Chapter 9
ANNABEL SAT ON A BENCH IN THE TRIANGLE THAT MADE UP Wakefield Green in the middle of town under a giant oak tree with sprawling, arthritic limbs—just the right cover to give herself a talking-to.
She’d never been one to linger long in discouragement, and over the years had learned to dust herself off from disappointments large and small.
When the world didn’t cooperate with her sunny view of it, she was good at finding comfort in the rococo rooms of her interior life.
She was resilient and self-contained. If she didn’t have friends, maybe she didn’t need them.
If she’d never been in love, maybe there was no one right for her—she was particular after all—or she hadn’t found them yet.
D’Evercy, or whoever he was, reminded her there might be someone, somewhere, at least a man who could pretend to be D’Evercy.
Yes, maybe she lived in a bit of a fantasy world, but it was how she wished the world would be.
Slower, kinder, more attentive to beauty, to wit and wonder, simple pleasures—without the demands and distractions of modern life.
The ball had been a dream; it was a night she’d never forget.
But instead of feeling bad about missing the next one, she could count last night’s ball as an unexpected gift and a gift to her writing, which was, after all, the reason she’d come.
“Write what you know,” Stella had told her.
Well, now she knew more, a lot more, in fine detail and firsthand.
Even if it was re-creation, even if D’Evercy was pretending, and Fanny, too, it fed her imagination.
She would find the good in it, because that’s what Annabel did.
And Bloomingdale’s card aside, Cassie had at least made an effort to come see her, and maybe she should count that as a gift too.
Jane Austen had an older sister—her own Cassandra—whom she was close to and adored.
They were more than sisters; they were soulmates.
It would never be that way with Cassie, but maybe if they spent a few days, came to know each other a little better, they’d have a chance for something new between them.
She resolved to make a nice dinner—sausage and mash and mushy peas—knowing it would take her mind off the ball she was missing.
But, being not immune to the magic of possibility, Annabel closed her eyes and counted slowly to ten.
If she opened them and saw anyone from last night’s ball, she would take it as a sign, renewed hope for figuring it out: how she could have gotten it so wrong, with still just enough time to get it right.
But when she opened her eyes, all were strangers.
She stood up, threw her shoulders back, and proceeded with plan B: the sausage and mash.
Stopping at the butcher, the grocer, and the wineshop cheered her considerably, even if she couldn’t help asking a chatty cashier if she happened to know anything about a ball that night, somewhere in the vicinity, for the officers of the regiment.
“Ah, pet, are you one of those people?” the cashier asked her. “The dress-up-and-play people?”
“Not really. Just curious,” said Annabel, then hurried to the exit.
She treated herself to a cab back to Kidlington, where she wrangled two totes full of groceries inside and headed for the kitchen. But when she passed by the drawing room, her heart sank. The Hepplewhites were gone.
She set down the groceries and let go a heavy sigh.
“A-bel? Is that you?” Cassie called from upstairs.
“Yes, it’s me.”
“You just missed Patterson and his men.”
“I can see that,” she said, strangely bereft.
“Billy said they ran out of space in the truck. But they’ll be back.”
It was hard for Annabel to see how lonely the massive couches and coffee table and armoire looked without the graceful Hepplewhites. They’d left a gaping hole and little rings of dust around their phantom feet. It made her feel lonely too.
“I know you’re probably sad about the Hepplewhites,” Cassie called down, “but this’ll cheer you up . . . Okay, close your eyes!”
“Why?
“Just close them.”
Annabel heard footsteps on the stairs but kept her eyes pinched shut.
“Okay. You can look.”
When she did, Annabel was shocked to see Cassie at the bottom of the stairs striking a fashion model pose in a gorgeous Regency gown.
“Wow . . .”
“Amazing, right?”
Annabel remembered seeing the gown on its dress form, but on Cassie it sizzled and popped.
