33. Chapter 1- Margaret
"What do you think it will be like?" Lily leaned forward, the feathers on her bonnet ruffling with the gentle sway of the carriage.
Margaret sat on one side of the carriage, facing two of her sisters, Beatrice and Lily. It was a natural consequence of being the the largest in stature of her sisters--if there was the option to allow it, Margaret sat alone.
"What, the Season?" Beatrice wrinkled her nose. "I hardly can imagine."
"You're both sure to attract a great many suitors," Margaret said with an encouraging smile.
She meant every word of her praise. Though Lily outshone them all with her doe eyes and perfect figure, many gentlemen would find Beatrice nice to look at, too. Even Claire, the eldest, was bound to have beaux--though she was in possession of a more frigid, stately beauty.
"I'm not all that concerned about the Season." Beatrice waved as if the idea of a husband wasn't at all exciting.
"I thought you wished to be married like the rest of us." Lily turned to her in question.
Beatrice smiled. "Of course I do. I just don't see the point in worrying about the Season ahead, that's all. If I meet the right someone, it will be lovely. If not, I'll continue to impose on our brother's largess."
Margaret gave a half-snort, half-laugh of agreement.
Their brother was beyond generous. After he'd discovered how their eldest brother--the late Baron Cavendish--had squandered the family's fortune through the worst kind of excesses, William had sent the eight Preston sisters to Paris while he picked through the rubble of what Richard had left behind.
In his sisters' absence, he'd restored the family home and reputation. Then he'd called the four eldest home so that they might have a London Season. The four youngest were still in Paris, waiting their turn the following year.
"I can't believe all the dresses he bought us," Lily agreed, smoothing down her green wool walking dress. "I simply can't choose a favourite--they're all so wonderful."
Margaret shook her head, smiling. "And if they'd only been half as pretty, you'd still be just as pleased."
"Which only goes to show how truly wonderful they are," Lily replied, her eyes wide.
Margaret smirked and looked out the window.
If Lily weren't her sister, she might have been tempted to provoke her to see whether she truly was as patient and gentle as she seemed. But Margaret knew full well that Lily’s kindness was no act.
It was a bit annoying that the most beautiful of them had been given a matching disposition.
Margaret thought her own voluptuousness might have been forgiven by society if she'd been that genuinely nice. Instead, she tended toward sarcasm and inappropriate humor.
"Goodness, the traffic is dreadful today." Beatrice let the curtain of the carriage fall back into place."
"It's hardly a wonder," Margaret said. "We had to travel all the way across town to get to that bookshop of yours. What a ridiculous notion--a bookshop near the docks. It's a wonder they have any books at all, with the dampness in that part of town."
"It's damp everywhere in London," Beatrice said, raising her chin. "Besides, they have the best selection."
"They have a selection," Margaret agreed wryly.
Beatrice narrowed her eyes. "You cannot blame me for how long this excursion took, not when you needed to go to four separate shops to find the perfect journal, and Lily needed to stop at the milliners and the bootmaker."
"Indeed." Lily frowned as if chastened. "I could have gone to those shops tomorrow."
Margaret rolled her eyes at her sister's endless forbearance. Sometimes the amount of patience Lily had tried Margaret's own.
"It hardly matters," she said. "We've finished the shopping now, and we're only sniping at one another because it's well past time for tea."
"You're probably right." Beatrice straightened and brightened. "Should we travel to the cafe and impose on Claire’s tête-à-tête?"
"Certainly not!" Lily's eyes were wide. "She specifically asked us not to attend."
"Precisely." Beatrice leaned forward and smiled. "Which means it would be vastly amusing to do so."
"I for one think that this Season will be more enjoyable for all of us if we agree to give each other as much privacy as the situation allows," Lily said.
Margaret grasped the edge of the padded seat as the carriage lumbered over a dip on the road. The closer one got to the docks, the worse the roads were. She bit back another remark about Beatrice's blasted bookshop preferences and said, "There, you and I agree, Lily."
"As if privacy will be an option when we're all accepting visitors in the same parlor," Beatrice grumbled.
If Margaret had a biscuit within reach, she would have winged it at Beatrice's head.
There was no surer way to plunge Beatrice into a foul mood than to withhold sustenance.
Though to look at them, one might have guessed Margaret the one who became displeased at a late meal, it was Beatrice who suffered the quickest. And her sister dearly loved company when she experienced said misery.
"It's a very large parlor," Lily pointed out. "I daresay it will be an embarrassment the other direction--how silly it will look when we don't have enough visitors to fill it!"
Beatrice and Margaret shared a sardonic look.
"I doubt that will be a problem," Margaret said.
On their shopping trip today, a gentleman had pressed his face to the plate window while Lily was choosing a set of gloves on the other side. Another had run directly into a lamppost. The lady in question had never noticed--she seemed as oblivious as she was beautiful to the notice she garnered.
Margaret had once demanded that Lily admit she knew she was pretty. Lily had finally done so, but only under threat of having frogs loosed in her bedroom.
Lily canted her head. "I suppose it hardly matters how many gentlemen call as long as the right one does." She proceeded to stare out the window with an expression that edged very close to a frown, at least for her.
Margaret's forehead wrinkled. Ever since Lily had returned from Aunt Lucinda's, she grew pensive like that sometimes.
