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Her mother turned to her and held out a slim, white hand, sparkling with diamonds and pearls. ‘Thank the stars you are here, Lily my darlin’!’ Stella Wilkins cried. Lily hurried to clasp her hand, hoping to hold her mother steady. ‘You must help me talk some sense into your papa. We have a golden chance here and he wants to toss it all away.’
‘Not toss it away, Stella,’ Lily’s father muttered, shifting his aching foot on its stool. ‘Just wait a year or two. What’s the hurry?’
‘Hurry!’ Stella shrieked. ‘Lily is already nearly twenty. All her friends are married. We must seize the chance now.’
Lily swallowed hard, afraid this was about Adam Goelet again. ‘Perhaps you should tell me what is happening, Mother?’
Stella clutched her hand even tighter and led her to the brocade sofa near the window. She didn’t look at her husband again, but smiled brightly at Lily. ‘My dearest girl, it is quite, quite wonderful! You remember that my mother went to school in England when she was a girl? She told me about it so often.’
Stella gestured to the portrait in the shadows on the panelled wall, of a stately, golden-haired woman in massive, pink silk skirts and puffed sleeves, marble columns behind her, magnolia blossoms in her hand. Lily’s grandmother. ‘Of course,’ Lily said. It had been all her grandmother had ever talked about when Stella would take Lily and the twins to South Carolina when they were children—the glories of England she had seen in her golden girlhood, before her genteel Southern world fell apart.
Lily had never minded those stories, though, for the long history of England, the romance of it, was most fascinating. The castles and monuments, the battlefields and museums. She’d pored over books about it all, peppering her grandmother with questions.
A tiny spark of excitement kindled to life deep inside, but she dared not let it take hold, not yet. Too many things disappointed in the end.
‘Well, I had a letter from the daughter of one of her English schoolfriends,’ Stella said. ‘Lady Heath, her name is, the widow of a viscount. She spoke most kindly of the old friendship and offered to meet us if we ever came to London. Lady Heath has many connections, even to the royal court, and meeting her could be so beneficial to you girls. Don’t you think?’
The excitement grew. Was this escape, then? An end to Newport and Fifth Avenue, to her mother’s constant struggle to belong, to outdo everyone else? Was she going to see England at last? But she glanced at her father, still trying to find a comfortable position on his stool. ‘I would certainly like to see London,’ Lily said cautiously. ‘The centuries-old buildings and museums...’
Stella tossed a tearful look at her husband and her hand tightened even more on Lily’s. ‘Of course you would. You are such a good, scholarly girl. Papa, though, is being ridiculously obstinate.’
‘It’s a long way, Stella. You wouldn’t let them go when they were younger—why suddenly now? That’s all I am saying,’ Coleman Wilkins said wearily.
‘They were not ready before now! And England is not too far for Jennie Jerome, is it? Or Consuelo Yznaga,’ Stella cried.
Lily saw in a flash what this was all really about and she felt like a fool for not realising immediately. It wasn’t about her grandmother, or culture or education. It was about marriage. Stella seemed to have something bigger in mind now than the Goelet money.
Jennie Jerome was the daughter-in-law of a duke now. Consuelo Yznaga would one day be a duchess herself. Her mother wanted a coronet for the Wilkins family, too.
Of course she did.
Lily felt a sudden wave of fear, washing away that tiny spark of excitement. She had known she couldn’t hide in her books for ever, but—to jump into English society, a pool whose depths she could not fathom? Everyone would be watching, everyone would know why she was there in London and she was sure to disappoint her mother again. ‘Mother, I don’t know. Perhaps Papa is right, perhaps I am too young...’
‘You are almost twenty! And the twins are almost seventeen. They need polish so badly,’ her mother wailed. Stella collapsed on to the sofa, her face buried in her handkerchief. ‘There is no more time. If you were settled, the other girls would be safe, too. No one could touch us!’
‘It’s all right, Mother, I promise,’ Lily said soothingly. She reached out and rubbed her mother’s silk-covered shoulder, meeting her father’s gaze above Stella’s head. In his eyes she saw her own feelings: resignation. They would go to London. But Lily had no idea what would happen then. She only knew she couldn’t be afraid. Rose and Violet were counting on her to help them make their own choices for the future and she would never let them down.
