R Is for Rebel

by Megan Mulry

  “I don’t know. Maybe I am willing to sit by and watch,” Abigail said. “I don’t want to hurt him.”

  Sylvia Heyworth Parnell looked away from her daughter’s pained expression and exhaled through her nose, silently cursing the double-edged sword of the depth of her late-in-life affection for her youngest child. Life had certainly been simpler back when she left the care and feeding, and emotional well-being, of her children to nannies and governesses. Now that Abigail was a twenty-nine-year-old adult, Sylvia had actually come to care for her so deeply, it was impossible to sit back and watch her flail. “Abigail, this is not a potential investment or philanthropic opportunity for you. This is your life. Please do not turn fainthearted now. It does not suit you.”

  Abigail tried to turn away, but her mother’s gentle hand on her cheek forced her to look her in the eye. Perhaps it was the absence of any maternal affection whatsoever for the first decades of Abigail’s life, but her mother’s subtle touch here on the sidewalk next to the newspaper kiosk was more than she could stand. Her eyes stung with unshed tears as she looked into her mother’s eyes.

  Just as Sylvia had been confused by the unfamiliar tenderness that had built gradually over the past few years, Abigail was equally befuddled. She wanted so much to rely on her mother, to simply fall into a hammock of strength, but Sylvia had been so completely unavailable for so long, it was, at base, a frightening prospect.

  “Why did you have to turn into a real mother all of a sudden?” Abigail asked through a hiccup of emotion.

  “I wish I knew. My life would be much simpler if I didn’t seem to live in a parallel universe where I felt every triumph and catastrophe of yours as if it were my own. It’s highly inconvenient.”

  They both laughed as Sylvia lightly patted her daughter’s cheek twice and wiped away a tear with her perfectly manicured index finger. The two women stared at each other: the one tall, elegant, fair-haired, and proud, the other petite, brooding, dark, and nearly defeated, their silver-gray eyes exact mirrors of one another.

  “I hate to admit it,” said Sylvia, “but I believe this is a situation that calls for Bronte’s version of sledgehammer subtlety.” Sylvia’s eyes tightened around the edges as they always did at the mention of her brash daughter-in-law. “You must simply pick up the phone and speak to Eliot, to discuss matters plainly.”

  “And say what, exactly? ‘Oh, hi, Eliot, Abigail here. Even though I behaved abominably, and I’ve never had the courage to apologize in all these months, I would like you to reconsider your plans to wed the lovely—and accomplished—Miss Marisa Plah-Whatever-Her-Name-Is, who probably shows you unreserved love and respect, and contemplate tossing your hat in the ring for fabulous me’? Something along those lines, Mother?”

  Abigail shook out her crazy head of hair and wished her thoughts would shake right out of her head along with her unruly tresses. “I’m exasperated, Mother. I’m fine. I’m just going to walk for a bit, then I have meetings the rest of the day with the two professors from the Sorbonne about partnering with our foundation in Uganda. Don’t count on me for dinner.”

  “Tant pis. I thought you might join us. All right then. I will see you back at the house later tonight.”

  “I think I’m going to go back to London tonight, after the meetings. Do you mind?”

  “Oh, all right, darling.” They kissed each other on both cheeks before parting.

  Abigail wandered around the cold city streets, the gathering, ambivalent gray clouds a perfect embodiment of her mood; directionless and mildly disappointing, with momentary glimmers of tentative, bright sun trying to come through. She was happy on so many levels, she argued with herself. Even her mother’s brief regret that she wouldn’t be able to join her for dinner represented such a wonderful change from the brittle, formal nonrelationship the two had tolerated until a few years ago.

  Sylvia’s love affair with Jack had transformed Abigail’s mother in many ways. She not only shed her former aristocratic title, but a slew of attendant responsibilities and social codes. All of the commitments and strictures that had defined her—or that had defined the person called the Duchess of Northrop—were set down like a long-carried parcel that was suddenly of no use whatsoever. She was still as opinionated and single-minded as she’d always been, but there was a new tone in her voice, a burgeoning acceptance of other people’s foibles. Lately, Abigail noticed that her humor was based on empathy rather than scorn. Jack Parnell loved Sylvia in a transcendent way that went far beyond the honorific title with which she had previously identified so closely. He was helping her see the world through a joyful lens.

