HEYA! Back again :D
"For the last time, the answer, my dear uncle, is no!"
It was a rare enough thing that Edie left the house for an afternoon, and she was starting to feel like once in a blue moon was far too frequent with how her uncle was carrying on. The park was quieter in the evening, so there were fewer eyes to gawk and fewer whispers that were hidden behind fans. Henry Granville had managed to convince his dearest niece to come for a walk with him, to take in and admire the colours of the sunset.
She was blind sighted, quite frankly, when he brought up the topic of suitors. More particularly, marriage.
"My dear girl, Lord Ashby is a fine man!" Henry continued on, studying the way his niece turned her face away from him, her scarred part of her face the only part visible. The left side of her face bore the marks of a wretch, but her right still held all the beauty she'd been graced with at birth. And yet, none could see that. "With him, there shall be no urgency for heirs. He has four of them already, all of them well educated and half of them already married. I think the man just longs for companionship."
"You think the knowledge that man has four sons, all of them my age, would soothe me?" she snapped.
Henry sighed. "I had hoped you would at least think of it."
"Ohh, I am." She laughed, a hard, bitter sound that twisted her uncle's heart. "I shall be his companion, as you say, and then, one day, when he eventually dies years before me, I shall be cast out on the street by his sons, for which of them would love me even the tiniest bit to shelter me?" Edie would surely not love the woman who replaced her mother, heaven forbid. "No, and even if I was left something by the old man, where shall I go?"
"Your brothers—" he attempted, but she was too fast with her voice.
"My brothers!…" she sighed then, her heart aching to think of it. "Richie would not have me. He loves his pinch-faced wife too much to tolerate me as she has made it horribly clear she detests my presence. Willie…we both know he would sink if I sought refuge with him. I would be nothing but a burden to him, financially and socially. I will not retreat to him if it means causing him grief."
He saw her lips tighten, blinking her eyes to rid herself of the tears that threatened to rise. "To me, then." He said, his voice soft in the way it only was with her. Sometimes, he wondered if this is how being a father felt. "I shall surely outlive your foolish brothers and your dimwitted husbands. You can always run away to me and Lucy too. I'd chew off all my fingers before turning you away."
She looked at him then, her brows drawn up, her fear clear on her mangled face. Their feet had slowed to a crawl, and when he stopped, he faced her, taking her hands in his.
"Husbands?" she asked, a tiny giggle in the word. Still, her eyes were red.
"Yes, husbands. You think a woman like you would have to suffer with one man the rest of her life?" She released a wet chuckle at that, her hands squeezing his. "And all of them shall be slow and immensely dull."
A heartbeat later and Edie moved towards him, her arm wrapping around his back, scarred cheek resting against his shoulder while his own arm wrapped around her shoulders. They continued to walk.
"I would have liked a child or two, but if I am promised to become a notorious widow, I think that trade would be easy to make." She joked, her heart still heavy. Henry laughed in response.
Truly, he wished so much that he could find a man who would love her past her scars, enough so that he could let her fly away from him, to become the woman she had always wanted to be. Perhaps then, he would not fret for her quite so much. Henry only wanted her happiness, her safety. Lucy, his dearest friend, had found hers at his side, while he had found his own at her side. Love, he believed, could come in so many forms, and if it was not a love match between a man and his wife, why then could it not be a friendship? A companionship?
"And you shall be the most notorious widow in all the land." He promised, sending a silent prayer to God that she become a happy wife at least once before he was in the grave.
It was not that Sir Henry did not enjoy having his niece in his home. Quite the contrary, he loved the way she filled his home up—with warmth, with her little noises of movement, with her presence. However, he was far too aware that it could not be forever. Already, twenty-six, his dearest niece deserved what she had desired since girlhood—a home of her own, a husband who was warm and kind to her and a family of her own.
Even if Lord Ashby did not provide her with one, he could give her the other two. After all, he was a jolly old fellow, accommodating and not one to complain or jab at shortcomings. He thought Edie could be quite happy with him.
However, Edie was correct in assuming that the lord's sons would not be quite as happy with her.
They walked a little farther on for a time, before Edie ventured to speak again. "Has my papa put this horrid topic into your mind?" Lord Granville had started suggesting potential suitors three years after the Incident. It was an infrequent occurrence that he found someone with wealth, title and kindness to consider his ugly daughter as a wife, and when she flat refused to see any of them, well, Lord Granville had not written to her of marriages for nearly two years. So, it was likely in her opinion, that he had demanded his younger brother to take up the task.
The silence of her uncle was damning. "For goodness sake!" she huffed, rolling her head back in annoyance.
"I admit your papa has written once or twice of it," Henry spoke in a rush. "But I only suggest Lord Ashby for the sake of your own happiness."
Edie sighed, annoyed at herself for even asking. "Why is it men think the happiness of a woman is dependant on having a husband?"
"Oh, like I wasn't there to bear witness at your wedding with the neighbour boy?" Henry smiled teasingly.
