The Rose Bargain

Chapter Two

Three Months Later

The doors to the atelier are thrown open to the street, bursting with so much activity it’s impossible to keep it all inside. Girls and their mothers spill out onto the sidewalk in a crowd so thick we have to elbow our way in.

The seamstress has been slow to let out the hem of my sister’s gown to fit me, and I know well enough it’s because we haven’t spent enough money in recent years to make us priority customers. My mother knows it too, but she just keeps on smiling in that pinched way of hers.

I wish I could have done this some other day, when there would be fewer people to hide from, but tomorrow is the first of May, and there is no time to waste.

All of London is whipped into an absolute tizzy. The start of the season—the moment for the debutantes to line up to make their bargains with the queen—is all anyone can talk about.

Most of the citizens of England will make their bargains on some other date. The queen’s throne room is open every Sunday from noon until midnight, and anyone who wishes to bargain with her may do so at this time. Some make their bargain as soon as they come of age; some wait well into adulthood, until they find something they want desperately enough to make a deal.

Those from the Midlands say it’s luckiest to make the bargain on the first Sunday of the month. Girls from Bristol always make their bargains sporting two left-footed shoes. People from Liverpool arrive at the palace wearing necklaces of their own braided hair. Counties and villages and families all have their own superstitions about the practice, entrenched now for over four hundred years.

Some never make a bargain at all.

But for girls like me, girls with titles or money enough to buy influence some other way, it is expected that we make our bargains on the same day we come out into society, officially available as merchandise on the marriage market.

Our clever bargains for shinier hair or prettier feet are just another line item on our wifely résumés, proving that we are good girls. Rose Bargains, they’re called. Bargains to make us beautiful, fragile, sweet—perfect English roses.

The official debutante coming-out is always on the first of May. Such is the fanfare around the aristocratic girls in their finest lining up before the queen, it’s been called the Pact Parade.

The bell to the shop chimes as we enter, barely audible over the chatter.

The Alton sisters drop their gazes as I approach. The little one turns away so quickly she trips over the edge of a rug. Our shame is contagious, and no one can afford to catch it, especially not now.

In the corner, with her sour-faced mother, is Greer Trummer, my former closest friend. I let out an anxious breath, turning my mother by the elbow so she doesn’t spot them, but it’s too late.

With a wide smile, my mother waves in a large arc over her head. “Lady Trummer, Greer, how lovely to see you here.”

My face burns with shame as everyone turns toward us, disdain and pity all over their faces.

“Did you see the ribbons just here, Mama?”

I say, trying to redirect her to a display of silk and lace, but it’s too late.

Greer’s mother turns away, as if she hasn’t heard us. Greer offers a sheepish smile, but doesn’t so much as wave back.

My mother, undeterred, crosses the shop, pushing past a dozen people as she goes.

“Please, Mama, she’s busy,”

I protest, but she pretends not to hear me.

“Greer, darling, Ivy told me you were nervous for tomorrow. You’re going to do fabulously. I do hope the turn around the park you two girls took this morning did something to quiet your nerves.”

For the first time in months, Greer looks at me. Something flickers behind her blue eyes as she catches me in my lie.

“The turn around the park?”

She’s confused. Of course she is. I’ve been lying for months, going to sit alone in the stables or skulking around the neighborhood with my cloak pulled tight, any excuse to escape the stifling misery of our house. I’ve been telling my mother I was with Greer, like she’s any better than the rest of them. She dropped me at the first whiff of scandal, just like everyone else.

I brace myself, ready for Greer to give me up. She blinks a few times, then turns back to my mother. “Oh yes, the turn around the park. Thank you, Lady Benton,”

she says softly. “Ivy is such a good friend. Always so willing to offer an uplifting word.”

She turns back to me. We used to be able to communicate with nothing but a glance, but I don’t know what she’s feeling now. The tether between us is broken. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I hear Mama calling.”

Her mother definitely isn’t calling, but neither of us say it.

