Page 15 of A Dash of Scot
“Mary,” Poppy said as if that were enough explanation.
Anise nodded and went back to dashing off her sentences.
One day, might they say things like, “Oh, I was just Mary’d.” Or “My goodness, don’t be such a Mary.” Sad really, how one bad Mary’s attitude put such a stigma onto another. She knew plenty of Marys who were nothing but sweet.
“What’s got you so frenzied?” Poppy asked.
Anise dropped her pen again to flop back in her chair and dramatically press her hands over her heart. “Oh, Sir John, wasn’t he a dream?”
Poppy shrugged, frowning a little. Dream was really an exaggeration, wasn’t it? “Hard to say, as we were only acquainted with him for a few minutes. I thought the colonel rather charming.”
Anise rolled her eyes.
Poppy crossed the room to take up the chair by the window. “Why are you rolling your eyes?”
“He’s boring.” Anise made the word “boring” sound utterly dull, the way she dragged it out and added a nasal twinge to it.
Poppy didn’t agree. Colonel Austen seemed to have more personality than Sir John in the few minutes they’d gotten to know him, but perhaps she could be persuaded otherwise. She was coming to things from a practical standpoint. Anise, more often than not, went about her judgments from the heart. Both methods had their merits and, when put together, could be very complimentary of one another. If one wasn’t so stubborn—that was the hurdle most days.
“I think you find Sir John more interesting because he was a little closer to your age,” Poppy suggested.
“And yours. The colonel had to be thirty at least. Practically ancient. Do you think Sir John is attached?”
Poppy bit the inside of her cheek. Thirty wasn’t ancient at all. In less than ten years, she would be thirty, and she hardly considered those meager number of years would make her suddenly decrepit. But she supposed that it might seem aged for Anise, who was not yet even twenty. Poppy kicked off her slippers and tucked her feet up under her legs. “Couldn’t say, but I doubt he would have volunteered to come and call on you if he was. That would be an insult to his fiancée.”
“Good point.” Anise rested her chin on her hand and stared into space, her eyes mooning over some imagined romance. Poppy could practically see the affair playing out before her, and if Anise kept looking off like that, she was liable to end up rushing off with Sir John before she knew him properly enough to ascertain if he had a middle name.
“You know,” Poppy hedged, “it’s not your responsibility to marry yet. No need to settle for just anyone.”
The glazed look in Anise’s eyes faded, and she focused on her sister with a frown but didn’t say anything, which was rather unlike her. Her silence was worrisome.
“What is it?” Poppy urged, one stockinged foot unfolding to press to the floor as if that might somehow ground her.
“Mama has made it clear one of us should marry soon to secure our future.”
“And that responsibility should fall to me as the eldest sister,” Poppy said. “You should wait until you’re in love.”
Anise’s frown increased, adding a hint of not quite malice but something akin to it. “And yet you’ve had all this time and not seen to it.” She flung her hand toward the door. “Locking us in here because our sister-by-marriage is a tyrant. This is no way to live.”
Perhaps another sister would take offense to Anise’s tirade, but not Poppy. She was used to her sister blaming her for things, even if they weren’t her fault. And there was a measure of truth in what Anise said. Poppy had not tried hard enough to entice any bachelors into asking for her hand. But she’d been mending a foolishly broken heart. She wasn’t at all surprised at Anise’s thoughts put to words. After all, she knew her sister well, and she knew herself just as much. They were close friends most of the time, but every once in a while, Anise, being the younger sister by two years, would feel a sense of competition, the need to prove herself. And in this instance, she thought Poppy had done them a disservice and that she would step in to right it.
Poppy was mostly patient regarding her sister and let her antics go. But in this situation, she could not. Anise was only nineteen and, most of the time, acted quite a lot younger. She’d lived a sheltered life, not that Poppy too hadn’t been coddled by their doting parents, but Anise especially had been.
In this situation, Poppy wasn’t going to make it a competition. There was no argument; she would take care of them, and Anise would need to understand that. “There was not a sense of urgency previously,” Poppy said, trying to compassionately relay that with Papa alive, she hadn’t needed to marry so swiftly. “We couldn’t have known that what has come to pass would be so soon.”
Anise squared her shoulders, digging in her heels. “Perhaps we should have.”
Poppy could see she was going to need to be a bit stronger with her sister than she wanted to be. Well, she wasn’t unused to fighting with her. And this time, she wasn’t going to back down.
“Perhaps we might have, but we didn’t. And death is never something scheduled, is it, sister? Rather popping up when you least expect it or want it. And we cannot live our lives with a knife to our throat. Rushing into one decision after another without consideration because someone might die.”
A knock sounded at the door, and their mother’s sweet voice sounded on the other side as she jiggled the locked door. Anise bounced up and unlocked the door with a look toward Poppy that said, “See what you did,” though she’d done nothing.
Mama walked in, her face rather pale, wringing her hands. Anise, duty done by unlocking, returned to her seat at the writing desk.
“My dears, I think we have a bit of an issue.” Mama looked ready to faint.
Poppy hurried over to her mother, taking her elbow and guiding her to their chaise longue to sit. “What is it?”
