Fifteen
T he dressmaker’s shop was charming, as always, but I could not bring myself to examine the fabrics with any sort of eagerness. Mother insisted on purchasing a few new gowns for the arrival of my coming beau, but the luster of expanding my wardrobe had ceased to exist.
“What about this? It’s a very nice silk.” Mother ran her fingers over a bolt of cool blue, glossy in the light of the lamps overhead. She did not look at me as she moved from fabric to fabric, silk to linen to chiffon; fabrics which seemed to shimmer, to move like water against her fingers.
I followed her absentmindedly.
There was still a small red dot on my finger; I had placed the rose in a vase in my room and forbidden the maid to touch it. It had been only a day or so, but its blood-red petals remained.
Who had left it? Perhaps a servant’s own gift left absentmindedly behind?
Or was it for me ?
I told Flora of it over the phone that evening, conveniently forgetting to tell her about the lunch with Lucas, and she speculated about the rose’s origins, slyly suggesting that perhaps Adam remembered hopping the gate when we were younger.
In visits past to the dressmaker, I would have scoured the shop for the perfect color, the perfect feel. Would have insisted on trying the model dresses on to find the right fit, even if I had to pull a dress from the window. The mannequins posed against the glass, still, like dolls, looking out upon the street, safe from the misting rain cascading from the dark gray clouds above the city.
I could not bring myself to raise my hands to touch, to do anything but hug myself, like the chill in the air was too much to bear. Though it wasn’t the bitter air that made me shiver.
“Helena.”
Mother’s brow was raised.
I glanced at the bolt of fabric. “It’s alright,” I said.
Silk was silk. In the end, my mother would purchase whatever she saw fit enough for my brother, for any other “respectable” man. She was prone to choosing silhouettes that mimicked those of decades past, more traditional looks that were no longer in fashion, but what she deemed proper: skirts that went past my knees, necklines that covered my shoulders; corsets and sleeves and bustles.
To be a mannequin. To be always dressed in the fashion of the day, to be the epitome of the present .
I raked my eyes over the shop. The seamstress was busy with another customer, but she kept glancing our way. She knew my mother, knew that our purchase would not be small.
“Pay attention,” my mother said under her breath, moving a little closer, lest the seamstress or other customer hear her chastising. “This is important.”
Yes, it was important. To her .
What would Adam like? The thought appeared in my mind before I could warn it away. Not any of the other men that I had taken a fancy to in recent months. But the man who had looked down upon the party like a king, who had saved me from a lunatic; the man with my lost lover’s eyes.
“Are you looking forward to meeting him?”
“Who?”
A glare. “Lord Highsmith.”
Lord Highsmith . His name had been revealed to me that morning, a slip of the tongue by Lucas, his eyes delighted when he saw the nausea sweep through me at the prospect.
With a name, this became real.
And I had only just gotten Adam back.
But was he mine to have?
“Are you?”
I thought about it for a moment. No, I was not excited, but how to tell her that? She would just scold me and move on like I hadn’t said a thing. “I’m sure he’s pleasant,” I said, if only to placate her, though I worried he was anything but, if he was friends with Lucas.
Mother ran her fingers over another bolt and hummed, pleased .
“I think this blue will do nicely,” she decided, motioning the dressmaker over. “It’ll do well to highlight your features when he comes.”
When he comes .
Highsmith was on his way over, my mother and Lucas seemingly decided on the matter. No other bachelors were presented to me. Lucas had decided before he’d even returned home. It made me think it was some scheme he had concocted months ago, whispering in Mother’s ear that it was time for me to be wed off.
Lord Wright Highsmith.
I guess it was what I had wanted—Flora and I would both have a British beau to whisk us away somewhere, except Dixon was mad about her, and I knew she felt the same, even if they hadn’t quite had that conversation yet.
A bolt of fear stabbed through me. Would I ever see her again? If Lucas got his way and I married, dragged to the other side of the world, would Flora and I ever visit each other? Write letters?
She was like a sister, a true sister, to me, and without her near, I’d have no one in my circle. No one on my side .
The dressmaker took the bolt of fabric from Mother and smiled at me, bowing her head like we were royals. She already had my measurements, since we came often enough. Mother patted my arm as they decided on what style—conservative, of course—and when it should be ready.
One week. It was a rush order, but Mother would hand over the large sum to make it happen. One week, and Lord Highsmith would make his way into my life. One week, and my fate would no longer be my own.
That evening, I sat up in bed, facing the window, warm embers burning in the fireplace. I held the rose in my hand, twisting the stem in my fingers. I had snipped off the thorns, but couldn’t part with them, and they were at the bottom of the small vase I kept the bloom in. Every time I pressed upon the stem with the pad of my finger, the spot where I was pricked, I felt a sore reminder shoot up my hand, the spot still tender, a reminder of the flower’s sender.
It was a welcome pain. Like the ache from the passion of a lover.
Curled up in bed, cradling the rose to my chest, careful not to crush the delicate petals, I played through that first real outing that Adam and I had—how he’d been waiting for me, eager, staring up at the house like he knew exactly where I was inside—and every other encounter. The secret nights in the garden just below my window, when he’d scaled the brick and iron wall, throwing a rock at my window like he was Romeo, summoning me to him. The love we’d shared in the garden, the ways we dared to show each other, when damnation was just an opened door away. But it didn’t stop us, and at the time, we felt inevitable.
His love was inevitable. And I wondered, as I drifted off to sleep, was our wrenching apart—his death—inevitable, too? Or had he taken hold of Fate and refused his thread to be cut ?
When I awoke to the soft gray morning light, the rose lay on the pillow, right next to my head, so it was the first thing I saw. The petals unblemished, as though it were just cut from the bush.