Knowing she behaved like a little girl, and not caring a whit, Nora pulled on her father’s sleeve. “Papa, please. Let me go with you.”
Her father peeled her hand away. “Nora, your aunt is right. If you leave London now, before the Season is properly concluded, without any expression of interest for you, your return next year will be sullied before you step off the train. You’ll have no better prospects than to be a vicar’s wife.”
“I don’t care about that! I want to go home!”
Her father was returning to Kent without her and leaving her in this horrible city for weeks more. Worse yet, it had been her aunt’s idea.
“You must learn how to behave in Society, and you’ll not learn it in Kent. You will stay with your aunt until the Season has ended. My word is final, Nora.”
“You act as if I can make things better if I stay, when I can only make things worse. If I were capable of learning, don’t you think I might have taken a lesson by now?”
At that, her father turned a look on her that she’d never seen in his eyes before. Not frustration, or worry, or resignation. Not compassion, or love, or overburdened tolerance. Her father was angry with her. He was irate.
His noble bearing crumbled, and he grabbed her arms, digging his fingers into her flesh, and shook her hard. “You are capable. Never have you failed a lesson when you wished to learn it! You are not stupid, Nora. You are willful, and I have reached the limit of my patience for it! You will learn, and you will submit! You will give our house honour and not shame!”
With a hard shove that sent her reeling backward into the arms of her aunt, her father released her and snatched his hat from George’s hand. Mr. Gaines had left London two days before, to oversee the reopening of Tarrindale Hall. George, a footman, stayed on full-time in the London house to serve Christopher as butler. He’d stood like a statue, his eyes cast away, during that family drama.
The Earl of Tarrin squared his hat on his head and stalked to the door. George held it open, and Nora’s father, whom she loved best of everyone, walked out of the house. He didn’t look back.
Her knees weakened, but her aunt didn’t let her fall. “There, there, little dove.” She turned Nora in her arms and pressed her head to her bosom. “There, there. All will be well, all will be will.”
The crooning was meaningless, and Nora was angry at her aunt and betrayed, but she wept on the soft pillow of her aunt’s heart, smelled the lilacs of her aunt’s favourite scent, and took that small comfort, because no other existed.
After a moment’s indulgence, Aunt Martha set her gently back and wiped her tears with a lilac-scented handkerchief. “Come. We’ll see if Kate has your things packed, and we’ll away to my house. You’ll find that cage rather roomier, I hope.”
Her aunt had a charming terraced house in Kensington—away from the Society crush near Buckingham, but still well within the range of propriety and acceptability. She’d lost her link to a noble line when her only child, a son still in short pants, had died, two years after the death of her husband, the Duke of Morevine. When the duke’s distant cousin inherited the title, Nora’s aunt had lost everything but her husband’s family name, the sum her parents had left her, and the modest income her husband had arranged for her after the birth of their son, in the event of the child’s untimely demise.
Nora didn’t envy her aunt the sorrow of burying a child, but she envied her the circumstance that had followed that grief. Widowed young, Lady Collington had made up a life free of external demand. She came and went as she chose, beneath the notice of nobles with influence. She lived alone in this bright, airy house, with a staff of only her lady’s maid, a housekeeper, a cook, a man who served as both butler and footman, and her amanuensis, Mrs. Sylvia Everham. When she wished to entertain, she did so. When she wished to accept an invitation, she did so. When she wished to stay home alone, she did so, with no sense of obligation beyond that which she chose to feel. Because no one noticed her, no one censured her.
It was everything Nora wanted in life.
That had been true. From the moment Nora had first understood she couldn’t have Tarrindale Hall forever, that she’d be required to lengthen her skirts, bind her waist, put up her hair, and be a lady for the rest of her life, she’d looked to her aunt’s life as a perfect dream. Now, though, she wanted more.
She stood at the window of this cozy, comfortable bedroom in her aunt’s house and closed her eyes to the view of the park. Lost in memories, reliving them so that they wouldn’t die, she felt the warmth of William Frazier’s hands—resting on her back and holding hers aloft while they danced. Covering hers while they spoke. She heard his soft laugh, and the rumble of his voice, the sharp angles of his accent, saying words that made her feel valued. She saw his smile, his broad shoulders, his wise eyes, seeming to really see her. His dark hair, just long enough to curl softly at his collar and entice her fingers to touch. The dark shadow of his beard. What would that beard feel like brushing her cheek, her lips, her throat?
