Chapter 4
Chapter Four
“You did not attempt to employ the least bit of charm on your suitors last night,” Lady Grisham declared harshly.
“And you, Wilhelmina,” she continued. “You are too—to feral for a debutante. You will scare everyone away!”
“That was the intention, Mother,” Wilhelmina replied. “Do you really want me to marry someone who can’t handle me?”
“Your husband will handle you in different ways, Wilhelmina. He will provide you with an allowance and a home to be the mistress of. Then, you’ll provide him with heirs. It is the way of our world,” Lady Grisham said with finality.
“And you, Elizabeth, would have paved the path better for your sisters if you had not looked like an awkward fool the whole time.” The words hurt, but she was used to them.
“Remember what we talked about. A girl who looks like you should have it easy, but you managed to push away all the suitors you somehow attracted with your bumbling about.”
“What does Elizabeth have to remember, Mother?” Wilhelmina asked suspiciously, quickly following the conversation.
“We should not be talking about that. We should be talking about more important things,” Elizabeth mumbled.
“Nothing of importance to you, dear,” Lady Grisham agreed with Elizabeth simply by ignoring her addressing Wilhelmina instead.
“She just needs to marry this Season. With every ball, she should establish her presence to be remembered and wanted to be somebody’s bride.
Unfortunately, she is doing the opposite. ”
“I suspect it would matter to me if it involves a conversation between my mother and my sister,” Wilhelmina insisted.
“Focus on your own manners,” her mother advised, with flashing eyes that seemed to warn her to know her limits.
Wilhelmina sighed heavily and went back to digging at her breakfast.
Elizabeth was relieved to discover that she had a free afternoon—free in that she need not socialize with members of the ton.
She was to spend her day with her thirteen-year-old twin sisters. She felt terrible for Wilhelmina, though, who had to go on a shopping trip with Lady Grisham.
“How was the ball, Lizzie?” Daphne asked, looking up from her book, her voice soft with curiosity.
A quiet morning in the drawing room was a balm after the storm of the previous night, and having her sisters close made speaking of it feel less like reopening a wound.
“It was, objectively, a well-planned event,” Elizabeth replied, folding her hands in her lap. “Everything was beautiful. The gowns, the decorations, the music. Even the food was thoughtful.”
Aesthetics, she thought vaguely, her mind conjuring an unwelcome image: the Scotsman’s sardonic smile, the gleam in his eyes, the heat that had crawled over her skin.
“I can hear a ‘but’ somewhere,” Victoria chimed in, sprawled on the carpet with her skirts tucked under her legs.
She was fanning out a deck of odd, painted cards on the rug before her.
Elizabeth blinked. “Where did you get those?”
Victoria grinned. “Found them in the library. Tucked in behind a stack of old French dictionaries in the locked cabinet. I think they’re from the Continent. Father must have brought them back at some point.” She flipped a card. “This one’s called The Tower. Doesn’t look promising.”
Daphne leaned closer, frowning at the image. “It looks terrifying. Are they… dangerous?”
“They’re just cards,” Victoria said airily, though there was something fierce in the way she shuffled them. “Symbols. I like the illustrations.”
“Lady Grisham wouldn’t approve,” Daphne whispered.
“Lady Grisham doesn’t approve of breathing too loudly,” Victoria muttered, laying out another card with a flourish.
Elizabeth smiled faintly, but the ache in her chest returned when she thought of the woman in the painting.
Of how much she had seen, how much she had felt.
Her fingers itched to touch something real again, something unobserved.
But the ball had been all eyes, all whispers, and the Scotsman’s voice cutting through the haze like thunder on the moors.
“What happened?” Daphne asked gently, as if sensing her silence.
Elizabeth hesitated. “I think,” she said slowly, “I saw something I wasn’t meant to see.”
Victoria immediately perked up. “A scandal?”
“No. I saw art,” Elizabeth replied. “Scandalous, perhaps. But art.”
Daphne looked bewildered. Victoria looked delighted.
“Scandalous art?” Victoria crowed then pointed dramatically at a tarot card. “The High Priestess! In the book that came with this deck, it says that it means secrets and mysteries. It’s you, Lizzie.”
Elizabeth hesitated, then bit her lip. “Some girls said unpleasant things. They laughed behind their fans and made sport of me.”
“Tell me who they are,” Victoria said at once, her voice like steel. “Point them out next time we’re at the park, and I shall see to it they regret it.”
Elizabeth managed a small smile. “It’s not worth the fuss, darling.”
“But it is,” Victoria muttered darkly. “You’re worth the fuss.”
“And then,” Elizabeth continued, cheeks warming, “I danced with a gentleman who spent most of the time staring at my… figure.”
Daphne made a face. “That’s revolting.”
“Sadly,” Victoria declared with all the certainty of a girl who had seen too much too young, “that is exactly what some men do. I’ve read about it.”
“Not all men, Vicky,” Elizabeth said gently. “Well, the second one wasn’t quite so revolting,” she added with a grimace. “He was simply obsessed with fox hunting. It was all he spoke of.”
“Didn’t Marianne’s Dominic used to hunt?” Daphne asked, frowning in thought.
