After the Wedding

by Courtney Milan

  She looked up from the chair in her room, crochet hook in hand. A mirror stood on the wall; she eyed her pink-flushed cheeks. Love hurt, but… Love had shaped her, too.

  It would this time as well.

  Adrian was going to walk away one day. But if the past were any sort of guide, she wouldn’t leave him empty-handed.

  What would she take from him?

  If she could choose…

  If she could choose anything, it would be that confidence she had seen so often seen on him. Could she learn that? She considered it, and she watched him, wondering where that wellspring of braveness came from.

  * * *

  It took Camilla five days to make friends—across the span of a hundred years—with Jane Leland, opium drugged heiress and Miss Laney Tabbott.

  It had taken her seven to read their accounts so often that she knew what she and Adrian needed for this annulment—proof, absolute proof, indisputable proof.

  They didn’t yet have it.

  It had taken her ten days to think about going back—about really going back. She pushed the thought away the first time it intruded, then the second. If it had been just her own future at risk, she wasn’t sure she could manage it.

  But for Laney Tabbott, for Jane Leland… For the women who had not had a chance for justice, she thought she might be able to try. The men who had hurt them were long gone, but if she did nothing, Bishop Lassiter would one day maybe sit over a question of annulment. Rector Miles would hear from women who had been injured by men on a near-weekly basis. There was no justice for the dead, but there were too many women still living in need of kindness.

  For Laney and Jane, Camilla allowed herself to imagine that she had the courage to act. She imagined herself walking into the household. The long-dead women would walk invisibly by her side, present only in her imagination.

  The first time Camilla imagined going back, she cried by the riverbank; she didn’t let herself consider it for another two days.

  But she could not let them down, not like this. Not anymore.

  She returned to the prospect again and again, imagining the words she would say. Imagining the precise turn of her neck. Imagining how someone in the household might respond, and what she would do if they asked her this question or that.

  The second time, she didn’t cry. The third, her hands scarcely shook. By the time she had done it fifty times, her determination had become a bonfire.

  That evening, three weeks after they’d come to Adrian’s house, she sat with Adrian at dinner one night.

  “We’d like to see what you say about designs,” he said. “They’re almost finished.”

  “Good.” She looked down at her plate, then over at him. He was watching her with an intensity that prickled the palms of her hands, the soles of her feet.

  “Tomorrow morning?” he asked.

  “If you wish.” She inhaled, almost afraid to commit herself. But she’d promised herself—and him—and she’d promised Jane and Laney, so she swallowed her worries and moved forward.

  “I know what we need to get our annulment,” she told him. “I know how to get it, and I’m prepared to do it.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Centralization, you said.” Theresa’s brother folded his arms and kicked his legs out impatiently from the seat where he had spent the last handful of weeks. “Less time in an office sitting around, you said.” He looked at the heavy volume in front of him. “We’ll do better than the man Christian paid a vast sum to, who does this for a living. Really, Tee?”

  Admittedly, their quest had not run as smoothly as Theresa had imagined. In her mind, they would have arrived at the General Register Office on a Monday and discovered what they needed halfway through that afternoon, before they even had a chance to get hungry for tea.

  In reality, it had been weeks. Theresa herself would have been bitterly indignant, except she had to pretend serenity for her brother’s sake.

  Instead, she sniffed. “Have some patience, Corporal. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

  Her brother frowned mulishly. “Everyone always says that, but it’s never because someone is complaining about an entire city not being constructed over the space of twenty-four hours! It’s always about something utterly stupid that should not take longer than fifteen seconds. And we asked last night at dinner and it turns out that of course the people who Christian hired did go through the General Register Office. Because they’re not idiots, that’s why. Your assumptions were wrong and you were wrong and I’m tired of sitting here.”

  Theresa shot him a quelling look. “How am I supposed to be addressed again?”

  A long sigh. “I’m tired of sitting here, sir,” he muttered.

  “Well.” It was time to bring out her most fearsome weapon. Theresa fixed her brother with a look. “You are younger than me, after all. And everyone knows men haven’t the patience of women; they never have the chance to develop it. I suppose I have been remiss in not making allowances for your incapacity.”

  “That’s—” Benedict bit off his complaint and glared at her. “That’s not fair.”

  She waved a hand. “You’re free to go at any time.”

  Theresa, on the other hand, was going to sit here and go through these damned records for the rest of her natural life if she needed to. The alternative would be that she would be wrong, and she refused to let that happen.

  “Have it your way!” Benedict picked up a book. “I’m staying.”

  She shot him another look. “Corporal Benedict.”

  He let out a groan. “I’m staying, sir.”

  “Your choice not to desert is commendable.” She flipped a page of her record book. “And you’re right—we did find out last night that Judith’s people had looked through the records. That was valuable information; it helps us expand our search, if we must. They were looking for a Camilla Worth. We’re looking for anything abnormal involving something that looks a little like her name. Let’s start by assuming that she’d make only a minimal change. She’s still called Camilla. If I were constructing a false identity, I would use a last name that starts with a W. Or maybe a Y.”

