“You’re being dramatic,” Rose wheezed as her strings were once again tightened. It must have been the pain ripping through her chest that was obscuring her mental faculties, because she had never before spoken back to her mother. And certainly not repeatedly.
Though, even as she refuted her mother’s claim, she knew she was quite likely not exaggerating. Rose did not have a great deal of experience with social events such as these, none at all—having always been confined to the nursery for being too young to properly attend—but she was not completely naïve to the Society she was a part of not to know that this world was dictated by gossip.
Nevertheless, she had no desire to pity her mama. That would require acknowledging that what she had done—run off for the better part of the afternoon and then confined herself to her room for the rest, not to mention what she had done the two previous days—was wrong. And she would not admit that! Rose would do the same thing again, she would shew the company of those in residence at her house for the next week if she thought she could get away with it, that her mother wouldn’t drag her out of her bedchamber by the hair, kicking and screaming, to mingle with their guests.
Which it was likely she would do.
“I am not,” Lady Blythe spat back.
It took Rose a moment to recall their conversation. She was far too focused on the all-consuming pain in her chest which seemed to radiate throughout her entire body, and by her own multitude of thoughts. It was a wonder, really, that she was able to remember at all what they were discussing. But, of course, she couldn’t forget.
Gossip ruled the world they lived in. It made people into successes or outcasts with merely a whisper. Gossip was dangerous.
“Where on Earth I went wrong with you, I suppose I will never know. I had such high hopes for you as a child. And now… Well, we can certainly be grateful that you’ve already secured yourself a husband. That is, if he comes to his senses and doesn’t run out on you,” her mother said with far too wide of a smile, making her look positively feline.
“What does that mean?” Rose gasped, followed on its heels by a sharp squeak as her breath was all but stolen away from her by another forceful pull on her ties, compressing her cracked ribs. It was such a shock, such an alarming strike of pain, that she nearly toppled over backwards on top of Helen.
When she finally managed to catch her breath—at least somewhat—she ground out, “Comes to his senses?”
“Lord Brighton is an honorable man,” her mother said, pretending to inspect one of her sleeves, “and if he listens to his mother, he will not shirk his commitments. It was as good as done, the ink was as good as dry on your license, and then you had to go out and ruin your reputation,” Lady Blythe accused. “Now, you just better hope he likes you well enough to see past your flaws.”
“I don’t understand,” Rose wheezed. Her reputation wasn’t ruined. Not yet, anyways.
“Have you not been listening? He knows about how you’ve been sneaking off. He’s already approached me, attempted to get out of the marriage.”
With one final tug, Helen knotted the ties, knotted her life.
“He might not have me,” Rose said despondently, finally fully coming to the realization of just how utterly senseless she had acted in the past days.
“He will have you if he knows what is good for him,” Lady Blythe snarled as Helen set to work bringing the ornate garment—or torture device—down over Rose’s head.
For several minutes Rose was lost in a sea of light pink fabric before she was able to poke her head out through the collar of the gown, though, she wasn’t rewarded with a breath of fresh air. She couldn’t nearly take a full breath—or even a half breath—she was tied so tight.
“And what if he doesn’t? What then?” Rose asked. But the words refused to be expelled with such little air with which she had to speak them, and therefore came out softer than she intended. She offset the softness by meeting her mother’s eye in the mirror and jutting out her chin in self-preserving defiance she had only recently come to know.
Rose knew what would happen if Lord Brighton didn’t marry her. She would be ruined, and her sisters would be there right alongside her. But knowing such and admitting it, admitting she was afraid of that outcome, were two entirely different things.
So she didn’t admit that she was afraid.
Lady Blythe, whose face had already turned a fiery color, practically turned purple with rage as one long, gloved finger pointed to Rose. “Shut your mouth this instant, you insolent girl. He will have you and you will be lucky to call Lord Brighton your husband, and you will take care to remember that. Not another word.”
Rose didn’t bother to argue. She was having hard enough of a time as it was trying to breathe. Her dress was so tight already that her breasts—which were really nothing more than average in size—were practically spilling out of her dress which hadn’t even yet been buttoned, which made her feel absolutely scandalous. And her chest… Well, her chest was like a fire-pit, a searing, all-consuming agony that would have stolen her breath away even if the tightness of her stays didn’t do just that.
When all the buttons up the back were painfully secured, Rose felt as though they were all going to pop off and fly across the room, poking out eyes and reducing all the crystal and glass in the room to shards.
Never before had she felt so confined. True as it was, her life was confining with its rules and corsets. But now she wasn’t even allowed to breathe, and hardly to move. How was she to make it through an entire evening, or even a meal? Surely she wouldn’t be able to lift a fork to her mouth. Her sleeves—which came to just below her elbows—were so tight that she could barely bend her arms without risking ripped stitches.
Her mother, however, did not see the discomfort, or chose not to. “You look…” Lady Blythe said, her apparent emotion doing a complete one-eighty while she paused to dab at her eyes with a handkerchief she seemed to procure out of thin air. “You look absolutely magnificent.”
