—Tristan
PS. I’m headed back to the city, but I’ll be in the front row at the debut. Can’t wait to see your creations!
Underneath the note, he’d drawn two stick figures facing each other. One wore a long cape, and they both held teacups. A larger stick figure with fuzzy, scowling eyebrows and crossed arms stood off to the side. Us and Grayson. Our time at the pub, captured in his messy lines.
I closed my eyes, remembering that day at the Prince Regent, how steam had drifted up from my teacup, how the pub had reverberated with the sounds of content customers, how Tristan had sat so close to me. Slowly, eyes still closed, I refolded the note and pressed it to my heart, trying to hold on to the moment a little longer. Then I tucked it into my pocket, making sure it was deep inside so it couldn’t fall out. Anytime I was overwhelmed today, I would remember it was there.
The debut was only four days away. Normally, the thought would have sent me into a panic, but now it meant I’d see Tristan soon.
I headed back to my bedroom. I heard Sophie moving about before I stepped inside. She stood in the middle of the room, looking at something small in her palm. The minute I entered,her hand snapped closed.
“What’s that?”
She stared at me for a long moment, her eyes dark and hollow, the face of someone who’d woken from a nightmare. Without a word, she lifted her hand toward me, and the item in her palm caught the light and glinted yellow. A small band, a circlet of gold.
“What...” My mouth was dry, and I cleared it with effort. “What is that?”
“It’s the ring Tristan gave me.” Her face was tight and expressionless as I let out an audible breath. There it was, sitting in her hand. A relic of their past, as shiny as though it’d been purchased yesterday.
“You—you carry it around with you?” While her cheeks were pale, I could feel mine afire with flush. “I thought you weren’t even sure where it was.”
“Well, I happened to have it in my pocket.” Her voice was a skeleton of itself, just bare words with no soul inside them. Carefully, like I’d done with Tristan’s letter, she tucked the ring back into her dress.
“Are you sure you don’t still love him?” I blurted out the question, my cheeks growing even hotter. She let out a careless laugh.
“Of course not.” She placed her hand over her pocket, as though she could feel the ring inside it. “I keep all trinkets from my suitors. Rings, necklaces, notes. It’s half the fun of it, don’t you think?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said. I’d only received a postcard and a note from Tristan, and Johnny Wells had never given me anyrings or necklaces—much less love letters. “It seems odd to keep a ring from a proposal. If an engagement is broken here, the girl returns the ring.”
I didn’t know if it was true or not—I’d never known anyone with a broken engagement. In Shy, engagements were nearly as good as weddings. I watched her closely, waiting to see if her facade would slip.
She didn’t even pause.
“Things are different in the city.”
By Friday, I was so sore and stiff from bending over our garments that I thought I might never stand straight again.
Since the day was clear, we went for a walk and circled the pond behind the pub. We were supposed to take a leisurely stroll, but Sophie kept walking faster and faster. I followed her, my satin flats catching on the pebbles and grass. Eventually, she stopped, staring out over the small pond.
“Are you all right?” I asked. The wind played with our hair, blowing it into our faces, catching on our lips. I wasn’t used to seeing Sophie outside. In fact, I still wasn’t used to being outside. After living in the contained Fashion House, the sun seemed much brighter and the wind much cooler, in the best ways possible.
“Things feel so different here. Smaller. And bigger.”
I watched her. As we’d worked together these past days, it had been hard to push aside the fact that she was the girl who’d had Tristan’s heart before me. But, at the same time, she was my partner. She’d stepped into the unknown with me. Yes, she was all pointy ends, rough corners, and dark passages. But whenI was with Sophie, we created what we wanted. She couldn’t offer me safety or even unconditional friendship. And that was fine—because what we had together was more important. The ability to design how we wanted, without conditions or limitations, even if there was that ring of gold in her pocket.
“I’ve been in so many cages. They were all quite pretty. Alexander’s manor. The Fashion House.” She sighed and squinted as the sun reflected off the pond’s surface. “It’s easy to see everything in terms of the walls around you. You’re lucky, Emmaline.”
“Lucky?”
“Your mother loves you, and even if you leave, you’ll always bring this”—she held her hands out to the glimmering circle of water—“with you.”
“Why did your parents appoint Mr. Taylor as your guardian?” I was treading on dangerous ground. Sophie, like my mother, guarded her past and kept it tucked away out of sight. But there was something open and free about her as she beheld Shy’s beauty.
“Alexander was my father’s best friend.” She spoke slowly, as though measuring out each word before she said it. “They loved the same things: art, theology, politics. They both loved my mother. You’d think it would have driven them apart, but it only brought them closer. My father was an odd man. His philosophizing made him... strange. When my mother designed a manor for Alexander, my father called it her love letter to Alexander. It never bothered him.” She trailed off, her brows drawing together. “They drowned, you know.”
“Your parents?”
“They were drunk one night, and walking along the Tyne River. No one knows exactly what happened, but my mother always loved to balance on the siderail. I imagine she fell in and my father jumped in after her. They were both found the next morning, floating facedown, tangled in her skirts. I was ten at the time.”