She wanted a life in which she could be herself, and a man who valued her for herself. But no such thing existed—for her, neither was possible individually, much less in concert.
Mr. Frazier hadn’t been wrong to reject her. Of course he wouldn’t marry her. Why on earth would he? What need had he of someone like her? Her aunt had read too much into his kindness, and so had Nora. He was a unicorn. A unique, beautiful fantasy.
Everything Nora wanted was fantasy.
Mrs. Everham, also a widow, though her husband had been an editor at the Times, lived with Aunt Martha and was treated not as a servant but a friend. She took her meals with them most days, unless she was away from Kensington on Aunt Martha’s business or her own.
Until this summer, Mrs. Everham had been an abstract concept, someone Aunt Martha spoke of when she was in Kent, or mentioned in her letters, but no one Nora had ever met. Thus, it had never occurred to her to wonder why her aunt required the services of an amanuensis—a term she deployed most specifically whenever she mentioned the woman’s name.
Having lived with Aunt Martha and Mrs. Everham for a week, it had occurred to her to wonder, and she wondered yet. Her aunt didn’t seem to be engaged in any literary project of note, and Mrs. Everham did not seem ever to be taking dictation or transcribing notes, which was, as Nora understood it, the work of an amanuensis.
At tea one day, after a demoralising afternoon of obligatory social visits—Nora was still tolerated in the homes of fashionable ladies, she had not yet done anything to cause them to snub her outright, but they did not visit her in Kensington, and they made her feel as if they counted the seconds until she would take her leave of them—Nora slouched at the primly dressed table and picked at her cold egg and cress sandwich. Aunt Martha and Mrs. Everham barely acknowledged her presence; they were engaged in avid discussion of the meeting of the Kensington Rose Club, which Aunt Martha would host that evening.
It was the only work Mrs. Everham seemed to do—the arranging of Rose Club meetings and affairs, which seemed surprisingly intricate and involved for a garden club. But Nora looked forward to a quiet night upstairs with a book; she had received no invitations for the evening, and her aunt would be occupied with her gardening friends.
“Nora, dove, I’m going to ring Christopher and ask him to escort you to the theatre tonight. “
Surprise ironed out Nora’s spine, and she sat up like a bolt. “What? But it’s half five—he’ll have plans!”
“Christopher’s plans are rarely the kind that may not be altered, because they are rarely plans at all. He enjoys the theatre, and he enjoys your company. He’ll not be inconvenienced. I’ll ring him as soon as we’ve finished our tea.”
“No, Auntie, please! I don’t want to go out this evening. I’m content to have a quiet night in.”
Her aunt surprised her further by turning to Mrs. Everham, of all people. The two women exchanged a look, pregnant with meaning but inscrutable to Nora. It was on the tip of her wayward tongue to protest her aunt seeking advice, even of the silent variety, from a member of her staff on a matter like this, but before she could, Mrs. Everham nodded, and her aunt turned back to her.
Aunt Martha’s expression was solemn, but her eyes sparkled. “Very well, little dove. But if you stay, I’d like you to join our meeting.”
“Of the Kensington Rose Club?” Nora had every intention of taking up gardening should she find herself married to a commoner, but she had no especial interest in the activity. Perhaps, now that Nora’s prospects for marrying an American captain of industry were even bleaker than her prospects for ensnaring an English lord, her aunt meant to prepare her for life as a vicar’s wife.
“Yes, little dove. Tonight is our monthly meeting of the Kensington Rose Club.” Aunt Martha reached across the corner of the table and clasped Nora’s hand. “I think you should find it more interesting than you foresee.”
An evening spent sitting in a parlour full of matrons while they discussed the merits of manure sounded more appealing than yet another evening hobnobbing in Society. Nora sighed her defeat. “Very well, Auntie.”
A dozen female guests filled Aunt Martha’s comfortable parlour. Most were demonstrably of Aunt Martha’s set, garbed in bespoke gowns by dressmakers Nora was coming to recognise. But a few of her guests were more humbly attired, in worn day skirts and blouses, though neatly pressed, and creased boots, though shined. Nora assumed that some of her aunt’s neighbours had brought along their own ‘amanuenses.’
