“Is that a ‘wa-wa-wa,’ as in she’s crying, or is she trying to ask a question?” Lila whispered behind her hand.
Sylvia peered at their blubbering mama. “I . . . cannot be altogether certain which,” she replied, keeping her lips absolutely motionless as she spoke. And if the countess was distraught over this small revelation, what was she going to say to the second item Sylvia had called her here to . . . discuss?
The door opened, and the sisters looked over.
A maid entered, bearing a tray in hand. The longtime member of the family’s staff hovered at the doorway, briefly considering the path over her shoulder.
“Lovely. Thank you, Patricia.” Sylvia smiled widely and, holding a hand up, gestured the girl over. “Refreshme—”
The rest of that announcement was lost to the dowager countess’s enormous gasping sobs.
And the usually attentive servant set the tray down, then fled without so much as a curtsy or waiting to see whether anything else was required of her.
Smart girl. Sylvia eyed the doorway covetously, knowing all too well how the young woman felt and envying her that escape.
Alas, this exchange had been . . . inevitable. There had been no way around informing her mother about her intentions. She was never going to take well to Sylvia leaving the respectable household she’d shared with Norman and moving not back in with her family but to another, less stylish street. Sylvia, however, was more than ready—and eager—to put this exchange behind her.
Donning another forced smile, Sylvia lifted the porcelain pot. “Tea?”
“I think tea is a splendid idea,” Lila exclaimed, albeit a bit too forcefully to be sincere, and yet her efforts were only appreciated. As was her support this day.
Sylvia proceeded to pour, and then she looked to her still-wailing mother. “Would you care for tea, Mother?” she asked loudly enough to penetrate the dowager countess’s noisy blubbering.
Her mother lowered the kerchief to her lap, revealing her swollen eyes and red cheeks. “Tea? Teaaaaa?”
Her mother managed to squeeze a whole four extra syllables into that single word.
Lila promptly looked down at her delicate floral cup and put a good deal of attention into stirring its contents.
Sylvia offered her most serene smile to their mother, the same one she’d practiced with her governesses to perfection as a girl. “You always did say tea is the great equalizer of sentiment and emotions.” Which she’d secretly thought to be vexingly redundant. Alas, using the countess’s oft-delivered lessons could only help in calming her.
Their mother’s lips fell agape, and she floundered about several moments for words. “This is the lesson you should choose to remember?”
“This one is as good as any,” Sylvia countered, taking it upon herself to pour a cup anyway. She tried to hand it to her mother.
The countess made no attempt to take the offering. “No. No, it is not. There are any number of lessons I’ve imparted that are a great deal more important.”
“Such as not moving out by oneself?” Lila volunteered.
Their mother looked to Lila. “Precisely.”
“Thank you,” Sylvia mouthed.
Her sister winced. “I’m sorry.” Clearing her throat, she lowered her teacup to her lap. “I . . . What I intended to say is though it might seem sad and disappointing to see Sylvia leave”—Lila’s recovery emerged halting and disjointed—“many women move outside of their family’s households.”
“She is a widow,” her mother cried.
When no other response was forthcoming, Sylvia asked, “And?”
“And you belong at home with us. Widows are prey for”—their mother dropped her voice to a loud whisper—“all manner of scandalous, wicked men.”
“Why are we whispering now? Are there scandalous, wicked men about whom we fear offending?”
The door opened, and they looked to the front of the room as Henry strolled in. “Lila!” he exclaimed. “I heard you—”
Both sisters spoke as one. “Get out.” The last thing Sylvia required was two overprotective family members attempting to dissuade her from her course.
“Do not order your brother gone,” the dowager countess commanded. She thumped a palm on the curved arm of her chair. “I would have him join us.”
The three March women stared back at Henry.
He looked amongst them and must have seen something more menacing in facing a pair of March sisters than a single angry mama, because he hastily backed out of the room.
