I lay on my belly under the table in the nursery, head cradled on my arms, sleepiness drawing over me from toes to chin like a heavy coverlet. At seven years old, I was just long enough that I had to draw up my knees to keep my feet from poking out from beneath the tabletop. My eyes were almost closed, but from under the quivering cover of my lashes I could just see Nurse’s square feet in their striped knit stockings. Nurse’s sturdy boots had been set aside, and her toes spread now and again, glad to be released from their pinching confines.
Nurse was sewing. I could tell, though her hands and their work were hidden from view by the spreading top of the dark wood table. My twice-daily dose of medicine made my ears sensitive to the tiniest sounds, and I could hear now, like a whisper directly in my ear, each tug of thread through fabric.
As she sewed, Nurse told me a story. She often told stories at this time of day, her voice was low and restful as I grew drowsy after taking my drops. Today’s, about the ugly prince whose intelligence earned him the love of a princess—whose beauty, in turn, endeared her to him despite her complete lack of wit—was one she had told many times before, and it was one that soothed me, for reasons I did not fully understand. I let my lids flutter closed, blotting out the sight of Nurse’s feet and making room for my mind’s illustrations.
“The prince was so ugly, his mother cried out at the sight of him,” Nurse said. “But a fairy told the queen not to worry, for her son was amiable and good, and what’s more, he was gifted with great wit, which he could, in turn, gift to the person he loved most in the world.”
I saw the little princeling inside my head, wrapped in his swaddling clothes. He had a tuft of golden hair at the very top of his misshapen head, and eyes like currants sunk deep in a poorly baked bun. He was deeply hideous; I smiled a little as he waved one lumpy fist.
“A neighboring kingdom was the home of a princess who was very beautiful, but who was so stupid her poor mother despaired of her. But that same good fairy promised the queen that her daughter would, at least, have the power to make her beloved as handsome a man as she could wish.”
I saw the princess as clearly as I did the prince. She had waving pale hair, and her cheeks had pink circles painted upon them, like the cheeks of my favorite doll. I saw the palace where the princess lived, larger even than our house here at Rosings Park, and surrounded by woods that were deeper but less frightening, dappled with improbable patches of sunlight. There were gardens, too, a maze of hedges that spiraled deliciously; I watched as the princess and her sister raced through it, just the hems of their skirts visible as they whipped laughing around corners, and imagined that I raced along just behind them.
My breathing grew slow and deep, and I missed the rest of the story entirely.
It was some time later when I was drawn out of my sleep by voices. One, I knew instantly—my mother bellowed even when whispering.
“What is Anne doing under there?” Mamma said. “Why is she not in her bed?”
“The young miss likes to curl up in the oddest places,” my nurse said. “I did not see the harm in it, Your Ladyship.”
“Nonsense. You did not feel like moving her, more likely. I will not tolerate laziness, you know.”
“No, Your Ladyship. Of course not.”
I opened my eyes in time to see Nurse’s feet under the table stuffing themselves back into their boots with quick furtive movements.
Then a face appeared, tipped upside down, big solemn eyes and curly brown hair. I stared at it.
“She’s awake,” the face announced, and then it was joined by another, a woman who crouched down and smiled at the sight of me blinking up at her.
“Anne,” the woman said. “My dear, it is so good to see you again.” She reached out a hand to draw me forward, and I took it, crawling gracelessly out from under the table on my two knees and free hand. I kept my head ducked until I was out and standing. The room moved in and out around me, as if I stood inside the bellows of a giant’s chest as he breathed. I swayed a little where I stood, and Nurse put out a hand to steady me.
“Greet your aunt, child,” Mamma said, and I blinked and dipped an unsteady curtsy.
