3. “Electric Love” - Børns
“Electric Love” - B?rns
Lady Rosalind is a sight to behold under the best of circumstances. Increase the stress load, ensure people are watching, throw in a late daughter or two, and she becomes something else altogether. She’s waiting for me when I walk through the door.
“Where is it?” She casts a panicked look at my hands.
I glance at them myself, but they are empty save for my handbag. “Where is what?” The words leave my mouth at the same instant I remember. The wine.
My breath makes a hissing sound as I inhale through my teeth. “I left it in my car.” I was so distracted by Henry’s appearance that the bottles in the back seat didn’t cross my mind.
My mother closes her eyes and presses her narrow fingers against her temples.
At forty-eight, she is still a classic beauty.
She passed her slender, white neck on to both of her daughters, but neither Beatrice nor I were fortunate enough to inherit her burnished copper hair, which she now pats to mask her irritation.
“I’m so sorry, Mum. I’ll go without wine tonight, if that helps?”
“No, it doesn’t help. I’m short six bottles.”
“It’ll be okay.” I grasp her shoulders and turn her around, steering her toward the drawing room, where the hum of voices is audible. “No one will even notice.”
The cocktail hour is underway, and it’s unusual for my mother to leave her guests. She must have been watching for my arrival.
I move to open the door, but she claps a hand on my arm. “What are you doing?”
I gesture toward the door. “Attending your party?”
“Not dressed like that, you’re not.”
I blink at her, then down at my outfit. I’m wearing wide-leg cream trousers and a silk blouse. Not exactly evening wear, but surely good enough.
“Dinner won’t be for another hour. You have time to freshen up.”
She opens the door herself, and I can see several people in the room, drinks in hand. I recognize one of them as an outspoken advocate for those living at or below the poverty line.
“You invited Lord Rosenbaum?” I’ve attempted to secure a meeting with him on multiple occasions but have yet to be successful. “I need to speak to him.”
“Celia, you’re not attending dinner like that,” Mum repeats in a hushed tone.
“But if I can get his support for my petition—”
“Go change. You smell like old books.” Without another word, she slips back into the drawing room and pulls the door shut behind her.
I sigh and spin on my heel. With any luck, I can clean up well enough to meet Rosalind’s approval and still have time before dinner to talk to Lord Rosenbaum.
I end up taking a shower. Turns out, not only do I smell like old books, but waiting in the sun added a tang of sweat as well. I’m zipping up the back of a long navy-blue evening gown when the door of my bedroom bursts open and my younger sister tumbles inside.
“A knock is universally accepted as a prerequisite for entering an occupied room,” I say.
She laughs, a tinkling, bubbly sound, like champagne in a flute, and I realize how much I’ve missed it. Taking the zipper from my fingers, she tugs it to the top. “You would’ve just told me to come in. I saved us both time.”
We squeeze onto the padded bench in front of my vanity, and she dumps an appalling amount of makeup onto the dressing table. It nearly obscures the surface and sends more than one bottle rolling to the floor. She either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care—both are 100 percent Beatrice.
She launches into a dramatized account of her semester, the heartbreaks and friendships and finding yourself that make that first year of uni so bittersweet.
Bea is a whiz at math, so getting into the University of Cambridge wasn’t difficult for her.
How she’s managed to keep up her grades since then is beyond me.
Every story she tells me sounds straight out of an episode of Gossip Girl.
“How do you have time to study?” I say, dragging a mascara wand through my lashes.
“People don’t go to uni to study, silly.” When she sees the look on my face, she adds, “I’m kidding!” But she doesn’t answer my question.
I study our faces in the mirror. At first glance, we’d hardly pass for sisters, but on closer inspection the similarities become more distinct.
We both have our father’s smallish, upturned nose and our mother’s high cheekbones.
Our mouths curve into the same slightly lopsided smile.
But where Bea has gorgeous flaxen waves that cascade down her back, I’ve got a chocolate-brown mane that hangs just past my shoulders.
It’s considered a terrific investment for a Wesbournian to study abroad, either at a Russell Group university in the UK or one of the Ivy Leagues in the US. For the rest of your life, you can dangle it like a diamond bracelet from your wrist. Yes, darling, I studied at Harvard. It was such a bore.
But I can’t argue with the fact that Bea’s time in England seems to have been good for her.
There’s a rosy bloom on her cheeks, and her eyes—one brown, one blue—dance with the excitement that comes from being nineteen and believing you own the world.
She’s the type that will stay friends with her flatmates for the rest of her life, swapping Christmas cards and baby announcements and holidaying together in Greece.