  “Right.” Benedict just looked disgusted. “Do you know how many people there are named Camilla in Britain? How are we to pay attention to them all?”

  Theresa set down her book, stood, and strode confidently down the hall, not waiting to see if her brother would follow. Luckily, he scampered after her. There was no point being anything other than confident.

  “We should finish up the marriage registries today,” she said as he caught up to her. “If we don’t find anything there, we’ll get to look into birth records, and won’t that be a delightful change of pace?”

  In all honesty, they should have started there. A child born out of wedlock was the most likely reason why Camilla would have changed her name. She wasn’t about to spring the notion on Benedict’s young, innocent ears unless she had no choice.

  After that, there were penal records and death certificates—but those both sounded terrible, and she hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  Theresa marched up to the clerk at the marriage records desk as if she were not fifteen years of age. She hoped the hat she was wearing made her look older; it was ugly enough.

  “My good man,” she greeted him. That was how the dowager marchioness spoke, and it always seemed to get results.

  He straightened and turned to her. “Yes? How can I help you, miss?”

  Theresa tilted her head up and attempted to look down her own nose. It didn’t work, because he was a good six inches taller than she was, and also, her nose was somewhat lacking. She felt herself blushing. “I should like to see the marriage registers for 1864 and 1865, if you please. And if you have a folio for recent marriages, we should like to see that.”

  “If you could fill out the request form…” He indicated to her right.

  “But of course. I should be delighted to.”

  “Why are you talking like that?”
Benedict asked loudly. “All stodgy-like? Have you had a stick inserted up your—”

  “Shut up,” she responded in a quiet hiss.

  A bit of lead pencil, two minutes, and her terrible scratchy handwriting later was all it took to produce the form. The man took it, bowed, and disappeared into the ranks of shelves behind him.

  “I’m always amazed,” Benedict whispered at her side, “that they’re willing to give us whatever we ask for just because we fill out some stupid form. Do they have any idea who you are and what you do with things that make you angry?”

  Theresa rolled her eyes at him. “Stop being so dramatic. We’re just asking to look at some ruddy pieces of paper. Nobody cares about them, so nobody’s going to make off with them. It’s not as if we’re filing a request to steal the Crown Jewels.”

  “Mmm. You’d find a way.”

  The man came back with two books under his arm and a sheaf of bound papers.

  “Here you are, Miss. You mayn’t take them from the room, of course.”

  “Thank you. You’ve been most helpful.”

  She and Benedict divided the work between them. Theresa had become almost familiar with the ebb and flow of the reading. The records were divided into books listing name after name after name, alphabetically set forth, with numbers following after that indicating where the full record was kept.

  There were no Camilla Worths married in 1865, Theresa found, nor anyone with a last name starting with a W. She tried a few other combinations—Camilla Cassandra, for her middle name, and Camilla Weston, for her mother’s name.

  Nothing, and they had gone through weeks of nothing. Boring. Her fingers tapped the table in irritation as she read. She hoped she wouldn’t have to go all the way to death records. That would be inconvenient, tragic, and also? A terrible birthday present for Judith. Even her diseased embroidered crows would be preferable to unveiling Camilla’s tragic, early grave.

  “Nothing,” Benedict said, closing his own book. “God, I’m weary.”

  Theresa had never been one to give up. Instead, she started on the recent folios. These were easier—pieces of freshly printed bound materials, much thinner since they contained a few weeks’ worth of material each instead of an entire year. There were only a handful of Ws in each sheaf, and she amused herself making stories about some of the people whose names she saw.

  Ann Edelbert Wumbler, for instance. She seemed like a solid sort. She owned her own bakery, Theresa decided, but it was actually a sham. Instead, she housed a printing press in the basement, one that produced lewd woodcuts…

  “What about this?” Benedict, who had started on his own folio, and who had not been distracted by Ann Edelbert Wumbler, pointed to a record.

  The registry index was sparse at best, listing names, parishes, and the location of where the final record was. Theresa followed her brother’s finger and felt her heart begin to hammer.

  Winters

  —Camilla Cassandra, Surrey, Lackwich, 1b 902.

  Oh, God. It…

  It could be a coincidence. There was no reason there could not be two Camilla Cassandras in the entirety of England. But… But… She swallowed. She looked over at her brother.

  “It’s her.” He said it as guardedly as she did. “At least, it could be? It’s the closest we’ve come.”

  It could be their sister.

  The moment should have felt more portentous. Drums should have sounded or a raven could have got into the building and cawed in dismay. Instead, the office whirred about them as if they had not just succeeded.

  Theresa scarcely remembered her sister.

  If that person on the registry was Camilla, it left so many questions unanswered. Why had Camilla changed her last name? Why had she not told her own family that she was marrying? Who had she married?

  This last question they could answer on their own. She smiled at her brother. “Here, you’ve seen me do it. You’re the one who found this. You fill out the request for the full record.”

  He did. They waited, holding hands so hard that they squeezed each other’s fingers to numbness.

  Theresa scarcely knew her sister Camilla. She had a vague memory of a dark-haired laughing girl, swiping Theresa’s face clean and patting her on the head. That was it—one single memory, compared with the millions she had for Judith.