  After Sylvia met Jack that night at the Plaza Athénée, she gradually realized that she might have a go at something—someone—for the sheer pleasure of it. Prior to that moment, Sylvia’s entire life had been a prescribed adherence to convention: her socially ambitious mother had schooled her in etiquette and proper behavior; her shrewd father had ensured she knew more than her fair share of economics, politics, and trade. She was a wife in training. Her father’s wealth ensured she would make a fine marriage, but even well into the twentieth century, the fact that her father was in trade was never far from her (or her more aristocratic mother’s) mind.

  When Sylvia met George Conrad Heyworth for the first time, he was a shy, sweet farm boy from Northrop. His pedigree was unassailable—nephew of a duke on his father’s side, nephew of a king on his mother’s—but back then, it had never seemed that he would one day hold one of the oldest, most prestigious titles himself. In those days, he was not in line for the dukedom. George’s uncle Freddy, the sixteenth Duke of Northrop, was hale and quite reproductive. At the time Sylvia met him, George already had three female cousins and twins on the way. Surely Freddy would sire a son at some point.

  On the other hand, if Freddy ended up with a gaggle of girls, George’s young, virile father, Henry, would be the duke if it came to that, and even then, George’s older brother Ned would take the reins from him and off it would go down that side of the family. And by then, they’d all joked, who even knew if there would be such a thing as a dukedom?

  Abigail’s father had grown up living the life of an innocent (albeit wealthy and educated) country bumpkin. George’s parents, Grandpa Henry and Grandma Polly, had little interest in the glittering London high life, opting instead to create their own small universe populated with eight children, myriad animals, self-produced dramatic performances, athletic competitions. George had a sister who started writing novels at the age of nine, a brother who built his first small tree house in the woods at eleven, all amid an environment that seemed to foster every form of creativity imaginable. By George’s own reckoning, he was the most boring of the clan. He simply loved the land. Sylvia found him utterly charming.

  She and her sister Claudia had been raised in bourgeois splendor in the small city where their father’s mills prospered. Regimental precision was always the order of the day: breakfast, lunch, and dinner served at exactly the same hours; clothes and linens pressed mercilessly; menus planned weeks in advance; social schedules adhered to. Sylvia felt a pang of insecurity when she suspected the contrived aristocratic life her mother aspired to bore no resemblance whatsoever to the real aristocratic life that George Heyworth enjoyed.

  The two of them had first danced at the small hunt ball in the town of Brinby. Sylvia felt an instant attraction to the dark, brooding, shy George. His older sister had dared him into asking “the ice princess” to dance. Sylvia only learned of the nickname later, to her horror. Her posture, the set of her jaw, the perfection of her blond hair—these were all things her mother had given paramount importance. It had never occurred to Sylvia that they could be sources of derision.

  George might have been shy around pretty (beautiful!) girls, but he was never going to turn down a dare from his bossy, sophisticated (or so she told everyone) older sister. He was sure the willowy, fair goddess in the corner would decline his invitation in any case, so there was no chance o
f further ridicule. When Sylvia Parker not only accepted his tentative offer to dance, but punctuated her response with a smile that transformed her face into something else entirely—something glorious—George swore he would be grateful to his domineering sister for the rest of his days.

  Their marriage had been one of mutual attraction more than respect. The characteristics that had initially drawn them to one another—his lack of polish and natural charm, her precision and grace—were the same traits that often drove them apart. They always loved one another, and their romantic life was perpetually satisfying, but the fabric of their love was rent after the unexpected chain of events that led to Great Uncle Freddy’s title being passed to George’s father, and then, in due course, to George (brought on by Uncle Freddy siring six daughters and Ned’s death in a car accident while Henry was the seventeenth duke).

