Chapter 17
“Did you think it was going to be easy, my dear?”
Muriel unbowed her shoulders and wiped hot tears from her cheeks, tears that had poured down once she had found her way into the library.
Here, in this room, her journey had truly begun. She’d felt so safe, so happy poring over papers and books, making notes. Why hadn’t she let that be enough? No one could have been hurt by her note-taking. By her studying.
“Muriel?” the dowager gently prompted.
Oh how she hated the fact that she’d been caught crying, even though she did not think the Briarwoods would judge her for such a thing. Still, she’d brought this on herself. On them.
“I don’t know what I thought,” she said at last, her voice so tight as she struggled to speak past her tears. “But I didn’t think I would hurt anyone.”
She swung her gaze back and looked at the dowager duchess, who had strode into the library and stood surrounded by the books that her family had collected over centuries.
She looked like a warrior queen. She did not look gentle. She looked ready for battle.
And somehow, that made Muriel stand firm. It made her heart slow. It made her fears start to slip away, and she raised her own chin, refusing to feel sorry for herself. No, she was furious with herself. That was a very different thing, wasn’t it?
“You wanted something great?” the dowager began with surprising firmness as she stepped forward.
“You are great. You have the potential for even more greatness, my dear, and it is still right there in front of you. But it will slip away if you don’t seize it.
You are standing at a crossroads, a place where most people falter.
You are facing your real first difficulty.
And I wonder if you will let what is yours be taken so easily. ”
Her jaw dropped at the words that cut through the room, not cruelly but with such precision. “But surely, if I am to hurt my family like this, then I cannot—”
“How did you hurt your family, my dear?”
She gestured to the door. “Look at what happened to my sister, Alice.”
“That man, that sad, pathetic excuse for man,” the dowager duchess said with a sigh, “exposed what was truly in his heart. And by the time my son is done with him, the poor thing will be mincemeat. I had no idea that my friend Minerva had raised such an utter ass. Unfortunately, it can happen. I shall have to have a word with her and explain why Alice will not be marrying him.”
Muriel shook her head, struggling to understand why the duchess wasn’t angry with her. “You make it sound so simple.”
The dowager duchess crossed to her but did not take her hands.
No, she stood toe-to-toe, as if they were two women of equal power and respect.
“I have many more years than you, but I see myself in you. At present, you are young, so this all seems complex, but the truth is that it is simple, Muriel. You, through your loyalty to yourself, freed your sister Alice from being married to a very terrible man who would have eventually showed what a terrible man he was to her. And she would not have been able to escape it, so you have actually done your sister an excellent turn.”
“But I—”
“No,” the dowager duchess said, whipping up a wrinkled hand adorned with jewels.
“You speak beautifully and can hold a room in the palm of your hand, but now you must listen. If you think that everyone is going to love you and all that you do, then you definitely should not go back upon the stage. You should retire to a little room, and I promise you this, you must not write a single word that anyone ever reads again. You must not do anything of note. You must not let anyone see anything that you do.” The dowager arched a brow and continued, her voice intense, driven, “Hide away, even from the family, because one of us might criticize you or give you a certain look. I know your mother and your sisters have always supported you and your brother, and we have too, but this is what happens when you choose to step out onto the world stage. People will hate you. They will judge you. They will tear you down. They will make you feel small so they can feel large.”
The dowager drew in a long breath. Pain crossed her face as if she had faced this moment once long ago, and the pain of it was still there, but she’d defied it.
“What I say to you, my dear, is do not let them tear you down. Do not let those little souls rip you asunder so that they can feel important. They will try, and it will be up to you to decide if their voices, their little whining voices, stop you, a blazing star racing across the sky. Can their darkness dim your light?”
Muriel’s whole stance began to transform at her words. The brittleness left her body and she felt herself stop shrinking. No, she began to expand. Expand in soul. In heart.
“So you tell me what you want,” the dowager continued, her eyes ablaze with her determination to speak the truth.
“Do you wish to rattle the earth with what you’re capable of and expose the truth of men like Lord Isleton so that people like your sister are not fooled by them?
Or do you wish to be like the little mouse you were when you first came here, hiding in the library, hoping no one would notice you, content to be less than what you are? ”
“You are brutal,” she replied without rancor. The words slipped past her lips before she could stop them.
A strange smile touched the dowager’s lips.
It was wise, sad, but unyielding. “Yes, I am, because this case requires nothing less, and it’s because I love you.
I wish that someone had been there to help me through when people hated me.
But I was lucky, and I met the man of my dreams, and he refused to leave my side when the world wished to claw me from the place I had chosen for myself.
I hope to God you let Perseus stand by you too, but only you can decide that. ”
“Alice,” the dowager called out, “you wished to speak to your sister?”
Muriel’s gaze swung to the door as Alice slipped through.
“She’s right, you know?” Alice’s face was pale and tear-stained as she walked into the dimly lit room. “You’ve helped me escape. And it was a very narrow escape,” she said. “I would not want to be married to a man who could speak thus of my sister. Of anyone. So I must thank you.”
“Do not thank me,” Muriel protested. “I have brought shame upon—”
“Shame?” Alice challenged. “You have showed us all that anything is possible, that we can choose what we want, that we do not have to be small, that I can choose more than a lord just because I think it would please my family. Do not retreat now.”
Alice rushed to her and pulled her into a hug. “And whatever you do, do not blame Perseus for any of this.”
Savoring Alice’s fierce hug, she looked to the thousands of books surrounding them, books written by philosophers and scientists and poets. Men and women who had dared to write despite the risks. Yes, they had sometimes risked their very lives to put words to paper.
Was she not willing to risk the disdain of an unworthy few?
Her eyes met the dowager duchess’s over Alice’s shoulder, and she thought of that woman’s journey from impoverished East End orphan to the powerful woman she was now.
She had risked again and again. Suffered over and over.
And if she had not, she might have never left the East End, its poverty, its cruelty.
She took the dowager duchess’s bravery, and all the bravery of all the writers in the library, and she found it in herself. And she seized it.
“I don’t blame Perseus,” she whispered softly.
“I thought that I could have everything I wanted and not have to pay any sort of price or experience any sort of pain, but it is through the pain and the suffering that we achieve more,” she said, her voice building with her strength.
“That’s how we know we are growing, isn’t it? ” she asked the dowager duchess.
The dowager duchess smiled. “That’s right, my darling.”
“I must find him. I must find him immediately.”
“I’m already here,” Perseus said as he slipped into the room.
Alice slipped away from her and went to join the dowager duchess.
Muriel’s heart blossomed at the sight of her husband. Her handsome, strong husband who had never doubted her.
“I was never going to go anywhere,” he declared, striding to her.
“I was always going to be here with you, because I’ve always known where I belong, just as I’ve always known where you belong.
You belong on the stage, my love,” he said firmly.
And he swept her into his arms and took her mouth in a fiery kiss.
And when that kiss had burned through them, he gazed down to her and whispered, “And I belong in the wings, laying waste to anyone who tries to stop you.”
“No,” she said, slipping her hand to the nape of his neck, sliding her fingers into his dark hair. “Never in the wings, Perseus. You belong by my side, and we shall go through this life together, undaunted, unbowed, and we shall laugh at anyone who ever tries to make us feel small again.”
Muriel pulled him down to kiss her again. And she kissed him as she had never kissed before, with strength, with bravery, with a heart that would never stop growing.