Chapter 14
“You have stabbed yourself three times since I arrived, and you haven’t finished a single petal.”
Isabella set down her own embroidery hoop and peered at Mary’s needlework.
Mary looked down at the linen stretched across her hoop. The rose she had been attempting for the past half hour looked more like a wound than a flower, and there was a spot of blood on the leaf where the needle had found her thumb instead of the fabric.
“I was never any good at this,” Mary said. “Charlotte was the one with the steady hands. She could embroider an entire tablecloth in a week. Mine always looked like someone had let a cat loose on the thread.”
“It does have a certain feral quality.” Isabella picked up her teacup and settled deeper into the settee. “But I did not come here to critique your stitching. I came because I haven’t seen you in days, and your last letter was only three lines long and mentioned the weather twice.”
Mary went to respond, but Isabella caught her.
“Before you deflect, you should know that the ton has been providing entertainment enough for both of us.” Isabella tucked her legs beneath her on the settee and pulled her teacup into her lap.
“Lady Fellowes wore a turban to the Cavendish musicale. An enormous thing, green silk, with a stuffed canary perched on top. She told everyone it was Parisian.”
“It was not Parisian, I assume?”
“It was from a milliner on Cheapside who also makes hats for the Drury Lane pantomime. Mama recognized the canary. She said it was the same bird they used in Harlequin and the Enchanted Isle last Christmas.” Isabella sipped her tea.
“Lady Fellowes was devastated. She left before the soprano finished her second aria, which was a mercy, frankly, because the soprano was dreadful.”
Mary laughed. It felt strange in her mouth, rusty from disuse, and the sound surprised them both.
“There is more,” Isabella said, clearly encouraged. “Lord Pruitt proposed to Miss Danbury at the Sefton dinner. On one knee. Between the fish course and the roast.”
“He did not,” Mary gasped.
“He did. In front of forty guests. And she refused him. In front of forty guests. Apparently, she told him that a woman who accepts a proposal delivered over turbot has no standards, and the entire table heard every word.” Isabella’s eyes gleamed.
“Lady Sefton nearly fainted into the gravy boat. Lord Pruitt has not been seen in public since. Mama says he has gone to his estate in Dorset to recover, though I suspect Dorset will not be enough.”
“Poor man.”
“Poor man? He proposed between courses, Mary. At someone else’s dinner.
The turbot was still on the table. He deserved everything he got.
” Isabella set down her cup. “Oh, and Mrs. Abernathy’s pug bit the Bishop of London at a garden party.
Drew blood. The bishop required a plaster, and Mrs. Abernathy told everyone the dog was a better judge of character than the entire House of Lords. ”
“I have missed everything,” Mary said with a sigh.
“You have missed the nonsense. The nonsense has not missed you.” Isabella’s expression softened. “But I did not visit merely to discuss pugs and proposals. How are you, my friend? You know you can confide in me, don’t you?”
Mary picked up her embroidery and set it down again. The gossip had loosened something in her chest, the laughter clearing space for the heavier things waiting behind it.
It had been nine whole days since the kiss. Nine days of Evander passing her in corridors with a nod, speaking to her at meals about estate business and Tommy’s feeding schedule, treating her with a courtesy so careful it felt like a locked door.
“I have been busy,” Mary answered. “Tommy is growing so fast, and the house requires more attention than I expected, and I’ve been learning the accounts from Mrs. Cahill, and—”
“Mary.”
“What?”
“You are listing tasks. I asked how you are, not what you have been doing.”
Mary set the embroidery hoop in her lap and pressed her thumb against the spot where the needle had pricked her.
“May I show you something first?” Mary asked.
Isabella raised an eyebrow. “That depends. Is it more needlework? Because I cannot be kind about that rose a second time.”
Mary smiled, set aside the hoop, and led Isabella upstairs to the nursery.
Once they arrived, Isabella stood over the crib with both hands pressed to her mouth. Tommy lay on his back, awake and alert, his eyes tracking the two faces above him.
“Oh, Mary.”
He was nearly a month old now, and the newborn scrunch had given way to round cheeks and bright, curious eyes that followed movement across the room.
“May I hold him?”
“Of course.” Mary lifted Tommy from the crib and transferred him into Isabella’s arms, adjusting the angle the way Mrs. Bridwell had taught her. “Support his head. Yes, just there.”
Isabella cradled him carefully, as though holding something precious and breakable.
Tommy studied her face with solemn intensity, his brow furrowed, his mouth working.
Then, his fist shot up and caught the ribbon at Isabella’s collar, and he gripped it with the iron determination Mary had come to recognize as his signature.
“He’s strong.” Isabella laughed. “Lord above, he’s got a grip.”
“Mrs. Bridwell calls him the dock worker.”
“He’s beautiful.” Isabella laughed and looked down at Tommy’s face, and her expression softened into something tender and aching. “He has Charlotte’s coloring.”
“I know.” Mary smoothed the blanket across Tommy’s chest while Isabella held him. “Every day, a little more of her comes through. The shape of his face is changing. His nose.”
“Does it make it harder? Seeing her in him?”
“It makes it everything.” Mary sat on the edge of the rocking chair. “Some mornings, I look at him, and I miss her so much I want to cry. Other mornings, I look at him, and I feel like she’s still here, in some small way. Both things are true at the same time.”
