“We will have constructed it together, and good for us,” said Willow. “What choice do you have, Sabine? Tessa’s condition will be obvious to everyone in a matter of months.”
Sabine walked to the window. After a moment, she said, “I would do nearly anything to escape my uncle—you know this—but your plan isn’t somethingto do, is it?”
“Wearedoing something,” insisted Willow. “We are soliciting potential husbands.”
“No, you have written this advert, and now we must sit idly by andwait,” said Sabine, turning back. The light from the window illuminated the healing bruise beneath her right eye. “If a stranger eventually writes us, there is a very great risk that he’ll report the scheme to your mother, or Tessa’s parents, or, God forbid, my uncle.” She made an expression ofwhat if?and put a hand to the top of her head. Her hand trailed from her hair and down her face, lingering idly on the healing eye. She looked at Willow. “I cannot.”
“But the men will introduce themselves by letter first, and we shall only meet in person with the candidates who portray themselves as the most fitting and safe. And even then, we shall broach the terms carefully, feeling our way. I’ll not reveal the full extent of the barter unless an applicant appears amenable to a marriage spent in separate corners of the globe.”
“Effective immediately,” said Tessa skeptically.
“And extenuating always,” added Sabine.
Willow carefully replaced her pen. She walked a small circle in the room. What did they want? To be begged? To agree that the whole scheme was a great risk? To snap her fingers and magically produce ideal husbands who would whisk them away from their hopeless situations in Surrey?
She settled each of them with a hard look. “You are running out of time, each in your own way. I’ve the least to lose, but hear me now; this advertisementwill goto London tomorrow by Mr. Fisk. Five copieswill beposted. The applications will surely follow. After that, I’ll convene interviews. You know me well enough to appreciate my determination. Iwillmarry when the correct man comes along. You may join me with the other men the advert will surely bring, or you may remain in Surrey to deal with your own fates.”
“But Willow,” Sabine asked after a pause. Her voice was softer now, careful. “What about your . . . barrenness? Will you tell him? Thiscorrect man,when he comes along—will you tell him?”
Willow looked away. “Of course I will tell him. Immediately, in fact. I’ve always said I would not misrepresent the truth.”
The truth, of course, was the childhood illness that left Willow unable to bear children.
“However,” Willow continued slowly, “it is my great hope that intimate . . . obligations will not be part of our arrangement.”
Sabine made a scoffing noise.
Willow rubbed at an ink stain on her hand. “There is no guarantee, of course. But these men are meant to be out of the country most of our lives. How much of an issue can it be?”
Conjugal relations and children were variables that Willow was not sure she could stipulate. She had shoved aside the notion of the . . . er, marital bed until . . . well, until they were a bit further along in the process.
She looked back to see her friends share a glance, but Sabine leaned down to read the advertisement again. “You sound very determined,” said her friend, finally. “Although I cannot say I am surprised. When you get an idea into your head, you are not one to let it die a natural death, are you?”
“But don’t you see?” said Willow. “This is so much more than an idea. Anideawas to paint the dining room orange. Anideawas to rebuild the stairs in marble tile.Thisis the admission to the entire Rest of My Life.”
Sabine chuckled sadly. “But you aren’t being terrorized by a lunatic uncle. Or expecting a child with no father.” She and Willow glanced at Tessa. Rarely did they discuss her predicament in as many words. Tessa dropped her head back and slowly closed her eyes.
“No,” said Willow. “What I seek is the wildest, most brilliant dream I’ve ever known.”
“You want it that bad, do you?”
“It’s only been my passion for as long as I can remember.” Willow paused, waiting for some response. Her friends looked away.
She said, “If I am able to get to London, I will have come all the way back around, don’t you see? Aunt Mary was the start of everything. She was the one who took me in hand, years ago, and taught me how to look for beauty in all things, to curate it, and to apply it to the rooms in which we sleep and eat and live. It’s one thing to be the relation of renowned designers such as Aunt Mary and Uncle Arthur, but to have the two of them invite me to live in their home and be their apprentice? Why, over the next five years, they will design the interiors of the finest, most modern new homes in the city. They could have chosen anyone to assist them, anyone at all, but they chose me.Me.”
“But you’ve not even seen these homes your aunt and uncle will design,” said Sabine. “You’ve not even seen the home in which you are inviting us all to move and start this new life.”
“I don’t need to see them,” said Willow. “If my aunt and uncle say that Belgravia is the height of modish luxury, it will be. The homes of society’s elite are their stock-in-trade. And honestly, I don’t care. Anything would be better than redesigning the same rooms of Leland Park again and again.”
Tessa looked over. “What a great injustice that your mother will not simply allow you to go. Why must you enlist a strange man and marry him, simply to live with your aunt?”
Willow waved the idea away. “Aunt Mary went against the family wishes and married a commoner. She’s been shunned for years. My mother won’t speak of her. It makes no difference that my uncle is a famed furniture craftsman, sought after by the wealthiest families. The notion of my relocating to London as their apprentice is unconscionable.”
Willow drifted to the window and peered out. “As long as I am under my mother’s purview, Belgravia, the design work, leaving Surrey—it is a locked door.” She turned back. “Unless I become a married woman who makes her own decisions. Unless I can come and go as I please—a bride with a long-lost husband, and happily so, living in Belgravia, making all my dreams come true.”
The room was silent again. Sabine walked back to the advert and read it over. Tessa traced a swirly line in the dark-blue velvet of her chair. After a moment, Tessa asked, “What if no one applies, toad or no toad? No one at all?”
Willow shook her head. “This will not happen. We’ve one circumstance working in our favor, and that is the money.” She walked to the massive desk and leaned against it, crossing her arms over her chest. “Life may have disappointed us, each in our own way, but the money, I’m confident, will not let us down.”