It had the usual neoclassical silhouette—high waist, low neck, slightly gathered sleeves—but a fine red chiffon lay over the pale underdress, fixed with a burgundy ribbon under her breast. From there the flat-front skirt dripped to the floor, finishing in a fluted hem with a trail of embroidered rosebud garlands in pink, red, and green chenille.
Cassie spun around to reveal the fabric gathered at the back, where the delicate silk flowed in luscious folds.
“Stunning,” said Annabel.
“God, I haven’t played dress-up in like a million years. Remember we used to? Those tea parties you made me come to?”
Annabel knew the question was rhetorical.
Cassie wasn’t the reminiscing sort, certainly not about anything that was Annabel’s idea.
The tea parties may have been where they parted ways years ago.
It was around the same time Cassie quit piano to play travel golf instead.
Her swing, it was said, was all feel, no fear.
“I love how the red goes with my current buttery blond.” Cassie moved her cosmetics bag from the scroll at the end of the banister and picked up an old book beneath it. “Plus, I found this in the library. Can you believe it?”
Annabel took the book from her sister, a slim volume, mottled brown calfskin, corners rounded and scuffed. She read the title stamped in gold in a decorative oval frame, cracked and faded: Ladies’ Fashions, 1815.
“I think it’s real,” said Cassie. “Like, from actual then.”
“Oh, it definitely is. How cool.” The book opened naturally to a flower pressed between two brittle tissue guards. Annabel touched it lightly. “Look! It’s probably from the garden. ‘From actual then.’”
“Sweet. But not that.” Cassie reached over and opened to a different page, bookmarked with a length of dental floss. “This!”
The tissue guard was all but disintegrated on the page Cassie turned to, and underneath was a hand-colored fashion plate of various hairstyles: topknots, high buns, chignons, ringlets, curls.
“I thought this one would complement the fit.” She pointed to the hairdo she liked.
“And I brought a curling iron that’ll do these ringlets around my face. Don’t you think?”
Annabel looked at her blankly. This wasn’t like Cassie at all.
“We wanna go. To the ball thing.”
“Oh,” said Annabel, closing the book. “But you said you didn’t want to.”
“Yeah, well, could this place be any more boring? I actually went up to the attic, to try to get cell service, and I found that crazy-ass room full of these! It’s like a museum up there. Like, holy shit!”
“I know.”
Billy wandered in from the kitchen in a white ruffled shirt and breeches, a gorgeous green silk waistcoat, and tights. Another shocking transformation—except for his still-wild hair.
Annabel was speechless.
“Right?” said Billy, eating the remains of the cold steak-and-kidney hotpot. “This fit is fire!” He pointed to the hotpot with his fork. “Also, this crap isn’t half bad.”
He stopped at the drawing room entrance, chewing a bite, taking in the depleted room.
“They took the Hepplewhites,” Annabel said, deflated.
“Oh no!” Billy said in his flawless English accent. “Not the Hepplewhites!”
Cassie fist-bumped him.
“Did Cassie tell you Patterson’ll be back later? For the rest of the stuff.”
“She did.”
“Your hair needs some help,” said Cassie, tousling Billy’s mop.
“Can you fix it?”
“I think I have mousse,” said Cassie. “But you don’t need volume, you need control.” Cassie turned to Annabel. “We both need gel. For the ball. Do you have any?”
Annabel sagged. “Oh god, you guys. I couldn’t find anyone, about the carriage.”
“So, we’ll call a cab.” Cassie pointed to the rotary phone on the console table. “That thing has a dial tone. I checked.”
“I don’t even know where the party is. I don’t have a phone number. Or anything.”
“But it’s Saturday night!”
“I’m sorry,” said Annabel, now balancing her own disappointment with guilt at letting them down.
Billy sat on the first stair, still eating the hotpot. “Bummer. I was actually kind of into it.”
Cassie crossed her arms and huffed. “This is so like you, Annabel.”
Annabel finally took offense. “So like me how?”
“I don’t know.” Cassie didn’t know where she was going with it, but that didn’t stop her. “Like your tea parties! All this big, huge buildup. You made invitations and everything.” She waved her arms around. “And then nothing happens!”
