In the early spring of 1813, eight-year-old Lady Wilhelmina Hunnicut fell ill from a bout of peritonitis that nearly took her life. For ten days she lay contorted in pain and wracked with fever, fighting an infection that simmered and glowed like the hot coals of a low fire.
Her mother and father, not particularly attentive parents even in the best of times, hastened to their daughter’s bedside. They pursed their lips and wrung their hands; they cried.
Willow’s father, Lord Lytton, was an earl, and their home in Surrey, Leland Park, was a lavish estate with renowned stables. Immediately, the earl sent for the best doctors from London. They arrived posthaste to bleed and swab and minister to the child. All the while her parents implored her, “Be a brave girl, darling. Do try to survive.”
By some miracle, Lady Willow did survive. She sat up in bed on the eleventh day, requested toast and tea, the lavender coverlet, and a view of the gardens. A cadre of footmen and maids descended, and the chief surgeon took Lord Lytton and his lady wife aside.
“It is a miracle that the child has pulled through,” the doctor whispered. “Praise be to God. But I must warn you that an infection of this severity—the abdominal colic, the fever, the ague . . . ” He paused, blotting his temple. “The girl will be barren, I’m afraid. Unable to have children all of her life. Her belly was inflamed for weeks. She will never be a mother, mark my words.”
Her father scarcely heard this news, so relieved was he that his daughter would not die.
Her mother heard the prognosis but chose to ignore it. “But how could he possibly know what may or may not happen?” the countess told Willow whenever she ventured onto the topic. “Dr. Whiting is not God. He cannot read the future. He said for two weeks that you would not live to see the next morning, and look at you now.”
Yes, Willow thought, each time her mother said this, look at me now.
She grew into womanhood—tall and lithe, with clear skin and a bright smile—but with no trace of the monthly cycle that would prove the doctor wrong or her mother right.
And so a childhood illness decided Lady Willow would never be a mother, but it was Willow herself, some nine years later, who decided that she would never—not ever—become anyone’s wife.
“I will never marry,” she vowed to her two dearest friends, Sabine Noble and Tessa St. Croix. “What man would marry a woman who cannot provide him with an heir and a family? And despite what my mother suggests, I cannot lie.”
Instead, Willow pursued other interests, cultivated her talents, and never allowed herself to wallow or waste time. She was a spirited girl, determined but cheerful, with an eye for visual harmony and unexpected beauty. Her life’s passion was design. Color and texture, form and light. She commissioned a workshop on the grounds of Leland Park and made over the rooms and corridors of the manor house, one at a time. She sent away for books about the interiors of stately homes and castles from around the world. She learned to weave intricate trim for tapestries and rugs, to paint plaster, to create mosaics with little bits of colored tile. Her parents indulged these pursuits because they kept her occupied, and an occupied daughter required less of their time.
If Willow noticed the young men who noticed her, who complimented her auburn hair or blue-green eyes, she didn’t dwell on it. She encouraged nothing, she danced never, and she always refused the rare young man who asked to walk with her in the village. Social diversion was limited to the exclusive company of her two old friends, Sabine and Tessa. Beyond this, she was content to create and seek the beauty in everyday life.
“Spinsterhood?” she would say. “So be it. Why wrestle with the futility of a union that I will never have?”
But futility, Willow soon discovered, did not come in the form of a union (or lack thereof); it came as the absence of nearly all of her rights. Without the protection of marriage, Willow was not permitted to seriously pursue anything she truly enjoyed. Without her father’s permission, she could not travel alone outside of Surrey. She could not let a flat in London. She could not submit her sketches for publication. After her father died, she was forced to seek this permission from her brother, Phillip.
In the end, it was not the solitude that troubled Willow; it was the limits.
Through it all, she relied upon Sabine and Tessa. They encouraged and supported her; they served as touchstones when her own parents were dismissive or away; and they understood that loneliness and contentedness could, in fact, exist at the same time.
What they did not understand—what even Willow herself did not know—was that a “contented” life, lonely or not, was but one of many paths that young women may take.
And a path that leaps clear of contentment and deals instead in courage and determination and true fulfillment is what this story is about.