How to Be a Proper Lady

modest ballroom at the rear, a garden behind, and innumerable bedchambers above. Serena had furnished it with an eye toward comfort but also with simple beauty. Viola supposed she must become accustomed to the splendor. Despite being titled nobility, Serena was still Serena, after all, and Alex was as kind and solicitous as ever, and baby Maria had made the journey well. She told herself she was more fortunate than most anyone she had ever met.

But without the constant company of friends, and without a bluff overlooking the sea to wander along, she swiftly grew restless. Stationary. When Sir Tracy called to drive her in the park in his new curricle, she gladly accepted. When Lady Emily invited her to an afternoon lecture by a noted female essayist, she agreed with a bit less alacrity but enjoyed it even better. The famous essayist employed any number of cuss words that Serena and Mr. Yale had strictly enjoined Viola never to utter, and her lecture was all about how women should be allowed to explore the professions as any man. Several ladies left the lecture hall pale and whispering behind their fans, but Viola felt positively buoyed up.

It took very little to batten her down again, however. Against her inclination she accepted an invitation from Lady Fiona and Madame Roche for an evening of cards.

“But, ma chere mademoiselle, you play less well ce soir than at the country house of your sister.” This said in a French whisper.

“In point of fact, I am playing wretchedly.” This said in a grumble.

“How are the pins doing to hold up your hem?” Lady Fiona looked hopeful.

“They are sticking me in the ankles. But that is the least I deserve for stepping all over them when dismounting from the carriage.”

“The tears, they will occur!” Madame Roche laid down the King and Queen of hearts.

“Tears?” Prickles erupted at the backs of Viola’s eyes.

“Tears as in rips, Miss Carlyle.” Lady Emily peered at her cards with a furrowed brow. “Clarice’s accent is quaint but occasionally inconvenient.” She flickered Viola a focused glance.

Indeed, Viola feared her friends and sister mistook none of her melancholy. They were solicitous to the point of annoyance. London’s sights and marvels could not be fully enjoyed in such a state of irritation, and in any case Viola disliked feeling irritated. She required activity to scare away her fidgets.

With that in mind, four days into their London residence she accompanied Serena and Alex to an evening supper party with dancing. She danced. She trod on gentlemen’s toes. None of them teased, or laughed, and perhaps most devastatingly of all, when the music halted there was no perfect man striding down the corridor to take her into his arms and make love to her.

He was gone. She was living like a lady although she most certainly was not one, with no connection to what she had known for so many years. And that was the mess she had made of her life.

The following evening, beyond the parlor windows the sunset layered gold and gray, terraces of shimmering bronze stacked upon billowing smoke. But Viola could not enjoy it. She sat in a beautifully upholstered chair, an embroidery frame on her lap, a book on the table beside her, and could do nothing but stare out through the glass and wish she were back at sea on the quarterdeck of the April. For then she could revel in the loneliness that gripped her so powerfully still, here in London, surrounded by those she loved. All but one.

Serena touched her on the shoulder. She jumped, knocking the embroidery frame to the floor.

“I am sorry.” Her sister sat on the ottoman before her, a vision in aqua silk and pearls.

“Are you going out tonight?”

“Yes. At breakfast I told you of this evening’s musicale fete. I came looking for you to tell you the carriage will be about shortly. But I see you are not dressed.” She tilted her head.

“I am sorry, Ser. I don’t think my disposition is suited for company tonight.”

She touched her on the back of her hand. “Vi, are you unwell? What I mean to say is, are you happy?”

He had asked her that, told her he could not stay away from her, then he left.

“I am so glad to be here with you, Ser. And Alex and Maria. And tomorrow we shall meet Kitty and Lord Blackwood. After all I have heard of Alex’s sister, I do look forward to that.”

Serena’s fingers tightened around hers. “But are you happy?”

Viola’s throat tightened.

“He brought me here,” she whispered, allowing the words to finally come, “and you made me a lady, but I will never really be one. Not truly, no matter how hard I try. On the outside I might rub my face with lemon juice and pluck at the harp-albeit wretchedly-but on the inside I am still cussing like a sailor.” She turned her gaze back to the sunset, now pale pink and gray, the gold entirely gone. “But I cannot go back to my old life. Oh, Ser, what am I fit for now?”

“Don’t you want this, Vi?”

“Yes, I want this.” She ducked her head and pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes. “But I want him more.”

“Him, Mr. Castle?” Serena sounded skeptical.

“Him, Mr. Seton.”

A moment’s silence. Then, “Oh, Vi.”

“I know,” she groaned, leaped up and went to the window, as close to the sunset as she could. “I do know. I think I have known since the moment I met him.” She gripped the brocade drapery and leaned her brow into its thick folds. “Yet to him I have been nothing but a bounty to line his pockets.” And momentary pleasure. She had given him that, at least. Perhaps even some amusement. It felt good to make him smile, to see stars. But that joy was not to be hers again.

“A bounty?”

Viola sank onto the window seat. “The bounty Alex paid him for finding me and bringing me home.”

Serena came to her. “Alex paid him no bounty, Vi.”

“Of course he did.”

“No, he did not. Even if Alex had offered him payment, Jinan would not have taken it. Why, he is rich as Croesus. Quite likely wealthier than my husband, given the many nights Alex spent at the card tables at one time. Didn’t you know that?”

She swallowed through her thick throat. “No” came out like a peep. “I did not.” She shook her head. “But then, why did he spend so many months searching for me, and so much effort convincing me to return here, if not for Alex’s money?”

Serena sat at her side. “It was rather the other way around. He felt he owed Alex a debt.”

“He owed a debt?”

“It is not really my place to share this information, but now I think you must be told. As a boy, for two years Jinan was a slave. Alex, not much older than him at the time, had him freed.”

Her breaths came fast. “But that was twenty years ago.”

“Then you do know.”

“I didn’t know Alex’s part in it.”

“Jinan found you for me because he believed it was the only manner in which he could repay my husband. Of course Alex never expected or asked it. Jin needn’t have ever done anything.”

Viola stood and crossed the chamber, abruptly hot all over.

“All this time I believed-” She could not think. “I never-” Her return to England had meant more to him than she had ever imagined. He had understood his friend’s love for his wife, and somehow also Serena and Viola’s bond as children. He was a man as alone as any could be, both by life’s tragedy and by choice, yet in this manner he had chosen to pay his debt. Because what Alex had given him meant everything to him.

She ached inside so profoundly, for the boy he had been and the man he had become. And she loved him beyond bearing.

“Viola, will you dress now for going out?” Serena’s voice sounded strange.

She turned and swallowed back her grief. “Ser, I don’t really wish to-”

“Please dress. I should like us to pay that call on Kitty before the party tonight, actually. You needn’t even dress for the evening. We will drop you off here again after we visit Lady Blackwood.”

“Well, all right.” She moved to the door, head heavy and not particularly caring where she went.

Jane buttoned her into a gown suitable for making calls, muttering all the while that Viola should use cucumber slices over her eyes at night to relieve the puffiness. Viola ignored her and met her sister and Alex in the foyer.