“Until tomorrow, Miss Sterling,” he whispered to her, and her only, before letting go. He held her stare until finally looking down at the shined shoes that he pivoted, and turned.
Jane trained her eyes on the center of his broad back as he walked away, melting into the gilded crowd like a shadow, and shivered at the sudden flicker of excitement in her belly. She squeezed the pamphlet tighter this time, so that she may capture the lingering heat from his touch for a moment longer.
CHAPTER
Two
Jane awoke to the warmth of sunlight filtering through the windows, washing the room in beams of pure gold. She stretched in the morning heat, sprawling her limbs across the cream-colored sheets, or at least as much as she could without disrupting her mother sleeping right beside her. When they first arrived at the University Arms, the only suites available were ones with a single bed, which would have been perfect if it were still only Dr. and Mrs. Sterling as initially planned, but Jane didn’t mind. She was always too tired at the end of the night to really care if she shared a bed, and she wouldn’t complain about the extra heat. It filled in the void on a mattress that would otherwise be occupied by Mr. Thompson at home, with his twitching whiskers and thumbed paws.
She rose from the bed, draped herself in a robe, and tip-toed into the suite’s parlor room to phone down to the concierge to have coffee brought up; her shadow cast on the opposing wall reminded her of a hedgehog, with her short hair tousled to jut out every which way.
Her feet absorbed the heat of the hardwood floor she crossed to look out one of the two bay windows in the room and watched Cambridge come to life. To her, it wasn’t too unlike the view her bedroom offered of Milwaukee. She looked upon choked streets and bustling sidewalks that achingly reminded her of home. Her eyes tracked the sweeping of skirts over the brick road, the skipping of boots as they evaded the clop of hooves and scrape of carriage wheels, and with a sigh she pressed her cheek against the window. The glass had a chill to it, seeping deep into her skin and fogging beneath her breath. She smudged away the condensation by tracing loose, swirling patterns with the tip of a pinky finger.
She jumped at a knocking at the suite door. Panic flickered between her breasts for a moment, fearing that Terence had arrived early, but calmed herself when she opened the door to the concierge with a tray of French press. After paying the boy a tip, she was alone again.
She drank coffee at the window, smudged with the echoes of her swirling fingertips, as she schemed what outfit she’d wear for the day out. She’d dress loudly, of course. She wanted people to see her, she wanted Terence to remember time spent with her if not for her eccentricities then for her ostentatious wardrobe. Rarely did she have a chance to impress a man on her own terms (let alone one she was fond of) before her sisters would swoop in to snatch him up with their lyrical seductions, leaving Jane to stumble over fossil trivia in their wake. Terence’s attention would be all hers this time, her sisters and their songs far away on a different continent.
Her hands started to shake, though she couldn’t determine whether it was from the coffee or her excitement—or perhaps it was a bit of both. With a small hum, she left her coffee on the window sill and set to work.
From her trunk, she pulled free a dress a shocking shade of chartreuse, with fabric that shone like freshly shined metal, notably in the puffed sleeves that tapered into tight cuffs at the wrists; the glass pearls sewn into the high collar, sleeves, and bodice gave the dress even more of shimmer as Jane slipped into it. It wasn’t quite the shade of those arsenic-laced gowns from yesteryear, but rather like that of a secluded glade illuminated by midmorning sunlight. It was a similar color to Jane’s own eyes, downturned, heavy-lidded, and set a tad too far apart from one another, though she always disliked their stony-green hue. If it were up to her, she’d prefer brown, or even black—a color that could be versatile with any ensemble. Green eyes were too striking and demanding of attention. But Jane found ways to make do, namely by using a dark brown pencil to smudge and darken around her eyes.
In the parlor’s long mirror, she admired herself, twirling to see how sunlight danced across its skirt. A part of her hoped Terence would equal parts admire it and find it exasperating, whatever it took for the image of her to be forever imprinted into his psyche and claimed as her own.
