While Father contemplated suppression and control, Mother contemplated another type of combat altogether: courtship. That very next morning Mother informed us that she planned to host an emergency dinner party.
“Whatever for?” Father asked impatiently, setting down his tablet.
“Haven’t you heard? Christine Dana and her son, David, arrived in town early—David himself was spotted at Marianne’s debut. And to think, we haven’t even introduced ourselves or invited him over! He must already be drowning in young women, and if he is to marry Madeline one day, we need to make her as visible to him as possible.”
“I’m not marrying David Dana,” I announced.
Father turned to me. “Don’t be so certain about what the future will bring. But,” he said, looking at Mother, “I’m not sure I see the necessity of a dinner party.”
“Of course, it’s necessary!” Mother said. “We’ve already missed a valuable opportunity at Marianne’s debut. We need to display Landry Park and display Madeline and make a good first impression.”
Father frowned, but his tablet began chiming. Excusing himself, he left to take the call.
The talk of marriage and good impressions made my head ache and my stomach churn.
But perhaps tonight wouldn’t be a total loss. Addison would never miss an opportunity to flaunt her daughter in front of the city’s newest bachelor, and if Cara came, I could finally talk to her. I finished my lavender tea and went back to my room, rehearsing my conversation with Cara as I walked.
Mother invited over twenty-four families for the impromptu dinner and sent Cook into the city center to purchase carloads of food and hire extra servants for the evening. I spent the day in my room being fussed over by a seamstress and watching servants and gardeners trot in and out of the house, filling every corner with fresh flowers. Smells of dinner began wafting into the upper stories by noon.
“This is ridiculous, going to all this trouble,” I protested to Elinor, who shrugged as she handed the seamstress a tape measure.
“He is supposed to be very handsome, miss,” she said.
“But Mother hates Christine! Why would she want to be related to her by marriage?”
“Maybe it would be some sort of victory for her. Christine may still hold some power over your father, but in the end, you will conquer her son.”
I gazed out the window, where the tops of the budding apple trees rustled in a cool breeze. “Marriage is not supposed to be like war.”
Elinor came over to help the seamstress pull my corset tighter. “With the gentry, everything is like war.” She pulled the stays tight, leaving me breathless.
After another three hours of standing blue-lipped before the mirrors, my dress was complete enough for me to leave. “Don’t forget to have Elinor do your hair,” the seamstress reminded me, a needle held in the corner of her mouth. “Or your mother will have my head.”
Elinor laughed. “And she’ll have yours, too, Miss Madeline, frizzy waves and all.”
She tied the wide silk sash of my lace gown and plucked at the princess sleeves to make them fuller. Her own slim figure was hidden under a long black dress and starched white apron, making her look older than her nineteen years. Every once in a while, a soft sigh would come from her mouth as she adjusted my dress.
“Do you think there will be lots of dancing tonight?” she asked wistfully.
“Probably,” I said. “You know Mother would never miss a chance to turn a dinner into a full-blown party. And she invited practically everyone in town.” I dreaded going down; with the academy finished for the year, the drinking and flirting would be much worse than usual.
Late spring and early summer traditionally marked a period of frenzied social activity for the young gentry. The heirs were free from any responsibility save for marrying, and the unluckier second and third children hadn’t yet begun their toil at the university or at finding a mate who could support them. If they failed to find a good position or make a good match, they risked sinking into the middle class, albeit with a considerable amount of respectability.
Between the bottom rungs of the gentry and the upper levels of the middle class, there was some fluidity of movement, especially when large sums of cash or impoverished but ancient parcels of land were involved. Likewise, there was some movement between the middle and the working class. My own maid Elinor was born to a middle-class family, but her parents’ early deaths meant that she had to seek employment at a young age. For a girl of six, it’s either the textile mills or service, but luckily Elinor had been going to a school and learning to read. So her teacher found her a comfortable position, training as a lady’s maid. As my lady’s maid.
Money was the real determinant. With enough money, you could purchase the illusion of respectability and after a few generations, the origin of your fortune would be forgiven and your family could move within the highest circles. Without it, one slowly fell through the ranks to the working class—the people who labored in factories or farmed small chunks of land.
Only one class was a sentence for life—the Rootless.
If only Elinor and I could trade places—I’d happily hide upstairs while she danced with every bachelor in town. My fantasy evaporated the moment Elinor resumed the talk about fixing my hair. I made my escape when she went to search for the silver-handled brush and the hairpins—my mother’s chosen instruments of torture.
Not for the first time, I wished I could talk to Mother seriously about going to the university, but every time I even mentioned the thought of delaying marriage, she would scold me into silence. I suppose that since she had devoted her life to marrying well and since it had paid such massive dividends, she wanted the same for me. But sometimes I felt like I could barely reach her through this wall between us, even when I wanted nothing more than to lay my head in her lap and sob in frustration that the house I loved was growing into a prison.
I wandered downstairs to wait for Mother to finish dressing. I let my fingers trail along the silk-covered wall as I made my way back to the darkened ballroom. A wall of windows and French doors overlooked a wide patio with shallow stairs leading down to a vast lawn, currently patchworked with unrelenting clumps of snow. The atomic symbol—our family crest—was rendered in platinum and inlaid into the marble of the patio. It gleamed dully in the low light.
Father stood at one of the doors looking out. The May twilight made his dark red hair look even darker, like wine or blood… redder than Mars, redder than the roses that grew in the English garden outside. He stood at least a head taller than me, but I knew we looked like a matched set standing so close, all gray eyes and pale skin.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Father said. And it was: the spring evening was blossoming into stars, while tendrils of faint orange light still reached over the lawn. To the north, the breeze tossed the slender branches of the apple and peach trees, sending storms of slush and ice crashing to the thawing ground. To the northeast, the skyline downtown lit the sky into a gentle lavender, and to the south and the west, the blazing lights of gentry estates looked like candles in the dusk.
I breathed in deeply. I could happily stand on this patio forever, surveying our land.
Mother came downstairs, slim and dark-haired like all Lawrences were, wearing a yellow silk gown embellished with crystals. It set off her deep brown eyes and dusky skin. “Are you two ready?”
Father extended an arm to me, and I took it. We both took a longing look back at the patio, with the gentle aspect fading into rapid darkness, and made our way to the front, where doors would be opened and the dinner guests admitted to Landry Park.