Misery Hates Company by Elizabeth Hobbs

Author:Elizabeth Hobbs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CROOKED LANE BOOKS

CHAPTER 25

Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to

emancipate women than anything else in the world.

—Susan B. Anthony

Try as she might, Marigold could not dismiss the haunting image of the Hanged Man from her mind. Nor forget the strange sort of desperation Sophronia had conveyed—as if she were actually worried about Marigold’s well-being. As if she really didn’t want Marigold to end up like them girls.

And then there were the flowers—day after day, the little jam jar next to her bed was replenished with fresh rosemary and wildflowers. Their conversation in the garden—though it had yielded no useful information about the wrong done Marigold’s mother—had revealed Sophronia’s affinity for the language of flowers. Rosemary was for remembrance, her cousin had said—and she was quite purposefully leaving sprigs for Marigold in her room. But what—or who—was Marigold supposed to remember? And what were the other flora—today it was a delicate, heart-shaped fern—supposed to mean?

Was it more fortune-telling from Sophronia, reading her tarot and embers? I saw it in the flames with my own ruined eyes. The curse will work its way.

Superstitious nonsense! The sooner Marigold was done with Great Misery, the better. And she would be done as soon as she got the Hatchet siblings free from the repressive hold of their lunatic—

Outside the open window, her eye was caught by the astonishing sight of a neat little naptha launch sailing across her view, it’s gay, striped awning dancing in the breeze as the eye-catching vessel came about some small distance off the point. And on that launch was a fashionably dressed woman, peering at the island though a telescopic glass—Isabella.

Naturally. First Cab and now Isabella—it was a wonderful thing to have friends one could rely upon.

Marigold waved elatedly and then gestured for the boat to proceed around the island to the west while she hastily retrieved her bicycle and made for North Cove, where the shallow vessel could safely put in on the sand.

“Isabella, you darling!” she called as she wheeled her bike down the beach. “What are you doing here?”

Isabella answered with a wave. “I’ve come to rescue you from the primitive. And not a moment too soon, from what I could see! Is the House of Usher open?”

Marigold laughed. “Absolutely not. You could have just written.”

“You didn’t think I was going to let a gown from the House of Dana be fitted by some two-bit country seamstress, did you? And for a party given by Julia Stuyvesant Endicott of the New York Stuyvesants and Salem Endicotts? I had to come myself, of course, and make sure about all the particulars you left out of your wire. Has she deigned to send you an invitation?”

“No.” Marigold was both relieved and reassured that Isabella grasped the important particulars so readily. “But now that you are here, I’m sure we can overcome that hurdle. It is absolutely smashing to see you.”

“And you as well, darling. Boston felt so dreadfully dull without your particular sort of panache.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.