Outshine

by Nichole Van

  The last two items were strictly forbidden under her father’s Congregationalist beliefs, but Fossi had learned how to dance from her mother. Surely God did not think there any harm in it?

  She continued:

  Receive a present for either Christmas or my birthday.

  Own a dress that hasn’t been turned.

  That last point was added in a moment of distress and vanity. It did not matter, in the eternal perspective of things, if her dresses had been unpicked over and over, the fabric painstakingly reversed to present the less worn pattern to the outside. But as she had spent the previous morning reworking yet another gown, Fossi thought it would be so lovely to have something new.

  Such a thought, of course, was a terrible combination of greed, pride and envy. This was what came of letting such thoughts free.

  Granted such thoughts did not stop her from continuing with her list.

  Taste a pineapple.

  Own a Kashmir shawl.

  Found a school for girls.

  Meet other members of the Society of Mathematics and be accepted as a woman.

  Experience a romantic kiss.

  Receive a proposal of marria

  She stopped right there, scratching through the last point.

  Wishing for the moon or a unicorn ride were just as likely scenarios as the thought of anyone asking Foster Love Among Us Lovejoy for her hand in marriage.

  She frowned, considering.

  Now that she looked at it, the last four items on her list fit into that category as well. She scratched through them, too—

  Found a school for girls.

  Meet other members of the Society of Mathematics and be accepted as a woman.

  Experience a romantic kiss.

  Receive a proposal of marria

  —and wrote the word Impossible beside them all.

  There was a difference between unlikely things that still seemed within the realm of reality and utterly impossible things that would simply never happen.

  When she finished, Fossi studied her list.

  Hmmm.

  She wasn’t sure if her list of Things I Wish to Do improved her state of mind or merely highlighted the deficits in her life.

  Writing the list was supposed to soothe her sense of unease and agitation. Instead it had amplified it.

  This was the problem with wanting . . . it was an insatiable appetite.

  It was much easier to go through life not wanting at all. One was much less likely to suffer disappointment.

  The Old Vicarage

  Kilminster, Dorset

  August 7, 1828

  Nearly two weeks after her ill-advised visit to Lord Whitmoor, Fossi found herself helping Betsy prepare herbs in the cold room.

  Her sisters’ voices drifted in from the front parlor. Prudence, Faith and Charity were there for the afternoon with their children, sewing before attending the evening prayer service. One of the children must have left the door to the hallway open, allowing sounds to drift easily into the cold room off the kitchen.

  “It will have to be you, Faith. You are the youngest.” That was Charity.

  “I do not think my Tom will countenance it,” Faith replied.

  “Well, it most certainly will not be me.” Prudence snorted. “Can you even imagine her living with John and myself? Nattering on about ratios this and equations that? We should all go mad within a fortnight.”

  What?

  Fossi’s blood turned ice-thick.

  Surely . . . surely they were not discussing . . . her?

  “She is the oddest creature.” Faith laughed. It was not a kind sound. “Has Foster even considered what will become of her once Father dies?”

  “Given the way her strange mind works?” Another snort.

  “She is already a charity case.” Faith again. “None of us can spare the money needed to keep her. I can barely feed and clothe my own children.”

  “It would be a mercy if someone would hire her as a governess.” Charity this time. Most uncharitably said.

  “True, but she is simply too odd for that. Worse, she will never see herself as a burden—”

  “Pity we cannot send her to the poorhouse.”

  “Faith! You are terrible. We would never send Fossi to the poorhouse. How horrible. Besides, imagine what father’s parishioners would say to such a thing. No, we will just have to take her in turns and make the best of it.”

  A hefty sigh. “There is no simple solution to this problem.”

  Fossi realized that her hands were trembling. Betsy looked over at her with pitying eyes. The maid obviously had overheard this conversation before.

  “It cannot be me,” Faith repeated, voice drifting in. “Tom would be angry and the twins fuss so much already—”

  “But Foster could be a help with the twins, no? I think they quite adore her.”

