Chapter Sixteen
Jo
Princess Emily,
I apologize for the delay in this letter. I wanted to start it the second I returned home from walking you to the station, but didn’t have anything to say yet. Being your tutor in decadence was such a joy and an honor that I wanted to have something to show for it when I wrote you. Proof that I too might have learned something from your company. Now that I’ve got it (and a sheaf of my preferred paper at last), I can share it with you.
I have had the conversation I was putting off, due entirely to you. It was regarding Miss Garcia’s living situation, and your expert opinion on the matter of her environment left no more room for argument. I’m happy to tell you (assuming she hasn’t yet) that she will make the switch when the run of her latest show concludes. With her condition growing noticeable, she won’t be able to secure another role at that point anyway, and will be in a good position for a change. Meanwhile, my husband is preparing the home for this next phase of his life.
All that aside for a moment, will you be in London again soon, for an appointment or one of those bluestocking talks? They’re not my usual entertainment, but I’d happily bore myself senseless if it meant a little decadence with you once we’d left the coffee house.
With affection and the strawflower I owe you,
Jo
Jo finished up her letter upon an uncannily tidy oak desk. She folded the crumbling strawflower she’d borrowed into the envelope. Then she carefully tucked the lot into the envelope and sealed the parcel with warmed wax. While investigation of the desk had revealed two metal emblems to personalize the seal, Jo opted to leave the red blob as it was. These initials belonged to Miss Withers and the society house. It didn’t seem appropriate to claim the insignia, since she was no more or less than one of the girls, taking up a room and a space at the dinner table.
It didn’t seem right to keep the flower, either. The quaint novelty of it had indeed smoothed the beginning of her conversation with Paul, but once she told him she didn’t feel there was room for all of them, and that she’d be getting out of their way at last, he didn’t think the flower was particularly funny anymore.
So yeah. Jo didn’t need the flower. And with Paul furious that Jo was acting like a prat, Vanessa’s fate still uncertain, and Miss Withers’s looks of pity all weighing on her, she wanted to give any spare flower—indeed, flowers she couldn’t spare; flowers she’d grown or gone broke buying; flowers she’d stolen from rich wankers’ gardens; every bloody flower in England—to the beautiful woman who’d asked her to write letters until next they met.