Four
O ne moment, I’m soaring—red ribbons, the taste of wine, the feeling of someone holding me, all reeling through my mind—and in the next, all pretense of dreams were ripped away with the shoving of curtains, the expulsion of darkness from my bedroom. I was abruptly awakened by the maid, rousing me from sleep with the sudden light filling the room. My eyes snapped open to a blinding brightness that sent spears of pain through my head.
“ God —” Hands flying to my face, shielding myself from the shooting pain, I pressed my fingers into my eyes.
“Good morning, Miss Helena,” the maid said, setting a tray of coffee on my vanity. The ceramic rattled. “Long evening?”
“What time is it? ”
“Oh, only half-past eleven,” she said, as though it weren’t outrageously late. No wonder the sun shone so strongly. “Your mother is waiting for you in the sitting room.”
I groaned. “Of course.”
“You’re lucky she let you sleep this late.”
I scowled at the maid, a young girl, not much younger than myself, who had only been in the house a couple of months. Due to the nearness of our ages, she seemed to think she could speak so casually to me. And I didn’t correct her, because someone who was willing not to mince their words was refreshing company.
Her dress was ironed so there were no wrinkles, the black fabric starched, the apron over her skirts unstained. Her dark, curly hair was braided into a knot at the base of her neck.
She shrugged at my sour expression. “I only speak the truth, Miss.”
“I know,” I sighed, feeling the ache in my muscles.
I realized I didn’t remember returning home. My memories of the last evening were foggy—no doubt thanks to the gin and champagne—but I knew I danced with a man—almost did more ; Brancato, was it?—and eventually, Flora and Dixon had corralled me back into the Duesenberg.
A line of red, a snake, a dancing woman. Writhing bodies, moving together in tandem, and shouts, and spilt liquor, and a red substance that stained the floor and moved under my shoes, flooding inch by inch until it crawled up the walls.
It was as though the whole evening played in my mind in flashes, over the course of a few seconds. I remembered spinning, the shattering of glass, raucous laughter. The smell of cigars tickled my nose, like I was still there in that grand foyer. The feeling of Brancato’s stare. Frustration.
And the gaze of one of those demons on the ceiling—or, not a demon, a stranger—his stare intense even across the crowd.
I could not remember what was real and what was a dream.
Soon overpowered by the pounding of my skull, I covered my face with a silk pillow to drown out the sunlight. “Tell Mother I’ll be down in twenty minutes,” I told the maid. I didn’t hear a response, but in a few moments, the door clicked, and I was alone.
We sat in tense silence, the sitting room’s air thick enough to sever with one of our serving knives.
I had managed to make myself up, to brush through my hair and pinch some color into my cheeks, before coming down the stairs. My head still pounded, the light still too bright for my poor eyes.
Elbows against the table, I leaned into my fingers. I hadn’t realized my eyes were closed.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Mother sat across from me, gaze piercing and critical.
I forced a smile. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“You look ill.” Her voice was loud and cutting, shrill to my ears.
I winced, but forced the smile to remain. “I’m alright.” Though I would’ve gladly continued to sleep the day away .
She scoffed and shook her head to herself. “Where were you last night?”
“At a dinner club.” The lie came smoothly, as it always did, slipping easily off my tongue. “With Flora and Lord Dixon.”
“Until the early hours?”
I fought an incriminating blush. Mother always went to bed not long after dusk, since Father had passed and Lucas had left, so I never thought to worry about how much she noticed about my comings and goings.
My fingers found a loose thread at my skirt’s hem. “We lost track of time.”
Mother sat embroidering, weaving the needle as though it were an extension of herself, a sixth finger perhaps. She probably didn’t even need to look. Though her gaze was on her task, I knew it was just to look anywhere else but at me. To avoid looking at her daughter. A small voice within me told me she could sense every lie, as though my mind were wide open, hers to read.
I picked at the cucumber sandwiches before us, feigning trying to pick just the right one, though, really, my stomach rolled.