They were all surprised to see Nora with them, some to the point of visible shock and discomfiture, but they were gracious in meeting her, and the first thirty minutes or so were spent in light social chatter and the consumption of tea and cakes.
Then, Mrs. Everham closed the windows and heavy drapes at the front of the room. The night was close and still, and Nora thought to protest the obstruction of fresh air in a room already warm, but she was distracted by the sudden shift of tone and activity around her. As if the closing of the windows had been a signal, the ladies set aside their cakes and arranged the seating in the room so that it made a loose circle.
Bemused, Nora stood amidst them like a post.
“Come sit, my dove,” her aunt beckoned, and Nora sat at her side on a divan. As she looked around the circle at the suddenly serious women, she noticed that every one of them had a white rose brooch—nothing expensive or elaborate; the rose was made of cloth—pinned to her breast. She hadn’t seen any of them with such an adornment only moments before.
Aunt Martha silenced the slight hum of chatter with an imperious clearing of her throat. “I hereby call the August 1910 meeting of the Kensington Rose Club to order, myself, Lady Martha Tate Collington, presiding. Mrs. Sylvia Everham recording. Before we proceed with our agenda, is there any open business?”
One of the more humbly dressed women stood. “I have, milady.” In those few words, Nora heard the East End in the woman’s voice.
Aunt Martha tipped her head. “Mrs. Helmstead has the floor.”
Mrs. Helmstead, a woman who might have been nearly as young as Nora or nearly as old as her aunt, produced a folded bill from her skirt. “My sister had a meeting like I asked her to, but the boss of the laundry she’s at got word of it, and this was tacked to her door. She got set on in the street. Five men, and nobody stopped ‘em. Her husband sat and let it happen.” With a shaking hand, Mrs. Helmstead handed the bill to Aunt Martha. “Milady, it’s us on the streets getting knocked around. Ain’t there nothing you can do to make it stop?”
Aunt Martha unfolded the bill. Looking in from her side, Nora gasped and slapped her hand to her mouth.
The bill itself was a rough, handmade notice of a meeting, with the words VOTES FOR WOMEN printed in large capital letters across the top. There was no time or location noted, but a directive to see ‘Emmie Cooper’ for information. Scrawled across the bull in spiky, angry, unschooled letters, were the words KILL THE KUNT.
A tear at the top of the bill showed where it had been tacked and yanked down.
The Kensington Rose Club wasn’t a garden club. It was a women’s suffrage group. Aunt Martha was a suffragette.
Her heart pounding with confused excitement, her stomach rolling from the horror that had just been described, Nora thought she’d weep right here, among all these strangers.
“Lady Martha,” Mrs. Helmstead continued before she took her seat, “We’re bleeding on the streets for the cause. If you’ll excuse me saying it, it’s our bodies being broke in pieces, not yours. It’s our jobs and little ones on the line. Making nice talk with Parliament ain’t enough. Writing cheques ain’t enough. Mrs. Pankhurst says it’s time to fight fire with fire. It’s time we hurt them back.”
All the other women like Mrs. Helmstead nodded in agreement. The women in finer clothes showed shock as the bill was passed around the room, but their reserve was as evident as their sympathy.
Another woman in skirt and blouse spoke up. “There’s a girl lives near me mum, she says she knows how to make a bomb. Her brother taught her.”
“Gracious!” exclaimed a lady in finery. “A bomb is not the way, ladies. Not at all.”
“It ain’t a big thing. Just blow out some windows is all.”
“No,” said the lady firmly. “Absolutely not. We are not criminals. What we want is reasonable, and we will prevail through reason, not violence.”
“Has reason worked yet?” Nora asked. The whole room turned to her as if an urn had suddenly sprouted lips and begun to sing, but she’d made no promise to be a silent observer of this ‘garden club.’ “Men don’t hear our reason because they don’t believe we are reasonable. They think we are fashioned from pure emotion, and they find us insignificant and frivolous, little better than children. If they don’t take us seriously in the first place, if they’ve never taken us seriously at all, why would you think they ever would, unless they are forced to do so?”
“But violence only proves their point—violence is anger. It is emotion.”