I let out a sigh of relief as she walks away.

The seamstress waves me over, and I step onto the pedestal in front of the three-way mirror as the final adjustments are made to my gown. I pretend I don’t hear the whispers of the other mothers and daughters in the shop: “Surely she’s not expecting any invitations this season.”

When the seamstress is finished, Mama muscles her way to the counter and pays with a stack of bills I feel guilty looking at.

We return home without discussing the whispers we both heard, as if by refusing to acknowledge our family’s misfortune, we can make it not true.

Lydia made her debut in society—and her bargain with the queen—two springs ago.

She returned that day in her frothy white gown with a confused look on her face. She couldn’t recall what happened in the throne room. She must have given up the memory in exchange for whatever the queen bestowed upon her, but in the two years since, we’ve never been able to discern what the gift was.

Her beauty remained the same, there has been no sudden talent or skill, only a Swiss cheese memory and a failure of a season that ended without a proposal.

Her lack of a match and her secret bargain were embarrassing, a blight on the family. My mother has spent the better part of two years saying I was the Benton family’s only hope, though my slim chances of making a match went up in smoke when the scandal of Lydia’s disappearance broke.

The news that she was missing reached the marble halls of London society before the sun was fully up. All the titled ladies in the neighborhood were at the door that very morning, with baskets of pastries and looks of concern on their faces. They could smell blood in the water.

And those same ladies passed the news of Lydia’s shameful return around like petit fours at a tea party. The fun of grace is to watch someone fall from it.

Walking into the foyer of our house, I can’t help but think of the night she returned. Sometimes it feels like I never really left that moment.

It was the constable who brought Lydia home, covered in grime. He shoved her by her elbow through the door with a sneer. “I thought this was a respectable family.”

I was already at the top of the stairs when Mrs. Tuttle shouted to the whole of the house that Lydia had returned.

Mama cried as she burst out of her room wrapped in a dressing gown, and Father caught her as her knees gave out on the stairs.

I raced past them down to my sister. My beloved big sister, the one I’d wept for, feared for, snuck out of the house to search for.

I clasped her face between my hands and found her skin cold and clammy, as if covered with morning dew.

Lydia just stared, silent and still, like she wasn’t there at all, like she was a ghost.

Then she collapsed in my arms.

Papa and Mrs. Tuttle carried her up to her room, but it was I who bathed her, wrapped her in a clean nightdress, and tucked her into bed.

It was I who first noticed that the soles of her feet were bloody, like she’d lost her shoes a long time ago.

And it was me to whom she spoke her first words since her return.

Floating in and out of consciousness, her lips pale, she snapped awake for one precious moment. Her eyes met mine, like she was finally back in her body.

“It wasn’t worth it,”

she rasped.

“What wasn’t?”

I whispered in return.

The candle at her bedside flickered. “The bargain.”

Her eyes were wide, imploring me to listen. “It wasn’t worth it.”

She slept for three days, and I sat vigil at her bedside, relief at her return and terror at the state she was in intermingling to form an emotion I still can’t name.

When she awoke after her long sleep, hope bloomed in me that she would be back to herself, armed with a plausible explanation for her disappearance. But all she had to offer was a paper-thin story about running away with a lover, some working-class printer. She said that they had arranged to elope but were accosted on the road and her bridegroom was murdered. Left lost and alone, she finally found her way back to the outskirts of London.

I brushed my sister’s fringe from where it was stuck to her sweaty forehead. “Why are you lying to me?”

We didn’t lie. Not to each other.

She looked vacantly at the wall, and something inside of me died.

Mama and Papa grimly spread Lydia’s explanation around town. None of us believed it, and it wasn’t exactly an acceptable story, but it was less tawdry than nothing.

But the gossips of London have plenty of time on their hands, and it wasn’t long before they discovered that no marriage records for one Lydia Benton were ever filed in Gretna Green.