I will never drink again.
“Young women should not be out that late,” she said. “ Polite young women.”
Smothering the urge to roll my eyes, I plucked a sandwich from the platter. “Everybody goes out at night, Mother. I don’t think anyone would look down upon—”
“You may not think it, but I assure you, people speak.” Her hands moved furiously at her cloth, her brow furrowed in concentration. She had some stray grays that escaped her braid, frizzled and framing her face.
“Why, has someone said something about me?” I asked.
Though I wondered, my head skimming through all of my memories for each salacious, indulgent evening—surely she wouldn’t know about those . The time I’d let that one particular charmer take me into a dark corner and had to wear scarves for the next week. The one party we’d gone to at a rooftop pool and everyone jumped in with nothing but their underthings.
There couldn’t be that many eyes around the city. Not trained on me , of all people, waiting to report back to Mother, or, worse, Lucas. Ready to spread the latest rumors about the sister to Lucas Quintrell, heir extraordinaire .
Mother glanced up at me, gray stare pointed and direct. Fingers paused at their task. “No.”
My shoulders relaxed. “Well, then, why worry?” I tried to give her my most confident smile.
My teeth ached. The room nearly spun, the sunlight streaming in the windows still just too bright.
Why worry, indeed.
The permanent scowl on her brows only deepened. “ Because , Helena, no respectable man would choose a wife who could not control her whims. Who was the topic of much… debate .” Her fingers began once again, picking up speed, moving deftly along the thread.
Lord Dixon would. He chose Flora. At least, for now. He did not seem too concerned about marriage, and neither did she. She hadn’t mentioned as much to me, but I couldn’t say she would refuse if he offered, not with those deep coffers .
“Mother, you worry too much.”
“I do not worry enough .”
I often wondered if Mother thought we were still in the nineteenth century, if Victoria was still queen across the sea, and our biggest problems were trains and smog and how long it would take for a letter to be delivered. A life that lived with the sunlight, dying with the darkness.
The same era in which she met Father. I did not know much about their romance, or lack thereof. Only that he courted her, the “proper” way, and that they had Lucas not long after their wedding, and then me, a few years later. And from that point on, they never slept in the same room again.
Is that what she wanted for me? A loveless consummation, children born into a house with love most definitely lost, a male patriarch who found affection elsewhere?
She would never admit it, but the years before Father’s death, their disdain for each other was no longer kept to their private chambers. We saw him less and less, especially in the evenings, and when he passed, he did it elsewhere. Mother wouldn’t tell me where, or how, but there were rumors.
The next morning, the papers read, Quintrell Family Business To Pass On To Heir .
And here Mother was, stuck at home with her frivolous daughter, spending her days away, embroidering, having ladies over for tea, waiting with bated breath for any word from her dearest son, the heir of that company now. Her star-child.
“It’s the twentieth century, now, Mother,” I said, taking the tiniest sip of tea. I winced again. Not Earl Grey .
“I don’t care what year it is. You can flout all you want about being modern , but I’m telling you,” her hands moved the thread and needle furiously, “it matters .”
A sigh brushed past my lips again.
“I never had to worry about Lucas,” she muttered.
I lowered my teacup, watching her fingers move. Deftly, they wove over and under in a complicated dance.
Red thread, ribbons, a pale limb .
His face .
My breath caught, and I cleared my throat to cover up my gasp. The sudden tightening of my throat, the pinch at the corners of my eyes.
It had to have been a gin-induced dream. A memory, come to haunt me. It was a face I hadn’t looked upon in years, one I’d tried hard not to forget, but to set aside for later. For when I was ready to think about it again, to think on all the good I’d once had.
It was impossible that he was there last night. It was a trick of my mind. A champagne hallucination.
“Are you listening to me?”
Mother stopped her movements, a brow arched.
I didn’t hear what she’d said. I had been deaf to the world, sucked back into the recesses of my mind.
Setting down my teacup, the ceramic tinkling against its saucer, and I pulled my lips back into a smile that didn’t meet my eyes. “Of course.”
