Lucy wished she felt well enough to pace or even venture outside, whatever the weather. These four walls—everything was closing in around her here in Hounslow. Esme’s birth and a fever that had lingered had sapped her strength.
Now she only had a fever to get out of this house for a spell. And without her adorable, two-month-old daughter. Yet guilt rode her hard that she had few maternal feelings for the child.
Simpson, the young nursemaid, knocked and brought cherubic Esme in as she did twice a day. Lucy took the baby, held her the way she’d seen others do. Why did it not feel instinctive and natural? Why couldn’t she want to do all this?
“There, there, my sweet little doll,” Lucy crooned, but she sounded silly to herself. What was wrong with her that she didn’t need to coo and fuss over Esme the way even Nellie had?
It terrified her that she only loved her child in an abstract way, not with a rush of emotion. Granted, she would love to take Esme places when she was older and to teach her things.
Actually, her fiercest feeling for the child was to protect her from her own father as she grew up, not that he would hurt her as he was seldom near her. He had become a layabout when he wasn’t drinking or gaming. He was also sulking because Lucy and even Nellie had criticized his long absences and his love of his brandy. This time the cad had been away in London for three days, doing who knows what and seeing—no doubt, chasing—who knows whom? Why had he swept her off her feet if he now simply wanted to sweep her under the rug? Granted, she’d been pregnant and then ill, but was her company so distasteful? She feared he would someday break the child’s heart as he had broken hers.
“Let’s give her the sterling silver rattle that Lady Fitzharding brought, Simpson,” Lucy said and pointed at the shiny rattle.
“Oh, I think she’d hurt her gums with that, and we’d best just let her look at it—not that it’s teething time yet, Mrs. Wallace,” the girl said. Again, Lucy felt she didn’t know what she was doing with Esme. It annoyed her that Simpson picked up the rattle and shook it as the baby gurgled and watched with her blue eyes wide.
After Simpson took Esme back to the nursery and she was alone, Lucy reached for Nellie’s latest letter from Paris, where she’d gone to visit their cousins Margot and Auguste, family connections through their grandmama. Despite the fact James dared to banish Nellie from here—and then wasn’t around to keep her out anyway—this letter annoyed and even angered her.
Dearest Lucy, what lovely fun I am having! I have discovered that English women have more freedom than do French women, but I would still rather be here!
“Indeed, what a cheery letter,” Lucy said, frowning at it and speaking in a biting voice. “Why, I am having the most smashing fun here, married to James Wallace who ignores me.” If Nellie thought these frequent, gushy epistles were helping, she was wrong. And it got worse.
You would adore the fashions here, and Margot has so kindly given me her last year’s gowns by Jacques Doucet, a women’s fashion designer who is simply all the rage. Lower necklines, which you would love. Lace, lace, lace, spills of lace. I have a peach gown with a tiered, full skirt all in gathers and folds, layers of lace, so wait until you see that. And I’ve had my hair done by Marcel Grateau, all with a hot comb and then finger waves. I’m sure you’d agree that sort of hair dressing goes so well with Doucet’s fancy dresses!
So far, we have divided our time between our relatives’ town house on the Champs-Elysées and a charming family château in the country, though I far prefer Paris. Versailles was a marvel! Our cousins’ family is amazingly well placed in Parisienne society, so different from dear Mlle Duret on my last visit. Auguste is the perfect gentleman to escort Margot and me about.
Lucy couldn’t help herself. She wadded up that first page and tossed it on the floor under her daybed. But, as if to punish herself, she read on.
What I mean about English girls having more freedom—even here—is that, since everyone knows I have no dowry—they call it a dot—the young women are willing to introduce me to the men they hope to wed or even their fiancés, because they know I will not—cannot—steal their men! The young men live a fast life, but the young ladies a carefully watched one. Of course I must be on my guard against flirtations, because I don’t want to lose the friendship of our cousins and the charming people in their circle, so I am keeping a diary of everything here, all my visits . . .
“While you, dear Lucy, enjoy yourself to no end.” Lucy created her own next line and tossed that page too. “And, of course,” she went on imitating Nellie’s voice, “all your dreams, dearest Lucy, are in ashes while your husband is off gallivanting in London.”
But she did read the last paragraph just before the signature, because it mentioned their former idol Lillie Langtry:
So did you hear that Lillie has been a huge success in her stage career in the States? They say Prince Edward urged her to try it! And maybe partly sponsored her! Lily has become an American citizen, where, I warrant, there is even more freedom for us younger women, those not wed at least, for then the man rules the roost as well we know! And that reminds me of one more thing—the French make it clear that love and romance are rarely the same thing!
“And don’t I know that,” Lucy said in her own voice and heaved a huge sigh. But, she promised herself, she would still strive for romance, at least in her designs, in her heart. Though, somehow, it felt as if the grand possibilities for all that were over, and even her sister and mother could not understand the black depths of that. It made her angry at Nellie all over again.
“And I know,” Lucy said aloud to her fancy, empty room, “that, for a would-be authoress, my sister, you use far too many exclamation points when you write to your sister who is distressed and depressed.” She ended by muttering “ding damn!”—one of James’s favorite curses—and meant the exclamation point.
The man who ruled her roost had told her to stop drawing and sewing her own fashions, Mother’s dresses too, but she was going to do it anyway. It fed her soul.
She turned over the last page of Nellie’s letter, grabbed the pen she had intended to use to write her back and sketched herself in an evening gown she was certain would be far better than one of this Jacques Doucet’s, not with the stiffer lace but clouds and clouds of something she’d seen only once in a French fashion gazette—soft, heavenly chiffon.
Why was it she could pour out her emotions like this, but not when she saw her own daughter, her flesh and blood? This drawing was a gown of emotion, one she could imagine cutting out even now, one she would entitle Exotic Escape.