“No,” Aunt Martha said. “It is not. Violence is strategy. It is war.” She met the eyes of every woman in the circle before she spoke again. “That’s the question before us now. We have been engaged all this time in diplomacy, and we have failed. Whilst we’ve been diplomats, we’ve faced thuggery. Our sisters are beaten. They are arrested and abased. When they assert their rights over their own bodies and refuse to eat, they are violently force-fed. When they are released, they come home to nothing—their homes taken away, their children taken away. I agree with Mrs. Pankhurst. War has been waged upon us for years. It’s time we took up arms ourselves.”
“Nora. Come and talk with me, little dove.”
After two hours of discussion and debate about how, when, and to what extent they would deploy a strategy of what Aunt Martha coined ‘disruption, not destruction,’ the ladies of the Kensington Rose Club had come to no decisions. They’d agreed to pick up the issue at their next meeting, and they’d adjourned. Mrs. Everham had gone up to bed. Only Nora and her aunt remained on the main floor—and the housekeeper, who no doubt itched to be allowed to close the house for the night.
Her heart still racing from the excitement of the evening and the astonishment of her discovery that her aunt was an activist for suffrage, Nora let herself be led again to the parlour, where they took up their seats on the divan.
“Auntie,” she began. “I had no idea! I want to know everything! What can I do? I’ll write to Papa and ask him if I can stay in London!”
Aunt Martha grabbed Nora’s agitated hands and set them on her own lap. “Nora, no. You cannot be part of this.”
All her burgeoning hopes crashed against those words. “What? But why not?”
“You know why. Should you become involved, and should you be found out, the scandal would be extreme. “
“I don’t care about that.”
“You should. You must.”
“But you—”
“I am a widow, on the margins of Society. No one pays me any heed. And yet, I remain careful. I will do nothing that would besmirch the name of my brother or my late husband. I am involved in this cause, yes. I hold Rose Club meetings, and I provide funds when they are required. I serve as advisor and as a conduit to those with power who are sympathetic to the cause. But I will make no bomb. I will throw no brick. I will march in no public protest. I only make it possible for others to do so. You, so early in your womanhood, cannot yet do even as much as I. You must focus on establishing your security—but when you have that, you will have less scrutiny and more freedom, and you might help me support our cause. I allowed you to stay tonight, and to witness, so that you might see the opportunities when the question of your future has been settled.”
Her aunt was not so brave after all. As Mrs. Helmstead had said, she stood behind the skirts of braver women and let them take the blows. Shock howled through the vast emptiness of Nora’s chest. She pulled her hands free and slumped to the back of the divan. “So … you show me all this, you know what it means to me, and now you tell me to go back to hunting up a husband? You are cruel, Auntie. No one has ever treated me more cruelly.”
Without another word, she pushed herself to her feet and stalked away. When her aunt tried to call her back, Nora ignored her.
“Speaking as a gentleman myself, I can say with some expertise that a smile will draw more admiration than these rumples of your brow, Nono.” Christopher brushed Nora’s forehead as if he could erase the furrows.
She pushed his hand away. “I’d rather not have notice, thank you very much. And don’t call me Nono.” Normally, she didn’t mind her childhood nickname, but tonight, in her—now seemingly eternal—cross temper, it chafed.
He laughed and chucked her under the chin. “I see why Auntie foisted you on me this evening.” He helped her to her seat in their theatre box and took his own seat at her side. “She must need a break from all this gloom. Soon, the Season will be over, and you’ll be turned loose again to run wild by the sea. Perhaps next year, you’ll be ready to take this business seriously.”
“Don’t you dare condescend to me, Christopher. Unless you’ve run off to Gretna Green to marry a housemaid, your Season was no more successful than mine.”
“I think this Season was perfectly successful for both of us, was it not? You have no more wish than I to be caught in the clutches of matrimony. So we’ve staved off the horror for one more year, perhaps.”
Nora rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. Christopher couldn’t possibly fathom how different their circumstances truly were. He had the choice not to ask for the hand of a lady. He was in high demand and had his pick of any of them. When next year’s Season opened, there would be a fresh batch of newly-minted ladies and a run of this year’s remainders trying all the harder to garner his interest and capture his name. He wasn’t yet thirty. With his looks, title, and wealth, he could be as old as forty and still have his pick of marriageable women.
