Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
It’s strange, the way men have begun to look at me.
To notice me, wherever I am. Not bad, necessarily.
Just…strange. Try as I might, I can no longer miss the admiring glances, the shy smiles, and the whispered conversations between them whenever I enter a room.
Even the boys I’ve befriended over the years have begun to act differently.
I try not to let it bother me. Honestly, I do. I’m fourteen, and my mother has prepared me for womanhood. For being a wife someday. I know some of what will be expected of me when I marry.
Still, I didn’t think it would be so soon.
When Mama mentioned I would have a visitor yesterday, I thought it might be Margaret or Jane.
Instead, it was Thomas Bingham. He will be the first of many, Mama has said.
Suitors from the village, some may even come from towns far away.
I can’t disappoint her, and I won’t, but I can’t help feeling like a cloak has been ripped off my head, like I’m no longer as hidden and safe as I once was.
Tonight, after the sun has gone to rest below the trees, Mama calls me into the parlor. The air in the house is thick with the scent of the evening’s wood smoke. The fire crackles softly, lighting Mama’s face and casting shadows across the room.
When I was a young girl, I was fascinated by the shadows. I’d sit for hours watching them dance before they eventually faded away with the dying fire. Lately, I realize I haven’t had the time to be interested in such childish things.
I drag the blanket I’ve been quilting behind me as I take a seat next to the fire, studying Mama. She’s beautiful, her long, wavy hair draped down over her shoulders. She sits in the chair knitting a scarf, her eyes steady on her work, but still as piercing as ever.
She reminds me of my gran more than ever now, since we’ve lost her. Her skin is softer, lines appearing where they once were not, and the slightest hints of silver have begun to lace through her hair.
“You’re nearly finished,” she says, looking over at the blanket in my lap.
My hands set to work again, the way she and Gran taught me.
Upstairs, I can hear Anna running circles in the attic.
She loves to play up there, but Papa doesn’t always let her.
Tonight feels different. Important. He retired to bed early, and now I suspect I know why.
“In time for winter, I hope,” I tell her.
Her smile is soft, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. Outside, the wind whistles through the trees, and I can hear it from right where I sit, feel it coming in through the cracks of the old house.
“What did you think of young Mr. Bingham?”
My fingers stop moving. “He was…polite.”
Mama seems positively delighted by my comment, though I’m not sure why. “I suppose there are worse things a young man can be.”
“I suppose there are.” Slowly, my fingers start to work again, and I rock in my chair. The sounds of the chair against the wood floor fill the room.
“Sit still, child,” she says, her voice low but firm. “We need to talk.”
A strange sort of feeling fills the air, but I don’t know what it is. Tension, maybe. Worry. Dread. I sense something is coming, but I have yet to figure out what it might be.
“Thomas Bingham’s family is decent,” she says softly. “He would treat you well. Keep you close to us, until Foxglove becomes yours.”
I turn my head slowly. “I’m not yet ready to marry, if that’s what you mean.”
“I don’t know if anyone is ever ready.”
I study her, and there’s that odd feeling again. “Were you ready when you married Papa?” She must’ve been. They’re so happy. Not at all like other parents I’ve seen in the village.
She lets out a long breath, setting her knitting down on her lap. Her eyes meet mine, warming, but when she speaks, there’s something heavy in her tone. A truth, a wisdom that feels like a secret. “You’re nearly fifteen, Mary. Growing up. And with that comes responsibility.”
I frown. “I am responsible. I clean and cook and help Papa with the animals. I mend our clothes and help Anna with her reading.”
“All of those qualities will make you a brilliant wife.” She pauses, leaning back in her seat. “And mother, someday.”
I don’t dare argue, though my hands are icy, and my stomach feels like the time we were all bedridden with sickness, when only the warm whiskey Mama prepared would stay down.
I know it’s coming, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready.
“There’s more to it than that,” she tells me, her voice gentle and low.
Her words carry a weight that I feel in my chest, like she’s covering me up, tucking me in.
“Being a Wilde woman comes with its own set of responsibilities, you know. This house and everything that comes with it is a part of who you are, my darling. And it will be yours—to protect and to tend to—someday. Whatever man you marry will have to understand that.”
She picks up her knitting again. “You’ve seen how the village treats your father for his choices. You shall need a strong man to stand by your side just as well.”
I open my mouth to ask if she thinks Thomas Bingham could possibly be that husband.
I don’t see it—he’s rather nervous if you ask me, not all like Papa—but she holds her hand up and I go quiet.
Her eyes lock onto mine, and I get that feeling again that tells me she can see straight through my thoughts, can split the earth and pierce stone.
“There will be others. Suitors who come to court you. Men who will say kind things, sweet things. Many of them will promise you love and safety. Some of them may mean it. You will be the lady of the house, and you will leave Foxglove—and me—to build a life with the man you choose. But you must listen to me, my love, and remember what I’m telling you. ”
A shiver crawls up my spine like a line of ants, and I tremble at her words. The way she’s looking at me now, I feel as if nothing will ever be the same. Whatever she says next, I will never be the same.