I’ve only been invited to the Pact Parade as a courtesy, given my father’s title as a marquess. But even if my mother is in denial, I know that no more invitations will come for the rest of the season. My debut in society will be over as soon as it has begun.

I dash upstairs to dress for dinner, hesitating as I pass my sister’s door. I know better by now, but I can’t help myself from turning the knob and stepping inside.

Lydia spends most days shut in the dark of her room—“Convalescing,”

they call it. She wastes her time away, eating cut fruit brought up on silver trays by the ring of her bell. It’s the only thing she wants. She devours whole oranges and cubes of hothouse pineapple and watermelon like she’s starving and nothing else will sate her.

I heard our housekeeper, Mrs. Tuttle, complaining to our cook, Mr. Froburg, that our parents’ coddling made us both soft. I couldn’t even find it in myself to be upset about her gossip. She was right. I was too soft. Right up until the moment my sister disappeared, I really did believe the world was a kind place that wanted good things for me.

The curtains in Lydia’s room are drawn, and she’s nothing but a lump, her blond hair barely visible under her duvet.

I sit on the edge of her bed and lay a hand on her back. “Lydia, the Pact Parade is tomorrow.”

She doesn’t roll around to face me, but I can tell by the rise and fall of her shoulders that she’s awake.

She draws a breath. “Oh?”

“Will you dress my hair like you used to? Remember when you used Mama’s necklace to—”

She finally rolls over and cuts me off. “I’m afraid I won’t remember how. You’d best let Mrs. Tuttle do it.”

She swipes a palm across her storm-cloud face. I don’t know if she’s only just finished crying or getting ready to start, but her eyes are rimmed in red. “Close the door on the way out, please.”

I leave her in darkness.

I don’t know why I keep giving her opportunities to break my heart.

She’s ruined my chances of finding a husband. No family of any real status will let their son stoop so low as to marry a Benton. No real dowry to speak of, and now no honor either.

The truth is, I hate her more than anyone in the world. The rage rips hot and fierce through the walls of my chest, and I have to resist the urge to wrench her door back open and shake her until she can give me an explanation.

But by the time I reach my own bedroom door, I miss her. I just miss her.

I love Lydia more than anyone else in the world too.

She’s easier to love when she’s not in front of me. I like her so much more when she’s not around.

My father goes to bed right after dinner, unable to bear the nervous tapping of my foot and my mother’s forced cheerfulness.

It’s just Mama and I in the drawing room. Outside, Belgrave Square is dark and quiet. Inside is a chorus of sounds I know well: the ticking of the grandfather clock, the crackling of the fire, and the incessant scratching of my mother’s pen.

She’s done this since well before I was born, dumping every single thought she’s had all day into a journal. There are volumes of them scattered across the house, shoved into bookshelves and in teetering stacks next to threadbare armchairs.

I’m working on my own correspondence; I owe Ethel a letter. Now in her mid-eighties, she rarely leaves her home in Bradford, but I’ve been writing her for years about our shared interest in faeries. I was twelve when Lydia and Greer told me that only babies were obsessed with magic, and that only the low-class worshipped the queen, so they didn’t want to talk to me about the Others anymore.

They were right, at least partially. It’s only the commoners, far outside the home counties, who wear fake pointed ears to celebrate Queen’s Day, marking the day Queen Mor arrived in England. They’re the ones who put her face up in the old chapels and built monuments in her name. It was far below a titled girl like me to find faeries interesting.

The London peerage like to think we’re something close to her equals, though of course we’re not. I think she let us keep the traditions of an England that was once ruled by humans, like our debutante parade, to give us some illusion that we still have any power left. An immortal queen letting English high society still have our little rituals is like an indulgent parent handing their crying child a toy.

These are the kinds of thoughts I write to Ethel about. When Lydia and Greer rejected me, all I was left with were secret letters to Papa’s great-aunt’s neighbor. We don’t write as often anymore, but I like to know she’s well. She was the only one I told about my theory of Lydia falling through a faerie door. I knew she was the only person on earth who wouldn’t laugh at me.