"I was a child! I have no control of what I may have done when I was bloody five." Edgar, was in fact a rather poor husband, in her opinion. Little sod abandoned her not ten minutes after their wedding to play with her brother Richie. "And anyhow, if I an to be married, I would like to find my own husband. That way I shall truly know his character before marching down the aisle."
"How shall you get to know a man when you chase away any who dare to cross you?" Edie had no reply for that, and the rest of their walk continued in silence.
The next night found Edie sat in her uncle's studio, quietly drinking her second glass of brandy.
Tonight featured Isabelle and Cath draped over a lounge, and for an added bit of drama, Henry had laid a blanked lined with rabbit fur down across Cath's belly.
Unfortunately, the scene did little to rouse her fingers, and so she sat back and drank. Her mind still weighed heavy over thoughts of marriage and Lord Ashby. He was an old man, likely to die in the next handful of years, and somehow he wanted to spend those years with a woman more than half his age. She felt filthy just to think of it, ashamed too.
But more than that…the fact that only seven years ago, she had had at least ten different men vying for a crumb of her attention, and now she was reduced to old men who only wanted her because she was the only one who might have them.
Her uncle had not intended to hurt her, but he had inadvertently reopened a wound that she had decided healed. Edie sighed, downing the last of her drink before rising to seek out the rest of the bottle.
Companionship, her uncle had called it. She could see the merits of such a union—protection, stability, perhaps an end to the gossip. Perhaps she might even feel better, Thomas Haken now forever removed from her life with a new man on her arm and a household of her own to manage.
And yet, companionship was not what Edie desired.
Deciding she was far too clear headed for the thoughts swirling through her mind, Edie downed her third glass of brandy quickly, and then filled her glass again.
Her actions caught the deep brown eyes of Caterina, one of the few Edie could safely call her friend.
"What, you think you're a sailor?" Cat's voice sounded far too loud for such a small woman, but Edie thought perhaps it was her close proximity. "You're certainly drinking like one." There was a spot of charcoal on her cheek, Edie noted with a wave of fondness.
Not nearly enough, Edie thought as she peered over her friend's shoulder to see what she was drawing. Cat had taken a focus on the model's belly, roughly sketching her hands and the fur lined blanket that rested below her navel.
"Rather lewd." She murmured, taking another drink. Cat grinned impishly, her friend settling down in the seat beside her.
"Lewd is a compliment here." To Cat, life outside this little haven was so board straight. Men and ladies walked about with an air of sophistication and propriety, playing the part of innocence from the Garden. She did not resent it so much as she was curious about it. Why pretend during the day, only to sneak away in the night? She supposed God had a bit to do with it.
"And it was meant as one." Edith watched quietly as Cat continued her work, watching the rough edges and uneven, overlapping lines become smoother, more refined until a handsome work appeared before her. By then she had already finished off her brandy, her head swimming in a lovely fog. A part of her was tempted to get up and pour another glass, but the last time she had drank more than her share, her uncle told her when she woke up the next day that should she be so tempted again, he would write to her father. And then her father would surely come to London himself to drag her back home.
Henry, she came to realize, had his limits. He might permit her to take a lover, provided nothing more came of it, but he would not abide her drunk.
"What has you so gloomy?" Cat asked after a time, setting down her charcoal to slap the residue from her hands.
Edie did not reply for a moment. Instead, she tilted her face downward to watch her fingers run over the rim of her glass. She could not tell Cat about Lord Ashby's offer, it felt far too shameful somehow. Speaking of marriages would lead, inevitably, to the man who had made her undesirable to the harshest degree.
But her mouth was moving before she could stop it. In the morning light, she would remember and swear off brandy the rest of her life.
"Men. Men and their faces, and the words they say. Men and their ideas and the way they act. You know, a man once told me he could only stand the look of me in the dark?" Her words were slurred, and the pain that memory held was dull with the drink warming her blood. Cat held her tongue at that. She had known Edith long enough to know that she never spoke of men in her past, for everyone knew of the man who had done that to her face. No one, least of all Edith, wished to tread too close to that memory.
Cat wanted to protect the other woman from it, and so tried to redirect the conversation to safer waters. "My sister once called me a fat sow with bubbies like uneven apples."
Edie burst out laughing, but quickly clapped her fingers over her mouth to silence herself. "That isn't funny." She mumbled. "If you like, I can draw her as a deformed woman-donkey thing."
Cat giggled. "No, if you do, I should be sorely, sorely tempted to show her. But then papa would know that I'm not sleeping in my bed at night."
The drunken woman sighed, leaning her body forward to her elbow rested on her knee, letting her head fall into her hand. "Bloody men. Oh, Cat." She mumbled once more.
Edith did not want companionship. Among her many reasons why she thought something as fragile as companionship would be unsuitable for her, the most childish of them that Edith wanted more. She wanted affection and warmth and tenderness. An understand that went deeper than convenience, that was stronger than vows sworn in a church.
Even drunk, Edie dare not give a name to what she longed for.