and Claudia’s painful shyness and lack of confidence with people she didn’t know well hadn’t helped. No one got to know her as well as Marianne had, so a few years had gone by without offers and suddenly Claudia had found herself a wallflower.
For Marianne, her fall had been far more painful and immediate. Her mother’s spiral into emotional overwhelm and eventual death the year before her coming out had darkened her first Season. And then there was her father, who had blamed and shouted and forced her into an even worse second one before he, too, succumbed to his final end.
Marianne had never had any chance on the marriage mart.
Thankfully, though, she had met Claudia and together they had stood on the edge of dancefloors, smiling politely as everyone else had a glorious time. They had ignored any catty remarks of the Diamonds of the First Water and accepted that this was the life they would lead until they were elderly like her maiden aunt Beulah.
Or at least,Mariannehad.
It seemed Claudia had dared to think of something different. Marianne knew that, of course, they’d spoken of it. But she’d taken it so far as to write these things down, to make them more than a mere conversation that disappeared on the wind.
She’d truly thought about taking the expectations of everyone around them and setting them aside tolivebefore she died, just as the title of her list said. Only her friend hadn’t been able to do any of it. Her disease had progressed too swiftly and her list had remained hidden in a jewelry box, yet another unfulfilled dream in a long string of unfulfilled dreams.
If Marianne destroyed it, she would be erasing those dreams forever. Locking them away until they became regrets. And Lord knew she would likely have enough of those before her own time came.
She stared once more at the account of things to do. She never would have thought of any of them, but now that she saw them and the initial shock began to wear off…she found something else was left in its wake. She read the list again and was tempted. Seduced.
“What would the harm be?” she whispered as she drew away from the fire almost without realizing she was doing it. “To do afewthings on this list. For Claudia?”
The moment the words escaped her lips, heat flooded Marianne’s cheeks. What in the world was she thinking? Obviously her grief and exhaustion had gotten the better of her. She had a place in life. And it wasn’t tofill her dance cardorattend a party uninvited, as her friend had written on her “Things To Do” inventory.