“Hello, Aunt Darcy,” I said, for of course that was who the woman was. Mamma had been looking forward to the visit for days, both her brother and sister and all their children coming to see us at Rosings Park, but I, keeping quiet in the nursery, had all but forgotten about it. I looked to the side, where my cousin Fitzwilliam had straightened and was watching me with frank curiosity. He was not quite a year my senior, but was much taller than he had been the last time I saw him, and his hair was longer, curling over the tops of his ears. He saw me looking and bowed very correctly.
“Cousin Anne,” he said.
“Cousin Fitzwilliam.” I felt shy of him, but safe inside the giant’s chest, padded a little from his curious stare. We both knew, having been told so all our short lives, that we were going to be married when we grew up.
“Come, Miss,” Nurse said. She took me by the hand and led me to the window seat, tucking me in among the cushions. Aunt Darcy nodded at Fitzwilliam and he trailed after us, looking reluctant.
He perched on the edge of the seat, looking out the window at the garden below. “I thought Edward and John would already be here,” he said. “They should have been. Their journey was much shorter than ours.”
My other cousins, sons of Mamma’s brother, the earl, could be at Rosings Park within a day of setting out. “Perhaps their horses are not as swift as yours,” I said.
Fitzwilliam looked at me. “Perhaps not,” he said, thoughtful.
My face cracked with the force of a sudden yawn, and my cousin frowned. “I am still tired,” I said, and let my cheek rest on the cool of the windowpane. I did not quite sleep—I was aware of the movement when Fitzwilliam stood, and heard his footsteps as he crossed the room—but I could not keep my eyes from closing.
The earl and his family arrived before dinner. They had a very fine, large carriage, and their horses were more than equal to the task of pulling it briskly. I was still resting in the window seat when their carriage was spotted but was summoned downstairs soon enough, where my entire family, including my aunt and uncle Darcy and my cousin Fitzwilliam, had arrayed themselves on the front steps to greet the new arrivals. Our butler, Peters; Mrs. Barrister, the housekeeper; and the most senior among the footmen, stood a little behind. Wedged between my father’s comfortable stomach in its silver waistcoat and my mother’s broad skirts, I stood a little on my toes, neck lengthening in my eagerness—for it was a rare treat when other children came to Rosings Park—to watch as the carriage rolled to a stop.
The Earl of Brightmoor emerged first, and he turned to hand out his wife. My uncle looked a great deal like my mother—they had the same nose, dipping down, as my own did, like a hunting bird’s beak; and the same way of positioning their tall, strong forms, feet so firm upon the ground that they seemed rooted wherever they happened to be—much more so than Aunt Darcy, who was shorter and rounder, more robin than hawk. My cousins, Edward and John, came next. Mamma had come to the nursery several days in a row this past week to instruct me in all the family’s proper titles, and I mouthed them to myself now as the boys emerged. Edward, the eldest at eleven, tall and pinch-faced, was properly Viscount Eden; John, just a year younger, was shorter, stocky, with a sweep of unruly hair over his brow, and was the Honorable John Fitzwilliam. It seemed unfair that my cousins were so distinguished—hadn’t Mamma told me countless times that I was special, niece and granddaughter to earls, heiress to one of the finest estates in southern England, betrothed to the heir of one of the finest estates in the Peak District? Though my father was only a knight, the de Bourghs—like the Darcys—had been well monied for centuries. I knew better than to complain to my mother, who had no patience for impertinence, but I did tell Papa that I wished to be known as the Honorable Earless of Hunsford in company. My father looked at me, astonished, then laughed the great wheezing laugh I heard so infrequently.
“That you will be,” he said, chuckling as he walked away.
Now my uncle kissed my mother’s hand, then Aunt Darcy’s; there was a great deal of chatter, a lot of quick movements as my cousins rushed to greet one another, Fitzwilliam jostling me in his hurry. I stepped back, out of the fray, watching as Papa ushered the men and women inside and the boys raced off across the lawn, already shouting in some game that had mysteriously sprung up instantly among them. I turned in a slow circle to watch them run—their legs and arms leaped and swung; their hair flew away from their faces in a wind created by their own quickness. Not one of them glanced in my direction.
