"Lara, my dear. Should you be up?"
Her mother, of course, noticed her first. She had lowered her embroidery to her lap and looked at her only child with the polite concern one reserves for people who have recently recovered from a chill, not a plane crash and two weeks of exposure.
Her father read his newspaper. If he had heard her mother speak, he gave no sign.
"I need to tell you something," Lara said. She hated her arm in the sling. It made her feel weak, at a disadvantage. Perhaps she should have waited until she didn't need the sling, until her forehead had healed . . . .
No. This needed to be done. It had to be now.
"I can't marry Farringdon."
"Can't marry? Of course, you can, Lara. The invitations have been sent. Are you sure you should be up?" her mother asked again, this time with a look of "clearly you aren't well enough to be" across her face.
"No." Lara licked her lips and tried again. "What I mean is, I won't marry Farringdon."
Now she had her father's attention.
"Won't marry Farringdon?" His eyebrows drew together. "Lara, I think you're not well enough to-"
"I am well enough!" She was appalled at the shrill tone of her voice. She pulled back. "I am well enough. I don't want to marry Philip. I never did. "
"Well, then you never should have said yes," her mother said in clipped tones. "The invitations are gone. The flowers are ordered. What on earth would people say if you backed out now? Most of my friends are already convinced you are half-mad! Shooting guns, following pygmies into the Kalihari desert—"
"Bushmen are in the Kalihari, Mother. Pygmies are the Congo-"
"They are no business of yours, that's what they are!" her father exploded, throwing down his paper and standing. He stopped then, and took a deep breath. "Lara," he began again, more in control, "I can see I have indulged you in the wrong ways, allowed you to get the idea that you do not have a duty to this family. There has been a Croft on Leitherson Hill since James I. You have an obligation to marry and produce an heir." His voice softened. "Farringdon is a good man and quite smitten with you. I realize I may have pressured into accepting his offer, but it was for your own good. You're not getting any younger, and you can't go hobnobbing around the globe forever. It's time for you to settle down and do your duty to this family. Heavens, imagine if you had died in that crash! The earldom would have reverted back to the Crown and that would have been the end of it." He shook himself then, as if someone had just walked across his grave. "It would have been tragic for that to happen."
The earl reseated himself and recovered his paper, and the room grew quiet except for the grandfather clock ticking on the far wall. It had ticked there for almost 300 years, having been a gift of Charles 2nd. The chairs on which her parents were seated were 100 years old. The books lining the wall, older. It was all so stagnant, Lara thought. So predictable. Suddenly she imagined dust falling from the ceiling, coating everything, the clock, the furniture, her parents, her, until she actually found it hard to breathe.
"But not for me to die, is that right?" Lara asked.
"What?" Her father looked up from his paper. He had ceased paying attention, having considered the matter settled.
"Tragic for the line to end, but not for me to die. That's all you thought about when you heard about the crash, isn't it? 'Thank goodness Lara survived to carry on the Croft line!' Never 'thank goodness Lara survived, she's such a clever girl, she makes me so proud-"
Lara's voice had begun to rise with her anger. "No, it's never been that. It's always been 'Lara, couldn't you take French instead?' or 'Lara, riding bareback makes you look like a heathen,' and 'Lara, what's wrong with a nice holiday in Monaco for once?'
You've never once looked at me and wished I wasn't someone else. What's funny is that's what I've been my whole life: someone else. Not who I was, not who I wanted to be, but some wind-up doll who did what she was programmed to do when taken out of the toy box.
"I don't want to be a doll anymore. " She gave a mirthless laugh. "I want to be a real girl, a real person. " As she said the words, her chest seemed to swell with the power of saying them. It was as if the words were magic, and she was being made real, a person in her own right. "I won't marry Farringdon. I won't be your Croft wind-up doll. I don't know exactly who I will be yet, but I know it won't be what you want me to be."
"Lara, really!" her mother cried, appalled at this unseemly show of emotion. "You are overwrought. Henny, summon the nurse. She needs medical attention!"
Lara looked at her mother, her distracted, shallow, but not unkind mother. "Mother, you don't know what I need. You never did," and kindness and not a little pity filled her eyes," but thank you for trying." Lara turned to go.
"Lara, I have to tell you that if you don't marry Farringdon, I shall cut you off without a cent. You know I mean what I say."
"Yes, I know. I don't need your money. Great Aunt Lucy left me all I need, and I shall make my own way for the rest." She smiled then, a free smile, a smile full of possibilities. It frightened her father.
"I do hope you won't do anything to embarrass the family," he said, worry in his eyes.
"I'm going to do what makes me happy, Father, and if a happy daughter embarrasses you, so be it. Good day."
She turned and left the room. The hallway, indeed the entire mansion felt small, constrictive.
Or maybe it only felt that way because her world had become so much larger.