A Season of Appearances (#11)
Early August, 1912
It was the sort of afternoon one is meant to enjoy. Linen dresses, white parasols, chatter as light as the meringues served with fruit cordial. Lady Elowen called it a Summer Reprieve, though from what, no one specified. I suppose the answer depends on whom you ask.
There were eight of us seated along the north lawn, arranged like chess pieces under an awning trimmed with lilac ribbon. The conversation had no true direction. It flowed the way lace ripples in the wind, all flourish, no substance. The tea had been oversweetened. The spoons were monogrammed. A bee circled the sugar bowl with singular determination.
Lady Kent spoke of her niece’s engagement (the younger one, not the nervous one), and Miss Daldridge, all flushed cheeks and flirtation, asked whether it was true Mr. Everett had been invited to both the Haversham and the Ellis balls, “such a social coup,” she said, as if he were a centerpiece one might boast of.
No one answered her directly. But there was a quiet rustle. Not of skirts, but of awareness.
Everyone knows.
He is not titled. And yet he is treated as if he were. That curious position; too reputable to ignore, too untethered to place. An unmarried man of means, intelligence, and unassailable manners, whose smile never lasts quite long enough to be familiar. The mothers, of course, have begun to whisper.
Miss Daldridge pressed on. “They say he’ll choose this season. It’s late for it, isn’t it? One would think…” She trailed off, realizing perhaps that the air had changed. Or perhaps because Lady Ameline, who had said nothing for nearly twenty minutes, lifted her eyes from her tea and looked directly at her.
The silence that followed was so complete one could hear the clink of a spoon against porcelain at the other end of the lawn.
Lady Ameline did not speak. Not yet.
But I did. I don’t know why. I think I wished to deflect.
“I imagine it takes time,” I said, smoothing the fabric at my wrist. “To find someone who sees you clearly and does not blink.”
A few ladies tittered politely. Miss Daldridge tilted her head, not understanding.
Only Lady Ameline responded.
“Sometimes,” she said, “you find them too late.”
She didn’t smile. She didn’t even blink. She simply lifted her cup again and drank as though she hadn’t just unsettled the entire table.
The moment passed, as such moments do. Smoothed over by the sound of a wren in the hedge and Lady Elowen asking if anyone had seen the new embroidery silks at the milliner’s.
But I could feel something curling beneath my ribs.
Miss Daldridge, undeterred, began describing a gown she had seen in town. Blue with scalloped sleeves, too fine for the heat but perfect, she said, for a midnight waltz. She was speaking to no one in particular, which is how young women speak when they hope everyone is listening.
Lady Kent redirected the conversation toward wisteria cuttings and the awful business of root rot. I let their voices wash over me, tried to become part of the scenery again.
But then I saw her. The girl with the hair like burnished copper, seated farther down the row. I do not know her name. She cannot have been more than nineteen. New to the season. The sort of girl who still thinks she’ll marry for love.
She was not speaking. She was watching.
And it was him she was watching.
Mr. Everett had arrived while I was pouring a second cup of tea. I hadn’t seen him step onto the lawn, but the shift in air told me he had. He was speaking to Lord Bevington near the ivy trellis, one hand tucked behind his back. He does that when he is listening; holds himself still as though he does not wish to interrupt the moment by shifting his weight.
The gentlemen were gathered in their customary corner, half-removed from the assembly, as if their presence was both dutiful and dispensable. Lord Bergamot was among them, deep in discussion with someone about the state of the railway.
The girl was trying not to be obvious. She pretended to stir her tea. But her eyes betrayed her.
And I… I watched her. I watched the way her breath caught when he smiled. I watched the way she tilted her head as though she might overhear him from thirty feet away.
I wanted to be unkind. Not to her. To the feeling.
But I was not. I simply looked away.
Lady Ameline, who had been watching me watch her, spoke then. Low, under her breath.
“It’s a terrible thing,” she said, without inflection, “to watch someone you cannot have be wanted by another.”
I did not answer her. I couldn’t.
Because the truth was, I had never been sure if he was ever mine to long for. Only that I had once stood close enough to the fire to feel its heat, and now, in watching him turn gently toward someone else, I felt the coldness of absence settle deep beneath my skin.
He did not come to our end of the lawn. Not right away. He remained where he was, engaged in conversation, his profile catching the light in a way that made the whole thing feel staged.
It was then I saw it.
The copper-haired girl glanced up, just as Mr. Everett happened to look her way. Their eyes met, briefly. He nodded, courteously. It was a kind nod; measured, acknowledging, utterly unrevealing.
But then he looked away.
And saw me.
Our eyes met. Not across a ballroom, not framed by candlelight or poetry, just across a lawn, beneath too much sun, among teacups and gossip.
His expression changed.
Something shuttered in him. Not coldness, but something worse. A kind of quiet despair. The way a man looks when he realizes he is performing in a play he no longer believes in. He did not frown. He did not falter. But the set of his jaw, the heaviness behind his eyes… I knew that look. I wore it myself.
He looked as though he could not bear to remain there. As though my presence had made the air itself false.
And he turned. Not abruptly. Just enough to put his back to me.
Eventually, Lady Elowen excused herself to speak with the gardener, and a few others followed. The table scattered, reformed in pockets of twos and threes. Lady Ameline rose and said she would like to stretch her legs.
I was left with Miss Daldridge and the copper-haired girl.
Miss Daldridge leaned in. “Do you think he will choose someone unexpected?” she asked. “Mr. Everett, I mean. I rather hope he does. It’s so dull when they marry precisely who they ought.”
I smiled. Tightly.
“And who ought he marry?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Someone who looks good beside him. Someone elegant. Not too quiet. Not too loud. Just enough of everything to be admired.”
I felt something inside me fold. Not break. Just… disappear.
She turned to the girl. “Don’t you think?”
The girl flushed. Nodded. She glanced at me quickly, then looked away.
I excused myself soon after. Said something about the heat. Took the long path around the hedgerow, past the roses, their scent thick and cloying. I reached the edge of the garden where the stone bench is half-covered in moss and sat there for a while, hands folded in my lap.
I could still hear their voices faintly, but they did not follow.
And I.., I let myself breathe. Truly breathe. For the first time all day.
I do not know what I am becoming. Only that I am no longer who I was before I knew what it felt like to be seen. To be recognized in the quietest way.
It is not love. It is not madness. It is something in between. A kind of ache that asks for nothing, not even relief.
I thought of Lady Ameline’s words. Of the way she watches the world now, not as a woman in it, but as one who once burned too brightly and learned to smolder instead. I wonder if she still waits for someone to see the ember beneath.
And I wonder if that will be me, someday.
—L.B.
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