The moment he’d closed the door behind him, Sylvia refocused on the countess. “There are no worries about scandalous gentlemen. I’ve no interest in letting myself dally with the wicked.” Or dally with any man, for that matter. Not ever again. No good came from such dealings. Life and love had taught her that much.
Her mother pounced. “They’ll do it anyway. The world will take it as an indication of how you intend to live, and . . . and . . . there is your son.”
Sylvia’s heart pulled. Her son, Vallen, was her world. The only gift left to her by a husband who’d never truly loved her. Not in the way she’d loved him. Not in any way, really.
Pushing aside that useless self-pitying born of an understanding she’d come to terms with, Sylvia took the opening left by her mother. “My son will be with me. I’m not leaving him here.”
“And do you expect he’s going to serve as a protector?” her mother asked incredulously.
“Of course n—”
The countess’s challenges kept coming. “He should not be exposed to all the widow-hunting gentlemen who have their sights on you, Sylvia.”
“He’s not going to be exposed to widow-hunting gentlemen,” she said, exasperation sweeping in. “Quite the opposite.” What she intended in moving out would see her home insulated from all men.
“Furthermore, are they realllly gentlemen?” Lila pointed out.
No, her sister was correct on that score. Sylvia joined in. “And are they really hunting?” After all, women weren’t fowl or deer.
“Yes!” their mother cried. “They are, and that there is the very reason you should not do this thing you are suggesting.”
“I’m not suggesting it, Mother,” she said gently. “I’m doing it.”
That pronouncement was met with a sudden onset of thundering silence so heavy the distant rattle of carriages rumbling past filled the parlor.
The countess’s lower lip trembled wildly, and she raised her wrinkled kerchief to her mouth.
“Here.” Lila collected the forgotten cup of tea from Sylvia and handed it over.
This time, their mother took the offering. The tip of her index finger sticking out, she raised the cup to her lips and sipped daintily at the contents. With her other hand, she dusted a tear back from the corner of her eye. And when she lowered the kerchief to her lap, Sylvia’s stomach turned over.
For she recognized that glimmer in her mother’s eyes. She recognized it all too well.
Setting her teacup down, the countess moved to the edge of her seat . . . And for one fleeting moment born of hope, Sylvia thought her mother would storm off.
But then the countess wouldn’t do anything so uncouth as walking briskly, which was why the leading pillar of society was responding as she was to Sylvia’s announcement.
And only one of her announcements at that . . . What would she say when she discovered the other reason Sylvia had called this meeting together? Her mother rested a hand on Sylvia’s knee, as she’d done whenever she’d doled out some maternal request she expected met.
Not allowing her that opportunity, Sylvia spoke quickly. “I’m not intending to live alone. I’m planning to have company.”
Her mother froze, from her silvery eyelashes on down to the gloved palm that still rested on Sylvia’s skirts; not so much as a part or sliver of her moved. And then her shoulders sagged slightly.
“Companions! Yes, that is a splendid idea,” she said, clapping excitedly. The dowager c
ountess sagged slightly in her seat. “You should have said as much. We shall find you the most respectable ones!”
Both sisters exchanged a look.
“No. No,” Sylvia said. “That won’t be necessary. I already have them.”
That brought the countess up short. She swiftly found her footing. “Very well . . . You found your own companions.” And since the door closed and their meeting began thirty minutes earlier, their mother smiled her first smile. “That is very reliable of you.” The countess trilled a laugh and gathered her teacup. “And here I was worrying, and all for naught. I should have known better, as you were ever the most dutiful of the daughters.”
“I’m sitting right here,” Lila muttered.
The most dutiful of the daughters. But then, that was how everyone and anyone in Polite Society and her family had come to view Sylvia. Always proper, always doing that which the ton expected of good young ladies. And mayhap that was also why no one had ever truly been able to love her . . . because she had been sculpted by the most illustrious governesses and shaped into a clump of colorless clay.
Sylvia tensed her mouth.
No longer. The days of being the vapid, soporific lady were at an end. “They are not companions, Mother.”
