“You are perfect.”
“I think not.” She skirted him. “But I know when I am beaten, so I will do as you all want. Good day.”
“Abby, try to understand.”
“I will never understand, but I will comply with your wishes.”
“Stop it, please. This person you’ve become is not the sister we want. You’re emotionless and malleable.” Frustration had his voice rising. “As though overnight our sister has been replaced by another in the same body as the old one. This one is everything that is proper. She’s cold, and even her voice has changed.”
“And yet, you want me to conform and be the perfect lady. Want me to be insipid and twitter and smile—”
“No one said a word about twittering.”
“My point is that I am at a loss as to what you want from me if it is not this. I am not allowed to speak with men you don’t approve of, which, I will add, is a very small list. You have no wish for me to go anywhere or do anything without someone watching me.”
“Abby—”
“I am twenty-three!” She hadn’t meant to shriek, but it came out just the same. There was only so much control she could harness, after all.
“I am aware of your age, as I purchased you that brush and comb set that sits on your dressing—”
“I know where it sits!”
“Excellent.”
“There is simply no rule book for this, Michael. I don’t know what you and the others want from me. After all, am I not now like the other women of society?”
“Simpering and empty-headed?”
“They are not empty-headed, brother; in fact, some are intelligent with a sharp wit. However, as there is a certain expectation, they, like me, are now observing it.”
“We don’t want you to be someone different, Abby. Just show more caution.”
“If I showed more caution, I’d be eligible for a convent,” Abby snapped. “But perhaps there I’d have more freedom!”
“We love you.” Michael’s words followed her as she walked to the door.
“In your own way, perhaps. But you do not respect or trust me, and that is something I have come to understand and accept. Good day to you, Michael.”
She did not look at him again, instead stomping to her room. Once there, she prepared for her departure. Mrs. Secomb was seated outside, her lips in a firm line, shoulders back, legs crossed at the ankles. The woman should really walk in society; she was far better versed in etiquette than Abby.
“I wish to leave at once for the flower market, Mrs. Secomb.”
“I am of course ready, Lady Abigail, for whatever it is you wish to do.” She dressed in somber colors, her small eyes focused and alert. Abby had tried to like her, tried to get her to talk of personal things, and yet the views she’d clearly been raised with were strictly entrenched in Mrs. Secomb. A woman’s place in the world was to do what the men in her life told her to.
Abby knew she also spoke to Gabe when Abby did something she didn’t think appropriate, which made her want to gnash her teeth. She was twenty-three years old. Women were married and running their own homes with children hanging off their skirts at this age. Not her, however. She would be in just this situation at forty-five years old if she didn’t take steps to change things.
They made it to the front door where Hogan, their footman, waited. His eyes smiled at her, but he kept his expression carefully blank.
“Abby!”
Looking upward, she saw Gabe was leaning over the railing.
“I have a meeting, but if you wait twenty minutes I shall accompany you.”
His hair was a mess, standing off his head, and necktie crooked. He tended to end up this way when he was reading reports. Abby hardened her heart to the love she always felt when she looked at one of her brothers.
“I have no need of your company, thank you, my lord.”
“Pardon? Who the hell are you talking to?”
“Oh, do you not like to hear your title on my lips? I would have thought it was exactly the right way for me to address you, considering you wish for me to be everything that is perfect in a young lady.”
“Abby!”
“Good day to you, Lord Raine.” She walked out the door, knowing her footman and companion would be following.
She’d deliberately called him by his title to annoy him, and she had to do that, even in a small capacity, or go mad. She sent little barbs their way under the guise of being sweet and proper. There was only so much docility she could manage in a day.
“It is right for you to address your brother formally, and in time he will get used to it,” Mrs. Secomb said.
“No, it’s not,” Hogan said from behind them. “He’s her brother.”
“Be quiet, Mr. Hogan.”
“Just Hogan.”
Abby swallowed her smile as they continued to argue as the carriage halted before them.
“We shall agree to disagree then,” Hogan said, winking at Abby before he climbed up beside the driver.
“He’s a bad one, that Mr. Hogan,” Mrs. Secomb said, settling herself beside Abby.
“No, he’s a very nice man, and I would ask you not to speak of him that way again.”
Mrs. Secomb harrumphed and looked out the window with her lips pursed tight.
A sunny day accompanied them through the London streets. Abby looked in shop windows as they passed and wondered at the lives of those she glimpsed. Were the people walking and riding the streets happy? Or, like her, were they enacting a charade? She was well treated and, yes, loved by her brothers, but now that she knew that there was so much to experience, she wanted to do so.
The longing inside her for the two people she could not have was almost a physical pain. Dimity, with her laugh and forthright ways, and Daniel, who she knew so little about but felt as if she’d known for a lifetime.
She had snuck down into the kitchens once to see Dimity, but the staff had