The words should have opened Rose’s heart, warmed her mother to her. But they didn’t. They weren’t a compliment, weren’t those of a mother crooning over her daughter. No, her mother was drooling over her like a perfectly prepared feast, eyeing her for her worth. Her eyes were full of pride, but instead of pride for her daughter, it was pride for herself. Rose would be her mother’s greatest achievement because her mother was determined for it to be so.
Beauty was pain, as the saying went. But love was infinitely more painful. And all of this was done for love. As much as she would relish in winning the battle, refuse to wear the garment that squeezed all the air out of her body, she had already submitted to losing the war, for the good of her sisters. Her love for them outshined everything else, even the agony of her ribs painfully crushed beneath the unbearably tight corset.
She tore her eyes off her mama, returning to her own reflection in the looking glass.
She wasn’t vain, but she had never had reason to question her beauty. Even covered in scrapes and bruises cleverly disguised with powder, her beauty was simply a fact. She didn’t have to be told it—in fact, she rarely was—but her looking glass spoke the truth just the same. And her mama, despite her misguided motives, was correct in her declaration: She was beautiful.
Rose wasn’t naïve enough not to notice the beauty in the extravagance of her gown either. It was a pale pink, embroidered with flowers just one shade lighter. The neckline was low and pleated to draw the eye. It was beautiful. It was just that she couldn’t breathe.
But beautiful as it was, it had no business being donned at a house party. It wasn’t made in the style of the rest of her gowns, with an empire waist, half-corset and a flowy skirt—that style was all the rage. This dress was like stepping back in time to an era of medieval torture devices.
Rose held back a despairing sigh.
It wasn’t vanity talking, but if anyone could pull off a style of dress that wasn’t quite on-trend, it was her.
Hel
en finished fixing her hair and left the room, leaving Rose and her mama alone, which left Rose looking longingly at the window as a reasonable means of escape.
“Your hair,” Lady Blythe said, pursing her lips as she moved up behind Rose to inspect her more thoroughly. Her mama picked up a piece of hair, moving it and then replacing it to the exact position it had been in to begin with.
“Perfection,” she declared, flourishing her arms in the air as though she had just created a masterpiece, as though there was an audience.
Rose simply stared at her mama. The word seemed as though it should be a compliment, but everything else about her mama—her tone, her expression, her body language—all contradicted it. Though, whether the compliment was meant for her or not—and Rose knew, beyond any shadow, that it was not—it was still, kind of, sort of, a compliment. And she had never even come close to receiving one of those from her mama.
Lady Blythe’s body went rigid under the inspection of her daughter. “We must go down,” she said, her voice clipped.
“Mother,” Rose interjected, all innocence and calm, “I was thinking—”
“As you do far too often, to my dismay,” Lady Blythe murmured bitterly.
Rose speared her mother with a harsh look in the mirror, but the woman wasn’t looking at her, she was inspecting the knuckles of one of her gloved hands.
With a purposeful stifling of the anger pumping in her veins, Rose said, “This is to be the first time I’m being presented to Society, and to my future husband. It may not officially be my come-out, but it is essentially, in a way, since this is the first time I’ve been allowed to participate in any Society event.”
“Get to the point, Rosalyn.” Her mother’s irritation irritated her.
Rose pinched her nails into her palms, though the feeling did nothing to sooth her as she had to make sure not to dig deep enough to tear the delicate fabric of her silk gloves. “The point,” Rose ground out between gritted teeth, “is that this should be a memorable occasion, should it not?”
“I already intend it to be,” her mother remarked snidely.
“Of course, but if there is one thing you have taught me it is that there is always room for improvement. What if I make a grand entrance? Then my lack of presence today would seem as though it were planned.”
A grand entrance? Rose wanted no such thing. Yet the words had already rolled off her tongue.
Truth be told, Rose didn’t care whether the occasion was memorable—she was sure to remember it no matter what. And she definitely didn’t care if it helped to quiet the rumors that her mama seemed sure were rippling through the guests.
No, what Rose wanted was to delay her arrival for as long as she could. She wanted to wait until the last possible moment before being thrown into the ranks of the Society types. Just five more minutes, ten, thirty, before her life changed. Because tonight her life would change.
There was no stopping the inevitable.
But she could very well delay it.
Lady Blythe, who had moved to the door, stood motionless for a moment, her eyes rounding like saucers in the mirror. Then she did something that shocked Rose more than almost anything in her entire life ever had. She crossed the room and hugged her—or, at least, it was as much of a hug as her mother had given her in years. She put her hands on Rose’s shoulders, resting her cheek against Rose’s so that the pair could stare at their reflections.
Rose couldn’t quite remember the last time her mother touched her so tenderly.
“That,” Lady Blythe said, her hoarse voice hinting at the tears she was fending off—tears Rose never would have dreamed her mother even possessed—“is a perfectly splendid idea.”
“Thank you, Mama.”
