families. Only a few of the mistresses remained to keep charge of us and a lively atmosphere always prevailed. We were taken on picnics and permitted to sit with them in the teachers’ sitting room. We feasted on pastries and fat, crisp sausages, and were allowed to put aside our interminable needlework for once. No, we had not minded our exile, and many an evening we whiled away the hours telling tales of our homelands, for the mistresses had travelled little and were curious. They teased me fondly about hairy-kneed Highlanders and oat porridge while Cosmina made them shiver with stories of the vampires and werewolves that stalked her native Transylvania.
I collected myself from my reverie. “Yes, she was. She always spoke so bewitchingly of her home. She lives in a castle in the Carpathians, you know. She is kin to a noble family there.” I brandished the letter. “She is to be married, and she begs me to come and stay through Christmas.”
“Christmas! That is months away. What will you do with yourself for so long in…goodness, I do not even know what country it is!”
I shrugged. “It is its own country, a principality or some such. Part of the Austrian Empire, if I remember rightly.”
“But what will you do?” Anna persisted.
I folded the letter carefully and slipped it into my pocket. I could feel it through my petticoats and crinoline, a talisman against the worries that had assailed me since my grandfather had fallen ill.
“I shall write,” I said stoutly.
Anna primmed her lips and returned to her needlework.
I went and knelt before her, taking her hands in mine, heedless of the prick of the needle. “I know you do not approve, but I have had some success. It wants only a proper novel for me to be established in a career where I can make my own way. I need be dependent upon no one.”
She shook her head. “My darling girl, you must know this is not necessary. You will always have a home with us.”
I opened my mouth to retort, then bit the words off sharply. I might have wounded her with them. How could I express to her the horror such a prospect raised within me? The thought of living in her small house with four-now five!-children underfoot, too little money to speak to the expenses, and always William, kindly but disapproving. He had already made his feelings towards women writers quite clear. They were unyielding as stone; he would permit no flexibility upon the point. Writing aroused the passions and was not a suitable occupation for a lady. He would not even allow my sister to read any novel he had not vetted first, reading it carefully and marking out offending passages. The Brontes were forbidden entirely on the grounds that they were “unfettered.” Was this to be my future then? Quiet domesticity with a man who would deny me the intellectual freedoms I had nurtured for so long in favour of sewing sheets and wiping moist noses?
No, it was not to be borne. There was no possibility of earning my own keep if I lived with them, and the little money I should have from my grandfather’s estate would not sustain me long. I needed only a bit of time and some quiet place to write a full-length novel and build upon the modest success I had already enjoyed as a writer of suspenseful stories.
I drew in a calming breath. “I am grateful to you and to William for your generous offer,” I began, “but it cannot be. We are different creatures, Anna, as different as chalk and cheese, and what suits you should stifle me just as my dreams would shock and frighten you.”
To my surprise, she merely smiled. “I am not so easily shocked as all that. I know you better than you credit me. I know you long to have adventures, to explore, to meet interesting people and tell thrilling tales. You were always so, even from an infant. I remember you well, walking up to people and thrusting out your hand by way of introduction. You never knew a stranger, and you spent all your time quizzing everyone. Why did Mama give away her cherry frock after wearing it only twice? Why could we not have a monkey to call for tea?” She shook her head, her expression one of sweet indulgence. “You only stopped chattering when you were asleep. It was quite exhausting.”
“I do not remember, but I am glad you told me.” It had been a long time since Anna and I had shared sisterly confidences. I had seen her so seldom since her marriage. But sometimes, very occasionally, it felt like old times again and I could forget William and the children and the little vicarage that all had better claims upon my sister.
“You would not remember. You were very small. But then you changed after Papa died, became so quiet and close. You lost the trick of making friends. But I still recall the child you were, your clever antics. Papa used to laugh and say he ought to have called you Theodore, for you were fearless as any boy.”
“Did he? I scarce remember him anymore. Or Mama. It’s been just us for so long.”
“And Grandfather,” she said with a smile of gentle affection. “Tell me about the funeral. I was very sorry to have been left behind.”
William had not thought it fit for a lady in her interesting condition to appear at the funeral, although her stays had not even been loosened. But as ever, she was obedient to his wishes, and I had gone as the last remaining Lestrange to bid farewell to the kindly old gentleman who had taken us in, two tiny children left friendless in a cold world.
Keeping my hands entwined with hers, I told her about the funeral, recounting the eulogium and the remarks of the clergyman on Grandfather’s excellent temper, his scholarly reputation, his liberality.
Anna smothered a soft laugh. “Poor Grandfather. His liberality is why your prospects are so diminished,” she said ruefully.
I could not dispute it. Had he been a little less willing to lend money to an impecunious friend or purchase a book from a scholar fallen upon hard times, there would have been a great deal left in his own coffers. But there was not a man in Edinburgh who did not know to apply to Professor Mungo Lestrange if he was a man of both letters and privation.
“Was Mr. Beecroft there?” she asked carefully. She withdrew her hands from mine and took up her needlework again.
I looked for something to do with my own hands and found the fire wanted poking up. I busied myself with poker and shovel while I replied.
“He was.”
“It was very kind of him to come.”
“He is my publisher, and his firm published Grandfather’s work. It was a professional courtesy,” I replied coolly.
“Rather more a personal one, I should think,” she said, her voice perfectly even. But we had not been sisters so long for nothing. I detected the tiny note of hope in her tone, and I determined to squash it.
“He has asked me to marry him,” I told her. “I have refused him.”
She jumped and gave a little exclamation as she pricked herself. She thrust a finger into her mouth and sucked at it, then wrapped it in a handkerchief.
“Theodora, why? He is a kind man, an excellent match. And if any husband ought to be sympathetic to a wifely pen it is a publisher!”
I stirred up the coals slowly, watching the warm pink embers glow hotly red under my ministrations. “He is indeed a kind man, and an excellent publisher. He is prosperous and well-read, and with a liberal bent of mind that I should scarce find once in a thousand men.”
“Then why refuse him?”
I replaced the poker and turned to face her. “Because I do not love him. I like him. I am fond of him. I esteem him greatly. But I do not love him, and that is an argument you cannot rise to, for you did not marry without love and you can hardly expect it of me.”
Her expression softened. “Of course I understand. But is it not possible that with a man of such temperament, of such possibility, that love may grow? It has all it needs to flourish-soil, seed and water. It requires only time and a more intimate acquaintance.”
“And if it does not grow?” I demanded. “Would you have me hazard my future happiness on ‘might’? No, it is not sound. I admit that with time a closer attachment might form, but what if it does not? I have never craved domesticity, Anna. I have never longed for home and hearth and children of my own, and yet that must be my lot if I marry. Why then would I take up those burdens unless I had the compensation of love? Of passion?”
She raised a warning finger. “Do not collect passion into the equation. It is a dangerous foe, Theodora, like keeping a lion in the garden. It might seem safe enough, but it might well destroy you. No, do not yearn for