  “Perhaps, but hired help would be cheaper than feeding and clothing another adult. Particularly one who is so addled.”

  Fossi felt her breath speed up, harsh and loud in her ears.

  The Fossi before London and Lord Whitmoor would have ducked her head down and continued to string lavender, burying the sting of her sisters’ words deep beneath her shell.

  But the Fossi after Lord Whitmoor couldn’t do that.

  Too many things had been knocked loose, and she didn’t know how to contain them anymore. The very walls felt too close.

  So with a mumbled excuse to Betsy, Fossi pulled off her apron and darted out of the kitchen, not stopping for a bonnet or gloves, practically running for the fields and a small copse of wood beyond.

  A charity case?

  Too odd to be a help?

  Fossi swiped at her damp cheeks once she reached the soft shade of the trees, her feet automatically taking her along a barely-there path that ended in a small grotto. A trickle of water tumbled down the face of a rock outcropping, landing in a puddle that only the most charitable would call a pool.

  She sat on a fallen log beside the small grotto, buried her face in her hands and let it all out . . . all the color and messiness and living she kept tight inside. Which was merely a fanciful way of saying she cried her eyes out.

  But . . . her sisters were right.

  She truly hadn’t thought about what would become of her. She hadn’t taken care to ensure she had a definite future. In her narrow world, she had simply assumed that once her father passed, she would continue as she had—caring for her sibling’s children, furthering her father’s work among his congregation . . .

  Never once had she thought her efforts were seen, not as a help, but as a burden.

  Oh, the humiliation of it . . .

  Fossi had long known one simple fact—

  She was only as lovable as she was useful.

  After all, only pretty or entertaining things were admired and kept simply by virtue of their existence.

  In order to be worthy of love—or, barring that, at least esteem—she needed to be useful in some other capacity. Her value as a tool had to equal the effort and cost of her maintenance.

  How horrid to discover that nothing could make her . . . more.

  Fossi cried until her chest heaved and hiccupped, until her head throbbed and her stomach hurt. Her throat sticky and aching.

  Life stretched before her, dense darkness.

  Prior to her mother’s death, life hadn’t seemed so dim. Perhaps it was just the naivety of a teenager. Or, as Fossi liked to think, the gentle positivity of her mother’s guiding influence.

  Regardless . . . no one besides Will had called her Fossi since.

  All the thoughts of the past two weeks tumbled around her.

  Unbidden, her mind danced through the Italian verb conjugations her mother had drilled into her—

  Fossi, fossimo, fossero . . .

  Circling back, as she always did, to her own nickname.

  Fossi—wouldst that I had been.

  The congiuntivo imperfetto. The imperfect subjunctive of essere . . . to
be . . .

  It was a verb form that scarcely existed anymore in English. That subjunctive tense which communicated longing for a past wish or desire.

  Fossi, fossi, fosse . . .

  Wouldst that I had been . . .

  Wouldst that thou had been . . .

  Wouldst that he had been . . .

  Fossi . . . she heard its meaning every time in her name.

  Wouldst that . . . her mother had lived, that Fossi hadn’t taken on the care of her siblings instead of marrying (as Prudence and Charity had done), that her oddness and plainness and cleverness hadn’t been an equally large deterrent to matrimony.

  At least, Lord Whitmoor hadn’t been repulsed by those things.

  No, he had sought her for her cleverness, for the odd turning of her mind.

  Fossi, fossi, fosse . . .

  Wouldst that God had granted her a different life. One where her internal existence and outside living could be one and the same.

  But such was not her fate.

  She stared at the humble puddle with its trickling water until her eyes dried and her hiccups ceased.

  Then, she physically washed her face in the cool water and repinned her tumbled hair, while metaphorically locking away all her self-pity and lack of gratitude. Carefully gathering every scattered bit of herself back inside.

