“Do you imagine yourself a duchess, parading about town in a high wig and my mother’s diamonds? I live in the country; I never attend Parliament; and I loathe polite society. My wife will, of course, be at my side. You might want to keep that in mind before you and your damned witness blurt out what happened.”
“Excuse me,” Viola said, her voice wavering. “I need to—”
She saw a flash of a strong jaw and bitter eyes before he slammed past her into the ballroom, revealing a woman in a mustard-colored dress who screamed, “You cow, you miserable bloody cow, why in the bloody hell did you come in?”
Viola stared aghast, unable to say a word.
“You’ve ruined everything!” the woman added, savage fury punctuating her sentence.
The door behind Viola opened, and another surge of panic flooded her body.
He was back.
She spun about and found a matron staring at her in bewilderment.
“You’re too late,” the woman in yellow snarled. “This fool interrupted, and he left in a fury.”
Viola bent over and emptied her stomach, in the process splashing the woman in yellow and her witness.
She fled the shrieks that followed, ran to her bedchamber, summoned her maid, and huddled in a hot bath, trying to understand what she’d seen.
The act bore no relation to the placid marital relations her headmistress had described in hushed tones. To the best of Viola’s recollection, Miss Peters had said that a lady relaxed on her back and allowed “relations” to happen in the dark. The event she had described was respectful, if uncomfortable.
The details magnified in Viola’s brain, even as she tried to forget them: the breadth of his shoulders, the rasp of his breath, the way the woman’s body thudded against the wall as Viola bumped into him, his sheer force.
The next morning, when no scandal broke, she realized that if she confessed what she’d witnessed, the man—apparently a duke—would be forced to marry the woman in yellow. Even if she was a widow, the woman’s reputation would be ruined by gossip. Viola’s stepfather, the Duke of Lindow, would be explosively angry to learn what his young stepdaughter had witnessed. There would be recriminations and the news would spread. Secrets were never private in a castle brimming with people.
An injustice would follow, and even though she loathed the man who would pay the price, Viola considered that she’d had a salutary glimpse into the darkness that gentlemen conceal with exquisite manners and elegant clothing.
He was a beast of a man, but he didn’t deserve to be tricked into marriage.
She’d heard her stepbrothers joking about schemes intended to trap them, but there was an edge in their voices. They wanted to choose their own brides.
That man had sounded furious—and betrayed.
So Viola never told a soul what had happened at the ball. She did her best to forget it, never attempting to find out the names of the woman in yellow or the duke in question.
The following year she allowed her mother to talk her into coming downstairs to a musicale, and narrowly avoided vomiting on a young man, lunging toward a potted lemon tree instead. Her brothers teased her that the poor tree never bore fruit again.
Since then, her shyness had become uncontrollable. She couldn’t stop thinking that she wasn’t a real Wilde. The very idea of marital intimacies made her shudder with revulsion, and she was terrified of finding herself married off to a gentleman who would consider her second-rate, and possibly confine her to the country, or even to a garret.
Never mind how unlikely that scenario was; it had taken hold of her imagination and she couldn’t seem to fight it off. She felt nauseated at the idea of flirtation, let alone marriage.
Marriage was inconceivable.
In the three years that followed, she became an onlooker to polite society, sitting quietly in the corner as the duchess welcomed guests, or in the back row while an opera singer entertained their visitors. She rarely joined the evening meal, but somehow she always managed to see enough of their guests to amuse the family with her observations—but only in private.
Unfortunately, private occasions were rare at Lindow. The powerful duke avoided Parliament, so ruling members of England came to him. The castle was often bursting at the seams with peers and politicians.
When the duke instituted a family dinner once a week, everyone knew it was so that Viola wouldn’t have to retire to her chamber with a tray while everyone else entertained guests. Viola adored those nights, when Joan would leap up from the table and perform impromptu reenactments of scenes Viola had witnessed, until the whole family convulsed with laughter.
She was happy living in the country. She helped their elderly vicar, Father Duddleston, with his parish duties and spent time with the castle’s beloved animals: Fitzy the peacock; her pet crow, Barty; and her two cows, Daisy and Cleopatra.
As a young girl, Viola had realized to her horror that the two adorable calves in the castle cowshed were being fattened for Easter dinner. She had begged her stepfather not to turn Cleo and Daisy into prime beefsteak.
The cowshed became her favorite refuge, the one place where beloved, brilliant, shining Wilde siblings came only if they were searching for her. She spent hours there, sitting on a stool, reading a book, and listening to the soft mooing of animals never forced into wigs and corsets and made to dance the quadrille.
When Father Duddleston passed away in his sleep, Viola gave up her dream of the vicar begging the duke to allow his stepdaughter to stay in Cheshire, and reconciled herself to the truth.
She would have to debut.
Viola’s mother, Ophelia, put her foot down when Viola suggested that perhaps she could stay in the castle. In the long run, according to Ophelia, ballrooms didn’t matter. However, a lady’s presentation to polite society was not a choice, but a necessity.
Aunt Knowe, the duke’s twin sister, agreed: The only way to surmount Viola’s nerves was to put them to the test. Consequently, the 1782 Season would open with the Lindow ball in honor of Viola and Joan, to be held at the duke’s townhouse in Mayfair.
“If you must throw up, darling, run toward a potted plant,” Aunt Knowe advised. “I’ll have Prism remove the lemon trees; they’re too finicky.”
The mere idea of the ball made Viola feel queasy, even though their debut had been delayed a year in hopes that her stomach would settle. From a distance of three years, she couldn’t remember the lovers’ features, but she still felt a wave of horror at the memory of the man’s scathing voice and his brutal strength.
“I can get through it,” Viola said to Cleo, stroking her smudgy, soft nose. “I can survive the Season.”
Cleo didn’t bother to moo.
Likely she knew as well as Viola that while survival was probable, success was unlikely.
Even Aunt Knowe had a tight look around her eyes when the subject came up. She had taken to dosing the footmen with dandelion potions and asking them if they felt capable of serving dinner without breaking plates. Unfortunately, when Viola tried a dose, she slept away the entire afternoon.
“It’s only a few months,” Viola told Daisy, who blinked her long eyelashes and chewed meditatively. Viola hitched her stool a bit closer and leaned her cheek against the cow’s bristly, warm side. Inside she heard mysterious gurgling sounds. “But I’m a coward.”