  When the title fell to Abigail’s father, Sylvia felt a responsibility—an almost-ingrained burden—to fulfill the role of the Duchess of Northrop admirably. George was ultimately grateful for her direction—she was socially adept in ways that baffled him—and Sylvia made his transition from tweedy eccentric to accepted member of the royal circle run far more smoothly than George could have ever managed. Unfortunately, her difficult pregnancies and lack of maternal instincts tore them apart. After Abigail’s birth, an event that served as the coda to nearly fifteen consecutive years of attempted pregnancies that had resulted in five miscarriages, two stillbirths, and four healthy babies, Sylvia simply shut down.

  She took her eldest daughter, Claire, and spent most of her time in London, enjoying the culture, society, and entertainments that were her due, or so her mother had drilled into her all those years ago. The genuine, profound affection George showered on his three younger children, Max, Devon, and Abigail, became one more thing the two parents did not share.

  Up until George’s premature death, however, Sylvia had always felt the ping of excitement when she would see him after a week’s absence, when she would return to Dunlear Castle from short absences spent trotting about London and enter their private rooms, sensing his childlike eagerness to touch her, embrace her, look upon her. If it were only the two of them on earth, she sometimes mused, it might have been perfect.

  On this earth, however, neither one of them were ever quite what the other had hoped. There was a world of love between them, but it seemed to Sylvia that something or other always forced them to focus their attentions elsewhere. To George, Sylvia’s lack of attention to her children was heartbreaking; to Sylvia, George’s lack of attention to her was equally heartbreaking.

  Since none of those intimacies between her parents were ever really clear to Abigail—what child ever understands the nature of her parents’ marriage?—having the opportunity to see her mother’s emotional journey with Jack Parnell was a particular gift. An emotional sympathy had developed between mother and daughter that allowed Abigail to forgive her mother’s absence during her childhood and had provided them both with a new and welcome friendship.

  Abigail sighed with a mixture of gratitude and capitulation, thankful for what she had gained with her mother and resigned to what she had lost with Eliot. By the time she looked up, she realized she had crossed half the city and was close to the Sorbonne.

  This meeting with two members of the anthropology department at the esteemed Parisian university was the culmination of a solid year of hard work. After her brief time with Eliot, Abigail had turned her full attention to her financial—and moral—responsibilities.

  Following that first meeting with the personal bankers at Coutts—and with Max’s kind, steady shoulder to lean on when necessary—Abigail had spent all her time researching everything she could about setting up her own philanthropic foundation. She learned about advantageous tax structures and sound investment strategies, and took two semesters of night classes at London Business School on trusts and estates, accounting, and corporate finance.

  Occasionally, she came upon Eliot’s name while she researched other organizations or the best way to go about populating a board of directors. He would have been an obvious choice to sit on her board. His personal work in the charity sector was far-reaching, as well as the corporate foundation he had set up as an arm of Danieli-Fauchard. Last summer, Bronte had pressed Abigail to contact him.

  “So what if you guys didn’t click in the sack? You could still be friends. Or at least professional associates. Sarah doesn’t have any problem with him. He can’t be all bad.”

  Not click in the sack? If only. “Bronte—”

  “I mean, it’s none of my fucking business why you never saw each other after last winter…” Bronte let the words hang in the air between them.

  “You’re right, Bron. It’s none of your business.”

  “All right, all right. Point taken. But still—”

  “I mean it. No more talk of Eliot Cranbrook being involved with the Rose and Thorn.”

  Putting the kibosh on conversations about Eliot had become second nature in the intervening months since they’d gone their separate ways.

  Abigail met three times a week with her private banker, Caroline Petrovich from Coutts, to go over the intricacies of her finances. She often looked back, almost fondly, at her own idiotic belief that her first visit would require less than an hour and would entail reviewing a few ledger sheets. In reality, it had run over three hours and led to the happy professional relationship that Abigail and Caroline now shared.