“It’s a tea party. You have tea.”
“Yeah, well, that was boring too. Plus, it was fake tea. We had to fake the actual tea!”
“I was four!”
“Yeah, maybe it started when you were four. I’m gonna be nice and not say how long it went on.”
“Maybe I had an active imagination.”
“Try ‘have.’” Cassie swept her hand across the space. “I mean, Mom’s right. Whose fantasy is this?” She rifled through her cosmetics bag. “I guess this really is the night I whiten my teeth!”
Annabel looked at Billy on the off chance he’d see her side of it.
“Not going anywhere near that sister shit.”
Annabel wanted to defend herself, take a stand.
Apparently, there was no “unexpected gift” between sisters to be had; in fact, part of her wanted to say that she hadn’t invited or expected them—that this was her writing holiday, her old country pile, and they’d foiled her plans.
She’d have stayed home and eaten the rest of her steak-and-kidney hotpot, thank you very much, then disappeared into a book, and been content!
But standing up to Cassie had never been her strong suit.
Long ago she’d understood that while she liked to live in her head, Cassie liked to live in the world, as long as that world revolved very much around her.
Hoping for an end on it, Annabel looked at the book in her hand. “I should put this back.” She shrugged and pointed to the totes. “And I got stuff for dinner.”
“Cool, yeah, great,” said Billy. “I’ll get those.”
At least he was trying. Annabel glanced at the stoic longcase clock with a sigh and set off to the library, peeking briefly into the dining room on her way.
It had the same forlorn emptiness now that the demilune table and chairs were gone.
She made a mental note that it would be best, for the rest of her stay, to avoid it altogether.
After Annabel returned the book to its waiting spot, she stood by the writing desk and gazed out the window.
The gardener appeared to be surrendering for the day, having lost the battle with the boxwood.
She pulled the note to Lady Gidding-Wedmore from her pocket and looked at it one last time.
If there’d been a bin, she’d have tossed it in as a final gesture of something, she wasn’t sure what.
Instead, she put it in the drawer, where she hoped it would soon be forgotten.
At least there’d be sausage and mash as consolation.
When she passed back through the foyer, she couldn’t help noticing Cassie standing in front of the entertainment center, pushing buttons on the remote.
Billy was sitting longways on the far couch playing what sounded like an action game on his phone, with pops, clicks, and crunches, the occasional explosion, making his own sounds to go with it.
They were still in their costumes from the attic.
She didn’t blame them; getting out of them was even harder than getting in.
She hoped they’d be careful, though, feeling responsible, well, for the clothes and the people wearing them.
Annabel felt her frustration melt away. If there wasn’t to be a ball that night, at least she had their company, such as it was, especially with the Hepplewhites gone. She’d never been the type to stay mad.
“I’ll start dinner in a while.”
Cassie turned to her, whitening strips on her teeth, lips pulled back on her gums. “I can’t eat fah an owuh.”
“She can’t eat for an hour,” said Billy, translating without looking up.
“Okay, I’ll start cooking, then.”
Billy took a swig from a bottle, held it up. “Hey, thanks for the brew. You’re a lifesaver.”
“No problem,” said Annabel. “I’ll just be up in my room.”
This was the Saturday night she was used to.
***
A light knock on the door downstairs woke Annabel from a hard nap.
The celestial blue of the room was dimming in the low light of early evening; she must’ve been asleep for a while.
She remembered Patterson’s men would be coming back with their truck and waited for the sound of someone shuffling to the door to answer it.
After a second, louder knock, she heard Cassie’s voice in the foyer.
“This Sotheby’s guy is really getting on my nerves!”
She heard a few unsuccessful tugs on the door, then the sound of it unsticking and opening, and a low guttural voice, a man, though she was pretty sure it wasn’t Patterson. She couldn’t make out what he was saying.
“Annabellll?” Cassie called loudly from below. “I think you better come down here. Like now!”