Chapter 1 #2
Aunt Louisa gave a small nod, as though this confirmed something already decided, and gestured faintly toward the chairs arranged nearby.
“Sit, both of you. Clara, do not flutter so, you will exhaust yourself before the day has properly begun.”
Clara laughed lightly but obeyed, though she could not remain still for long, shifting in her seat as the tea tray was brought forward.
The ritual of it, pouring, offering and accepting, provided a brief structure to the moment.
Aurelia found herself grateful for it, for the familiar motions that required no thought and no feeling.
But it could not last. She could feel Aunt Louisa’s gaze resting upon her once more, sharper now and more assessing.
“Your mother … how does she fare?”
The question was simple. The answer was not.
Aurelia placed her cup carefully upon its saucer before replying.
“She is … much the same.”
Aunt Louisa’s mouth tightened, though whether in sympathy or disapproval, Aurelia could not immediately tell.
“It has been many years,” her aunt said. “One might have hoped she would recover herself in that time.”
Clara glanced between them, her brightness dimming just a fraction, though she said nothing.
“The past does not always release its hold so easily,” Aurelia replied, forcing herself into calmness she didn’t possess.
“No,” Louisa said, with a faint, almost dismissive exhale. “No, I suppose not, particularly when one insists upon clinging to it.”
Aurelia felt the words more than she showed.
“She does not cling to it,” she said quietly. “She lives with it.”
There was a brief silence. Aunt Louisa cautiously reached for her tea, as though conserving what little strength she possessed.
“I never did understand the full of it,” she continued after a moment. “Only that there was talk, rather unpleasant talk, and that your mother chose to involve herself where it would have been wiser not to.”
Aurelia’s fingers tightened slightly against her skirt.
“She chose not to support what she knew to be false,” she pointed out.
“And it was not merely her word they wanted. There are letters of my father’s, and a little book of memoranda, which they believed she possessed.
When she would not give them up, nor swear that he had been mistaken, they found it easier to call her disordered than to answer what those papers contained. ”
Aunt Louisa gave a small, weary shake of her head.
“Your mother was always stubborn as a mule,” she said. “It was only a matter of time before that disposition brought her trouble. The world does not reward such … principles, however admirable one might think them in theory.”
Aurelia met her gaze then, steady despite the quiet strain beneath it.
“She stood for the truth.”
“And what did it bring her?” Louisa returned with a bluntness that allowed no escape. “Disgrace, isolation, ill health. You, driven from your home.”
Clara shifted again, clearly uncomfortable now, though she attempted a small smile.
“But she was brave, Mama, was she not?” she ventured. “It must have been very brave—”
“Bravery,” Louisa interrupted, “is of little comfort when one must live with the consequences of it.”
Aurelia lowered her gaze, not in surrender, but in restraint. There were arguments she could make and truths she could insist upon, but they would change nothing here. The past had already been judged. It would not be tried again in a drawing room over tea.
“She would not have done otherwise,” Aurelia told them.
“No,” Louisa agreed. “No, I suppose she would not.”
For a moment, the conversation drifted toward safer subjects, toward France, toward the quieter life Aurelia and her mother had made for themselves.
She spoke of small things: the house, the gardens, the mildness of the seasons there.
She did not speak of loneliness, nor of the way her mother moved through her days as though something essential had been left behind.
The tea things were gradually set aside. Clara, sensing perhaps that the mood had grown too heavy, began once more to speak of lighter matters, of gowns, of invitations, of the promise of the season ahead, but even her cheer could not entirely dispel what had settled in the room.
Louisa regarded Aurelia for a long moment, before asking, “And you … what is to become of you, Aurelia?”
Aurelia looked up, faintly surprised. “I beg your pardon?”
“You are six-and-twenty, are you not?”
“I am.”
Louisa inclined her head slightly.
“Then it is high time you settled. You cannot remain a companion to other young ladies indefinitely. When do you intend to marry?”
The question was asked plainly, as though it were no more than a matter of ordinary concern. For a fleeting moment, she remembered what it had once been to imagine such a future, to think of love not as something distant or impractical, but as something possible.
That had been before England, before the scandal, before she had learned how swiftly society could close its doors and how firmly they remained shut.
She allowed herself a small smile.
“I do not intend to marry at all,” she informed them.
Clara blinked in surprise. “Not at all?”
Aurelia’s expression did not change. “No.”
Louisa studied her, as though weighing the answer, but did not immediately press further. Aurelia lowered her gaze once more, her hands resting calmly in her lap.
Once, she had dreamed of love.
Now, she knew better than to expect it.