Page 59 of The Unlovable Lady

Rosalind saw the anger of years ease out of her aunt’s shoulders by a single degree, real and earned.

“Mama would be glad of that,” she said. “Not the forgiving. The setting down. She would not have wanted you to carry it forever for her sake.”

“No.” Augusta’s hand went briefly to the ring on her finger, as it always did at her sister’s name. “No, she would not. Cecily never could abide a grudge, for she said they spoiled the complexion, and she was vain enough about hers to mean it. Go and open your parcel, Rosalind. Whatever your father has not the courage to say, he has put in it.”

Rosalind rose, though she paused when her aunt spoke again. “Do not mistake lateness for absence, child,” Augusta said gently. “Your father loved you badly. That is not the same as not loving you at all.”

Rosalind went out to the hall, where the parcel lay small and plain upon the table, wrapped in paper gone soft with handling. It looked as though it had been taken up and set down a great many times before it was let go at last. What had he kept back all these years? Why leave it now, without a word, without staying even a quarter of an hour? Her heart beat quickly against the questions, though she did not open it there in the cold hall. She carried it back to the warm parlor, where her aunt sat by the fire, and held it in her lap a moment while the snow fell past the window.

I am done with asking for nothing.

She untied the soft string, let herself want whatever was coming, and opened it. Inside, folded in a square of old silk, lay a small gold locket, worn thin at its edges from a lifetime of being held. It was her mother’s, the kind of thing a woman keeps against her heart and not in a jewel-case. Rosalind turned it in her fingers without opening it at first, for she had some notion of what the opening would cost her. Her breath came unsteadily as she pressed the catch.

A curl of hair lay inside, pale and infant-fine, tied round with a thread gone brown with age. Rosalind knew whose it was before her mind had caught up with her heart, for it was her own, cut when she was too small to remember it. Her mother had kept it against her heart for the rest of her short life, wearing the gold thin with the holding of it. In all her years as the plain, useful, unregarded daughter of that house, Rosalind had never once been told that it existed.

She closed her hand around it, and tears rose hot in her eyes.

Rosalind opened her hand again and looked at the tiny curl.

“It is mine,” she said.

Augusta came nearer. For once, she had no dry answer ready. “Yes.”

“Mama kept it.”

“Against her heart.” Augusta touched the edge of the locket with one finger. “She wore that often. I never knew what was inside.”

“Do you think Papa knew?”

“I do not know. I rather think he did not.”

Rosalind looked down at the worn gold. Her mother had carried this small piece of her through every ordinary day Rosalind could no longer remember.

“Then he has given me more than he knew.”

“That would be very like Edmund.” Augusta sat beside her. “Late, badly managed, and more important than he understands.”

Rosalind closed the locket around the curl and held it tight. Whatever else had failed her in that house, this had not. Her mother had wanted her from the beginning.

“There,” Augusta said softly. “Now you know.”

Rosalind could not answer at once, but held the locket while the snow came down clean over the railings. Somewhere in Brook Street, a man was waiting for Christmas so that he might ask her a question she already knew the answer to. After a whole life spent outside the gladness of the world, she had a place to stand inside it at last.

“She kept me,” she said, and closed her hand the tighter around the small worn proof of it. “And I shall keep this.”

And when he asks his question, I shall not keep him waiting long.

Chapter Nineteen

Snow had fallen again on Christmas morning, and James walked from Brook Street to Wimpole Street through it. The ring had sat in his coat pocket for three days.

Two more notes had come to Brook Street since Lady Renton’s, each three lines and perfectly civil. One hostess had found her dinner unexpectedly reduced; another had decided upon a family party after all. James had laid both notes beside Lady Renton’s and felt no desire to win either invitation back. With every door that closed in London, Wrenfield seemed the better bargain.

He had written to Lady Holt the day before to ask her leave, and she had bidden him come at noon and mind the step at her door, which always iced over. He minded the step, and was let in.

Lady Holt sat in the drawing-room with her needlework, a fire built high against the cold. She did not rise.

“Lord Dover,” she said. “You are punctual to the quarter-hour, which I had counted on, and you have brought the cold in with you, which I had not.” She gestured toward the hearth with her needle. “Go and stand by the fire before you do anything rash.”