Chapter 9
“Muriel, are you a witch?” Muriel’s sister Mary demanded dramatically as she grabbed Muriel’s hands and whirled her around the small salon overlooking the square. They danced together as Mary all but squealed with joy.
Her sister Jane was at the piano, plunking out a tune, and Alice was embroidering on the settee by the fire. Rain was still pounding away. She feared that they were all going to have to build boats, lest they float away and become one with the Atlantic or the Thames.
“Don’t say such a thing,” she tsked back to her sister.
“I agree with Muriel, my dear Jane,” their mother said, who was fanning herself with a handkerchief, having suffered a wave of heat despite the chill of the room.
It was something that was occurring to her more and more often as of late.
“You wouldn’t want anyone to accuse your sister of witchcraft,” her mother said.
“They may not be so worried about such things now, but I will not have a whiff of such gossip about her. Besides, my darling girl does not need such a thing to captivate so many young men.”
“I’ve done nothing,” Muriel insisted.
But the truth was something very bizarre had happened.
They had had a dozen or more callers come this morning.
Her mama never needed so many pots of tea or sweet treats for guests, and yet gentleman after gentleman had arrived bearing flowers, boxes of chocolates, or little sonnets.
And one after the other, they had professed their interest in the girls, including herself, which was quite terrible.
She did not want to have a list of gentlemen to pick from. She had entirely different plans for herself. Husbands were not part of that plan.
“An earl asked me to dance,” gushed Mary, blinking her eyes as if she was in a dream.
“And a viscount asked me to dance,” Jane cheered as she played a particularly exuberant chord.
“Well, a marquess asked me,” declared Alice, tying off her crimson thread, finishing a perfect rose.
“Yes. A veritable suit of titles,” her mother said, aflutter with happiness.
“Thank you, my dear girl, for impressing the Briarwoods so very much and bringing us into their inner circle. They are quite lovely people. Who would have guessed that such a glamorous group, so notorious, so legendary, would be so lovely to little people like us?”
Little people.
It was an odd thing to say, she thought, as she picked up a cup of lukewarm tea and drank it to its dregs. She needed the little bit of a pick-me-up it would bring. Tea was a gift from the heavens.
She stared at the empty cup, considered the pot, and decided another was just the thing. Her brain was most out of sorts. She’d never thought that her family was little exactly.
She knew that they weren’t very important, but they lived a fairly decent life. She’d been satisfied. She’d had enough. But now doors were opening for her, for her sisters, and for her mother that had simply never existed before.
Her older brother, Cassius, had been summoned to the Duke of Westleigh’s club for an afternoon retreat with a few of the gentlemen of the Briarwood family.
Her brother had been astonished at first. His eyes had gone wide. He had been a trifle suspicious of the invitation. But then he’d nodded, squared his shoulders, and seemed ready to see what it would bring.
He had gone upstairs immediately and begun trying to pick his very best clothes for such an engagement. It was, she realized, something that people didn’t really consider when mixing with people who had so much.
Generally, the circle that they were in were like them, well-to-do but not the most glorious or glittering.
Now they’d been shoved into the veritable fire of the most exclusive, and they weren’t being burned, but it was impossible not to notice the differences in their clothes and their demeanor and their attitudes.
The people of the Briarwoods’ ilk knew they ran the world and they acted like it. She and her family, of course, came from a long line of landed gentry and that was very important, but they’d never quite known what it was like to be one of those people. She wasn’t sure she’d ever wished to know.
She wasn’t certain what to think, but she was delighted for her sisters.
“You looked so beautiful last night, my dear,” her mother said, waving her handkerchief again and pressing it to her throat.
A sheen of sweat glowed ever so slightly upon her face.
“I do wish these dreaded waves would stop. It is a great nuisance being a woman in her forties, if I must say. There is much I like, but not this!”
“Yes, Mama,” Jane said sympathetically. “It does seem that way.”
The girls looked at their mother, wondering if such a thing awaited them one day, but she and her sisters refused to think on it overlong.
They had a great deal to do before their forties, and if they managed to survive marriage and the child bed, they would worry about that battle when they got there.
Their mother, however, poor thing, did often have quite interesting swings of mood and sudden needs for cold air. Sometimes Muriel half expected her mother to dash out into the rain in the back garden to cool down.
Alice served herself a slice of cake, took a large bite, and swooned. “This is delicious. Cook has done her best today.”
“And I’m glad of it,” her mother said, “given how many lords came to call in this little house of ours.”
“Do you think they were dismayed by our little house?” Jane asked, pausing at the pianoforte.
“Not a bit of it,” Mary declared boldly. “We are associated with the Briarwoods and that makes us good enough.”
Muriel bit the inside of her lip. What if the association ended? Or what if it didn’t turn out the way her mother and sisters hoped?
What if they lost the shine and polish that the Briarwoods gave them? She hated the idea of disappointing her sisters.
Mary pulled her into a hug. “I don’t know what you did to make the Dowager Duchess of Westleigh and Duchess Mercy admire you so much, but whatever it was, can you teach me?”
“Love books,” she replied, hugging her older sister back.
Mary laughed happily.
“Oh, well, that’s easy,” Mary said as she dashed to the table beside the settee that their Mama sat on and gestured to the large stack. “Look, we already have several of the books published by Duchess Mercy. Which one should I read now?”
“All of them,” Muriel replied with a laugh that matched her sister’s. “And then, of course, read a great deal about William Shakespeare. If you love William Shakespeare, you can’t go wrong. But I don’t advise praising Christopher Marlowe.”
