Elizabeth scratched her vow onto a fresh page with “1810” written atop it. Hannah had written the year earlier in anticipation of the evening, her penmanship so careful and perfect, even the stern-faced Miss Cuthbert wouldn’t have cause for complaint.
“And you, Amy?” Hannah asked, already guessing the answer as Amy accepted the book.
Amy gently blew at the page to dry the ink. “I would like to be kind always.”
“You are always kind,” Lucy groaned in exasperation.
Even Amy rolled her eyes at this, albeit playfully and wrote the resolution in her neat, looping script.
“And I resolve…” Lucy indulged in another gulp of brandy with only a wince this time.
“To be as wicked as possible,” they all finished for her in chorus.
She blinked in surprise as they all laughed. “Apparently, I ought to resolve to be less predictable.”
“Don’t you dare,” Elizabeth said with a giggle. “We’d be at a loss as to what to do with you.”
Lucy grinned and drank from the bottle again.
All eyes turned on Hannah.
Well, the year wasn’t exactly starting on fine footing, considering how many potential resolutions she’d already blundered within the short side of an hour. She sighed. “To be more patient.”
“Isn’t that what you tried last year?” Amy asked gently.
Lucy scoffed. “And only made it a week if I recall.”
Immediately Hannah regretted having shared this information with her friends. Perhaps she truly did talk too much. “To be fair, patience does take a while,” she protested.
Lucy tilted her head at the point well made.
And patience did take a long while to master. An eternity.
Time stretched before Hannah, dreadfully dull and hopelessly bleak. But still, she held onto the thought that patience might eventually be the key to everything she needed.
Her answer officially written beneath Lucy’s scratched script, the book found its way into Jillian’s hands.
Of the five of them, Jillian’s answer would be the most difficult to predict. Much like the young woman herself.
One never knew what thoughts danced about behind her crystal-green eyes. She saw the world in a different hue of light, her thoughts like winding tendrils that concocted insights no one might otherwise consider.
“I resolve…” She brushed the page with a tapered finger. “To never wed.”
The girls all sucked in a breath. Well, except Lucy, who snorted an unladylike laugh.
“What?” Elizabeth gasped.
Jillian’s chin lifted slightly, and she got that dreamy look on her face as when a notion struck her. “What if none of us ever wed? We wouldn’t have to cede ourselves or our property to a man. We wouldn’t be forced into a poorly matched union with a disagreeable man.”
“I don’t want to wed either,” Lucy said with a derisive scoff.
“Perhaps we could all live on a country estate together when we become spinsters, and our parents have given up on us,” Jillian said slowly as the idea came to her. “And we can make the ballroom into an extra library stacked to the ceiling with books.”
“Oh, yes,” Elizabeth breathed.
Hannah’s heartbeat quickened at the idea of living in the country forever. To think of never having to fret over the disinterested stares of the opposite sex again or bear the suffocating rules of society.
She was to have her debut in several years, she knew. And she did not wish to. It would be far better to enter her first season with no expectations of a match, secure in the knowledge that she would never wed.
“I shouldn’t like to wed either,” she said, grabbing Lucy’s bottle for another searing drink. Her head was already spinning, not only from the blazing alcohol but also the freedom of never having to worry about marriage.
Or, rather, the rejection that would lead to her inability to wed. For that was her biggest fear, more than a disagreeable man to marry; it was the very real possibility of there being no man at all willing to have her as his wife.
A smile brightened Jillian’s face as she wrote on a fresh page—The Vow of the Wallflowers with the s blooming into a perfectly drawn rose. Beneath that, she wrote, “The wallflowers who will take their freedom and never wed.” She signed, then passed the journal to Lucy, who signed, and then on to Hannah.
“No man wants a wife who trips over air.” Elizabeth blew at a lock of brown hair that had fallen over one eye. “And I should love that library filled with every novel ever written.” She nodded firmly. “I’m in too.”
“I want a curricle of my own,” Hannah said. “Perhaps a phaeton.”
“You’ll have it,” Jillian said emphatically. “And there will be a music room for Lucy with every instrument imaginable. And an art room for me, glowing with sunlight and overlooking the garden.”
They all looked to Amy, whose cheeks were scarlet beneath her rag curlers. She opened her mouth, closed it and opened it again.
Though only fifteen, Amy was a woman destined for motherhood. She was exactly the sort who could tolerate shrieks and cries of infants with a pleasant disposition and was filled with sweet patience that even a saint would covet.
“You don’t have to sign,” Hannah said.
“And abandon you lot of spinsters in that manor without someone to properly look after you?” Amy reached for the book and added her signature, one she had practiced to loopy perfection. “Besides, I should like to bake confections in a kitchen without judgement.”
“Then it is done.” Jillian folded the book closed, sat back on her heels and beamed at them all. “None of us will ever marry.”
“Wallflowers to the end.” With that, Hannah helped herself to one last sip of brandy, secure in a future she could finally face.
1
January 1816
York, England
* * *
Hannah opened the old leather journal from her days at Lady Finch’s Finishing school and touched the paper where the signatures from The Vow of the Wallflowers were written in five different scripts. The opposite page was dotted with ink as well, imprinted there all those years ago when the book was closed too quickly before the ink had fully dried.
And sealed all their fates with it. Thank heavens!
“Hannah,” her mother’s voice came from the other side of her bedroom door, pitching higher on the last syllable.
Hannah shrank deeper into the plushness of her bed, wishing it would swallow her up. Her maid, Mary, had delivered the message her parents desired to speak to her half an hour ago. It was not difficult to know what they wished to discuss with the start of the season looming ever closer.
Preparations to depart their country estate would begin sooner than later. Gone would be the days of ambling about in hardy boots and breathing in the crisp morning air during walks. There would be no driving her own carriage or reading up in trees with her legs dangling over the rough branches.
She would be back in shoes that pinched her toes, her hair pinned and curled, enduring insufferable niceties with people her parents wanted her to meet and gowns that made breathing difficult. Desperation welled up inside her, threatening to overwhelm her.