i really wish she didn't have to die. i feel like she and evelyn napier would have been adorable together.
XXX
Daphnis dearest, wherefore weave me
Webs of lies lest truth should grieve me?
I could pardon much, believe me:
Dower me, Daphnis, or bereave me,
Kiss me, kill me, love me, leave me,-
Damn me, dear, but don't deceive me!
It's almost funny, in a way, because she'd prepared herself to be angry. All those months of watching her fiancé gaze after a woman who is everything Lavinia is not - confident, strong, the very picture of what an earl's wife should be - and she still cannot be angry.
She had seen them. She had stood, teetering on the stairs, and watched the man she loves dance with the woman he loves. And she had watched them kiss. And then she couldn't be angry, could she, not when it was so clear:
It was goodbye.
They were saying goodbye. And that hurts her, more than she can say, because she knows all too well what Mary Crawley feels. She knows what it is to want something always out of reach, to smile at the one she loves only to see his eyes on someone else. It would be infinitely easier, she thinks, to say that she lost Matthew to Mary, but that isn't true, is it? She never had him to begin with.
And it costs her a piece of her heart, knowing that, because she also knows that this goodbye was truly an end. Matthew won't be unfaithful to Lavinia once they are married; he is too good, too noble. As for Mary - Mary will marry Sir Richard, even though she is miserable with him, even though she ages a hundred years every time her betrothal is announced. Simply by virtue of accepting his proposal, she has made her intentions toward Matthew clear: she is trying to move on. Lavinia knows Sir Richard, knows his temper and his threats. If Mary is willing to live with that man for the rest of her life, to submit to him as his wife, then she is deadly serious.
Do what is right, her father always tells her. Do what is right. What is right? Is there any path that she can take that will not hurt someone? She must be honest, that is certain. There have been too many secrets as of late, too many tiny lies intended to smooth over things that should not have been allowed to fester as they have. So she will tell the truth, though it might very well kill her.
And Lavinia thinks that if she could will herself to die, she would.
XXX
poem by edith nesbit.