Her mother’s smile wavered ever so slightly. “Beg pardon? You just said—”
“They are not paid companions, that is.”
“Un . . . paid companions?” That teacup found its place once more on the countess’s lap. “Are you in dire financial straits?” Not awaiting an answer, she looked to the doorway. “I knew we should have had your brother remain. He would—”
“My finances are in order.” Sylvia’s husband had offered little in terms of happiness, but he’d left her comfortable enough with resources to see herself cared for.
“Then why aren’t you . . . paying them?” Puzzlement underlined her mother’s question.
“Because they are not employees, Mother.” She spoke gently with her elucidation. “They are friends.”
Lila, silent through all that exchange, raised her cup to her lips and looked up at the ceiling.
Their mother whipped her head over to her younger daughter. “What is it?”
A blush bloomed on Lila’s cheeks. Lila, the only person who was even worse at dissembling than Sylvia. “I didn’t say anything,” her younger sister said.
The countess didn’t waste any more time pressing Lila. She narrowed her gaze on Sylvia. “What is it?”
Smoothing her hands over her peach skirts, Sylvia met her mother’s stare with a brave smile. “I take it you mean . . . who?”
“Sylvia.” Her name emerged as a warning.
“They are very dear ladies, who not unlike me have found themselves the unfair recipients of—”
“Who?”
“Lady Annalee,” Sylvia blurted, starting with what would be outrageous, but still the lesser so, to her mother.
Silence met that pronouncement. There was another moment of stillness as the countess turned motionless. “Lady Annalee?” A young woman who’d been at the Peterloo tragedy with Lila. Unlike Lila, who had dealt with the aftermath by isolating herself, Annalee had used alcohol and society as a distraction from her pain. As such, it was to be expected Sylvia’s announcement would be met with some degree of shock. “As in . . . Lila’s friend?”
“Yes.” Annalee may have not at first been Sylvia’s friend, but since Lila’s reentry to the living, Sylvia had become close with Annalee as well. “The very same.”
There came another wave of silence that Sylvia filled. “She was visiting with Lila when I also happened to be visiting, and we were both remarking on how unfair it was that grown, unwed women should be expected to live with their relatives, and then I said . . . ‘Why do we have to? Why can we not have a place of our own, as gentlemen do?’ And”—Sylvia lifted her hands—“here we are.”
Her mother stared blankly back. “Here we . . . ?” And then she erupted. In . . . laughter. Unrestrained mirth, which was the first ever shown by the older, proper matron.
She’d driven the countess to madness. Splendid. Sylvia looked over to her sister.
Lila lifted her shoulders in a confused little shrug.
This had decidedly not been the response they’d expected. Hesitantly, Sylvia allowed herself to join in that amusement.
“And here you, the least humorous of all my children, are telling jests.”
Indignation killed Sylvia’s laughter. “I beg your pardon?”
Her mother dashed the tears of hilarity from her cheeks. “You aren’t even friends with Annalee.”
No, she hadn’t been. As Annalee had been her previously reclusive sister’s closest friend, their mother was certainly entitled to some . . . confusion.
Lila took heart and came to the rescue once more. “They were not friends; however, I took the liberty of introducing them, and they’ve since become so. Isn’t that right, Sylvia?”
Steadied by her sister’s support, Sylvia nodded. “Indeed. We get on quite well, and—”
“You . . . get . . . on . . . quite . . . well?” Their mother’s disjointed question emerged garbled. “But her reputation. She is unmarried. She is . . . a scandal.” The countess hissed out that last word on a whisper. Though it was unclear which she found to be a more egregious offense.
“Mother,” Sylvia said gently but firmly. “I would not judge a woman unfairly. She conducts herself no differently than most gentlemen living their lives.”
“Yes,” her mother cried, nodding frantically. “That is precisely it. She is not a gentleman, and you are not one to invite scandal. I forbid it.”