“He did,” Elizabeth said. “But it wasn’t all he was. After they married, he gave it up entirely. He eats little meat now—only game, and that rarely.”
“Not entirely,” Victoria said, wriggling her brows. “He still eats pheasant when it’s roasted just right. I’ve seen him.”
Elizabeth chuckled. “Yes, but that’s by Marianne’s leave. They understand one another. They make compromises.”
“Then you wouldn’t compromise with your suitor?” Victoria asked, cocking her head, too perceptive for her age.
Elizabeth sighed. “He didn’t seem to notice that I was quiet. Or that I was trying to speak at all.”
“There, then,” Victoria declared, clapping her hands. “It wasn’t the hunting that was the problem. It was the man.”
“Vicky,” Daphne said admiringly, her face bright with pride, “you’re positively shrewd! Was there anyone else, Lizzie?” she added, eyes alight with interest.
A face came unbidden to Elizabeth’s mind. Dark green eyes, a crooked smirk, and a voice low enough to make the gallery walls echo.
But he wasn’t a suitor. He’d never be a suitor.
“There was a gentleman who was supposed to be speaking with me,” she said instead, “but spent most of the time gazing at another young lady.”
“How vile!” Daphne cried, scandalized.
Elizabeth gave a small nod. “Indeed. But I’m no longer so bothered as I was last night.”
Their talk turned, as it often did, to the twins’ latest distractions: Victoria’s growing obsession with the foreign playing cards, and Daphne’s newest novel borrowed from the circulating library. The drawing room settled into its gentle peace again.
But Elizabeth’s thoughts wandered.
She kept thinking of that painting in the hidden gallery: the woman at the window, bare and unashamed, with a letter clutched to her heart. A woman who longed for something with her whole self. A woman who dared to feel.
And Elizabeth wondered, not for the first time, if she had been living too small, if the rules that had shaped her thus far had also quietly stifled her. And if that was why the Scotsman’s voice still echoed in her head.
It was such an intense craving that she—
Her thoughts were interrupted by the butler. She did not even know he was already standing by her side, delivering what looked like a letter.
“Lady Elizabeth, a letter.”
“Oh, thank you,” she said, her eyes lighting up when she saw it was from their only brother, Daniel.
Daniel wrote to them from the Continent.
Only nineteen years old, he seemed to have more life experience than all his sisters put together, but she never held it against him.
If she had a chance to flee her father and now their stepmother, without dragging her sisters’ reputation down with hers, she would.
“Who is it from?” Daphne asked, her eyes widening. She rose from her seat and sat next to Elizabeth on the couch.
“From Daniel!”
Even Victoria rose from the floor to join Elizabeth on the other side.
“What does it say?” she asked, trying to reach for the letter.
“I’ll tell you what is in it. There is no need to pull it away from me. Also, you should have at least asked, “May I?” Elizabeth scolded.
“May I read the letter?” Victoria asked, batting her lashes at her older sister, who could not help but laugh.
“Patience is a virtue, my dear. Stay put and I will tell you what is on it,” she promised.
The girls reluctantly obeyed. Elizabeth knew they simply wanted to know what their brother was up to. It had been so long, and everyone missed him.
“He’s been to Paris and Rome,” Elizabeth said, marveling at their brother's adventures and the places he had been to.
“Oh, that’s marvelous! I hope I’ll visit them one day, too!” Daphne exclaimed. “But that might mean marrying someone wealthy who wants my best interests.”
Victoria pretended to choke.
“He misses us all. He said he was glad he could come over for Christmas and meet Marianne’s husband,” Elizabeth continued. “But his adventure is in Europe at the moment. Now that he knows Father will be away for quite some time, he is considering another visit.”
“Oh, he should come,” Victoria commented, although she seemed to have sobered a little, possibly due to the mention of their father.
“He sends his love.”
“I wonder if he knows Mother is here. She can be stifling,” Victoria muttered.
Marianne, Elizabeth, and Daniel shared the same mother. Daniel had been the long-awaited heir, the answer to their father’s hopes. But their mother died giving birth to him, and with her death, everything changed.
Instead of being celebrated, Daniel’s birth marked the beginning of their father’s unraveling. The Marquess of Grisham, once a proud and composed man, grew bitter and cruel. The child who should have been his pride became, instead, a constant reminder of his loss.
“Don’t talk about Mother that way, Vicky,” Daphne protested.
“Why? Can’t you see what she’s doing to us?
” Victoria burst out. “She hardly looks at us, let alone cares for us. She’d rather parade about, spending money on gowns and jewels for herself.
Do you remember last year? She vanished for months, and now she returns only to remind Lizzie and Mina—and us—that we’re burdens to be married off to strange, dreadful men.
I’m only grateful Marianne found someone decent. ”
“Hush, both of you. Reading Daniel’s letter ought to have been a comfort, not an excuse to quarrel,” Elizabeth said gently.
Not that it was ever truly a quarrel; Victoria’s will was simply louder, sharper. And this time, Elizabeth couldn’t disagree with her. Lady Grisham offered affection only when it suited her, when appearances demanded it.
Elizabeth stared out the window, her thoughts clouded. She only wondered… just how far would Lady Grisham go to see them all married off?