It would have been sensible to bite her tongue and say nothing, but Pippa found words spilling out anyway.
“I’m not going to be a Marchioness, Mama,” she blurted out.
Bridget narrowed her eyes. “We’ve been through this, Pippa.”
Pippa stood up, breathing in deeply.
“Lord Whitmore –Nathan– confessed to me last night that he is in love with me. He plans to visit today to speak to you and formally ask me to court him. I don’t want to go against your wishes, Mama, but your threats of ruining me and casting me off mean nothing, not if I can marry Nathan.”
Bridget gave a choked noise. “You can’t mean it.”
Pippa hurried towards her mother, taking her mother’s hands in hers. “Mama, please don’t be angry. Don’t you want me to be happy? IknowI won’t be happy with Lord Barwick, and you know it, too! But I love Nathan, and that’s the best start any marriage could have. I’ll be a viscountess, and I know he’s rich! More to the point, he knows thatIam not, and doesn’t care about it. Please, Mama! Give us your blessing for our courtship.”
Bridget tore her hands away. “You don’t know what you’re speaking of, child. Do you plan to humiliate me? Only this morning…” she paused, pulling out a crumpled letter from her sleeve and shaking it in Pippa’s, face, “… only this morning I received a letter from Lady Barwick, informing me that you meet with her approval and that Lord Barwick intends to make you an offer soon. Today, even! We are so close, Pippa, so close! You can’t possibly falter so close to the finish line.”
Pippa bit her lip. She felt like crying.
I’ll never get her to understand.
“Mama,please,” she begged, voice cracking. “Papa wanted us to stay together, to support each other. Why must you do this to me?”
“Why mustyoudo this tome?” Bridget snapped. “Why can you never listen?”
Pippa stepped back, composing herself. She felt like crying, like throwing herself on the ground and sobbing.
Mama will never give her permission for me to marry Nathan.
I think I might marry him anyway.
And what would be the results? If she refused to marry Nathan at her mother’s request, Pippa knew in her heart that she could never marry Lord Barwick. So she’d finish the Season as a sad little spinster, reliant on her cousin’s good graces. Maybe their good graces would continue, maybe they wouldn’t. It was hard to tell. Either way, her Season, such as it was, would be a resounding failure. An irrevocable one.
And if she went ahead and married Nathan, there was no telling how Bridget would react. Might she make peace with it? Mayhap. But if she did not, there would be a chance for reconciliation later. Pippa would be a viscountess, safe at last.
And that was what Mama wanted, wasn’t it? For me to be safe? Forusto be safe.
“I going to marry him if he asks me, Mama,” she heard herself say, voice choked with tears. “I wish you would give us your blessing.”
Bridget held her gaze for a long minute. For an instant, there was anguish in her eyes, quickly replaced with anger.
“I know where all of this began,” she hissed, shaking a finger in Pippa’s face. “With that wretched violin!”
Before Pippa could understand what her mother meant, Bridget had stormed past into the room, snatching up the violin which still lay on the window seat.
Ice-cold fear surged up into Pippa’s throat.
“Mama, no!”
Bridget sidestepped her easily, holding the violin aloft.
“Well, I am your mother, and I take away anything you have as easily asthat,” she snarled, dodging again. “If I say no more of this wretched scraping, then there will beno more, do you hear me?”
She lifted the violin into the air, holding it by the neck, and at once Pippa saw what she meant to do. She meant to smash the violin down on the empty hearth, splintering it into a million pieces.
Pippa gave a wordless cry, and threw herself forward, trying to snatch the instrument out of her mother’s hands. Bridget dodged again, backing towards the staircase. Pippa tried to grab it once more, and Bridget grabbed her by the shoulder and pushed her away.
Pippa staggered backwards, and suddenly there was no more ground beneath her heels. She just had a moment to see shock and horror in her mother’s face before she tumbled backwards, falling down the stairs.
Falling tended to be a rather strange thing. A handful of seconds, all stretched out to last a moment or two in one’s perception, but without the ability to actuallydoanything about the extra time. Pippa faintly recalled flashes; the ceiling above her, the coldness of the air which rushed past her.
