“May I come in?” she asked. “I should like to speak with you.” Though now she did not know why or what she would say. There had been days she’d wanted to scream and nights she’d cried herself to sleep; birthdays had passed with letters sent across the sea when Lady Chattaway had held her tight and shushed in her ear. As a mother should do.
A pause stretched between them like their silent half decade. Then her mother turned to the side, making enough room in the frame for Tessa to enter.
She did. Everything the same inside as well. Neat and clean and sparsely furnished. Dust did not even dare to float in on sunbeams.
Her mother led her to the kitchen where she silently prepared a pot of a tea as Tessa sat at the old, time-worn table. When her mother slipped into the seat across from her and they both had steaming cups fogging the space between them, her mother said, “Your father tells me you are considering marriage.”
Inhale. Exhale. The tingle of lemon on her tongue. “I am. To a Mr. Tilbury, a vicar from Surrey.”
“Your father says he is a respectable man. He says you have lived a respectable life with Lady Chattaway.”
Tessa almost laughed. Her mother’s harsh inspection of every visible inch of Tessa’s self helped her swallow it whole. Her mother seemed to think that if she looked hard enough, she’d be able to discern some sign of hidden sin.
Could she see the stable and window seat on Tessa’s skin? Could she see Tessa’s lies in the slant of her mouth, the fluttering of herlashes?
“What is different now?” her mother asked.
“W-what do you mean?”
“You were not yet ready to marry Mr. Grimsby. And you shamed your family in refusal. What makes you ready now?”
She wrapped her hands tightly around her cup, but the warm porcelain could not warm her. Funny, that. The day was already hot, the lightness of the morning air bowing to the summer sun.
“You weren’t desperate enough back then,” her mother said. She took a long sip of her tea. Six years had carved new lines into her face, fine and delicate, the merest curves around the corners of her mouth, the line between her brows drawn with the lightest ink. All that visible from the slanted plane of her face because when she set her cup down, she studied its contents, neck bowed between high lace collar and the fine orange curls. “It’s good to know desperation.”
A rather hard thing to say.
“Do you?” Tessa wondered. “Know desperation?”
Her mother’s head whipped up, her knuckles around the cup going white as bone.
“Did you marry Papa because you were desperate?” She’d never had the courage to ask such questions before, to make such challenges. She’d been her mother’s child—soft and scared. Now she felt more like Lady Chattaway’s daughter—bold and brilliant as a sun, the sort of woman who let a rake ruin her in the stables.
“I married your father because I was clever.” A pause, during which she did not sayUnlike you. Didn’t have to. It rang clearly enough between them without a voice. “I was an orphan. Nothing and no one to my name. I knew more desperation in a single second than you’ve known your entire life.” The grooves around her face deepened. “Dire circumstances force the correct choices.”
“Or they narrow your options, and you mustbelieveyou choose correctly.” A way of surviving.
“Mother…?” The soft, morning-fuzzy voice from the doorway turned them both around. Tessa’s little sister stood in the frame, head titled to one side, a yawn hidden behind a small, pale hand. “Who’s this?”
Oh. Oh, there she is.
Tessa’s heart squeezed.I’m your sister, she wanted to say. She wanted to rush the young girl, to hug her tight. But she clung to her skirts instead. Distance had shackled her. Time had made a stranger of her. Her sister had been seven when she’d last seen her. Thirteen now? Fourteen? She was so very pretty in that awkward, gangly way young girls had. Her hair darker than Tessa’s and their mother’s, her eyes deep hazel and shining.
Shining. Good. Not dulled with defeat, then. Good.
Her mother stood and faced her youngest daughter. “Come here, Verity.”
Verity obeyed, her hands clasped before her. She wore the plainest brown gown, tattered and shabby and possibly one of Tessa’s old garments. Her parents were not rich, but there was enough for new gowns. Her mother had been wearing a fashionable frock the other night at Crossvale.
“Do you remember your sister?” her mother asked Verity.
The slightest nod, eyes darting in Tessa’s direction.
“That’s her. You may greet her.”
Verity looked up, her eyes were mirrors to Tessa’s—same shape and color, same subdued spark. She’d seen it often enough in the looking glass growing up. The same desire to do, the same denial of that desire. But then?—
The corners of Verity’s mouth twitched, and her eyes blazed to life.