The pair remained staring at their mirror images, so much alike with their blonde hair and light, light eyes and slender frames. Though, looks aside, they were different in almost every other way.
The moment was too bittersweet. It was so close to the love she had for years wished her mama would show her, and yet, it was still out of reach. Rose swallowed, uncomfortable with the burning sensation growing behind her own eyes.
Lady Blythe’s small smile was replaced by a large, wolfish one as she relinquished her hold on her daughter and retreated back to the door. “Be down at seven sharp. I will have everyone waiting in the hall for your entrance.”
“Yes, Mama.”
“And Rosalyn?” Lady Blythe queried, her hand hovering above the doorknob.
Rose arched her eyebrows as she turned to face her mother.
For a moment, Lady Blythe floundered, as though she was battling with herself, unsure of what exactly she wanted to say. When her lips did finally open, the words sounded like a disappointment to the lady who spoke them. “I love you.”
Rose’s own lips settled back into a grim line as she replied, equally as solemn, “I know.”
She had spent years vying for her mama’s love and affection, but her words now brought no comfort because they were not meant to be comforting. Her mother loved her, but not for the right reasons, and not in the way that counted.
Rose did not want to wear this horrid dress that was far too small. Rose did not want to go downstairs and have dinner and socialize with people she didn’t know and had no desire to know. She didn’t want to meet Lord Brighton and secure herself a future—a future without love.
Rose wanted romance and passion and happiness.
Her mother loved her because she was beautiful and because she’d had a good idea. She loved her daughter because she was set to marry a duke and, in doing so, bolster her family’s reputation. But Lady Blythe did not know her daughter, did not know her daughter’s heart.
All Rose wanted was love. Even just the unconditional love of her mother would do. But it was a love she had never received.
“Don’t be late,” Lady Blythe ordered, the moment lost, returning both mother and daughter back to a sense of normalcy, before whisking out of the room, her skirts twirling about in her wake.
Rose turned back to the mirror, her hand sprawled out over her stomach. It felt as though her entire skeleton was going to crack under the pressure of the corset.
She feared her spirit had already been cracked by her mama.
Chapter 14
Why had she thought this would be a good idea?
A grand entrance was the exact opposite of what she wanted.
What Rose wanted was to fade into the background, stand in some shadowed corner and be ignored until their guests finally departed in one week’s time.
But what Rose wanted, and what was expected of Lady Rosalyn, were two entirely different things.
There was hardly a shadowed corner remaining in the house—all of them dispelled by the overabundance of candles. And then there was the whole matter that all of this was being thrown in her honor. With her come-out just weeks away, and her future husband just a few feet, all eyes were bound to be on her as it was. The last thing she needed was more attention, and especially not every eye trained on her simultaneously. She had been raised for this, raised to join Society and become a duchess. Yet, Rose felt completely unprepared as she waited in the hall upstairs, just out of view.
Why, why, why had she suggested it?
She swallowed the lump in her throat, but even that movement was difficult. She opened her fan and trained it on her face, trying to focus on her nerves rather than her pain.
If there was an upside—and Rose, as a matter of keeping her sanity, had to believe that there was—it was that her stomach had nowhere to go. She could feel it there, wanting to dip and dive and fall right down to the floor at her feet, but it was stuck, imprisoned in place by her beyond-belief tight corset.
It was just a matter of moments now, seconds until her great reveal, seconds until her life changed. It was true that there were still a few weeks between this moment and her come-out, and probably a few months between now and her wedding, but this was the moment she fretted over most. As so
on as she stepped out of the hall and onto the stairs, she wouldn’t be able to take it back, to regain her lost self—though she knew that she would want to.
Rose didn’t want to leave this life. It wasn’t a good life—it was barely tolerable at times—but she had her sisters and she didn’t want to lose them, didn’t want to abandon them.
This was the moment when she did. When she set into motion the clock that would wind down to her doing just that. Leave.
From below, she heard her mother’s unmistakable voice rise above the din of conversation and shuffle of bodies. Rose tried to steel herself, but it didn’t take.
Instead, she lost her breath. All of it.
Rose gasped, steadying herself with one hand on the wall.
The noise in the lobby tripled and Rose knew that the guests had been assembled for her debut. It was time.
Reluctantly, she found her footing and took tentative steps towards the stairs. Her mind decided to go perilously empty and she hoped beyond measure that her feet would remember those ceaseless hours of training when she had been forced to practice walking the stairs like a lady.
As she came into view of the assembly she did not hear their collective gasp or even see the awe on their faces. All Rose saw was a swarm of color. All she heard was the beating of her own heart. And all she felt was anxiety that was nearly as painful as the flames burning her chest.
Her life was ending. The minute she put on this dress, the second she stepped onto the top step, her life had begun its slow and tumultuous end.
She hadn’t had a very exciting life, locked up in the abbey like a prisoner with no friends save for her sisters and a maid, and letters that marked the place of her brother, but it had been her life, and she would miss it.
Rose by Another Name (The Blythe Series Book 1) Page 17