"You miss her a lot, don't you?" Margaret asked gently.
"Who?" Lily turned, her eyes large, her expression alarmed.
"Great Aunt Lucinda, of course."
"Oh, yes. Very much." Lily fiddled with the beading at the edge of her purse.
Beatrice pursed her lips and looked out the window. Margaret stared back and forth between them. For a moment, she could have sworn she'd scented a secret upon the air…
"Ah, finally," Beatrice said, dropping the curtain. "We're home. I'm going to call for tea in the breakfast room."
"I'll join you," Lily said.
Beatrice looked at Margaret expectantly as they waited for the steps to be let down and the door to be opened.
"I will, too, but I need to drop my packages in my room first."
"Fine, but I'm not waiting to start if you dally," Beatrice said.
"That goes without saying," Margaret said beneath her breath.
Once inside the grand townhome, the sisters scattered. Margaret headed upstairs with her stack of paper-wrapped packages. She might have let her maid or the footmen deliver them, but one of the items was especially precious to her--the aforementioned journal.
Beatrice had been right about one thing--Margaret had searched high and low for a worthy replacement. Though she'd already decided her writing companion would forevermore be called Ruth, she still felt it a momentous occasion to choose a new writing book.
She'd found precisely the right one in the fourth shop.
The book had a burgundy leather cover tooled with gold leaf at the edges.
It was a far cry from the plain, sturdy book she'd written in daily for the past three years, but Margaret's life had changed much in that time span; she figured it was only right that her journal reflect the change.
Margaret was also determined not to write so densely upon the page in this new journal as she had in the last. Of course, that had been from pure necessity--there certainly hadn’t been money for stationary when there’d barely been enough coin for food.
All that had changed. Margaret intended to use a page per day--a scandalous abuse of wealth by her previous standard of trying to fit three or four days onto one page.
Yet it cramped her hand to write that way and it made her dizzy trying to read what she'd written.
She reasoned that a page per day was more for her health than anything.
Margaret sailed into her large room, barely noticing the silk-upholstered walls, the expensive furnishings and the beautiful coverlet.
It was true--with enough exposure, the most luxurious of surroundings became common-place.
Even when one was determined not to take anything for granted, ever again.
At her desk, Margaret set down her stack and began unwrapping them--pens and ink, the aforementioned journal, and some new wax and loose parchment for sending letters to her other sisters in Paris.
The youngest four had all begged the eldest to write often about the Season so they might know what to expect when their turn came.
Margaret set her new journal in the old one's place. She gasped and jolted.
Where was it?
Her heart pounded. Her eyes went wide.
Her old journal wasn't in the spot where it had been only this morning. She'd thought about taking it with her to compare its size to new ones as she shopped, but she'd decided against that idea. Hadn't she?
But then where had she put it? Margaret sifted through her desk, pushing her purchases to the side and opening all the cubbies--even those far too small to contain her personal diary.
A sudden memory--a momentary image--flashed in her mind. She distinctly remembered holding her much-beloved, worn journal up against a new brown one. Panic choked her throat and turned her thoughts into stuttering foolish things that ran into one another.
Margaret stepped back and gaped in horror. There was no possible way she would have forgotten it somewhere--misplaced it during their shopping trip. It was impossible.
She had debated with herself at length as to the advisability of taking the journal from the safe confines of home in the first place.
Margaret rarely left the thing on her desktop, let alone took it from her bedroom.
It had too much information, too much honesty to ever let the thing from her sight.
Heaven forbid her sisters know what she truly thought of all of them.
Heaven forbid they find out what she'd been up to all those years.
Heaven forbid it wasn't her sisters at all who found out, but a complete stranger…
Margaret's breathing grew shallow. Her knees shook until he nearly collapsed into her desk chair. She couldn't have left it out there, could she? She wouldn't have.
And yet, that image of her holding the old up next to the new wouldn't leave her mind. That had happened. She'd brought her journal out and left it somewhere.
Margaret ran for the door. There was no possible way she could have. She wouldn't have. Her journal was sitting on the plush seat of the carriage even now. She'd been the last to exit and she'd left it behind, that was all.
She'd meet a footman bringing it to her on her way down, surely. Except she didn't meet anyone as she ran down the stairs. She ignored the curious glances of the servants in the kitchen as she barreled past them with wide, frightened eyes.
In the stables, she inhaled the familiar scent of horse and hay and nearly ran directly into the groomsman who was still unhooking the last of the horses from their harness.
"Miss Preston," he said, nodding his head and yanking at the cap he wasn't wearing. "Is everything alright?"
It took Margaret a moment to catch her breath and speak past the terror that burgeoned like sickness in her stomach. "I left something in the carriage. A book?"
The man frowned. "I didn't see one when I removed the heating bricks, miss, but I'm happy to check again."
"No need," she said. "I'll look myself."
"Certainly."
He offered her a helping hand into the carriage, but even before Margaret hauled herself in the door, she could easily see that what he said was true--the compartment was completely empty. There was no journal on the plush seats, nor on the carpeted floor.
Margaret sat heavily on the padded seat and pressed a hand to her midsection.
"Everything all right, Miss?"
"No. I’m sorry, I'm afraid I must ask you to reattach the horses. I need to go back to town, immediately."