They sat, munching almonds and admiring the ugly, beautiful future stretching before them.
When the modiste returned with a tray of tiny cakes and a reminder of the time, they rose together, a phalanx of friendship, ready to take on the world—or at least the next round of fittings.
Nancy left the shop that afternoon feeling lighter than she had in weeks. She was still afraid, but it was a manageable fear. Like the fear before a battle, or the leap from a high place when you know there is something worth landing for.
She had her friends. She had the twins. And, God help her, she had a duke waiting at the end of the aisle.
What could possibly go wrong?
Night brought no relief. Nancy lay abed, listening to the clock ticking with a stubborn will that would not let her sleep. She had spent the evening rehearsing her composure in the privacy of her dressing table mirror. Now, without witnesses ordistractions, the mirror image dissolved and left her only with herself.
She tried counting the day’s peculiarities, but her mind wandered instead to Fiona’s warnings—Never trust a man who can make you forget your own name with a smile, darling; he will surely find a way to use it against you.
Hester had laughed at that, but even Hester’s confidence had a sharp edge:If he ever breaks your heart, I will hunt him to the ends of the earth and collect his ears as proof.
Nancy tried to recall all she had ever wanted. Marriage had not been a consideration, and even if it had, it was not with notions of romance or love. She tried to imagine Scarfield softening, but it was impossible.
She threw off the blankets, restless.Could Father be right? Was this some mad performance, a last-ditch gambit to save face and salvage the family pride?Or worse, was it a genuine, awful leap into the unknown, the sort of risk that ended with one or both parties broken?
But then she remembered Clara’s desperate little voice in the nursery:Are you taking us away?She remembered Henry’s hollow eyes, the color of old grass, the way he clung to his rabbit as if it could bring his mother back.
“I will not abandon them.” She said it out loud, just to hear it echo in the empty room.
Sleep did come, eventually, but it brought no comfort. Nancy’s dreams were crowded with uncertainties.
She stood on the moor behind her childhood home. Teresa was there, barefoot and smiling in a way Nancy remembered from the days before the world had sharpened its claws. She was holding the twins, one on each hip, and laughing at something Nancy could not hear.
“Will you promise me?” Teresa asked, reaching out, her hand cold and impossibly light.
Nancy took it, felt the pressure of bone under skin. “I promise,” she said, not sure what she was promising, but knowing it was everything.
“Good,” said Teresa, and stepped back, dissolving into mist.
The air changed, and suddenly Nancy was alone in a house full of closed doors. She ran down the hallway, opening each one in turn—behind the first was a cradle, empty and rocking. Behind the second, Clara and Henry, small and frightened, clinging to the bars of their bed. The third door opened onto a long, dim hall, and at the end of it stood Oscar.
He did not move. He did not speak. He simply stood there, immovable, arms folded and head lowered, the set of his shoulders so familiar and so final that Nancy felt terror bloom in her chest.
She tried to call to him, but her voice would not work. She tried to run, but the floor was syrup and her feet would not obey.
When she reached him, he turned, but it was not Oscar’s face. It was her own.
She woke with a start, heart stuttering in her chest, sweat cold on her neck.
You fool. You are afraid of yourself.
She pulled the blankets around her and watched the sky grow pale with dawn, waiting for the courage to do what needed to be done.
She would protect those children. She would keep her promise, no matter the cost.
But the man at the end of the hall was waiting, and she knew—better than anyone—that there are some doors you cannot close, once you’ve opened them.
CHAPTER 11
“You look like you’re walking to a funeral and not your own wedding,” Moira said, folding her arms and surveying Nancy from the threshold of the bedchamber.
Nancy considered her reflection in the tall glass. The pale green silk suited her coloring—she’d been told this so often she almost believed it. She felt nothing for the dress, or for the tiny flower neatly pinned to her hair, or the scattering of pearls at her throat. She looked, in her estimation, exactly like a woman about to be sacrificed to a cruel deity.
“It is an honest mistake,” she replied. “In certain lights, the two ceremonies are almost indistinguishable.”