Tommy began to fuss, his face scrunching, the warning signs Mary had memorized over four weeks of close study. She stood and took him from Isabella, settling him against her shoulder with the practiced motion that had become second nature.
“You are good at this,” Isabella said. There was no surprise in her voice, only recognition. “You were born for this, Mary.”
“I was born for needlework and marrying well, according to our governess.” Mary rocked Tommy until the fussing subsided. “This part I learned on my own.”
Mrs. Bridwell appeared in the doorway, and Mary passed Tommy to her with the quiet choreography they had developed over the weeks.
The nursemaid settled him in the crook of her arm and carried him toward the window, humming softly, and Mary touched Tommy’s cheek once before turning back to Isabella.
“Come,” she said. “I believe I owe you an honest answer.”
They went back downstairs to the parlor and sat together on the sofa, where Mary recounted everything to Isabella.
“He kissed you?” Isabella gasped once Mary had finished, her embroidery hoop sat forgotten in her lap.
Her tea had gone cold. She stared at Mary with an expression caught between delight and disbelief, her needle suspended in midair.
“Keep your voice down,” Mary said. She glanced at the drawing room door, which was closed, though the habit of caution had become instinct in this house. “And yes. Nine nights ago. In the kitchen. At three in the morning.”
“The kitchen.”
“He came home injured. A cut on his arm, a deep one. I was making tea, and he walked in bleeding, and I cleaned the wound and bandaged it, and then we argued, and then he—”
Mary stopped. The memory rushed forward, vivid and unwelcome. His hand in her hair. The taste of brandy. The sound he made against her mouth. She picked up her embroidery and stabbed the needle through the linen.
“Yes… He… kissed me.”
“And?” Isabella leaned forward. “Was it terrible?”
“It was the furthest thing from terrible.” Mary pulled the thread through and realized she had stitched the petal to the back of the fabric. She set the hoop down. “It was extraordinary, Isabella. And then he apologized and walked away and has barely looked at me since.”
“He apologized?” Isabella’s brow furrowed.
“As though he had stepped on my foot at a ball.”
Isabella pressed her lips together. “Mary. Listen to me carefully. A man does not kiss a woman the way you have just described and then apologize because he felt nothing. He apologizes because he felt too much, and it frightened him.”
“You sound very certain for someone who was not there.”
“I am certain because I have eyes, and I used them at your wedding. The way he looked at you during the vows, Mary….” Isabella picked up her tea and took a sip. “The Duke of Blackholm is not indifferent to you.”
Mary traced the edge of the embroidery hoop with her finger.
“I wish Charlotte were here,” she said.
The words arrived without warning, rising from a place beneath the conversations about kisses and husbands and needlework. Isabella’s expression changed.
“I know,” Isabella said.
“She would know what to do. She always knew what to do. When I had my first season and that awful Lord Chelworth kept asking me to dance, Charlotte pulled me behind a pillar and told me exactly how to handle him. What to say, what to overlook, when to smile and when to walk away.” Mary’s throat tightened.
“She was braver than anyone gave her credit for. Everyone saw the pretty face and the good manners, and they assumed she was simple, but Charlotte understood people. She could read a room better than any diplomat.”
“And she could read you best of all.”
“She could.” Mary smoothed the fabric in her lap.
“And I failed to read her. She was planning to leave for heaven knows how long, and I saw nothing. I noticed she smiled less and that she was quiet. But I told myself it was bridal nerves, because that was easier than asking the questions I should have asked.” She looked at Isabella.
“If I had asked, she might have told me. She might have stayed. Tommy might have a mother who holds him instead of an aunt who is learning as she goes.”
Isabella set aside her tea and her embroidery and moved to the settee beside Mary. She took Mary’s hand and held it between both of hers.
“You are not an aunt learning as she goes. You are the woman raising that child. And Charlotte’s leaving was her choice. You could not have stopped her any more than the Duke could have stopped his brother.”
“I could have tried.”
“Oh, darling, please don’t drown yourself in past possibilities.” Isabella squeezed her hand. “You are doing everything right, Mary. The baby. The house. Even the impossible husband. You are holding all of it together.”
“The stitching is appalling, though.”
Isabella laughed, and the sound broke the tension open. “The stitching is genuinely dreadful. And yet you tell me you bandaged a knife wound on this man without flinching.”
“Embroidery and wound dressing are entirely different skills. One involves roses. The other involves a man bleeding on a kitchen chair at three in the morning. I find I perform better under duress.”
“Then we should find you a different hobby. Watercolors, perhaps.”
“I am worse at watercolors.”
“Then we will find something you cannot stab yourself doing.” Isabella kept hold of her hand. “Write to me more than three lines next time. I need proper details. The kiss alone deserved at least a full page.”
Mary managed a smile. The drawing room was warm, and Isabella’s hand was solid in hers, and for a few minutes the house felt less vast and the silence less heavy.
This was not Charlotte. No one would ever be Charlotte.
But Isabella was here, and she was real, and she did not flinch from the mess of Mary’s life, and that was its own kind of grace.
They picked up their embroidery and returned to their respective disasters, and Mary stitched another petal while Isabella corrected her angle, and the afternoon settled around them, and for the first time in days, Mary did not feel so terribly alone.