Chapter Eight #2
After sitting on the chair, she opened her letter, and when she realized it was from Adelaide, she smiled. It had been a few weeks since she’d last heard from her niece.
After the familiar salutations and greetings, the young woman started right into the meat of her written conversation.
Papa has returned to London from his travels.
Because he has been gone for several months, he has promised to take me to Cornwall for the summer.
Can you believe it? I have never been there but have always wanted to go.
Apparently, one of his friends has an estate there.
He is an earl and has invited Papa and I to spend a few months with him.
The letter went on in that same gushing vein for a few paragraphs, but being able to hear the words in Adelaide’s voice lifted Mary’s spirits.
The earl also has two handsome sons a few years older than me.
Papa wants to go for the visit because he fears I’ll soon be matched and married—not necessarily to one of the earl’s sons, of course—and then he’ll be all alone, but he feels this time in Cornwall might be a good thing for my future in society.
He says I need to make more connections.
In that way, her niece sounded much like Bright. And they had been spending more time together lately, ever since they’d sponsored Adelaide during her Come Out last autumn. If possible, the tone of her letter grew even more excited as Mary read onward.
Once I come back to Town in September, I’ll wish to call upon you.
Of course, I’ll see you before Papa and I leave, but I promise to write to you every week with tales of my adventures in Cornwall and to tell you about the people I meet.
I will also give you updates about Papa.
I’m worried about him. He has been working himself far too hard.
I think he misses Mama and is just lonely these days.
Oh, could you please tell the inspector that all my friends think he’s beyond handsome and dreamy? He will find that vastly amusing. My friends want men like him for their own. A few of them have wondered if he might arrange introductions for them to Bow Street men.
Truth to tell, I wouldn’t mind finding a man with the inspector’s temperament, or a man who looks at me like he looks at you, but on the other hand, I would like to remain unmatched for a bit.
I’d rather not find myself as a man’s arm ornament before I’ve had a chance to discover who I am for myself.
The letter went on in the same vein for another few paragraphs before switching topics.
Tell the inspector I would like very much to work on a case with him, or if that is too much a stretch, perhaps I can become his secretary and keep his office and diary organized.
It would help him, and I could learn how he approaches cases, but since I had a taste of that last October, I haven’t been able to put it out of my mind.
Besides, I rather think he has far too much paperwork, and he doesn’t seem the type of man to enjoy sitting behind a desk fussing with that.
The last time I saw him, he was a bit frazzled…
Mary’s concentration on the letter faded as the idea bounced about her brain.
It was rather perfect and would solve a few issues.
The next time she spoke to Bright alone, she would mention it to him…
except he continued to behave like an arse.
They were out of sorts with each other due to both feeling underappreciated and fretting about the future they thought they would have before life had crept in.
Another wave of tears welled in her eyes. Would they ever overcome the challenge facing them at the moment? And who the devil was sending her the flowers if it wasn’t her husband? Was someone out there trying to tear them apart?
Not knowing, she moved to the bed and laid down, fully intending to take a nap. Everything was far too complicated these days, and she didn’t know why.
A few hours later, her maid came in and woke her, told her it was time to dress for dinner.
“Oh, goodness. I hadn’t meant to sleep for so long.”
“Well, you did tell me you passed a fitful night. No doubt you were tired, Mrs. Bright,” the maid said as she laid a freshly pressed gown on the bed. The deep rose-colored satin shimmered in the early evening sunlight.
“True.” Mary blew out a breath. “Uh, has the inspector come up to dress yet?”
“I wouldn’t know, but I didn’t see him leaving the room as I came up.”
Perhaps he had sneaked in and grabbed his evening clothes, or perhaps his valet already had them in his possession.
“This hasn’t exactly been the holiday I had envisioned.”
The maid gave her a quizzical glance. “At least no one was murdered this time.”
“There is that.” Except perhaps her marriage was slowly dying.
She looked around the room at the baskets and vases of flowers.
Hot guilt filled her chest. If someone out there was trying to court her with May Day flowers, they were doing a good job of undermining her current relationship.
Never had she seen her husband so incensed or frightened.
It had the power to break her heart anew.
I don’t even want anyone who isn’t Bright.
Even more disturbing, he never made an appearance in their room while she submitted to her maid’s assistance to dress her. Usually, it was one of his favorite activities, but he had the habit of kissing her or getting up to other sorts of scandals under the guise of assisting her on with her gowns.
“Everything is changing, Molly,” she whispered to her maid as the young woman did up the row of buttons at the back of her gown. “I fear that I’ll be left behind.”
“Don’t fret, Mrs. Bright. My mam used to say if caterpillars never changed, the world would have no butterflies. How sad would that be? Butterflies are a sight more beautiful than caterpillars.” Then she reached for a brush. “I wonder if the same can be said of moths…”
What an interesting way to think about it. That didn’t stop the tears from overflowing onto her cheeks anyway. So much so that her maid was quite alarmed and tried to comfort her, but Mary suspected she was beyond that.
If I lose Gabriel, what will become of everything we’ve worked so hard to build? We will all be devastated…