Page 14 of Now Comes the Mist

“I wish I could give you a different world, my love, one in which women are respected for speaking out. But I cannot change the rules of society.” She laughs. “I was much like you when I was young. You would be surprised. I threw champagne in a suitor’s face once.”

I gasp, delighted. “Mamma!”

“I don’t recall what he had said to deserve that. Only how ridiculous he looked with his hair and shirt soaked. And it did the trick, for he never proposed marriage again.”

“My prim and ladylike mother! I wish I had known you then.”

“So do I. You would have approved of that wayward girl who longed to run off with the circus. What a life of adventure I dreamed for myself once.” Mamma laughs again, her eyes wistful. “So you see, we are not so different.”

“How could we be? Any woman, in any time and place.” I twist the jade ring on my right hand. Tiny letters are etched into the band: Van, the name my great-grandmother had forsaken when she had married LordAlexander Westenra and become a respectable English lady. “Do you think that Vanessa …Vanwill be the only woman in our family to ever have a real adventure?”

“That depends on how you define adventure. She had to endure a difficult voyage and many trials in an unfamiliar land. But you don’t need that to have joy and love, as I did with your father.” Mamma takes my hand. “I must apologize for something else, Lucy. I worry that I have never been there for you the way Papa was. I know you felt you could tell him anything and I’m glad you were close, especially because my own father cared nothing for my troubles. When we lost Papa, I vowed to be everything that he had been. But I feel as though I’ve failed you.”

My free hand flies to the gold locket around my neck. If Arthur were standing across the room, he would know exactly what my mother and I were discussing. “Mamma, why are you saying this? You have only ever been kind and loving, and I have nothing to reproach you with.”

“I suppose I saw you dancing with Arthur, and it made me realize how grown up you are.” Her smile is heartbreaking in its regret. “You’ve become a woman almost overnight, and soon you will no longer confide in me. You will be a wife … and perhaps a mother as well.”

I smile back to hide my consternation as I imagine a screaming bundle in my arms, wet and smelly and writhing, with dirty sticky doll hands reaching for my hair. Me, a mother? I push away the horrid thought. My mind returns to the memory of Arthur’s gaze on me last night, as though I already belonged to him. “Why look so far into the future?” I ask. “We are here now, together. Let us enjoy the present and speak no more of this.”

“Bear with me. I don’t know if we will have many chances to talk like this.”

“What do you mean?” I demand. “We have many more years together yet.”

“I only meant that you may be living in your own household soon. Away from me. And I have not properly prepared you for the … requirements of being a wife,” my mother says with the caution of someone stepping barefoot around broken glass.

I laugh. “Are we truly about to have this conversation with all of these people around?” I gesture to the dressmaker and her apprentices putting the finishing touches on our garments. “Mamma, I may be innocent, but I know. Iknow.”

Relief flatters my mother’s elegant features. “Mina told you?”

I nod, though that isn’t completely truthful. It was I who had found the book in Papa’s library and shared it with Mina, the two of us giggling like naughty schoolchildren as we read the more lurid passages. The diagrams had been informative, somewhat terrifying, and—if I am to be honest—titillating as well. Mina had been aghast at the content, but I had argued that weneededthis information so as not to be overly shocked by our wedding nights.

“One last thing,” Mamma says. “I told you how much I used to be like you. But I am glad I gave all of it up when I married your father. It is the honor of a woman’s life to be chosen by a good man as his wife and the mother of his children. It is a duty, but it can also be a joy.”

I stiffen. “Gave all of what up? Your cleverness? Your high spirits and liveliness?”

She looks at me with knowing sympathy. “I thought I was getting the worse end of the bargain, too. But Lucy, this is what is asked of us. I am not saying you must change who you are. Just … suppress it. You will understand when you are a wife, too.”

Thankfully, the dressmaker comes over to us at that moment. I watch Mamma touch and exclaim over each dress, feeling suffocated by our conversation and the expectation that society will dictate what I choose and what I give up. I am no more than a farm animal with a yoke to its neck, propelled to do what I am bid instead of living like a free being.

My lungs tighten and spots dance before my eyes. I take a deep breath, recognizing the signs of an attack. I cannot let it overtake me as it almost did last night, with Arthur watching. I must keep my mind from flying back to the churchyard where Papa waits, the mausoleum inviting against the dark. Something drifts across my memory like snow in the wind: a cold marble hand in mine, a kiss of ice pressed to my burning lips, and a man murmuring my name. The strange, half-forgotten images vanish when I try too hard to remember them.

Lost in my reverie, I scarcely hear our housekeeper answer a knock at the door and am only roused by the sound of footsteps approaching the sitting room. A hearty voice says in a flat American accent, “Good afternoon, Mrs. Westenra. Miss Lucy.”

Quincey Morris beams, his eyes as bright on me as when we first met last night. He is wearing his long coat again, but today it is buttoned against the chilly weather and there is no sign of the weaponry I know is hidden beneath it. A hat is pulled low and rakishly tilted over his forehead, making him look every inch the gallant cowboy.

With him is Arthur, who bows in greeting. “Mrs. Westenra, I beg your pardon. And yours, Miss Westenra,” he adds, looking directly at me. I stifle my laughter. In just one evening, I have trained the bashful Arthur to ignore me at his own peril. “Quincey and I wished to call and thank you for a wonderful evening, but I see we have interrupted an appointment.”

“Nonsense. You are both most welcome,” Mamma says warmly. She signals for the men to take the sofa across from ours and for the housekeeper to bring them tea. “My daughter and I are only preparing for our holiday in Whitby. A seaside town in Yorkshire, Mr. Morris, where we go each summer,” she adds politely, looking at the American.

“It sounds delightful, and no doubt it will be even more so when you are both there,” Quincey Morris says with the coy charm I am beginning to recognize as his signature. His eyes shine at me. “I have half a mind to see it and prove myself correct.”

The housekeeper appears with tea and cake, and as Mamma serves and chats with Arthur, I smile at the cowboy. “I’m glad to see you today, Mr. Morris. I did not expect to, for I was worried that you were more like Dr. Seward than I thought,” I say in the teasing voice that ismysignature. “Shocked by my bold ways. You did not like my dismissal of Miss Worthing’s fiancé.”

Mr. Morris blinks, seemingly at a loss for words.

“I thought perhaps I had disturbed you with my frank and forward manners,” I continue, enjoying his consternation. “I have the habit of being overly direct, I’m afraid.”

“It is an admirable habit,” the American says quickly. He sits up straight, looking eager to show me that he is not as old-fashioned as the doctor. “Miss Lucy, thank you for your kindness in speaking up for me. Any displeasure I showed was for the rude gentleman and not you.”

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