Chapter Sixteen
By the time Andrew got back to his home in London, he’d begun to feel a familiar sort of restlessness.
He’d had ample time on the journey to confront those admittedly confusing feelings and to identify them, but they still circled around him like vultures.
The restlessness had been his constant companion for years.
It had followed him as he’d traversed the globe, and it had made all of his accomplishments feel hollow.
He’d long ago identified the source of that particular feeling.
He needed a purpose. He needed something to do, some way to make an impact on the world around him.
He’d thought studying the law was the way to do that, and he’d done some good in his legal career so far, but none of it felt grounding.
None of it felt like the reason he was brought into the world.
When he saw Della again after eight years apart, he knew he’d found his purpose.
As soon as he’d left her behind, the restlessness crept back up.
It felt like a snake slithering across his body, a scaly sensation climbing up his spine and down his arms. Even now as he stood hovering at the entrance to his own home, the itching unease remained.
He couldn’t place just how long he might’ve been standing there at the door, suspended in motion but not in time. Eventually, he shook his head, as if to dispel the lingering confusing feelings. Or maybe to shake the snake of disquiet off of his back.
Luckily for him, his mother was waiting.
He’d scarcely taken two steps inside the house before she was approaching.
Her hair was just starting to gray around her ears, and she wore a light-blue day gown and an ivory shawl.
She was always cold, his mother. She wrapped her arms around him, and even though he was taller and broader and a man full grown, he still felt like the boy who hugged his mother every chance he got. In many ways, he was still that boy.
“Welcome back!” she said, with all of her usual enthusiasm. She patted his cheeks then looked him up and down, as if to assess him for injuries or determine if he’d somehow gotten taller. “How was your trip?” she asked.
They gravitated to the sitting room, and he pondered how to answer.
His trip was incredible. It was life changing.
It hadn’t felt like a trip, like all the rest. It felt like coming home.
He simply didn’t know what to do with that, or what to say.
As much as he wanted to confide in his mother, and she was perhaps the only person in London he trusted, it didn’t quite feel like his story to tell.
“How did you know that you wanted to be a dressmaker?” he asked her, answering her question with one of his own and completely changing the subject of their conversation.
His mother didn’t bat an eye. This kind of non sequitur was common practice in their relationship, and she’d always done her best to follow the path of his winding thoughts.
“I was very young,” she started, sinking further into the old divan she sat on.
It was becoming threadbare, and it needed reupholstering.
His mother hadn’t changed the furniture since the death of his father, and that was almost a decade ago.
She insisted she loved the old-fashioned furnishings, but it suddenly seemed rather dated to Andrew.
“My mother taught me how to sew and how to make clothes. I made my own church dresses as a girl, and I loved it.”
She smiled, and Andrew knew that fondness. He’d heard all of this before, but he had a feeling he could do with a reminder.
“I suppose I had other choices, but it never really did feel like a choice.” Her eyebrows pinched and her gaze turned contemplative.
It was in the slight tilt of her head. Andrew saw himself in that.
He’d always favored his father, and it was almost a comfort to find pieces of himself as he looked at his mother.
“You know my work was always rather . . . unusual.” She seemed to emphasize the word with the raise of one of those previously pinched brows. She threaded her fingers together in her lap and brushed dust off of her skirt with her littlest finger.
“Unusual?” Andrew asked. “How do you mean?” He was surprised at this turn in conversation. That sort of pivot was usually his to make, and he wasn’t sure he was still following.
“My mother made dresses for everyone around her until her fingers gave out.” She sighed, and Andrew didn’t know if it was wistful or an expression of long-held grief.
“And she did so by the book. Maids were in drab muslin and cooks were in stiff aprons. She did a wonderful job, but there was such little fun in that.”
Something in her gaze shifted, and Andrew decided she was truly wistful.
“I had fun.” Her mouth tipped up in a rueful smile, and she was almost mischievous. “I made wedding gowns out of old curtains and communion dresses for girls out of tablecloths. The rich are so bloody wasteful.”
She rolled her eyes, and Andrew did too. He wasn’t surprised at her unsavory language—she was often quick to swear when she truly got started speaking.
“But I took what they didn’t want, and I let it shine.”
Andrew was beginning to follow the strangely winding path of her speech. Perhaps he was more like her than he’d originally thought.
“What I mean to say,” she leaned forward, spearing him with her intense focus, “is that being a dressmaker wasn’t the choice I made. The choice I made was the kind of dressmaker I wanted to be.”
He sat with that for a moment. He generally considered his mother to be correct in all matters, and the reality of what she said began to resonate with him.
Maybe this sense of restlessness came not from the fact that he was a solicitor, but that he wasn’t yet the kind of solicitor he wanted to be. Her words repeated in his mind. I took what they didn’t want, and I let it shine.
The rest of society, even her parents, didn’t want Della, but he did. He desperately, fervently did, and he could let her shine.