Third Day of Christmas
Kestrel had a restless night and woke slowly. She’d had dreams that she was frantic to run away from something but she couldn’t move. For most of her life, the nightmares had come regularly, and she regularly pretended not to notice. Life was passably good if she pretended hard enough.
Here in the unreal and sleepy side of morning, Kestrel allowed herself to feel the magic of it.
A secret admirer. A person who loved being in Austen’s world too.
Who noticed her. Who knew what she cared about.
Last night, the idea of Austenland as a for-keeps dating service had felt unnerving, but in the lazy sway of morning, she savored a sleepy thrill.
Was love possible? Tom was gorgeous and fun. Mr. Culpepper was intelligent and kind. What if she decided to become another Austenland guest who transformed the fantasy into reality?
Kestrel dressed herself in a long-sleeved green muslin gown and twisted up her own hair. She had begun to relish feeling feminine in new and interesting ways, and she nearly skipped down the red carpeted steps in her eagerness to start another day.
In the morning room, her core friends were absent. Andrews and Jerome seemed to skip breakfast, and Charming’s frequent conversations about her marriage must be cutting into her free time.
Only Gussie was present, silently eating toast and marmalade. Kestrel hesitated before sitting beside her. Their interaction last night had felt mildly hostile, so, hoping to find common ground, Kestrel gave her an intense “help me” look.
“All this is weird, isn’t it?” Kestrel whispered.
Gussie straightened. “By weird do you mean out of the ordinary, uncanny, and perhaps supernatural? Because, my dear Kestrel, I find nothing weird about this lovely Christmas house party.”
“No, I mean the regular weird. Upside down. Confusing? I mean, at moments, right? Isn’t it?”
Gussie gave her a look of pity and reengaged in her toast.
A deep roiling disgust at her own self churned in Kestrel’s gut. She must have offended Gussie, but she had no idea how. You always do this, Kestrel, she thought. No matter how hard you try, you hurt people.
Kestrel sighed, feeling all of it.
She was scanning herself for interesting conversation starters in hopes of undoing whatever damage she had done in this relationship, when they were interrupted by Mrs. Wattlesbrook in the doorway.
“Today we will entertain visitors.”
Kestrel choked on her cup of Earl Grey. “Visitors?” She was imagining tourists tramping through the house, snapping photos of Kestrel in her green muslin as if she were an extinct mammal on display. “Who are they?”
“Surely she means the ladies of Windy Nook.” Gussie didn’t look up from her fork and knife as she slowly dissected a sausage. “Seeing as you are such dear friends with the Pembrook Park regulars, I would have assumed you were also acquainted with Windy Nook.”
Her housemate’s strange antagonism was a mystery Kestrel felt loath to uncover. Maybe she could just avoid her for the next nine days?
Mrs. Wattlesbrook explained. “Pembrook Park and Windy Nook have long been each other’s nearest neighbor, so we invited their ladies to visit us first thing this morning. The gentlemen will join later for dinner.”
“I’m game,” said Kestrel. “More people means more fun.”
Gussie sipped her tea, her smugness fraying into apparent apprehension. Kestrel couldn’t make any sense of her. Perhaps Gussie was one of those women who viewed all other women as competition.
Gussie headed back to her room to “tidy up” before the visit, and Neville the butler fetched Mrs. Wattlesbrook for some house matter, so Kestrel was alone in the morning room when Bobby strolled in, wearing an undershirt with Regency breeches, his feet bare.
“Did Bubba come in here?” he asked.
Kestrel frowned. “Charming doesn’t like that name.”
“Well, I’m not gonna let her grow too big for her britches,” Bobby said. “Her britches are big enough as it is.”
“Hey!” Kestrel pointed her fork at him. “Stop that.”
He fully entered the room and folded his arms, a wide smirk on his ample lips. “Stop? Stop what?”
“Stop belittling her.” Kestrel stood up to face him.
“You came back, and she accepted you. But as her . . . her friend, I’m telling you that you’d better treat her right.
Because if you don’t . . .” She made a fork-jab in his general direction with more force and better aim than she’d intended.
She quite nearly stabbed him in the eye.
Bobby leaped back, his face deep red. “Are you loony? Get that fork away from me!”
Alarmed at her own near violence, Kestrel forced herself to lay the fork on the table.
She never knew when that wildness would leap up and get her into trouble.
You’re so flawed, Kestrel. You are unlovable.