Nora, conversely, would start next Season as a failure, with a reputation for foul temper and a tendency toward embarrassing outbursts. Her prospects would be even bleaker, and she had no other option. Her only role in life was to marry.
Now, she wanted to be wed. But she couldn’t have the man she wanted, so all that was left was to find someone, anyone, of sufficient station who might want her.
At least he was right about the time between. He could carry on with his charmingly roguish ways in London, and she could go home to Kent and be free for a little while longer.
The house lights of the Prince of Wales Theatre dimmed, and the curtain rose, foreclosing any further discussion. As this performance of ‘The Balkan Princess’ got underway, Nora wondered what Aunt Martha had planned for this evening, after she’d so emphatically sent her out for a night at the theatre with her brother. Now that she knew what subterfuges her aunt was capable of, a whole new world of shadows lurked on the edges of this one.
At the intermission, Christopher led her into the lobby. As he maneuvered through the crowd toward the refreshments, pulling her along, he stopped abruptly, and she crashed into his broad back.
“Christopher!” she muttered, but her brother wasn’t listening.
“I say, old bean!” he said to someone she couldn’t yet see. “If I’d known you planned to be here tonight, I wouldn’t have complained so much when Aunt Martha pressed me into service.”
“Hello, Chris,” an American voice said warmly. “It was a last-minute decision.”
William Frazier. In the act of stepping outside her brother’s shadow, Nora froze, her lungs twisting shut. William Frazier stood right there, just beyond the high wall of Christopher’s shoulder.
She hadn’t seen him since the night of Lady Spenhall’s fancy dress ball, when she’d humiliated herself and seen the end of her hope. Three weeks, but the shame and pain was fresh as yesterday.
“And who is this lovely young lady?”
“Lord Christopher Tate, allow me to introduce my friend, Mrs. Caroline Sweeney.”
“My lord,” a sultry female voice said. A female voice. A sultry voice. Attached to a sultry female being introduced by her Mr. Frazier. Nora resolved to stay right where she was, shielded from view by her brother’s large form.
But of course, her uncooperative, oblivious brother yanked her forward, into view. “Mrs. Sweeney. It’s a pleasure. Look, Nora! You remember my friend William Frazier.”
There was small consolation in the look of abject shock that fleeted across Mr. Frazier’s handsome face. He paled, and for just one tiny second, Nora almost thought he felt some pain to see her. Yet the consolation to be found there was small indeed, for at his side was a gloriously beautiful Amazon of a woman, with hair as dark as jet, eyes as blue as sapphires, and lips as red as rubies. Her ample bosom strained against the confines of an emerald-green Worth gown, and she dripped diamonds from her ears, neck, and arms. Nora could scarcely look upon her without shielding her eyes, but she couldn’t turn away.
“Lady Nora,” Mr. Frazier said, softly. “It’s very good to see you. I hope you’ve been well.”
“Mr. Frazier,” was all she could manage to push past her lips.
The dazzling Mrs. Sweeney cleared her throat prettily, and Mr. Frazier remembered his manners. “Lady Nora Tate, please meet Mrs. Caroline Sweeney.”
“Lady Nora.”
“Mrs. Sweeney.”
Then the four stood in awkward silence. Mr. Frazier stared at Nora. Nora tried not to stare at him and instead let her gaze flit around their group. Mrs. Sweeney watched Mr. Frazier. And Christopher’s eyes shifted back and forth between Nora and his friend. His mouth fell open. He was seeing something he hadn’t seen before.
“Well,” he said suddenly. “It’s good to meet you, Mrs. Sweeney. Enjoy the rest of the show—and Will, I’ll ring soon.”
“Please do. Enjoy your evening.” Mr. Frazier looked straight into Nora’s eyes when he added, “It was very good to see you.”
With that Christopher recommenced dragging her through the lobby. He said nothing about his epiphany, whatever it was, and Nora, shaken to her core, kept silent.
She’d thought that she’d found the bottom of her hope that night in Lady’s Spenhall’s rose garden, or again when Aunt Martha had tantalised her with suffrage and then snatched it away, but she’d been wrong. Seeing Mr. Frazier, a man she thought she could love, might already love, with another, much better, woman at his side—that was the last dregs of her hope seeping into the ground.