Alice’s eyebrows shot up as she ate another bite of cake, crumbs decking her chin.
“Alice,” her mother said, “eat with a bit more decorum, can’t you? We shall have to pay our entire fortune in laundering linen napkins.”
Alice giggled and tried to be more delicate. “Forgive me, Mama, but I find I’m extremely peckish after last night. I danced every dance.”
Alice was a beautiful girl with blonde hair and bright blue eyes and freckles atop her nose. She was what should have been the pinnacle of a diamond, but she wasn’t important enough to be a diamond. Her heart was larger than almost anyone Muriel knew.
She had a few gentlemen who were interested in her, but most of them were second sons, sometimes even third sons. And now it seemed last night, simply by standing by the Briarwoods, that a viscount was possible, even without a significant dowry.
Her mother sat up a little bit straighter and then suddenly blurted, “Are you going to marry him?”
She blinked. “Who?” she asked.
Alice rolled her eyes. “Don’t be obtuse.”
“Perseus Briarwood,” Mary said.
“No,” Muriel rushed, “of course not. Why would I marry Perseus Briarwood?”
“Because he looks at you as if you’re water and he is dying in the desert,” said Mary, waggling her brows.
“Does he?” she asked.
“Oh, he does,” her mother said merrily before arching a warning brow. “Now you are not allowing anything to occur that should not, are you, my dear girl? You’re in that house a great deal of time.”
She swallowed. Should she tell her mother the truth that he’d kissed her? No, she couldn’t do that. Because if she did, then her mother would make her stop going to Heron House and stop going to the theater and she couldn’t allow that for many reasons.
It wasn’t just so that she could keep doing research and venturing to the stage. No. If she did, then it might ruin the chances of her sisters. She was going to have to take a chance and not just for herself. It was like rolling a set of dice and not knowing the outcome.
Many people had lost their entire fortunes to the roll of the dice, but it felt to her that she was going to have to do it. Even though it caused her belly to twist with fear.
“Come on then,” she said to Alice. “Slice me a piece of cake. I need one.”
Alice grinned, headed to the little table, sliced off a piece of cake with its drizzle, plunked it onto a pink-painted plate, and handed it to her. “Nothing finer,” she said.
Muriel took up a delicate silver fork, took a bite of the exquisite stuff, and closed her eyes as the flavors danced across her tongue.
It was delicious.
But Alice was wrong. There was definitely something finer. Perseus Briarwood’s kisses, and the library at Heron House, and the costume room at the theater, and standing upon the stage in a doublet.
The cake could never ever replace those. And she had a sudden, terrible realization that now that she’d known those things, she could never go back.
The cake turned to dust in her mouth for a moment, and she felt as if her life was opening up before her like a yawning chasm. She couldn’t see the other side, what awaited her after these moments, these choices.
“I say, are you all right?” Alice asked gently.
She nodded swiftly and chewed quickly. “I was greedy and took too big of a bite.”
Alice pursed her lips, eying the cake and the fact that the bite missing was rather small. But Alice said nothing. Instead, she crossed to her and gently leaned her head upon Muriel’s shoulder for a moment.
“Thank you,” Alice whispered, “for all of this. Who knows what’s possible now?”
The words should have filled her with joy, but she wondered if maybe it would have been better if she’d never gone to Heron House.
Maybe it would have been better if she’d never tried the doublet on or gone onto the stage and recited Rosalind’s soliloquy.
Maybe it would have been better if she’d never danced with Perseus Briarwood or gone to the ball with the Dowager Duchess of Westleigh, because now that she knew all those things, she didn’t know how she was going to let any of that go, or if she could.
She’d only had a slight sense of longing before. One that books filled. For one could not long for things that one did not even understand, could they? But now she had new knowledge and that knowledge was tantalizing indeed.
She feared the cost.
Mary turned the page of her book and let out a peep of astonishment. “I say,” Mary suddenly exclaimed, “have you read this passage?”
“Oh, yes, I have,” she said, relieved to think of something else, to force her fears and doubts away. “Rather shocking, isn’t it?”
“Very shocking,” Mary breathed, which caused Alice, Jane, and their mother to perk up.
Mary tsked and let her finger trail down the page. “I think I must read it carefully to see if Alice can read it too.”
“My dear,” her mother said as she seized the book, “I must read it first to ensure that it is suitable for all of you.”
And then her mother began scanning the page.
Her mother’s eyes widened, her cheeks colored, and her handkerchief fluttered apace.
“Yes, very bold, very interesting. But I think it might be all right if you all read it. Edification and all that. I’m a true believer that girls should read everything.
Even what boys read. If I had been able to hire you Latin and Greek tutors, I certainly would have done.
It would have expanded your horizons. They do say the poems of Virgil are… ”
“Shocking?” Muriel offered.
“Colorful,” her mother supplied with a smile.
She was so grateful for her mother. For her mother hadn’t stopped them from reading delicious books as so many young ladies had been stopped. Sermons were all well and good, as well as books on decorum and how to run a house. But they did not inspire the soul.
And she was grateful that her mother encouraged them to read the epics of the past.
If people thought Shakespeare was scandalous, or Marlowe, then they had no idea what some of the Greek and Roman poets were about. But her mother did. For her mother had read every book in their library and subscribed to a lending one.
She was rather glad that the poems of the Greeks and Romans had been translated and that she had long ago secreted copies up into her room, devouring them in the window seat by the light of a silvery moon.
Books were a way of understanding the world. She’d always known that. But now she had more than books. She had Perseus Briarwood.