“No man can ever know what we know. About Foxglove. About her secrets.”
Though she’s never said it outright, my mother and Gran have both hinted at variations of this. The secrets of our house belong to Wilde women alone. “I know the rules.”
“You think that it has been hard, keeping the truth from your father, but wait until it is the man you love from whom you must keep secrets.”
“But why do we have to? Don’t you trust Papa?”
She stops knitting again, this time clasping her hands together in her lap.
“It is not about trust. Or even love. I know it is hard to understand, but you must. You must understand. Foxglove has rules, rules that came long before you or I were ever thought of. If you break the rules, if you tell anyone outside of our blood—any man especially—you will pay a price.” She pauses, letting the words wash over me. “And so will they.”
Bewilderment passes through me. What she’s saying can’t possibly be real. It’s like the bedtime stories she once told me to keep me in bed at night, meant to scare me from wandering the house. “This all sounds like rubbish,” I admit. “Unfair, even if it is true.”
Her eyes go distant, her gaze softening as though she’s looking right through me, though her face hasn’t turned away.
“Foxglove chooses us. Protects us. Keeps us, and us alone, safe from the world outside. A world which has not always been kind to women like us. And because of that, as a thank you for that, we protect her secrets. Fair or not, that is the life you have been given. The burden and the blessing.”
“What if I don’t want to stay here? What if the man I marry has a grand manor, or a whole estate—like Joan’s husband?”
Her eyes darken with something old and fierce, something that frightens me, seems to frighten her.
“When I am gone, you and your sister will decide how to protect Foxglove. I trust that you will do what is best for the both of you. And your families. But, Mary, there have been men in the past…men who thought they could hold our hearts and therefore Foxglove herself. Her power. Her secrets. Our ancestors, the Wilde women who came before us, some of them thought love would be enough.”
She looks down, and I know this isn’t going to be the happy ending I was hoping for.
“People in this world get consumed by power. By greed. Even the men we love. Even we ourselves. The very magic that keeps us safe can be a curse in the wrong hands.”
“Magic?” The word feels heavy and thick on my tongue. “Not real magic.” My words lift, like a question, but I’m not sure there is one. I’m not a child anymore. I don’t believe in such things.
A slow, grim smile touches her lips, but there’s no warmth to her expression.
She leans back in her chair and closes her eyes.
“Love is magic, my darling. Hope. Trust.” Her eyes open.
“Hate. Speaking your wishes out loud to the trees, that’s magic.
The way your Gran planted rosemary in the garden, the way she spoke to the plants to nourish them.
The way I weave flowers into your hair to make you feel brave.
Magic isn’t always fairies and magic spells.
Sometimes it’s just choosing to believe in something. Sometimes it’s just knowing.”
I swallow, my throat itchy. “What happened to the men? The ones who wanted Foxglove? They died?”
“Sometimes.” Her voice is as dry as the leaves in the fall.
“But there are fates worse than death. Foxglove does not allow her secrets to be stolen, Mary. I don’t tell you any of this lightly.
I tell you this because, someday, you will need to know.
Someday, you will pass this knowledge down to your daughters.
And someday, I may not be here to tell you myself. ”
A strange, cold weight settles in my chest, and I think of Gran. I wonder when she told this to my mother. Wonder if Mama wishes she were here now.
“Is there love without trust?” I ask her softly.
“Can you really love Papa if he doesn’t know you?
Doesn’t that just make you ache with sadness?
” A soft pain fills me as I think of my friends who won’t share this burden.
Who will marry men who love them and who will not be forced to keep secrets. It makes me feel dreadfully alone.
Mama stands from her chair, crossing the room to look out the window at the forest. The moonlight outside illuminates her face, the cool blue cast warring with the orange reflection of the fire on her cheek.
“I love your father, yes. The way I hope you and your sister will love your husbands someday. He has been a good man to me. A good father to you. But you must never forget that Foxglove is your true love, Mary. She will never betray you. Never hurt you. Never lie to you.”
“But Papa hasn’t hurt you.”
Her hands go to either side of the window, to the stones holding our house together.
“If you let her, my love, Foxglove will teach you the most valuable lesson any woman could ever learn. One that neither I nor your gran could ever teach you alone. It is not a lesson in being a wife or a mother, but a woman. A woman existing in a world that will do everything to control you. No matter how much you wish it so, Foxglove will never share its full self with a man.” She looks over her shoulder at me, and I hold my breath, waiting for her next words. “And neither should you.”
I nod as her words sink into my bones, chilling me.
I don’t understand. None of this aligns with everything she has told me about love and marriage.
I am supposed to find a husband who will love me, who will take care of me.
Who will protect me. Still, because she is my mother and because I know it’s important to her, I hear myself saying, “I understand.”
She reads me like always, like the primer from which I learned in the village school. “No,” she says, turning her back to me again to look out the window. “No, you don’t. But you will. In time, I’m afraid you will.”