I think of my own uni friends. I can’t remember the last time I’ve spoken to any of them. Our WhatsApp thread has been quiet for an eternity.
“What are your summer plans?” I say, even though it’s pointless to ask. Bea has never made a plan more than twenty-four hours in advance.
“Fran said her uncle might be able to find something for me at WBC, but I don’t know if I want to waste my holiday in a stuffy news station.”
“What’s Andrew doing? Are you two taking any trips?”
Bea has been dating Andrew Piedmont for the past two years, and our mother has high hopes for the match.
Landing the future Earl of Hansford would be no small feat, and getting your daughters married to men with titles and money is, unfortunately, still a thing Wesbournian mums worry about.
I have disappointed her on this count, and she’s redirected her energy toward Bea.
“I broke it off.”
“You what?”
My sister begins applying her favorite shade of lipstick, Chanel 426 Roussy.
I watch her, transfixed. “Why? You guys were great together.”
“There’s someone else.” Her hand shakes, and she has to wipe a smudge above her lip.
I’ll castrate the bastard myself. “He cheated on you?”
Her eyes fly to mine in surprise. “No, I met someone.”
“What do you mean? I thought you liked Andrew.”
“Andrew’s great, but he’s not what I really want.
” She tosses the tube of lipstick onto the cluttered dressing table.
“I want someone to worship me, to give up everything to be with me. Someone who will write me songs and fight battles for me and tell me he’ll die if he can’t have me. I want a Heathcliff.”
The clawing scent of makeup coats my nostrils. “Heathcliff and Catherine were toxic and unstable.”
“They were madly in love. They couldn’t function without each other.”
“Bea, it’s not normal to feel that way about a person.”
“That’s what makes it so beautiful.”
“You can’t truly want that. All of those emotional highs and lows—they’d eventually wear you out.”
“The highs would be worth every single low. To have someone who loves you like that . . . It’d be the most glorious drug in the world.” There’s something ethereal in her tone, which scares me.
“You’d have to come down some time,” I say.
“Not if I could help it.”
“You can’t be serious. There’s no stability in a relationship like that.” I turn to dust my face with powder as if her words aren’t slowly carving a hole in my chest.
“Stability isn’t the most important thing.”
“Happily-ever-afters are make-believe, Bea. Every relationship is work, but it’s a lot easier with someone you trust.”
“Like what you have with Beck?”
“Yes! Exactly.”
“You’re with him because he always lets you have your own way.”
“That’s not true,” I say, and catch her cocked brow in the mirror. “Okay, so he often does, but that’s not why I’m with him.”
“Don’t get me wrong. You and Beck belong together.” She stands and gathers her scattered makeup. The bottles make hollow clunks as they knock together in the bag. “But Andrew never made me feel this way. Like I’m on top of the world.”
“So you’re already with someone else?”
She toys with a makeup brush, skimming its bristles across her palm. “We’re not together officially, but it feels like the real thing. I think I’m in love with him.”
There’s a prickle behind my ears. She’s too young, too inexperienced. She still has three years of university ahead of her. She’s not ready for love.
“Who is he?” I ask. “Someone at school?”
She shakes her head, and her blonde tresses bounce. “He’s older, more mature than a student.”
Now doesn’t seem like the right time to point out that she is, in fact, a student herself. I don’t want to think about the words older, more mature.
“We were at a party in London, and things just clicked,” she says.
I teeter on the edge of composure. “He’s British?” Rosalind will have a coronary if Bea leaves the country for good.
“Nope, he’s from Wesbourne.” Her face splits into a stunning grin. “See? He’s perfect.”
I very much doubt that. “Are you going to tell me his name, or do I have to wait for an introduction?”
“Actually, you’ll meet him tonight. He’s coming to dinner.
In fact,” she says, glancing at her phone, “he should be here soon. I’m going to finish getting ready in my room.
I’ll see you downstairs.” She presses her lips into my hair before walking out.
The scent of her honeysuckle shampoo trails behind her.
It takes me five minutes to find my phone under my discarded clothes.
When I finally check the time, it’s seven forty-five.
Rosalind plans to serve dinner at eight, and thanks to Bea’s unceremonious waltz into my preparation and her forthcoming introduction, I completely forgot about talking to Lord Rosenbaum.
But right now, that petition is the furthest thing from my mind.
My little sister thinks she’s in love for the first time in her life, and with someone who is the Heathcliff to her Catherine, no less. She expects me to approve of this man who has stolen her heart so thoroughly, but we will see about that.