  And, when she finally felt equal to the challenge of returning to her home and her father and the sisters who did not want her . . . she returned.

  Demurely. Decorously. Just as her mother had tutored her to be. Every inch a lady despite her old dress and lacking bonnet and gloves. No shattered running across fields. No odd words at her lips.

  She walked up the road and over the three-arched bridge into town, past the new church and its charming vicarage, through the village green, past the Royal George Inn with a fancy carriage in the coaching yard, past the apothecary and haberdasher closing shop for the day, across the road, left at the stone fence . . . down the long lane to The Old Vicarage.

  Prudence and Charity met her at the door, Betsy wringing her hands behind them.

  Fossi schooled her features into a mask of calm.

  “What have you done?” Prudence hissed, voice low.

  Not the most auspicious of beginnings.

  “Me?” Fossi asked.

  “Yes, you!” Charity snatched her arm. “You will send Father to an early grave with escapades like this.”

  “Pardon?”

  “There is no help for it now. Father waits for you in the study.”

  “Is it true?” Strength, her younger brother, shouldered through the doorway behind Fossi. “The boys came running with the news.”

  “You’ll have to see for yourself.” Prudence waved a hand toward their father’s study.

  “Better not to keep them waiting.” Charity nodded, pushing Fossi forward.

  What had happened?

  Fossi swallowed and walked to her father’s study, her siblings at her back, crowding her.

  She knocked.

  “Come.”

  Fossi opened the door and walked into the room, Strength at her heels.

  Directly ahead, her father stood before the fireplace, hands clasped behind his back, dark eyes drilling into her. He was wearing his most severe black coat which made his graying hair appear nearly white. Her older brother, Will, leaned against the large desk to the right of the door.

  Both men bristled with tension.

  But it was the other occupant of the room who instantly garnered her entire attention.

  Fossi clutched an arm across her waist, as if that alone could keep her astonishment in check.

  Why had he come?

  “Ah, Miss Lovejoy,” Lord Whitmoor said. “How delightful to see you.”

  He flashed a decidedly charming smile her way. The same kind of smile she imagined a lion gave its prey before consuming it for dinner.

  Lord Whitmoor punctuated his remarks with an elegant bow, precise and courteous. It was the perfect gesture with which to greet a debutante but somehow took on a mocking edge when directed at her.

  Or, perhaps, that was just her own fragile assessment. She could scarcely recall another instance in her life where she had received such a bow, so naturally it would seem ironic—

  Babbling.

  She was mentally babbling.

  But it was simply so . . . incongruous, the juxtaposition of her father’s study and Lord Whitmoor in his fine elegance. He outshone them all. Like an exotic bird suddenly alighting on Reverend Lovejoy’s supper table—thrilling, to be sure, but not to be tolerated . . . by either the bird or the good Reverend.

  “Yes, how delightful to see you, Foster.” Reverend Lovejoy’s tone made it clear he considered Lord Whitmoor’s bow ironic as well.

  “And now that you are here, Foster,” her father continued, “perhaps you can enlighten us as to why an aristocrat”—he practically spat the word—“has descended on my house to call upon you.”

  Chapter 7

  Daniel had gravely miscalculated.

  Again.

  He had thought to take up Miss Foster Lovejoy’s recommendation and use charm this round—another attempt at persuasion before resorting to kidnapping, a length of chain and a sturdy desk.

  His aim had clearly misfired given the tension vibrating from the people around him.

  Trust Miss Lovejoy to keep him on his toes.

  He surveyed the room. Miss Lovejoy was attired in an even older gown than the one she had worn before, its high-waist and faded fabric declaring the dress to be at least a decade past its prime. She clasped her hands across her stomach, dismay written on her face.

  And then there were the men. Her two brothers were reflections of her—one older, one younger—with their brown eyes and simple, country dress, though the elder brother appeared to have slightly more sartorial taste than the other. They studied Daniel with wary expressions. In contrast, Reverend Lovejoy vibrated with anger from his shock of gray-white hair to his scuffed shoes.