However, what she hoped would truly capture his attention was her hair as she started to tame it with the assistance of a rose oil tincture and boar bristle brush. It was shorn short in a masculine cut, barely long enough to even curl her dark-colored bangs with a pair of heating tongs. And she liked it that way. There was less for her to fuss with and it also earned her attention. When she wore no hat or veil, her hair never went unnoticed. And she reveled in it. It could’ve been a curious stare, one of disdain, judgment, ordisgrace, she didn’t care all that much. As long as she could flaunt it and people saw her, then their disapproval was worth it.
The character of her voice was similar: nasal and abrasive, with an emphasis on vowels in the back of her throat, so that it may be heard from all corners of a room. She first developed the inflection as a teenager, when she’d finally acquired an eye for fashion and the desire to be noticed from within the shadows of her sisters’ achievements germinated into a wretched blossom. It remained that way as she entered womanhood, and no longer could she remember what her voice ought to have sounded like, much like how she’d forgotten what her hair would be like if it hung at a long and proper length.
To complete her ensemble, Jane wore a new set of pearl earrings, gloves, a parasol, and a locket hanging above her collarbone.
Returning to the mirror, she lightly fingered the charm—a trilobite fossil preserved in resin so that nothing may harm it. It was her first fossil, found on the shores of Lake Michigan. She was three or four, an age she couldn’t exactly place, when she’d accompanied her father on a casual walk, as she had always done. Her little paw was captured in his hand that guided her as her gaze remained fixated solely on the pebbles that shifted beneath her bare feet. She’d nearly tripped when she found a gray pebble with an oblong blot of brown in its center, and even to this day she vividly recalled the way Dr. Sterling’s eyes shone as she held up the stone.
“Calymene celebra,” he explained to her whilst coaxing her little thumb along the crustaceous exoskeleton. “A trilobite, Janie. This whole state used to be drowned in water, once upon a time, in an era before mammoths and ice shelves.”
At the time, Jane had been both enthralled and terrifiedby the prospect of her home being drowned in prehistoric water. Although, the dreams she had of trilobites and deiphons and mammoths walking the streets of Milwaukee in waistcoats whilst waiting for trams had eased her fear enough to instead reconstruct it into wonder.
The little stone had been with her ever since.
A knock at the door took her attention away from the mirror. The same concierge that brought her coffee stood on the threshold with Terence looming behind him when she opened the door.
“Mr. Hayes, miss,” the boy nodded, then was gone, leaving Jane and Terence alone in the entryway.
Jane stepped aside and beckoned for Terence to enter. “Well, don’t be a stranger, Mr. Hayes. There’s still coffee left if you would like a cup,” she said, but her offer was met with silence. He was staring at her hair, and she smirked as she tucked a short, curled strand behind her ear. “Do you like it?”
“Are you ill?” he asked in a low, considerate whisper. He worried the brim of a tophat between quivering fingers. His question was thick in what it asked.
“Ill” meant many things concerning womanhood. He may as well have asked if she had once been thrown in a madhouse or a sanatorium, had sold her hair, or was riddled with mites all in three simple words. The question itself hadn’t bothered Jane, having been asked it by family when she first cut her hair, it was the fact that Terence was the one to have asked it.
She refused to let it toy with her morale and she maintained a toothy smile.
“Not at all. Can you imagine having hair that hung almost to the floor, how long it takes to groom?” she asked, raising a brow and settling a hand upon her hip.
He winced as if taking the time to imagine such a scenario. “I suppose you’re right, Miss. Sterling. But… youareall right, yes?”
She lightly patted his arm at that. “Very much so. Quite excited for our little outing!”
His shoulders seemed to relax a bit and a breath rushed from his nose in a sigh. “Oh, delightful, then.” He looked into the suite behind her. “Will Mrs. Sterling be joining us?”
“No, I don’t believe so,” Jane tried to make such words come across with little enthusiasm as she puckered her lips into a pout. If she were to at last be free of her sisters’ influence, so, too, did she wish to be free of her mother’s. She didn’t require a chaperone! “A lady needs her beauty sleep, and you should know that my mother isn’t a woman to give up the chance for beauty sleep!”
