Chapter Eleven #2
Della was about to send her to the library to retrieve the books they used in their lessons, when she had a better idea.
“Would you mind terribly if we skipped our lesson today? And we simply had a chat, instead?” she asked her. Della found that she’d never really spoken all that much to Gwen, not about anything that mattered, besides the lessons she taught her.
Gwen nodded again, this time hesitantly.
“I did not see the doctor today because I am unwell,” Della tried to explain. “Not acutely, anyway. I am ill, as I’m sure you know. I have pain all through my body that has lasted for years, and it will linger for all of my days.”
“I understand that,” Gwen said, wringing her hands together where they sat in her lap. She appeared uncomfortable, and Della hated to be the cause of it. She hated that even talking about these things made everyone so uneasy.
“So I see the doctor once a year. He attends me, makes his notes, and reports to my mother.”
“Your mother?” Gwen’s face twisted in suspicion. Della noticed she was rather pale, as she often was. She worried about her.
“Yes,” Della laughed, something bitter and forlorn. “I’m afraid we don’t all have excellent mothers like yours.”
She didn’t want to talk about the viscountess.
She wasn’t even sure why she’d brought it up.
Perhaps because an indignant rage still simmered in her blood, lingering where the flutter of her pulse beat against the skin of her neck.
Even the high collar of her dress felt hot with that particular rancor.
“She is an excellent mother.” Gwen averted her eyes. She picked at a stray thread in the embroidery on her dress. They were simple, gorgeous flowers made out of the delicate thread she’d sewn into the muslin. “I am lucky to be here with her. With you.”
“We are lucky to have you.” Della smiled. “I don’t know anyone else who would make trousers short enough to fit Clara.”
Gwen giggled, met her eyes once again.
“It is always so interesting, what Miss Clara asks of me. I believe now she’s wanting a pair of loose trousers made out of the fabric we’d use for a nightgown. It seems so odd to want to wear trousers to bed. Men don’t even wear trousers to bed.”
Della laughed, but she did wonder how Gwen knew what men were wearing to bed these days. She wouldn’t ask, but she wondered.
“I think that’s a delightful idea. Seems wonderfully comfortable, perhaps even for lounging about the house. I should like a pair myself.”
“Of course.” Gwen nodded seriously. So serious, their Gwen. She was too young to be so . . . burdened.
“Is that what you’d like to do?” Della asked. “In the future. Work as a dressmaker?”
Gwendoline froze, her fingers stilling against the middle of one embroidered flower. She’d been running her hands over each one, tracing the pattern she’d sewn. Della cursed herself for opening her mouth. This was what happened when she didn’t think her words to death before she spoke them.
“I . . .” Gwen looked at her, and those soft eyes were rather afraid. “I am not certain.”
Della thought to speak again, to tell her it wasn’t important, they didn’t have to talk about this now, it was all right if she didn’t have a plan for the rest of her life. Remarkably, Gwen kept speaking.
“I mean, yes. That is what I’d like to do.” She balled her fingers into fists and that pale face turned an almost frightening shade of red. “I just do not know if I can. I don’t know if I am . . . able.”
Her voice broke on the last word, and immediately, Della understood.
She’d long suspected what Gwen had just seemed to confirm.
That was something about being ill, it allowed her to sense illness in other people.
To notice the signs, even when they tried to hide them.
That pale countenance couldn’t be hidden.
“Have you fallen ill?” Della asked simply. She was not one to speak in riddles and metaphors. She wanted direct confirmation of the topic they were discussing, however delicate it may be.
“I am not sure, Miss Della.” Gwen sighed. Her rigid posture fell all at once, and she sank into the oversized armchair as if it were a warm bath. “So often, I think it must be a problem of my own creation. That it must just exist in my own mind.”
Della nodded, for she knew that exact feeling all too well.
“I thought the same thing, dear.” Della shifted her own posture, as her various bones and joints were beginning to stiffen.
She attempted to cross one leg over the other, as she’d seen Clara do so easily.
That took the pressure off of one hip but put it all on the other.
Even more deeply uncomfortable than her last position.
Della righted herself again, crossing her legs at the ankles instead.
Gwen’s eyes met hers, and she saw the face of true solidarity. An understanding borne of shared experience.
“I thought that everyone had weak ankles. That all hips were structurally unsound. That all knees burned as if with fever.” The more Della recounted the days of her youth, the more pain she remembered.
It was all so easy to brush off when she’d been swimming and running and sneaking out her bedroom window to look at the stars.
“It was not until I couldn’t get out of bed for days at a time that I ever considered something was amiss. ”
“And what did you do?” Gwen asked. She’d abandoned fiddling with her dress in favor of leaning forward to follow Della’s every word. It felt like a responsibility, to be the person Gwen talked to about this. It was a welcome weight on her shoulders, the thought of being listened to so intently.
“I hid it as best I could.” Della was loath to admit this to anyone, as she’d become more than ashamed of her own behavior over the years.
“It was foolish of me, but I was young. My mother was training me for my debut. Pianoforte lessons and gown fittings and rehearsing all manner of dances. I’m quite sure it’s exhausting for all future debutantes, let alone for a young girl of seventeen trying to hide an illness. ”
Gwendoline seemed to be stunned into silence. Della hadn’t spoken about this with anyone in so long, it felt oddly refreshing to confess to someone how she’d treated herself so badly.
