Page 20 of A Highly Unlikely Duchess
She could not imagine it. She had tried, and she could not.
“I was angry at my parents tonight,” Emily whispered. Her eyes were still on Frederick. “I stood in that room, and I was so angry at them I could barely speak. Then I came up here, and I looked at him, and I thought —” She stopped again.
“What, My Lady?” Peggy asked softly.
“I thought that for all their faults, they are still there,” Emily said. “He does not have that anymore. He woke up one morning, and the world had simply taken everything from him and left him with a scar and a suitcase and nobody who wanted to claim him.”
They sat on the bed for a while, neither of them speaking, listening to the quiet sound of Frederick's breathing.
It was Emily who broke the silence first.
“Do you remember, Peggy?” she asked. “When Anne and I would sit at the pianoforte? I can still hear my mama’s voice behind us.‘Higher, Emily. Arch your wrists like Anne does. Watch your tempo, Anne’s timing is flawless.’”
Peggy gave a small, sad nod. “I remember, My Lady. You used to practice until your fingers cramped, just trying to match her.”
“Everything had to be exactly as she did it,” Emily whispered.
She turned away from the bed. Growing up, Emily had felt like a blurred sketch beside a finished masterpiece. Anne had been perfect. There was no other word for it. She was the one who could walk into a room and turn every head without even trying. She was smart, she was radiant, and she possessed a silver-tongued charm that could disarm the most cynical person. She was the golden daughter, the one who knew exactly how to please people, exactly what to say to make the world fall in love with her.
But then, at twenty, Anne had vanished into the night with a man of no rank, leaving nothing but a shattered reputation and an empty seat at the table.
The memory of it still made Emily’s chest tighten. Overnight, the sun had gone out, and the spotlight had swung violently toward Emily. She was no longer the second daughter; she was the only daughter. She had been forced into the mold Anne left behind, expected to be twice as perfect to make up for the daughter they had lost.
“It is the hypocrisy that haunts me,” Emily said, her fingers curling into the fabric of her skirts. “One minute, they spent years comparing me to her, telling me to walk like Anne, speak like Anne, play like her. Then the next? She is a ghost. A name that must never be spoken. How can they spend two decades holding her up as the standard of the world, only to act as if she never existed the moment she stopped being useful to the family name?”
“They’re afraid, My Lady,” Peggy said gently. “Afraid that if they speak of her, the shame will come back into the house.”
“But she was real,” Emily insisted, her voice trembling with a sudden heat. “She wasn't a set of rules or a standard. She was my sister. I should be able to grieve her. I have not been able to do that.”
A small, heavy silence followed, thick with the grief of a family that had chosen pride over love. Emily felt a sudden, desperate need to break the tension, to pull herself out of the dark waters of her own mind.
Peggy seemed to sense it. She shifted her weight, a small, knowing glint appearing in her eyes as she looked at Emily.
“My Lady,” Peggy said, her tone shifting into something conspiratorial. “Since the world outside is so determined to be grim... would you like me to share my latest ability to gossip? I’ve heard a thing or two from the household staff of the Family across the road.”
Emily let out a long, shaky breath, a faint, weary smile finally touching her lips.
“Actually, Peggy, yes,” Emily replied, leaning back against the bed frame. “I think I could use some gossip right now. What is the word from the Viscount’s camp?”
“The Byron sisters have come to London,” Peggy whispered.
Emily blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“The Byron sisters,” Peggy repeated, leaning in slightly. “All three of them. They arrived last week, apparently. Nobody saw them come in, nobody was told, they simply appeared. Like they materialized out of thin air.”
Emily looked at her. “Who are the Byron sisters? I don't recall a Byron family with three daughters of the same age.”
Peggy's eyes widened at the privilege of being the one to explain. “That is precisely the thing, My Lady. Nobody entirely knows.” She settled slightly, the way she always did when a story had enough layers to require proper arrangement. “There are three of them. One is as blonde as a summer morning, one has hair asdark as a raven's wing, and the third is a brunette. They are quite peculiar, My Lady. They moved into a house in Mayfair. They look absolutely nothing alike, yet they call themselves sisters. The Byron sisters. All three of them.”
“They are not sisters?”
“The story going through the servants' quarters is enough to make your hair curl. Their fathers were all men of rank. You might recall the story from years ago. All their fathers were Viscounts who went into business together. Something to do with shipping or mines, but it went so ruinously under that the three of them were left with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They had gone out together on one of those bitter, freezing nights in the north, seeking some kind of comfort in the bottle to drown out the ruin, I suppose. They were found the next morning in a carriage that had lost its way in the snow. They’d simply fallen into a stupor from the drink and the misery, and the cold took them all before the sun rose. Left the girls with nothing but a mountain of debt and a tragedy no one wanted to touch.”
Emily felt a chill that had nothing to do with the night air. “Great heavens, that is horrible, Peggy,” she gasped, covering her mouth with her hand.
“The mothers didn't fare much better,” Peggy continued. “One was already gone, died during childbirth. One died of the shock, and the third... well, they say she simply vanished. Couldn't bear the grief or the shame. The girls were taken in by an aunt, a Dowager Viscountess, who lives like a ghost in the countryside.A recluse who kept them hidden away for years, long past their time to debut. That is why they are only appearing now, nearly two years late.”
“Why would you tell me this, Peggy?” Emily asked, dropping her head into her hands with a frustrated groan. “I am already drowning in the tragedy of my own family. I asked for gossip to lift my spirits, not to hear a story so pathetic it makes my own life look like a cheerful comedy by comparison. Three fathers lost to a snowstorm and a bottle? It’s absolutely miserable.”
