Page 50 of A Lady's Wager
As the evening transitioned from dinner to entertainment, she noticed Wynn making his way in her direction, and she subtly—she hoped—began to do the same. While they had not seen one another since the carriage ride back to London, Etta had thought of little else other than Rachel’s situation and her own situation in regard to Mr. Wynn Firth.
They reached one another near a potted plant, somewhat removed from the crowd that mingled and laughed a short distance away. Each had a glass of wine and a careful expression.
“Mrs. Markshire,” he said, bowing slightly.
“Mr. Firth,” she replied, dipping the slightest curtsy.
They both turned out as though surveying the room.
“My carriage will come for Miss Johnson at eleven,” he said as he took a sip of his wine.
“Very good, thank you,” she said, also sipping her wine.
He brushed against her arm. She met his eye. Held it. “We never finished our…conversation from last week,” she added.
“I was unsure if you wanted to revisit it.”
“I have not stopped thinking about it.”
“Neither have I.”
They both sipped their wine again, hiding their smiles behind the rim of their glasses.
“If you came to Shrewsbury with your niece, we could find a great deal of time to discuss it further.”
She turned her head fast to look at him—completely losing her public composure. He held her eyes. “Go to Shrewsbury?”
He nodded.
She stared.
He took a half step closer to her and lowered his voice. “What do you want your life to be, Etta? If this”—he waved the hand not holding his wine to indicate the well-appointed parlor and fashionable people—“is what you want your life to be, then youalready have it. Is it what you want, or is it the only option you have had?”
She blinked at him. Was it?
“Mrs. Markshire?”
Etta turned forward and smiled politely at Lady Gwen—she’d asked Etta to reserve some time to discuss her charity lunch, and apparently that time was now. Etta looked at Wynn. “Can we speak more about this tomorrow?”
“Of course,” he said, inclining his head. “I shall look forward to it.”
It was after midnight when Etta and Rachel arrived home, and they’d discussed the final details of Rachel’s journey in the carriage. Rachel’s relief to be done with London was in equal measure with her excitement to go to Shrewsbury. It was remarkable to Etta that anyone could dislike London as Rachel did, and yet she had felt different here too since the Straw Hen. She’d come to realize how much of her life was about creating an impression on the people here and giving them no cause to judge her actions. That impression had been more important than Rachel when she really thought about it. It was an uncomfortable realization that stacked neatly upon other uncomfortable realizations she’d been avoiding for too long.
What did she want her life to be?
As she had the first night she’d encountered Wynn Firth, she watched her costume disassemble in the mirror: the dress, the petticoats, the hoops, the hair, the makeup. She asked Lowry to take down her hair, though it was not time to wash it, and then wet it herself in the basin before brushing it out and taking in the truth of who she was—the skin and the shape and the hair. Her skin. Her shape. Her hair.
“What do you want?” she asked the woman in the glass, then lifted her chin and turned her face from side to side. She was not put off by what she saw, only thoughtful and curious about whether this version of Etta Markshire could be enough.
For Wynn Firth.
For herself.
London had given her purpose and security, and by her own definition, that was happiness. But was it what she wanted? Could there be other ways to find happiness? Did she dare look?
LOWRY WAS UNABLE TO HIDEher surprise the next morning when Etta said she only wanted the small corset, which supported Etta’s breasts but little else. She then asked to wear the lavender day dress with a round neckline, elbow-length sleeves, and a shape that barely hugged her figure at all. It was a dress Etta only ever wore on days she stayed home—of which there were few.
“I’d like natural hair today,” Etta said after she was dressed, further confounding her maid. It took far longer for Lowry to style her hair than to pin on a wig, but Etta was pleased with the result. She waved off the pot of rouge Lowry held out to her, then changed her mind and added a very small amount to her cheeks and lips—far less than her usual toilet. She smiled at her reflection and tried to quell the butterflies in her stomach as she stood from the dressing table and thanked an uncomfortable Lowry before leaving the room.