That night, Nora couldn’t settle into sleep. She threw herself about her bed, beset by a restlessness that had too many causes to attempt to comprehend. She was closed in by the walls with their striped paper, smothered by the linens and the duvet, trapped by the open windows that no breeze moved through. Hot under the covers and unsettled atop them, with a weight squeezing her chest and a fog filling her head, finally she gave up and rose, while the moon was yet bright and high in the clear, quiet sky.
After covering her scant nightgown with a filmy matching peignoir, she eased open the door and tiptoed down the corridor of the silent, sleeping house, down the stairs, to the back, and out into the garden.
The Kensington Rose Club was a façade for Aunt Martha’s political work, but it worked so well as a guise because she was, in fact, an expert gardener, whose roses routinely won prizes. Nora wandered into the centre of the garden, breathing the rich mingled scents, distinct but similar, of dozens of varieties of the flower. She sat on the wooden bench near the reflecting pool at the centre and gazed up at the clear indigo sky. A slight breeze finally stirred the air and made the roses’ natural perfume burst and swirl around her. Her hair, loose and long over her shoulders, lifted lightly as the breeze brushed her cheeks.
Nora detected the barest hint of chill in that kiss of air. Autumn was near at hand. Soon, she would return to Kent and be free of this dreary city and its dour, constant, censorious gaze.
Funny—in the past few weeks, she’d discovered that everything she wanted was, in fact, here in London. A cause to commit herself to—a fight to wage, a place to use her voice. And love, real love, for a man who wanted to hear her thoughts, and who cared enough to see her clearly—as she was, not as he expected her to be. But she couldn’t have either. She’d been shown that they existed, and then told that they were impossible.
So she would return to Kent until next spring, and then she would try again. Perhaps, in the meantime, she would learn the lessons her father and aunt wished her to learn, and she would be more successful next time.
The thought of her success and what it would mean filled her with bleakness. Nora closed her eyes and turned her mind to Mr. William Frazier—not her most recent memory, of her disappointment and jealousy to see him with another woman, but of the night of the ball, when he danced with her, so dashing in his black mask. Before she’d shamed herself. His hands. His smile. His voice. She’d thought she’d seen something, felt something, in him, and in her memory, she could still feel it. A pull between them.
When Nora next opened her eyes, the sky had lightened to grey, and her hair and peignoir were damp with dew; dawn was near. Lest Kate find her bed empty and sound the alarm, Nora hurried back into the house, quietly as she might, up the stairs like an elf.
She stopped dead at the landing, and stared. Directly before her, her aunt’s door was open. New dawn poured in from her bedroom windows and cast the doorway in pale light. Her aunt stood at the threshold, dressed in a lawn nightgown, her still mostly dark hair unfurled over her shoulder.
Mrs. Everham, in a similar gown, her grey hair harnessed into a braid that lay along her spine, stood in the threshold as well. The two women clung together in a passionate embrace.
They were kissing. In the way Nora often imagined kissing Mr. Frazier. Aunt Martha’s hands cupped the sides of her amanuensis’s face. Mrs. Everham’s arms circled Nora’s aunt’s waist. Their mouths moved hungrily together. It was such a close approximation of Nora’s fantasies about Mr. Frazier that her belly did that strange, hot clench that shook her knees.
Nora didn’t understand what her eyes were seeing. Why on earth would Aunt Martha be kissing Mrs. Everham like that? To what purpose? Whatever the reason, it seemed illicit and secret, something they did in the dark of the night, when the house was asleep. Certainly, they’d never touched each other like this in the daylight, not that Nora had seen.
The kiss ended, and the two women touched foreheads and simply rested there.
They hadn’t seen her. She knew she should hurry to her room as quietly as she could, but her feet were fused to the floor, and her eyes would not look away. At last, through a mighty effort of will, and a burgeoning, inexplicable panic, Nora moved her feet and took two steps toward her own room.
The floorboard creaked under her foot. She froze at the sound, startlingly loud in the quiet house, and turned her eyes guiltily back to her aunt’s room. Both women stared at her. Mrs. Everham’s eyes and mouth were a round trio of shocked fear. Aunt Martha’s expression showed every emotion in an inscrutable jumble. Nora still did not understand.
“Go back to bed, little dove,” she said.
