She hoped she’d struck the right note of charm, respect, and familiarity, and that Mr. Erasmus Monroe was a clever man. If Edouard had indeed written to him the news of her engagement, words like “America” and “urgency,” not to mention the sudden startling introduction of a “Mrs. Mary Gallagher,” would alarm, or at least intrigue him. Perhaps he was kind and protective, like Edouard.
Faith was adecisionone made, she knew, in the absence of absolute knowledge. And she’d decided to put her faith in her brother’s judgment, and her brother’s friend. She could not afford to do otherwise.
And she prayed Mr. Monroe would help her to sell the necklace, and then help her to find someone trustworthy and respectable with whom she could travel. She was not naive enough to believe that the world abounded with sturdy and congenial Mary Gallaghers, or to think for a moment she ought to go alone.
If she posted the letter first thing in the morning, it ought to reach Mr. Monroe later in the day.
Her entire future depended upon selling that necklace for passage. Thanks to Madame Aubert’s generosity, she had enough money for perhaps a month’s worth of lodging and perhaps small necessities.
And then she’d have...
She’d have nothing.
Black spots scudded before her vision.
She covered her eyes briefly with her cold hands. Then she filled her lungs with a long steadyingbreath and sighed and pulled her hands away again, as if to admonish herself for the impulse to hide from her reality for even a second.
One never knew. She could just as easily be on the precipice of triumph as disaster.
Still, it was difficult to escape the bitter irony then that she might indeed be useless for anything beyond being a wife for a man like Brundage.
And at that she would have been superb.
No matter what, no matter how foolish or futile it might prove to be, no matter where or how she might end up, she was determined to claim her life for herself. She owed it to her parents, who had not been able to escape their fates.
She sprinkled sand and sealed the letter with a press of wax and a whispered prayer and prepared to go down to dinner.
Chapter Six
Out of the corner of Aurelie’s eye, the fork held by a man named Mr. Delacorte flashed as it rose and fell again and again with the rhythmic speed of the second hand on a clock. It had taken a minute or two to become accustomed to it. Now she found it almost soothing.
Apart from posting her letter to Mr. Erasmus Monroe, she’d kept to her room for two days as the rules allowed it, resting, gathering nerve to face the other guests, savoring the quiet and safety. She’d written another letter to her brother Edouard to pass the time. Mrs. Hardy had loaned her a book by a Mr. Miles Redmond, which she’d said might be enthralling or sleep inducing. Aurelie welcomed either outcome, and it turned out to be a bit of both. But she could hear the cheerful voices on the stairwell, and the maids were so lively and pleasant when they came in to tend to her fires and to bring her tea, that she began to crave company. So down she went.
Aurelie had never had dinners quite like this one: in a small warm room, surrounded by hungry, cheerful strangers and the sound of chewing and the slosh of gravy. In her uncle’s residences—she’d never quite thought of them as her own—she was used to hearing her own footsteps echo as she moved through rooms furnished with Chippendale furniture and framedportraits of wigged and ruffed dignitaries. She’d often dined at glossy tables as long as lifeboats with just the silver candlesticks and the to-ing and fro-ing servants for company. And she’d attended formal dinners when she was older, which were very like balls, only seated, choreographed, and orderly, with servants at everyone’s elbow.
Here, the food was passed from hand to hand, and often across the table. Occasionally the potatoes nearly collided with the peas midair, to general chuckles. Fascinatingly, it seemed the general mood was particularly ebullient in part because someone named Mr. Tweedy had accepted a job as a footman. And this was a novelty, too: the notion that a footman, something as ubiquitous as furniture in what she’d come to think of as her previous life, could be a prized acquisition.
Mr. Delacorte had the right of it, she discovered when she got her fork up to her mouth. The fish stew wasdeliciousand she hadn’t had a good full meal in days. She was certain she would welcome the temporary stupor of being quite full, and set about doing just that.
An actual viscount (Mrs. Durand’s husband, Lord Bolt, slyly witty) and a captain (Mrs. Hardy’s husband, dryly witty) made for handsome bookends on either side of the dinner table.
“I’m a widow, too, my dear,” said Mrs. Pariseau, gently. She had dark, dancing eyes and dazzling white stripes in her dark hair. “It gets better.”
All had been gracious and welcoming, lending credence to Mrs. Hardy’s and Mrs. Durand’s interview practices: Not a cretin or rogue in evidence. Nobody fixed her in their sights and began asking probing questions. The men did not ogle. They were all clearly gentlemen, even Mr. Delacorte. And contrary to howshe’d thought she might feel amidst strangers, something in her eased, rather than knotted more tightly. She felt suddenly as if she had just a little more air to breathe. Like a bird reintroduced to the sky from a cage, perhaps. She was not fundamentally made to be alone.
She was grateful for their kindness and solicitousness, even if she still felt she’d come by it somewhat fraudulently. It meant she could take refuge in silence, if she wished, and just observe.
She surreptitiously noted how Captain Hardy sought Mrs. Hardy’s eyes from time to time, and how Lord Bolt sought Mrs. Durand’s. With merry warmth, or a sort of wondering stillness. As if every moment could be improved by reminding themselves of each other’s existence. As if the fact of each other still amazed them.
She realized she’d not ever truly witnessed marriages in their humble domestic form. This cozy intimacy, this silent language, this clear regard and comfort and familiarity, made her heart contract with yearning and something... very like shame. Because she simply... she simply hadn’t realized what a marriage ought to look like. She could not have even guessed.
From their first introduction, Brundage had spoken to her as one adult to another, respectfully and attentively, while his eyes did breathtakingly adult things—fixed upon her mouth a gaze so intent it burned, or dipped swiftly to the swell of her décolletage, only to return to her face, dazed. She had not known whether it was fear or desire which took away her breath when he did this—she’d thought perhaps they were merely the two sides of a coin? She knew so little of such things between men and women.
He’d courted her with exhilarating charm and intensity and intention. If she spoke to or laughed with or even mentioned another man at an assembly, he would refuse to speak to her for the rest of the night. She was moved and thrilled by his suffering and jealousy—it was her first ever taste of her own sensual power and the intoxicating responsibility that came with it.
Now and again, she’d test him to reassure herself of his regard—teasing him with a glance at him over her shoulder as she waltzed by in the arms of another man, or laughing merrily with a crowd of admirers, just so she could later flirt and charm and soothe him out of his glowers and silences.
She had never been so noticed. She had never been so wanted. She had never felt so womanly.
