special blend made from the pink roses of Norfolk and sweet honeysuckles. Which will last longer, this last vial of scent captured and bottled from my father’s garden or my life? I have become such a maudlin, melancholy woman! I am too young to be so bitter! Such lemon-and-crabapple tartness is better suited to a woman much further along in years,
decades
older than I, a woman stoop-backed, wrinkled, and grey-haired who has lost her teeth and everyone she ever loved, or never had anyone at all. I press a hand to my forehead and sigh. I
hate
what I have become!
Carefully, slowly I raise my arms, and Pirto gently slips a shift of fine white lawn over my head, and it billows down easily about me, unimpeded by curves, concealing the now frail and wasted figure Robert used to describe as “luscious”, playfully sinking his teeth into my breast, buttock, or hip as if it were a ripe and juicy peach. Gone is the round and rosy Amy he used to love.
Though I have no need of them now—this disease has melted away so much of my flesh, the full, buxom, rounded curves, hips, and bum, and flattened the little round hint of a belly that
longed
to swell with the promise of a baby nesting inside—I insist that Pirto fetch my stays from the chest at the foot of my bed, so prettily embroidered with bright yellow buttercups, and lace me up tightly, even though it ignites a lightning storm of pain rippling across my ribs and up and down my spine. Pain plays my spine like the ivory keys of a virginal, but I don’t care; I want to be perfectly dressed today. I want to look like Lady Dudley, Robert’s wife,
should
look.
Then come the petticoats, starched and crisp. I want my skirts to billow and rustle; I want to have full, feminine hips again, even if it is just an illusion. And then the gown, a glossy satin the colour of high-polished oak, festooned with frills of golden lace, and embroidered all over with green and gold oak leaves and amber acorns—my husband’s personal emblem.
Though everyone knows it is a play on the Latin word for his name,
robur,
which means
oak,
only I know this device once had another, more intimate and loving, meaning. Perhaps even Robert himself has forgotten, but
I
remember the day we stood in the drizzling rain huddled together in our cloaks beneath a mighty oak overlooking the crumbling ruins of Syderstone, fallen into decay and disrepair, too sprawling and expensive to keep up, the lands gone to seed and weed, overtaken by thistles and grazing sheep with burrs studding their woolly coats. Robert promised me that he, as my husband, would be like a mighty oak unto me, to shelter and protect me all the days of my life, and these acorns represented the many children we would have. Syderstone would rise again, he swore, and be a
greater,
grander
estate than it had ever been before. He would double—nay,
quadruple!
—the size of our flock, and he would breed and train horses that would be famed throughout the land and even abroad. And, best of all, the halls of Syderstone would ring with the joyous laughter of our children playing. My husband was one of thirteen children, though five of them had died before they reached the age of ten, and, as we held our hands together, cupping a shared handful of acorns, we both dreamed that each tiny acorn represented a child that would someday grace our nursery. We both wanted a large family, “the more the merrier,” we smiled and agreed. And with a broad sweep of his arm at Syderstone, he vowed that we would have an avenue of oaks leading to the house, a new sapling planted each time my womb quickened with a new life, and we would bring our children out and show them their own special tree, planted the day they first stirred inside of me. Oh, it was a
beautiful,
grand, wonderful
dream!
But not all dreams come true, and there were so many promises that he didn’t keep. There were never any children, not even one, to fill our nursery; we never even had a nursery. And
decades
older than I, a woman stoop-backed, wrinkled, and grey-haired who has lost her teeth and everyone she ever loved, or never had anyone at all. I press a hand to my forehead and sigh. I
hate
what I have become!
Carefully, slowly I raise my arms, and Pirto gently slips a shift of fine white lawn over my head, and it billows down easily about me, unimpeded by curves, concealing the now frail and wasted figure Robert used to describe as “luscious”, playfully sinking his teeth into my breast, buttock, or hip as if it were a ripe and juicy peach. Gone is the round and rosy Amy he used to love.
Though I have no need of them now—this disease has melted away so much of my flesh, the full, buxom, rounded curves, hips, and bum, and flattened the little round hint of a belly that
longed
to swell with the promise of a baby nesting inside—I insist that Pirto fetch my stays from the chest at the foot of my bed, so prettily embroidered with bright yellow buttercups, and lace me up tightly, even though it ignites a lightning storm of pain rippling across my ribs and up and down my spine. Pain plays my spine like the ivory keys of a virginal, but I don’t care; I want to be perfectly dressed today. I want to look like Lady Dudley, Robert’s wife,
should
look.
Then come the petticoats, starched and crisp. I want my skirts to billow and rustle; I want to have full, feminine hips again, even if it is just an illusion. And then the gown, a glossy satin the colour of high-polished oak, festooned with frills of golden lace, and embroidered all over with green and gold oak leaves and amber acorns—my husband’s personal emblem.
Though everyone knows it is a play on the Latin word for his name,
robur,
which means
oak,
only I know this device once had another, more intimate and loving, meaning. Perhaps even Robert himself has forgotten, but
I
remember the day we stood in the drizzling rain huddled together in our cloaks beneath a mighty oak overlooking the crumbling ruins of Syderstone, fallen into decay and disrepair, too sprawling and expensive to keep up, the lands gone to seed and weed, overtaken by thistles and grazing sheep with burrs studding their woolly coats. Robert promised me that he, as my husband, would be like a mighty oak unto me, to shelter and protect me all the days of my life, and these acorns represented the many children we would have. Syderstone would rise again, he swore, and be a
greater,
grander
estate than it had ever been before. He would double—nay,
quadruple!
—the size of our flock, and he would breed and train horses that would be famed throughout the land and even abroad. And, best of all, the halls of Syderstone would ring with the joyous laughter of our children playing. My husband was one of thirteen children, though five of them had died before they reached the age of ten, and, as we held our hands together, cupping a shared handful of acorns, we both dreamed that each tiny acorn represented a child that would someday grace our nursery. We both wanted a large family, “the more the merrier,” we smiled and agreed. And with a broad sweep of his arm at Syderstone, he vowed that we would have an avenue of oaks leading to the house, a new sapling planted each time my womb quickened with a new life, and we would bring our children out and show them their own special tree, planted the day they first stirred inside of me. Oh, it was a
beautiful,
grand, wonderful
dream!
But not all dreams come true, and there were so many promises that he didn’t keep. There were never any children, not even one, to fill our nursery; we never even had a nursery. And
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