“I’m sorry.” Nora ran back to her room and closed the door.
“Kate, if you’re finished, will you leave us, please?”
“Yes, milady, of course.” She set the last pin in Nora’s hair and hurried from the bedroom.
In the mirror, Nora watched her aunt cross the room and sit on a damask chair near the window. She indicated its mate with her open hand. “Come sit, Nora.”
Nora went, and she sat. Three hours had passed since that unsettling scene in the corridor. Both women were now dressed for breakfast. Where Mrs. Everham would also be.
“I’m sorry about earlier, Auntie. I didn’t mean to see.”
“What is it you think you saw, Nora?”
She’d been thinking of little else since, but the only answer she’d come to made no sense to her. “I … I don’t know.”
“Do you remember when I told you that I also know what it is to have one’s life shaped by other people’s demands, when what I would have chosen for myself was something altogether different?”
“Yes.”
“My husband died long before you were born. What do you know of him?”
“I …” Nora knew very little of the man who had been her uncle by marriage. Christopher had been an infant when the Duke of Morevine died, and she hadn’t even been a glimmer of a thought. “He … was very powerful and wealthy.”
“Yes. And?”
“He was much older?”
“Yes, he was. Forty-eight years older than I when we wed. He’d been married twice before, but both wives had died without giving him an heir. I was his last attempt to leave a legacy. And I gave him a son. I did my job. My Edgar died when he was only three, but his father didn’t live to know that grief.” She looked out the window for a long time before she spoke again, and when she did, she kept her eyes on the view beyond the room. “Do you know why my father, your grandfather, the great Earl of Tarrin, a line that stretches back to the Saxons, gave his only daughter in marriage to an old man with a failing heart, Nora?”
Nora could only shake her head. Her throat had twisted itself into a snarl that barely allowed breath, let alone speech.
“Because he caught me in bed with a pretty scullery maid.”
“What? I don’t—Auntie, I don’t understand.”
Aunt Martha turned and faced her, her eyes solemn. “I am attracted to women, Nora. Romantically. I have never in my life been attracted to a man.”
It was the conclusion she’d come to herself, but it made no more sense now than it had when she’d puzzled it out alone. “But that’s not possible.”
“I assure you that it is, little dove.”
“But I’ve heard you say things about men. Bawdy things.”
“Because it is expected, and it makes a shield for me. What I am—that is not expected. Nor is it tolerated. Were it to be known, I would likely be committed to an asylum for the insane. Am I insane, Nora?”
“No! Of course not! But … I don’t … how …” Words failed her—how could she make meaning when there was no sense?
“The how doesn’t matter; nor does the why. Here are the things that matter: I’ve trusted you with this information to explain truthfully what you saw this morning, and because I believe you love me and will keep me safe, even if you can’t understand. Do you love me, Nora? Will you keep my secret and keep me safe? And Sylvia as well?”
“Of course I love you, Auntie. You are dearer to me than myself. Of course I’ll keep your secret.” Nora’s mind reeled. She tried to catch hold of any thought at all in the whirlwind. She grabbed a strange one, and it had the cast of truth about it. “Do you … do you love Mrs. Everham? That way?” The stout, grey-haired, bespectacled Mrs. Everham?
“Yes, I do. Very much. We’ve been in love for fifteen years.”
At long last, one thought settled at the centre of her mind and pulled all the rest into a steady, comprehensible orbit. “And are you happy?”
“I would be happier if I could love her openly, and not send her from my bed each morning before the house wakes, but inside the cage we must live in, yes, I am happy. She gives me joy every day, and I try to do the same for her.”
“Then I’m glad for you. But I still don’t understand how it’s possible.”
“Nor do I. When I was young, I wished fervently to be like the other girls. To be normal. But I have never been, and no amount of wishing or prayer or effort has changed who I am. I know you don’t have the same anomaly that I do, but I think you understand what it is to be different no matter how hard you try not to be. Eventually, you cannot resist your nature.”
“Then … if you understand, why do you insist I do what my father wants?”
“Because it was in my submission that I found my freedom, Nora. When I stopped fighting and gave them what they wanted, when I did my job, I found a way to be me. Even before the duke’s death, I had room to be myself that I hadn’t had before. I want that same for you. I want you to find your happiness, dove.”