Page 6 of Infamous

‘It’s real.’

All manner of childish rebuttals flared in Eddie’s mind, but she knew they were futile. She took a breath, feeling slightly sick. This day had been coming for a while; she had just tried very hard to ignore it. Almost all of Rose’s friends were now married or betrothed. It had been like watching a huntsman pick off game birds one at a time, until only Rose was left, the best and the brightest .?.?. and for some reason now flying directly towards the smoking barrel.

They had put it off for six miraculous years, but Rose had been winged.

‘Oh God,’ Eddie said suddenly, trying to keep her tone light. ‘Is that why you were so fixated onkissing? You’re planning on kissing this .?.?. thisdesiccatedpruneof a man?’

Rose glanced away, and then looked back at Eddie with a shrug.

‘Well, as you’ve so tactfully pointed out, he’s quite a few years my senior. He’ll probably havelotsof experience.’

Eddie swallowed down the bitter dread that had threatened to overwhelm her and then laughed too loudly and pressed a hand to her chest in a facsimile of a swoon.

‘Whereasweare innocent young maidens who have never so much as caught a glimpse of ourselves nude in a looking glass.’

‘Well – I don’t stand around staring at myself naked in the looking glass,’ Rose said, frowning. ‘Have you been staring at yourself naked in the looking glass? Because I think that might be a sure sign of—’

‘I want to go to bed,’ Eddie said. She was suddenly very tired.

Rose squinted at her with a strange, sad little smile on her face and then shrugged, as if she didn’t mind at all.

‘Edith Miller. Only two-and-twenty, and with all the party stamina of her sister’s elderly cat. Whatarewe going to do with you?’

Chapter Four

It had been said on a number of occasions that the way the Millers ran their house and raised their children was a little unorthodox. To Eddie, it had on the whole been a blessing.

Her mother, it was whispered, had been exposed to far too manybooksfrom a young age, and it had engendered in her a curious mind and a lack of respect when it came to propriety for propriety’s sake. This deficit of character was excused only because her husband had been particularly prosperous over the past decade – enough so that Mrs Miller never had cause to look with horror upon her four daughters and wonder how, exactly, she would be profitably rid of them. She had taught all her children herself rather than engage a governess, assisted by Mr Miller when he was not off merchanting, with a focus on expanding their minds rather than teaching them pristine manners. It was only when Eddie reached her teenage years that Mrs Miller had been confronted with the true extent of the independent, free-thinking horror she had wrought.

Lucy-Anne had rebelled by caring very deeply about decorum, talking often of marriage and loudly lamenting the Miller children’s prospects with Eddie at their helm, more an interfering grandmother than a younger sister. It had befuddled Mrs Miller almost as much as her eldest, who was prone to carrying things about the house between her teeth and putting her feet up on the furniture, like some sort of upright Labrador.

Eddie’s motherdidinsist on a certain level of decorum when leaving the house, not wishing for them to be cast out of polite society altogether, and more than once had stopped Eddie in the hallway on her way out of the door and demanded that she go and wash the ink from her fingers, or at least attempt to do something with her hair that did not resemble an explosion in a textile mill.

‘Edith,’ Mrs Miller said now, touching Eddie on the arm as she tried to slink past. ‘You have a pine cone on your head.’

Eddie – who had been writing in the treehouse all morning, meaning that arboreal debris was entirely possible – patted the back of her head and then frowned.

‘That is just my hair, Mother. I did it myself.’

‘Good God,’ said Mrs Miller. ‘Yes – you did, didn’t you? Hold still a moment.’

Holding still was not Eddie’s forte, but she filled the time by tapping her foot impatiently as her mother fetched a comb and some ribbon and attempted a co-ordinated attack.

‘It was very nice of Mr Rednock to invite you to his party,’ Mrs Miller said, eliciting a hearty scoff from her daughter.

‘He is attempting to ingratiate himself with me, in order to win favour with Rose.’

‘Well, honestly, Edith. Would you rather he spurned you and made it clear you were never to darken his door?’

Eddie shrugged. ‘At least I would respect him for his honesty.’

‘You are speaking as if you are still a child,’ said Mrs Miller, tugging too hard on a lock of Eddie’s hair and making her wince. ‘Oh – sorry. I did tell you to stay still. I know it all seems dreadful now, but you would do well to befriend this man, if you think Rose does intend to marry him. You do not want your friends’ husbands as enemies. They tend to hold the keys to the front door.’

‘Then I shall use the window,’ Eddie said, wriggling free of her mother’s grasp. ‘Farewell, Mother. If I do not return, assume I have committed murder and taken on a new identity to escape prosecution.’

‘I assume that whenever you leave the house,’ said Mrs Miller.

When Eddie reached Rose’s door, she had barely lifted her hand to knock when it opened.