“Miss Claude, you have a little…” he says, gesturing to thecorner of her mouth. She tries to wipe where instructed but continuously misses the mark. He finally removes his own glove and wipes away the small bead of honey from her lip. He licks it off of his thumb and smiles.
“There. All better,” he says, and she blushes. They maintain eye contact, the heat of his fingers lingering where he touched her face. The two of them are currently breaking a number of etiquette rules, but she doesn’t care.
“Well, I recant my earlier statement. It turns out that I am not exceptionally talented at eating sweets either, or I would be able to do so without making a mess of myself,” she says, wiping around her mouth to ensure there aren’t any lingering crumbs.
They share a genuine laugh, and at this moment, she thinks that maybe marriage wouldn’t be the worst fate in the world. Mr. Notley is extremely handsome, comes from an exceptional family, and seems very agreeable, which is an important trait of any person who is going to attempt to fall in love with her.
But something still does not feel right. It would be like painting the walls of her life beige. It would be a safe choice, a comfortable choice that no one could fault her for, but it does mean that every day she would have to sit in her room and look at her beige walls and wonder what could have been if she had painted them bright yellow or pink. What if she had forgone paint entirely? Or better yet, what if there were no walls at all? Only sky, sunlight, salty water, fresh rain, and spring flowers and no one else around to comment on the paint color of the walls. That would be perfect, and that is why it is only a dream.
“What is that?” Marigold asks as she points over Mr. Notley’s shoulder at nothing in particular. When he turns, she quickly takes a honey cake and wraps it in a piece of cloth before carefully hiding it in the small reticule purse that hangs from her wrist.
It’s not for her, though. It’s for her midnight meeting, so she must be sneaky. Mr. Notley turns back around and says, “What? I’m afraid I don’t see anything.”
She shrugs. “Ah, must have been my imagination. Shall we attempt to dance?”
He smiles as he follows her lead. She takes him in front of the band, where Frankie, Aster, and the other musicians are positioned like statues behind Sir Kentworth as he raises his sparkling conducting baton. Aster’s voice fills the room, and though the melody is strange, it seems the vocal rest worked—she sounds undeniably angelic.
“Your brother and sister are extraordinary,” Mr. Notley says.
“I hear that often,” Marigold says quietly.
She turns her head and pushes through the dance. Mr. Notley is slightly better than she is, and they keep with the beat as best as they can. Focusing on her steps helps her forget the rest of the world for a small moment. The music is demanding—heavy, punctuated beats dictate a complicated dance. The command of the strings and the swift obedience of the dancers fill her with ferocious envy. How unfair that she may always desire but never earn that much control over a room.
A brief intermission follows so that the musicians may rest their overworked hands. People are still filing into the room like ants back from foraging, eager to show off their finds—an artifact that should not be in this country, a new wife wearing the late wife’s dress. And then, as if he was waiting for Marigold’s eyes to land on the door so that she would have no choice but to witness him, enters George Tennyson: a poet, a prodigy, and the most beautiful monster she has ever known. She has not spoken to him—beyond obligatory pleasantries—in two years, not that he would have given her the chance if she wanted to. He has not even looked at her for more than a few seconds since she was ten and seven and he left her on her knees outside of a ball just like the one they are attending tonight. Bardshire is a small world, so his occasional presence is unavoidable, but she always pretends that he is a ghost when she sees him. A hollow, transparent creature of only the past. Tonight, though, he is too close. She can feel the warmth of him from here. He is so undeniably and mercilessly alive.
He looks at her, intentionally so, surveying her body and settling on her hand intertwined with Mr. Notley’s. His cheeks flush red and a devilish grin stretches across his face. His eyes find hers, and she cannot withstand the memories conjured by his gaze. Flashes of promenades and poetry and promises that proved to be empty. He starts walking toward her, and she wishes the floor would open up and swallow her whole. He’s smiling, and she surprises herself when she smiles back. Hers is a cautious smile—what if he grants her the closure she has always wanted but never sought? Will he take back the worst of his words? Or could she, with one sharp sentence, ruin him? Words sit heavy on her tongue behind her saccharine smile. He’s right in front of her, so happy and so handsome that she almost forgets what made her hate him so. Were they that bad? Could they be good again? His hand is reaching toward her. She takes a breath, moves to reach back, and then realizes too late that his hand is not reaching for her. He sidesteps her. From over her shoulder, she hears, “There you are, my love.”
She turns slowly, against her better judgment, to see him kissing Priya Gill’s white-gloved hand. The pair moves as one through the crowd and stops in the center. George calls for the attention of the room, and oh God, she knows it before it happens, hears it before he says it, the nightmare is both almost over and only just begun—he proposes to Priya Gill. He does so loudly and with such flair that there are no dry eyes in the room. Everyone else sees a beautiful couple, a grand wedding, another romance for the poets to wax on and on about in their leather-bound journals that apparently everyone takes as law. It’s sick, all of it. His gaze locks onto Marigold for one brutal moment, as if to say, “This could never be you.”
His hand is wrapped around Priya’s, but it’s soft. It’s not a death grip where he’s pulling her back in line or squeezing her knuckles when she says something out of place. There is something prideful about the way he holds on to Priya, and it’s maddening. He never loved Marigold like that. It was never soft,never gentle. George is a decade older than her, and during their courtship, he often cited his age as if it meant that he could never be wrong. He was too wise, too well-versed in the nature of people to make an improper judgment. No—George always had to be right, and it killed him every time he was bested by her: a young girl who was only meant to be a muse.
The hold George once had on her was punishing, like he was trying to mold her into a different shape, make it so she took up less space in every room. She blamed his father, high society, social pressures, and the like. Maybe things could have gotten better if they weren’t trapped in Bardshire with all eyes on them all the time, if they simply gave up on everything except each other and ran away. She begged for that as he left her. She prayed at his feet like he was a god who might listen if her suffering was compelling enough. He never wanted her, though—not in any true way. He only wanted a bride who would succumb to his violent pursuit of civility.
Congratulations to dear old George. He has all that he wanted and did nothing to deserve it. The men will shake his hand and the women will watch Priya slowly realize that she is trapped, and they will teach her how to pretend that she is not breaking. Marigold, decidedly, will never be broken by him, or anyone, ever again.
The music resumes, and Mr. Notley sweeps her away into a new dance, twirling her until George and his betrothed are out of sight. But she cannot escape the whispers that snake through the room.
“Priya is a much better choice.”
“Remember when he was with the Claude girl? What a lark.”
“It’s too late for her. She will never, ever marry.”
She scrunches her nose in a way that makes her look like a lapdog, so says her mother. A bitch, Aster once said before she knew exactly what that word meant. Marigold laughed then—what is so wrong about being a bitch? It is the closest a girl can be to a wolf.
Mr. Notley studies Marigold’s face for a moment. “Miss Claude, will you allow me one prying question?”
She squeezes his shoulder as they turn in time with the music. “It seems I am trapped. How can I refuse?”
“How is it that you are not married?”
Marigold flinches. “What makes you think that I should be?”
“You are beautiful and full of life, like springtime,” Mr. Notley says.
“And why should those qualities merit promising myself to another? Perhaps there is a reason you cannot marry the spring.”
“But I could marryyou.”
