Page 10 of A Lady’s Fairytale Come True
From the Estate of Eliza Kirby
Olivia was frozen for a moment. She still could hardly believe her eyes. Was this real?
Suddenly, with a shock, Olivia remembered that she had to send a reply, urgently. She grasped the dress in her hands and rushed inside, throwing it less than carefully into her sewing basket and finding a pen as urgently as she was able.
Taking the slip of paper that had been provided, with a space to tick yes or no as to whether or not she would come to the estate, Olivia checked that she would attend. From there, she rushed as quickly as she could, back out the door and up the street.
She did not see the postman but knew that he couldn’t have gone far. Although she had taken her time with the letter initially, he was never a man to walk speedily and Olivia hoped she could catch up with him.
Indeed, before long, running in an unladylike fashion, she spotted him.
“Wait!” she yelled, trying to speak through her breathlessness.
Dozens of people surrounding her watched in horror at her terrible manners. Olivia knew she ought to be embarrassed, but this was a rather unique circumstance, one she did not wish to ruin.
She was being honoured by one of the most famous and wealthy families in London. It would hardly do for her to miss her opportunity to reply to the dowager and insult the woman by not showing up as expected.
“Miss?” the postman replied, staring at her as though she were a madwoman.
“Forgive me,” she heaved. Her breathing was shallow, and her chest ached. Olivia was unaccustomed to running and that was hardly something she was ashamed of.
“Yes, I have a letter for you,” she managed to say through the struggle.
“Right, I see,” he replied slowly, taking it from her hesitantly, as though she might bite him.
Olivia wanted to laugh, but the ache in her lungs proved too much to chuckle at the man for being so cautious towards her. She handed him the reply and turned around, walking back home at a slower pace and trying to ignore the ache in her thigh from having pulled it during the run.
When Olivia reached her home again, she pulled the dress back outside, but more importantly, she read through the letter again. It still made no sense to her. No matter how many times she read it, she was unable to decipher the reason for the dowager to wish to see her.
Olivia knew that the woman had recently lost her son to typhus. Being such a wealthy and well-known family meant that it was rather difficult for them to hide the challenges they faced in such circumstances. Their loss was a public one. First the viscountess passed away, then the earl. His son had recently taken over the family title.
Still, these facts did not answer the most pressing question.
Why would the Dowager Eliza Kirby wish to see Olivia? What could she want from her? The thoughts went around and around in her mind until she thought she really might be driven mad by them. None of it made any sense at all. She wished only that she could figure out who had even told the dowager about her.
Olivia tucked the letter in her dress, thinking she ought to hide it, although she didn’t know why that impulse came to her.
Had she made a mistake in responding that she would come? What if this was all a terrible idea? She hadn’t thought it through. Her reaction had simply been to reply that she would come but there was no reason for her to have done that other than the fact that she felt she could not refuse a noblewoman.
But what if the letter had not come from Eliza Kirby at all? There was no reason she should have received such a letter, so why was she imaging it had even been from the estate that it claimed to have been from?
Olivia felt entirely foolish. What was she doing?
But would it have been better to not have responded, not have accepted, and risked insulting a prominent member of society? No, surely that would only have made things worse.
Olivia heard a giggle and knew that her sisters were on their way home. She had to rush inside and put the dress away before Gemma saw that she was adding the ribbon.
Olivia ducked in the door and folded the dress gently as she went before placing it inside her sewing basket. She would try to find time later, and an excuse to send her sisters out again. Surely she could finish it that day if she tried.
By the time her sisters arrived back at the house, Olivia was seated in the chair outside, notebook in hand, pretending she had simply been writing the whole time. It was the perfect way to avoid suspicion, especially when she felt so suspicious. But Olivia did not wish for her sisters to know about the letter any more than she wished for them to know about the dresses.
“And what are you up to?” Louise asked, watching her.
“Oh, I was just coming out to see if the day might inspire me. I’ve not written more since what I showed you. But I wanted to write again. Thanks to the two of you, I am starting to love it again,” she told them.
While her rediscovered love of writing was true enough, Olivia was lying about the rest. She hated to deceive her sisters, but felt that this was a situation she had never come up against. She could hardly imagine how they might respond if she were honest with them about all that had transpired that day.
“Liv, you seem…is everything all right?” Louise asked, apparently curious at her sister’s strained smile and wide eyes.
