Beauty by Sadie Johnston

Author:Sadie Johnston [Johnston, Sadie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-07-29T04:00:00+00:00

The dying fire still crackled and cast off warmth as it danced in the fireplace. Constance sat watching it from her bed, knees pulled to her chest. Warmth and chill wrestled within her, but the flames didn’t have the answers she looked for.

“What’s on your mind?” Jeanne asked from where she sat in the corner, working on more sewing and mending. Her tone hinted that she already knew, but was going to let Constance come to her instead.

“He asked me to marry him,” Constance replied. Her voice was barely a breath, just loud enough to be heard, but she couldn’t tear her gaze away from the fire. From the corner of her eye, she saw Jeanne lower the fabric in her hands.

“What did you say?”

“Yes, I told him yes.” Constance sighed and finally looked across the room at her maid, whose outline she could just make out in the dim light. “But I asked him to keep it between us until I found out if my uncle would grant a different match. I fear that too much time has gone by and too many people know. He may want to save face and not break an engagement that everyone knows about. It would be disreputable, if Morangis did not accept it gracefully, and he’s never accepted the word ‘no’ with any grace.”

Setting aside the dress, Jeanne came to sit behind Constance on the bed and pat her shoulder. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” Constance covered her face with her hands. “I realize now that I’m in an equally impossible situation as before. If I ask my uncle and he says no, he will know that I’ve not been behaving in the way expected of me and I don’t know what the repercussions of that would be but it wouldn’t be pleasant. So I can only ask if I know that he is going to say yes and I have no idea that he will. My aunt is no ally. She will be of the same mind as Uncle.”

“There could be one other option, if he says no,” Jeanne suggested carefully. “You would have to move quickly if it came to that, but you are not a prisoner in shackles.”

It took a moment for her meaning to dawn on Constance, who gasped. “Do you mean run away?”

Her maid hesitated. “I am not telling you that you should, but it is an option. You would not be alone, like you would have been before. If you love this young man then I am sure he is worthy, and he would not abandon you. You would have his help and would not have to risk destitution to get away from this marriage. I cannot bear to think of you married to that man either, but this is all I can offer you.”

“My family would be shamed if I ran away.” Constance looked at the bedclothes, letting her eyes trace the shadows and contours. For the first time she wondered if it would be really any better to have her dead instead.

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