She scoffed. “No one’s going to want a wife who can’t listen, either, Helena.”
“Well, then, perhaps I won’t marry.” The words nearly snapped out of me, despite knowing better .
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you’ll marry.”
We’d had this conversation so many times. It felt like a script from a play.
“Every respectable woman marries.”
I bit my lip.
“Can I not be respectable and stay unmarried?”
Mother looked exasperated. “ No , Helena.” She set her fabric down on the table and stared at me for a moment. I couldn’t read her—couldn’t read anything in the furrow of her dark brow, the dullness of her gray eyes, other than a deep tiredness that had become a disease. A tiredness for not only me, but everything .
The woman she was, the woman she wanted me to be, was killing her with exhaustion.
“What is it you want?” she demanded.
I blinked, the backs of my eyes aching at the midday light. “What?”
She scowled even further, if that was possible. “You always refuse. No matter what I say, you have to fight it.”
“Perhaps we’re just different people,” I said gently.
She shook her head, and I didn’t know if it was a refusal of my answer or further exasperation. “You must have some goal, then. What is it?”
“A goal?”
“Yes. To be so… contrary .”
“You think I’m contrary?” I scoffed, though, if I were honest with myself, was it a surprise she thought of me so?
“Yes,” she said again. “You’ve always been this way.”
I crossed my arms, feeling a sudden chill in the room, the window open just a crack. The breeze from outside raced down my arms, lifting a curl off my cheek. I stood, making my way over to the window so I could look at anything other than her .
If I’ve always been this way, then why do you try to change me?
“I’m sorry we cannot be in agreement, then,” I said, but I wanted to take the words back almost immediately, because no, I wasn’t sorry. I wasn’t sorry that I liked to spend my evenings with Flora and Dixon, and whomever else we found. I wasn’t sorry that I wanted to experience what the night had to offer. I liked flirting, grabbing a man’s attention for the night, making him so absolutely mad with his want for me that he’d think about me for days. I liked when my feet ached because I couldn’t stop dancing the night before. I liked coming home at all hours, because when the sky turned just a slightly lighter shade of indigo, the night coming to its end, that was when it was most quiet, and anyone still up was the most honest they could ever be.
I was just sorry that she wanted me to change.
She picked up her fabric and resumed her embroidery. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, her voice a little more resigned.
“It doesn’t?” I turned toward her. She was again focusing on her fingers, her brow arched in concentration.
“No. Your brother will figure it out.”
I wanted to laugh. “Lucas?”
“He is coming at the end of the week to straighten this out.” To straighten you out, I knew she meant.
My stomach instantly dropped, the breath sucked out of me. “But—surely he’s busy. He doesn’t need to come—”
“He will be staying with us for the next few weeks, and in the meantime, I expect you to remain at home.” Her focus broke from her task, so the glare turned on me. She pinned me with those eyes, nailing my feet to the floor. “ With your family .”
Blood rushed to my ears, and a chasm opened up within me. The emptiness in my chest I tried so hard to disguise, to hide. “You cannot expect me to just never leave the house.” I almost laughed because it was so ridiculous. Like I was a criminal. Untamable.
“That is exactly what I expect.” Finality laced every word.
My hands curled into fists, my nails digging into the flesh of my palm, the biting pain anchoring me. My vision blurred.
“So you summon him because you feel you can’t control me?” The words were almost a shout, and she whirled on me, aghast.
“That is exactly why I summoned him. I did something right with him, and as the head of the family, he needs to know you cannot be left to your own devices.”
I laughed drily, wishing my fingers were claws that could puncture my skin, bring blood to the surface.
Red thread, ribbons, his eyes. He was there, he found you, he found you.
“If we do not figure you out, Helena, what future do you have?”
I didn’t want to hear it anymore. I left the room without a reply, heart pounding against my ribcage, my eyes burning, teeth nearly biting through my lip, and I could not catch my breath.