“How did you hide it from everyone?” Gwen asked, her voice almost an awed whisper. As if they were young girls telling secrets in the schoolroom.
“I pushed myself until I broke.” Della spoke the words through gritted teeth, still angry at herself for all of that unnecessary pain. “I played until my fingers locked into place and I danced until my knees wouldn’t hold me up any longer.”
Her mind and her words painted a brutal picture of that time, but the pain her body remembered was so much worse.
“Why would you do that to yourself?” Gwen asked, then she seemed to catch herself. “I . . . I understand why you would, I’m sure. So you didn’t lose all of your prospects just before your debut?”
Gwen was partially right. Della had been worried about her prospects. She’d worried about what would happen to her if her debut into society didn’t go exactly as planned. She’d never dreamed that it wouldn’t happen at all. That was a nightmare not even her overdrawn mind could’ve predicted.
“I had a friend. Her name was Mercy. There can be competition among young ladies on the marriage mart, and there is almost an expectation that we consider each other a threat. I was supposed to assume that Mercy could steal my future husband, but she was amazingly kind to me. There could be no competition between us, as she was a diamond of her first season. She would surely have married before I made my debut the next year. My mother wanted me to model my own future after her.”
Gwendoline watched with wide eyes, hanging onto Della’s every word. She briefly wondered if she should tell Gwendoline about this, the harsh truth of what so often happened to young women like them.
“She received several offers, and she accepted a proposal from an earl. I was thrilled for her, and she seemed so proud to be elevating her family.”
As if Gwendoline sensed the impending tragedy, she leaned back, resting against the chair like she could protect herself from the blow.
“But she was hiding an illness. I’ve no notion of what it was.
There were many rumors, of course, but I do not know if any were true.
Her earl rescinded his offer, claiming her illness made their agreement fraud.
And Mercy just . . . disappeared. Knowing what I know now, I’m sure she was sent away to the countryside, or Scotland, but I never heard from her again.
No one knew what happened to her or how she fared. ”
Della felt her own voice thicken with the threat of tears, though she choked them back for Gwendoline’s sake.
“I suppose society would say the same about me,” she remarked. “Though I am doing quite well here. I can only hope the same is true for her. I did end up modeling my life after Mercy’s, it seems. Just in the last way my mother would ever have wanted.”
Silence reigned between them, and with a sigh, Della took the opportunity to tell Gwendoline a few more vulnerable truths.
“I never particularly cared about my prospects, if I am honest.” Della sighed wistfully.
This was the bright spot in this story. The waxing moon in a cloudless sky.
“My mother had hopes of me marrying a duke. She thought I had the potential to elevate the family much further than my father’s recently established viscountcy.
When she discovered I was ill, she threw herself into trying to cure me.
She was obsessed with it, to the point that she became someone else.
She was never so . . . ill-tempered before she had to care for me.
When she finally accepted that I’d be sick for the rest of my life, it was as if I’d done it to personally insult her.
They sent me here, saying it would be for a season.
Perhaps a year. I’d delay my debut, and everything would be fine.
I’d find my duke eventually. I don’t know if she truly believed that, but it was what she told me. ”
Della rolled her eyes. The idea was preposterous. Even as a bright, healthy debutante, she didn’t belong as anyone’s duchess.
“Wait,” Gwen said, her delicate face crinkling up. “What did you care so much about, then? If you didn’t want to marry a duke . . .?”
Della smiled ruefully. Here was her bright spot. She could easily grow tired of speaking about this time in her life, but she’d never tire of speaking about him.
“I wanted Andrew. I cared about him.” It felt freeing to admit that.
That he was the only thing she’d ever really wanted.
“Marrying a duke would’ve been miserable, because it wouldn’t have been him.
I hid my illness for so long because I was afraid, so deeply afraid, that Andrew wouldn’t want me.
That he’d turn me away like Mercy’s earl. ”
Gwen simply nodded, as if she understood. Della sincerely hoped she didn’t.
“But I was sent away. He traveled abroad. Suddenly I had all this time to consider what I wanted out of my life. I’ve come to realize that being here, ill and at peace, is a much better existence for me than that of a duchess in hiding.”
Della breathed a sigh of relief. Something in her chest felt lighter. More free. There was a note of acceptance ringing through her heart that she’d never truly felt before.
“And Andrew?” Gwen asked. She seemed so enraptured just by Della’s simple words, by her explanation of how she’d ended up here.
That was the question, though. What about Andrew? Della hardly knew. She hoped, radically so. Even if hope was a faint notion that seemed almost foolish.
“I am not sure,” Della said, using Gwen’s own words. “He is here. I know nothing more than that.”
Gwen opened her mouth to speak, but they were interrupted. Harry was a shockingly quiet man, despite being both overly tall and broad. Della had always thought he’d make an excellent soldier, defending the Crown with his deceptive silence and alarming stature.
“Pardon me, but Clara would like to know if she can come out of hiding now.” The knowing look in his eye, and the softening of his usual overt formality could only mean one thing. “I believe Mr. Lockhart would also like to know.”
Della felt herself smile. He was here. That may be the only thing she knew for sure about Andrew, but it was a truly incredible thing.