  Or the dozens she had for Pri.

  Maybe Theresa had been afraid to think too much of Camilla. When Theresa had been young—very young—she had accompanied her father and brother to China. She remembered the trip dimly through the gauze of distance that made all her early childhood memories seem impossibly far away. She remembered standing on the deck of the ship.

  Anthony used to have to keep dragging her away from the edge.

  She’d been the only child on the trip, and so apparently, she’d invented a playmate for the journey—a sister to take the place of the ones she’d left behind. Priya—that was the name she remembered, Pri for short—had been older. Dark-haired, brown-skinned, with laughing brown eyes. She had been maybe Camilla’s age, although at three, Theresa had been unable to judge such things with any degree of certainty. She’d been sweet. She had played games with Theresa, pulling her away from the edge of the ship when Anthony wasn’t around…and occasionally, sneaking there to stand next to her, watching the waves pass far below.

  Don’t worry, Tee. I’ll keep you safe.

  Theresa could remember her imaginary sister better than she could Camilla, and it was frightening that her mind could fool itself so well. Perhaps she never let herself think of Camilla because she was afraid that she’d invent something out of nothing.

  Look at her; she’d invented an entire story, ending in lewd woodcuts, around Ann Edelbert Wumbler, and the poor woman had done nothing but get married.

  Theresa knew that she worried Judith.

  In truth, sometimes Theresa thought she worried Judith on purpose. She never wanted to forget that she was different, that her mind did things that other people’s minds did not. And maybe she wanted to remind Judith, because she never knew when she would…

  “It’s arrived,” Benedict said, breaking Theresa out of this depressing reverie. Thank God. There was nothing more annoying than reflecting on reality.

  The records from the parish were just sheaves of paper sewn together, so new that Theresa could still smell a hint of pungent ink.

  Her brother’s fingers fumbled to the right page, spreading it open.

  Camilla Cassandra Winters, age 19. Her parents were listed as George Winters and Anne Marie Weston. Her occupation was servant.

  “It’s the right age,” Benedict breathed. “And…isn’t that’s her mother’s name?”

  Camilla had a different mother than Benedict and Theresa. She stared at the name in question. “I think so.”

  “George was father’s given name.”

  “True,” Theresa said slowly. “But everybody’s named George. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

  Still. It seemed increasingly possible that they’d found their sister. Now all they had to do was…find her.

  A handful of weeks ago, she had married a man named Adrian Hunter. His parents were listed as a John Hunter the IIIrd and an Elizabeth Denmore. His occupation: valet.

  Benedict exhaled. “This will be…interesting. Do we tell Judith now?”

  “Tell Judith what?” asked a voice behind them.

  Benedict jumped. Theresa was too well-disciplined to do so; inwardly, though, she winced.

  It was the Dowager Marchioness of Ashford—her sister’s mother-in-law. She was a sweet, sweet lady who loved Theresa dearly.

  Theresa still couldn’t figure out why. She looked at the black ink smeared on her gloves from examining freshly printed records and scrunched her hands into fists.

  “Lady Ashford.” Theresa turned. She curtsied. “How lovely to see you. We were just getting ready to go home?”

  The woman raised a single eyebrow. “Theresa, I taught you that t
rick. You can’t go all mannerly on me in an attempt to get out of an explanation. Whatever are you two doing here?”

  Benedict looked at Theresa. “We were going to tell them anyway.”

  “No, we weren’t,” Theresa contradicted. She turned to the dowager. “It’s a surprise. For Judith’s birthday. We’re planning it.”

  The dowager looked around the General Register Office with a dubious air. Theresa could imagine how the place looked to her—an ugly, dusty building, inhabited by men in dour brown suits. They sat at a table, surrounded by volumes. It smelled of must.

  Yes, she imagined herself saying, we are obtaining these lovely records requests for Judith’s birthday. Who doesn’t want to request records?

  The dowager shook her head and sighed. “I knew you were up to something when Judith said you were shopping for hats. You never like shopping. You hate hats. You’ve been shopping for three weeks. Is this a good surprise for Judith?”

  “It’s the best surprise,” Theresa said earnestly.

  The dowager looked unconvinced. “Would Judith think so? Or will this be like the mice?”

  “Judith will be overjoyed,” Theresa said. “I promise. With everything I have in me.”

  Assuming that Camilla wasn’t dead, that was.

  The woman looked around. “Very well, then. Are you almost finished?”

  “We’ve just a few notes to make,” Theresa said. “Then we’ll be off home.”

  “Off to get a hat,” the dowager told her. And when Theresa’s nose wrinkled, she gave her a stern look. “It won’t be much of a surprise if Judith suspects you of anything. Finish your…whatever it is you are doing. Then, for the sin of telling your sister a lie, I sentence you to hat yourself.”

  “But—”

  “You know how it is,” the dowager said. “You can be as odd as you like if you’re wearing the right hat. And you, my dear, need to watch yourself on that count.”

  “Very well.” Theresa frowned. “If I must.”

  Benedict waited until the other woman had retreated to the hall. “You’re so nice to her,” he murmured. “You’re getting soft, General.”