Inside my own body, something stirred, making my arms tingle and my feet move restlessly against the gravel drive. I was not allowed to run; too much physical effort made it hard for me to breathe. And yet I had taken five or six steps forward—quick steps!—without even meaning to before I was stopped by Nurse’s hand on my arm.
Edward and Fitzwilliam played at battledore and shuttlecock while I watched from my garden bench. They hit the feather-trimmed shuttlecock back and forth, lunging and grunting, faces going red with exertion. Both had taken off their coats to allow their arms more freedom of movement. I was the Keeper of the Coats; I held the folded garments on my lap, absently stroking the soft wool.
The day was warm, but because the sun was mostly covered by clouds Nurse had allowed me to come outside. Still, she took precautions; my hat shaded my face and neck, and I had been firmly instructed to keep to the bench and not run. This would have been an easier command to obey had I already had my drops, but it was too early, and a child’s body craves movement. Even knowing the way I would end up gasping for air if I were to take a turn at my cousins’ game, I found myself unable to keep still; I wriggled on the bench until Nurse lay a hand upon my shoulder, a quiet reprimand. I turned a furious look upon her, but Nurse just kept sewing.
Earlier, Dr. Grant had come to Rosings Park for his monthly visit, which always put me a little out of humor. Dr. Grant’s fingers were cold when they probed the sides of my neck, and he looked at me as if I were a curiosity in a jar, like the butterflies in Papa’s book room. He peered into my eyes, checked the color of my tongue, felt the pulse beating through my wrist, and grunted to himself after each evaluation, as if he had discovered something very important. He seemed a very old man to me, the top of his head bald and shiny and the ruffle of hair around his ears blackish-gray, but his skin was unlined and his voice steady when he said, “Miss de Bourgh is very well,” to the room at large.
Usually, the audience to these examinations consisted only of Mamma and Nurse, but today my aunts watched as well, their faces, until the doctor’s pronouncement, politely interested, at which point they both smiled, as if he said something enormously clever. I felt my cheeks flush as if from fever from the force of all their gazing eyes and glowered down at my blue-sprigged lap. Dr. Grant said the same thing every time he came, unless I was actually in the midst of a bout of illness, and it annoyed me every time. If I were truly very well, I would be able to play with my cousins, or to go to London—that thrilling, fabled city—with my father.
Dr. Grant stood and took a glass bottle of my medicine from his satchel and set it on a little side table. “I see no reason to change her dosage,” he said, bowing to Mamma.
Sitting on the garden bench with Nurse, I fancied, for all the warmth of the day, that I could still feel the chill of Dr. Grant’s finger pads.
John had vanished at some point, but now he returned, the pockets of his coat bulging. He stopped before my seat, looking down at me and blocking my view of the game.
“See what I found,” he said, and reached into one pocket to take out a handful of stones. He dropped them into my lap, where they lay upon the others’ piled coats like an offering. I picked them up one by one. Most were uninteresting at first glance, rough and irregular in varying shades of dun and gray; but when I brought them closer to my eyes I could see why John chose each one. This stone was shot through with silvery flecks that made it sparkle when the weak sun caught it; that one had a vein of pink running through its dull gray body. I looked up at him, my mouth pulling up at the corners.
“And see here?” My cousin put his hand into the other pocket, which looked flat and empty compared to the first, and took out something hidden by the curl of his fingers. He picked up my hand and dropped the something into it—a fat, furry caterpillar, soft as anything but a little squashed and syrupy about the middle, and clearly quite dead.
I screamed, flinging it away from me, and Nurse turned a fierce glare upon John, who had taken a startled step backward.
“What in the world . . . ?” Nurse said. “Bringing a filthy dead thing to your poor cousin—”
“It was alive when I found it!” John said. He looked down at his hands, which seemed outsized dangling at the ends of his narrow wrists, as if they had betrayed him.