  Garvis had clearly not understood the familial situation when he delivered Daniel his report on Foster Lovejoy’s whereabouts. Daniel would have to have words with the man. Peaceful times did not sanction sloppy work, particularly with a mission as critical as this.

  “Well, miss? What do you have to say for yourself?” Her father’s tone brooked no argument. “Why does this man”—here he waved a dismissive hand at Daniel—“wish to speak with you?”

  Miss Lovejoy darted those chocolate brown eyes of hers between Daniel and her father, past her brothers and back to Daniel again. Panic flitted across her elegant face, color touching her high cheekbones.

  “I-I cannot think that I know, sir,” was her marginally garbled reply. “I am as equally surprised as yourself.”

  She met Daniel’s eyes for a fraction of a second, a pleading note in them.

  Daniel instantly understood.

  Please don’t tell them I was in London.

  Ah. Of course.

  It was obvious the men in her life would never have countenanced her traveling so far alone to answer the summons of an unknown lord.

  Unfortunately, her father intercepted her beseeching glance. Daniel suspected little escaped Reverend Lovejoy’s notice.

  Her father’s eyes narrowed, pinning his daughter in place. “What sort of . . . activities . . . have you been engaging in, girl?”

  The shock of her father’s insinuating accusation nearly winded Daniel.

  Good heavens!

  It took a moment for Miss Lovejoy to follow her father’s meaning.

  And then color swept her face in a blush of truly magnificent proportions.

  “Oh!” She pressed her hands to her cheeks, expression equal parts horror and mortification.

  “Father!” The older brother, Mr. Will Lovejoy, rolled his eyes. “You know full well that Fossi has not been engaging in those sorts of activities, with or without Lord Whitmoor. The idea is absurd.” He shook his head, as if the thought of
any man wanting his sister was too ludicrous to countenance.

  “Oh,” she repeated.

  Miss Lovejoy—Fossi, apparently—wrapped her arms around herself again, as if hugging a life-preserver.

  Though his mind did snag on her nickname for a moment.

  Fossi.

  It was . . . cute. How long had it been since he had found anything cute?

  Her suffering stirred something deep within Daniel, something long buried and forgotten.

  “I can assure you, sir,” he said, “that Miss Lovejoy’s behavior has always been all that is proper and decorous—”

  “Pardon, sirrah?” Reverend Lovejoy snapped. “Please describe the nature of your prior interactions with my Foster—”

  “Father!” Fossi shot Daniel another distressed, apologetic look.

  “Silence, Foster!” Her father whirled on her. “It is just like a parasitic aristocrat to come sniffing around my household—”

  “Hear, hear.” That was the younger brother. “What could he possibly want with us?”

  “Perhaps we should apply to the man himself?” That droll bit was from Will. He still leaned against the edge of his father’s desk, arms crossed. “Lord Whitmoor does appear to still be in the room.”

  He shot Daniel a ‘go on’ look.

  Well.

  How to phrase this?

  “Gentleman, I would be honored to explain my presence here. Though, I require your discretion as to the contents of our conversation, as they must remain as secret as possible—”

  “I will agree to nothing,” Reverend Lovejoy harrumphed. “You will tell us and then we will decide what is to be done.”

  Daniel’s eyebrows shot to his hairline.

  Obviously, the good Reverend Lovejoy disliked the aristocracy.

  In Daniel’s experience, there were two reasons for this attitude. One stemmed from a decidedly American belief in a meritocracy, that each man should be valued based on his own merits and not an accident of birth. Such an opinion was in line with Daniel’s own personal worldview. He had, after all, risen to the peerage for precisely those reasons.

  But there was another viewpoint which disliked those in positions of power and authority out of resentment and jealousy—the thought being, ‘If I can’t be the one in charge, then I refuse to support those who are.’