“What do you think the other girls will ask for this year?”

Mama asks casually, like she’s only just thought of it, but she’s been glancing at me anxiously over her page for the last hour. “The Itos’ daughter has such a pretty face, and more money than she knows what to do with. Maybe she’ll ask to play the pianoforte better. She didn’t exactly impress at the summer solstice concert last year.”

“Hmm.”

I nod noncommittally and continue sipping my tea.

“Greer will surely ask for a few inches of height, and that never costs much. You know the Duchess of Gloucester? She came out in my year. She asked for three inches, all in her legs. It cost her both big toes, but it landed her a duke, didn’t it?”

My mother thumbs over the nub of her left pinkie, where it stops abruptly at the second joint. She gave it up for a better memory. She had such a fear of forgetting names and faces during the whirlwind balls of her season and getting a reputation for being rude. She remembers absolutely everything now. My father says that the way she recalled the tiny details of their past conversations is what made him fall in love with her. She made him feel seen.

My mother remembers everyone from her season, could recite their faces, their titles, and the addresses of their estates like an encyclopedia, but those people don’t speak to her anymore. They’ve forgotten her in a way she can never forget them. It’s why she writes in the journals. She hopes dumping everything from her too-full brain out onto the page will give her some semblance of peace. I’m unconvinced it helps.

She takes another small sip of port and tuts her tongue. I don’t like the way her glance has fallen on me. Sometimes I’m afraid she’ll look right through me, like I’m made of glass, and see everything I’m hiding from her. That’s the thing about a mother who remembers absolutely everything; she’s nearly impossible to lie to.

“And you know, as your mother, I think you’re perfect, but have you decided yet the bargain you’ll make?”

This is the dance we do. I’ve learned the steps as diligently as I practiced the quadrille in cotillion class, stepping around the topic of Lydia, her lack of a husband, the bargain she can’t remember.

It never should have been me in this position. This was always Lydia’s job. My father used to joke about us being the heir and the spare. Lydia was the Benton family’s great hope. Her advantageous match was a foregone conclusion. My only job was to stay out of her way and stop tearing my dresses when I skinned my knees.

“Not yet.”

I yawn dramatically, preparing to make my exit for bed.

But Mama just keeps staring at me. “I think you could do with sleeker hair, or a clever talent, like watercolor or the cello?”

“Hmm, perhaps.”

This little act we do makes me so sad, I have to blink back sudden tears. She must know as well as I do, I could be the greatest watercolorist on earth and it wouldn’t help me receive any offers this season.

“Think on it, will you? You don’t have long, and there’s nothing worse than an impulsive decision.”

I rise from the silk settee and cross the room to give her a kiss on the head. “Of course, Mama.”

“Darling?” she asks.

I pause in the doorway.

“This family can’t afford another failure. We’re—”

She swallows hard. “We’re going to lose the house in the next twelve months unless something changes.”

I freeze. I knew things were bad, but I didn’t know our finances had become so dire.

I don’t let the tears fall until I’m up in my room. The embers of the fire glow in the grate, casting my room in long, dark shadows.

I look to where the invitation to the Pact Parade sits on my bedside table, its gold lettering dancing in the firelight against the thick, robin’s egg blue parchment.

I write down the words I plan to say to the queen one final time, ensuring that they’re perfectly committed to memory, and then feed the paper to the fire.

Though I slept fitfully all night, I’m awoken by the chirping of birds. I roll over and gaze at the rinsed blue sky of a London spring morning. It’s a certain kind of feeling, one that rests in the joints of my ankles, that today my life will change.

Lydia’s words echo in my head. It wasn’t worth it. The bargain wasn’t worth it.

I am not my sister.

I’ll make sure my bargain is.

When one makes a faerie bargain, one must be prepared to pay the price. There is one silver lining. I have nothing to lose.