Another time those three words would have effectively quashed any hint of rebellion from Sylvia. Not anymore.
Sylvia took a deep breath. “There is more.”
“Of course there is,” her mother muttered. She set her cup down hard. “What is it nowww?”
It was a dire day indeed when the dowager countess was a-muttering and sloshing tea over the rim of her glass.
Just get out all of it. “And we will also be joined by Valerie Bragger.”
There was a time when that name had brought only the greatest hurt and resentment and outrage. No more. Sylvia had come to find a compatriot in the unlikeliest of women.
“Your . . . husband’s . . . former . . . lover?” The countess strangled on each syllable of each whispered word.
Sylvia’s body stiffened. The truth of her late husband’s betrayal still landed a blow square to her chest. Not from any love that she carried or felt for the man who’d deceived her. That had died. Rather, it came from her own naivete. At having loved where she’d been wrong. At the lie she’d lived for so very long.
“Mother,” Lila said chidingly. “That isn’t fair.”
“Well, she was,” the countess hissed. “That is precisely what she was, and she isn’t deserving of Sylvia’s kindness”—the countess jabbed a finger down at the Aubusson carpet as she spoke—“or financial support or . . . or . . . anything. And furthermore”—her voice crept up—“you’ll simply dismiss the fact that she was following you and Vallen at one point. Now, this matter is officially at an end.” With that pronouncement, their mother grabbed a small plate, added a chocolate biscuit to it, and proceeded to nibble at the corners.
Yes, of course. Because ladies nibbled like mice. Just like ladies didn’t do anything that would earn any manner of attention from Polite Society. Living with one’s husband’s former lover would certainly fall into that category.
“It is not,” Sylvia said quietly.
And for a moment, as her mother continued to take those small bites and dab at her immaculate face with a napkin, Sylvia thought the countess might not have heard her. Or perhaps the dowager countess was simply ignoring her show of defiance? Or mayhap it was just that she was so unaccustomed to Sylvia being anything but an obedient wife, daughter, and mother that she couldn’t hear when Sylvia went against what was expected of her. “Vale
rie explained her reasons for seeking me out.”
“Following you,” the dowager countess snapped. “She was following you.”
Because she’d been filled with the same curiosity Sylvia had for her. That was something the dowager countess, however, would never and could never understand. “She is my friend.”
“You simply have not thought it through. You are a young mother. It will be expected that you carry yourself above reproach, and if you do not, then you risk losing your child.”
Vallen. The son whom she’d been carrying while her husband had been betraying her and their vows to one another. And whom she alone had cared for, after Norfolk’s death. Yet, even as his mother, she was held to entirely different standards than men . . . where if she did not conduct herself in a way society deemed appropriate, she might have her child ripped from her. Following Norman’s death, the court had approved multiple guardians for Sylvia’s son, and as such, there existed the possibility that Vallen could go to someone else’s care if she were found to be unfit.
Resentment lent her heart an extra beat, that organ pounding harder from the unfairness of her lot. Of the lot of all women.
“I have always lived my life above reproach,” she said when she trusted herself to speak through her bitterness. “I am not suggesting I live in a townhouse with two unmarried men. I am going to reside with a lady and—”
“And a woman born of the streets, who also was your husband’s former lover.”
“There is no scandal in our living together,” she murmured, this time not allowing those words to sting. Refusing to be sidetracked by her mother’s matter-of-factness. “No one is even aware of . . . what happened.”
“What happened? As in your mother-in-law having been responsible for organizing a horrific fight society in which children battled to the death for entertainment?”
Sylvia’s entire body tensed, and her stomach revolted, just as it had when she and Lila together had made the discovery and tracked down the head of that heinous group . . . only to discover it had been Lady Prendergast.
“And now, one of the women you are choosing to live with also happens to be a former fighter whom your late husband was in love with?” Her mother spoke in barely audible tones, because of course she’d be aware that only danger would come from anyone overhearing such words. “Have I missed anything?”
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