I had shrunk against the back of the bench, away from my nurse’s vehemence and the lurking possibility of other nasty creatures falling into my lap. But I made myself stir when John, frowning, shoved his hands into his now-empty pockets and began to walk away.
“Thank you for the stones,” I said; and then, when he did not look around, I raised my voice and repeated myself.
John stopped, looked back at me over his shoulder, and raised one side of his mouth in a half-smile. Then Edward called to him and he went running off before I could think of anything else to say.
I saw little of my cousins over the next few days. They spent most of their time outside, their play rough enough that they were banished from the house from breakfast until dinner; I was kept mostly in the nursery except when Mamma called for me to be brought into the drawing room, where I sat and listened as the ladies gossiped and sewed. Their talk was very dull, though, all about what schools my cousins would attend and which women of their acquaintance were expected to soon be brought to bed, and so I did not even struggle when, after Nurse came with my medicine, the usual tiredness came over me. I half-woke a few times, taking in words of their conversation—“Edward’s master says his Latin is improving, but John’s is still atrocious”—before slipping away again.
“Poor lamb,” Aunt Darcy said one afternoon, her voice dropping.
I always knew I was being discussed when my aunts’ and even my mother’s voices dropped. They spoke of me in whispers, as if I were a secret.
“I do hate to see her like this,” Aunt Darcy continued. “Children should not be so still, so silent; it’s unnatural.”
Moments before, Nurse had given me my second dose of medicine, tucking a shawl around me and murmuring that I should sleep a little now. And so my eyes were already closed; and though my aunt’s words made some stubborn part of me ache to rise up and move, I stayed perfectly still so that I could hear what would be said next.
“Dr. Grant assures us it’s for the best,” Mamma said. “She requires absolute quiet. You did not have to contend with the screaming when she was an infant, Sister. Nothing soothed her, but her illness is quite well managed with a little medicine every day. It is a wonder, is it not, Nurse?”
“It is indeed, ma’am,” my nurse said. “Keeps the young mistress happy as can be.”
“She could be rather pretty, couldn’t she? If only she were plumper.” They had leaned closer, I could tell; and I knew, too, when Aunt Darcy raised a hand, as if to touch my cheek, though she stopped before actually making contact. The shadow of her hand had the weight of folded cloth.
“Her appetite is always quite depressed,” Mamma said. “Dr. Grant says it is very normal in cases like this, with delicate young ladies.”
“She is just so—small. And so quiet.” Aunt Darcy lowered her voice still further. “She seems to have no spirit at all. Fitzwilliam is very serious; he will need a lively wife to remind him to—to find enjoyment in life.”
My eyes squeezed more tightly closed. Mamma always spoke of my smallness as if it made me special, but there was something about the doubtful way my aunt spoke now, each syllable like a slap, that made my body feel brittle, like ice in spring. I thought of Nurse’s story about the ugly prince and stupid princess, and wondered, fleetingly, whether when we married, Fitzwilliam might be able to gift me some of his own strength. But what did I have to gift to him in return? I was very aware of all my bones; of the blue veins showing so clearly under my skin. My face, not round and rosy as a child’s should be, but sharply delineated. Only my hair looked healthy: dark as both Mamma’s and Aunt Darcy’s own, it was my mother’s pride manifested as thick, waving strands, caught up with silk ribbons to match my gowns.
“It is a good thing my nephew is such a strapping boy,” Mamma said, and her voice was defiant, cutting off any possibility of argument. “He and Anne will make well-proportioned children together.”
Aunt Darcy’s silence was very loud.
I would have stoppered my ears if I had to, against that silence. Happily, in this instance, my little glass of medicine made it easy to disappear into my own head. There, I raced along forest paths with the hoop and stick I longed to have in my waking life, my feet fleet upon the earth, nimbly avoiding tree roots and rolling acorns and hazelnuts. My lungs never wanting for air, my hair flying out behind me.