The thought was common enough that she barely noticed it, as deeply rooted in her sense of self as her own name.
Charming popped her head in. “There you are!”
Bobby’s face split with a grin. He hurried over to her with his hands out in a grabbing motion, seized her around the waist, and he sloppily kissed her neck as they walked out.
Kestrel sighed. What did she know about what love should look like?
Maybe Charming and Bobby’s relationship really was the best that love could offer.
Kestrel had believed—truly believed as deep as her marrow—that Hank had been her soulmate.
They’d been two puzzle pieces that fit together exactly right, completing the picture of what she’d wanted her life to look like.
And she’d been wrong. It was hard to trust her own opinion after that.
She snapped a pine needle off a bough decorating the sideboard. The sharp, sweet odor struck her like she was piano keys and easily played a memory out of her.
It was her first Christmas season with Hank.
They were downtown at night at a tree-lighting celebration in a park, oohing with the crowd as a massive fir was lit up in rainbow lights.
Fallen fir needles crushed under their boots, filling the air with the green, zesty scent.
The crowd was thick, and ever since Teacher and the box, being trapped in any close space made Kestrel panic.
But she noticed that somehow, magically, with Hank beside her, there was no fear.
And then a band started to play, and the crowd shifted, moving toward the music. Before Kestrel realized what was happening, she was pulled in a different direction. Hank was no longer beside her. She was so surrounded by strangers, she couldn’t see her way out.
It’s okay, you’re safe, nothing’s wrong, she tried to assure her brain, but her body had already begun to panic. Her core started to shake. Her limbs froze. Her breath stopped in her lungs. She couldn’t call out. She couldn’t move.
Somehow, Hank must have guessed how she was feeling, because from a distance she heard his low but loud voice command, “GET OUT OF MY WAY!” She wasn’t used to hearing that tone from gentle and thoughtful Hank.
It was the voice of an experienced rancher, and everyone nearby responded as if trained cattle.
They stepped back, creating an aisle for Hank to walk through straight to Kestrel.
His eyes were hot and angry, though not at her, and she could feel his intensity like a wave of energy coming before him.
She was expecting him to catch her tight in an embrace, but instead he turned, stooping before her, and she instantly understood.
She climbed onto his shoulders, he stood up, and she rose high above everyone’s heads.
She laughed out loud, the terror gone, and rested her hands in his hair as he walked her out of the crowd.
As safe as a bird in the air. As safe as Kestrel with Hank.
Kestrel dropped the pine needle and walked out of the morning room, her body needing to move, to feel unrestricted. She smiled at the maids coming to clean up breakfast, and part of her wished she were actually a maid, with a role and purpose. In that moment, freedom felt like loneliness.
After a loss like Hank, Kestrel no longer believed in soulmates.
But still, she had all this self—this big, fabulous, faulty, interesting, scary, true self—and she couldn’t help wanting to show it to someone.
And she wanted to know all of someone too.
And stand there before each other in mutual vastness and craziness and interesting imperfections, and say, “I know how you feel, and I feel that way too. Let’s feel that way together. ”
To say, “I love you even though.”
And eventually, to drop the even though.
Was that possible? Or was it as much fantasy as the corset around her ribs and the drawers on her bum?
Kestrel’s system was still spooked by the memory of the crowd, so she sat in the drawing room and did a mindful meditation a friend had taught her: Allow thoughts to clear from your mind like clouds pushed on the wind and focus on sensations.
The feel of a velvet pillow under her fingertips.
The woody smell of the Yule log burning in the hearth.
A sound of a knock at the front door. The sight of Neville the butler rushing down the hall, lanky limbs flailing.
Through the drawing room doorway, Kestrel could see the two Windy Nook ladies enter the front hall, their cheeks and noses rosy from the cold, looking for all the world like a watercolor painting of an old-fashioned Christmas.
Maids unburdened them of bonnets, hand muffs, and pelisses.
Kestrel stood up to greet them, and she had a good-shivery feeling now, like she had stepped into the watercolor painting too. Like she belonged there.
Gussie hurried into the drawing room from the other door as if afraid she was late, then checked herself, straightening her posture just as Mrs. Wattlesbrook entered.
“Lady Heartwright, Mrs. Martinez, may I introduce Miss Augusta Chen and Miss Kestrel Spinster. Miss Chen and Miss Spinster, this is Lady Amelia Heartwright and Mrs. Gloria Martinez.”