She’s done this since well before I was born, dumping every single thought she’s had all day into a journal. There are volumes of them scattered across the house, shoved into bookshelves and in teetering stacks next to threadbare armchairs.
I’m working on my own correspondence; I owe Ethel a letter. Now in her mid-eighties, she rarely leaves her home in Bradford, but I’ve been writing her for years about our shared interest in faeries.I was twelve when Lydia and Greer told me that only babies were obsessed with magic, and that only the low-class worshipped the queen, so they didn’t want to talk to me about the Others anymore.
They were right, at least partially. It’s only the commoners, far outside the home counties, who wear fake pointed ears to celebrate Queen’s Day, marking the day Queen Mor arrived in England. They’re the ones who put her face up in the old chapels and built monuments in her name. It was far below a titled girl like me to find faeries interesting.
The London peerage like to think we’re something close to her equals, though of course we’re not. I think she let us keep the traditions of an England that was once ruled by humans, like our debutante parade, to give us some illusion that we still have any power left. An immortal queen letting English high society still have our little rituals is like an indulgent parent handing their crying child a toy.
These are the kinds of thoughts I write to Ethel about. When Lydia and Greer rejected me, all I was left with were secret letters to Papa’s great-aunt’s neighbor. We don’t write as often anymore, but I like to know she’s well. She was the only one I told about my theory of Lydia falling through a faerie door. I knew she was the only person on earth who wouldn’t laugh at me.
“What do you think the other girls will ask for this year?” Mama asks casually, like she’s only just thought of it, but she’s been glancing at me anxiously over her page for the last hour. “The Itos’ daughter has such a pretty face, and more money than she knows what to do with. Maybe she’ll ask to play the pianoforte better. She didn’t exactly impress at the summer solstice concert last year.”
“Hmm.” I nod noncommittally and continue sipping my tea.
“Greer will surely ask for a few inches of height, and that never costs much. You know the Duchess of Gloucester? She came out in my year. She asked for three inches, all in her legs. It cost her both big toes, but it landed her a duke, didn’t it?”
My mother thumbs over the nub of her left pinkie, where it stops abruptly at the second joint. She gave it up for a better memory. She had such a fear of forgetting names and faces during the whirlwind balls of her season and getting a reputation for being rude. She remembers absolutely everything now. My father says that the way she recalled the tiny details of their past conversations is what made him fall in love with her. She made him feel seen.
My mother remembers everyone from her season, could recite their faces, their titles, and the addresses of their estates like an encyclopedia, but those people don’t speak to her anymore. They’ve forgotten her in a way she can never forget them. It’s why she writes in the journals. She hopes dumping everything from her too-full brain out onto the page will give her some semblance of peace. I’m unconvinced it helps.
She takes another small sip of port and tuts her tongue. I don’t like the way her glance has fallen on me. Sometimes I’m afraid she’ll look right through me, like I’m made of glass, and see everything I’m hiding from her. That’s the thing about a mother who remembers absolutely everything; she’s nearly impossible to lie to.
“And you know, as your mother, I think you’re perfect, but have you decided yet the bargain you’ll make?”
This is the dance we do. I’ve learned the steps as diligently as I practiced the quadrille in cotillion class, stepping around the topic of Lydia, her lack of a husband, the bargain she can’t remember.
It never should have been me in this position. This was alwaysLydia’s job. My father used to joke about us being the heir and the spare. Lydia was the Benton family’s great hope. Her advantageous match was a foregone conclusion. My only job was to stay out of her way and stop tearing my dresses when I skinned my knees.
“Not yet.” I yawn dramatically, preparing to make my exit for bed.
But Mama just keeps staring at me. “I think you could do with sleeker hair, or a clever talent, like watercolor or the cello?”
“Hmm, perhaps.” This little act we do makes me so sad, I have to blink back sudden tears. She must know as well as I do, I could be the greatest watercolorist on earth and it wouldn’t help me receive any offers this season.
“Think on it, will you? You don’t have long, and there’s nothing worse than an impulsive decision.”
I rise from the silk settee and cross the room to give her a kiss on the head. “Of course, Mama.”
“Darling?” she asks.
I pause in the doorway.
“This family can’t afford another failure. We’re—” She swallows hard. “We’re going to lose the house in the next twelve months unless something changes.”
I freeze. I knew things were bad, but I didn’t know our finances had become so dire.
I don’t let the tears fall until I’m up in my room. The embers of the fire glow in the grate, casting my room in long, dark shadows.
I look to where the invitation to the Pact Parade sits on my bedside table, its gold lettering dancing in the firelight against the thick, robin’s egg blue parchment.
I write down the words I plan to say to the queen one final time,ensuring that they’re perfectly committed to memory, and then feed the paper to the fire.
Though I slept fitfully all night, I’m awoken by the chirping of birds. I roll over and gaze at the rinsed blue sky of a London spring morning. It’s a certain kind of feeling, one that rests in the joints of my ankles, that today my life will change.
Lydia’s words echo in my head.It wasn’t worth it. The bargain wasn’t worth it.
I am not my sister.
I’ll make sure my bargain is.