  At the end of the first three months, Abigail—with Caroline’s astute advice, and lots of cheering on from Sarah and Bronte—was starting to have a clear idea of how much of her fortune she wanted to put into trust and how much she wanted to strategically give away through the creation of a well-structured foundation. She named her foundation the Rose and Thorn Foundation in memory of a distant Tudor relative who had been beheaded after specious accusations of adultery. The foundation battled the diminution of women’s rights or outright destruction of women through economic and medical education. Financial independence and physical health were the best weapons she hoped to provide against centuries of oppression.

  While Abigail tried to steer clear of moral or religious arguments, she often found herself writing letters to the editors of many papers. The mere suggestion that there was honor in the punishment of women for real or imagined moral turpitude was the philosophical evil against which the foundation railed. It was a battle Abigail hoped to fight with an arsenal of rational, hands-on education and aid, not unwinnable religious arguments.

  She took it all very seriously and treated the entire enterprise with the same fervor and enthusiasm one would apply to starting any new business. Or digging a well.

  She persevered.

  She enlisted her sisters-in-law: Bronte for the PR and marketing (how should Abigail promote herself and the foundation; how would the foundation reach potential applicants), and Devon’s wife, Sarah James, whose experience running her shoe company had given her a wealth of firsthand experience in start-ups and how to maintain creative and corporate enthusiasm. In addition to their credentials, both were simply women who had succeeded in pursuing their own achievements and thrived in the face of challenge.

  Abigail was about to duck into Balzar for a quick lunch to kill the spare hour before going to her meeting at the Sorbonne, when her phone rang and she saw it was Sarah.

  “Hey, Sar.”

  Sarah mumbled something dismissive to someone in her office then turned her voice back to the phone. “Hi, Abs! You’re on your way into the Sorbonne, right?”

  “Yes. I’m a little nervous.”

  “Why? You’ve stared down bigger dogs than these guys.”

  “I know. But it’s always easier staring down the big guns when I am going after their dirty money, but these people are so tuned in and… if I could get them on the board… well… I am really, really keen. If their estimation of the work we’re doing in Uganda is that it’s a load of ineffectual—”

 
“Stop!” Sarah laughed with sisterly affection. “You are so your worst enemy, sweetie. It makes no difference what those dusty academics say. Of course, it would be a feather in your cap to have their name on your letterhead, to forge that alliance, but you of all people know that those women in Uganda are getting proper health care thanks to you.”

  “Not me! The group of doctors and students who are giving their—”

  “Oh, Abigail! Please. How would any of those doctors or students afford the supplies and… well, it’s just too boring. I’m not going to waste time praising you. You’ll never have any of it, anyway. So, more to the point, what are you wearing?”

  Abigail laughed way too loud and a decidedly aristocratic French woman of a certain age lifted her Gallic chin and looked away as she passed her on the uneven sidewalk. “Only you could place equal importance on the desperate lives of impoverished Ugandan women and what clothes I have on.”

  “That is sooooo not true,” Sarah said plaintively. “You know I think the clothes are more important.”

  Abigail laughed even harder and leaned her shoulder against the side of a building along the Boulevard Saint-Michel across from Brasserie Balzar, since she didn’t want to carry on her conversation inside. Abigail refused to answer calls in restaurants on the simple principle that she despised when other people did it, so she couldn’t very well excuse the same abominable behavior in herself. She marveled that she might very well be turning into her mother after all. Her silly adherence to antiquated forms of etiquette was a constant source of humor to Sarah and Bronte, who were perfectly happy to bark entire soliloquies into their cell phones in the middle of lunch at the Wolseley.

  “All right, as long as we’re being honest.” Abigail’s laughter died down, then she pulled her cashmere muffler a little bit tighter around her neck to fend off the chill. The thought of Eliot peeling off her old rubbishy purple scarf skittered across her mind. “I’m wearing the Brora cashmere scarf you gave me for Christmas, the long-sleeved, stretchy black silk top you made me buy at Harvey Nichols, and that black thigh-length coat-sweater thing—”