Where most feared death, Daria revered it. In fact, since she’d been a child of six, the only thing to truly bring Daria’s lips tipping up had been mention of the afterlife, and thoughts of people getting there.
Not Anwen.
Anwen had witnessed her father’s death, and when one witnessed a person take their last and final breath, well, the memory of that stayed with them.
Unbidden, that very memory whispered forward like a slow-rolling London fog that blanketed a street and stole away all warmth, and Anwen’s ability to so much as blink.
…Papa, wasn’t that funny? Why did you stop laughing? Papa? Papaaa?
Anwen briefly squeezed her eyes shut, and when she opened them, they landed on Daria’s perpetual black skirts of mourning the girl never went a day without wearing. Nay, there was nothing grand or great or amusing about death, but rather a sadness and finality at that loss. Anwen would be content to never see a black garment again. Because all they did was mark a loss and serve as a reminder of it.
And it was why, she wanted absolutely nothing to do with her mother’s fortune teller or her sister’s fascination with death and dying.
She exploded to her feet, and her mother and her sisters stopped conversing about…whatever it was they’d been talking about when Anwen ceased paying attention to them.
“Given, Madam Pomfret is clearly very busy,” Anwen said, hating the slightly reedy quality of her voice, but hopeless to contain it, “might I suggest we return some other t—”
“No!” Daria exclaimed.
“We are not leaving,” the dowager viscountess said, her soothing tones better fitting a mother reassuring a child at Gunter’s ices.
Of course, they weren’t leaving. Their mother would never dare abandon an appointment she had with the great Madam Pomfret.
Anwen nudged her sister on the shoulder. “You don’t want to be here either, Delia. Tell her this is ridiculous,” she whispered.
“I didn’t want to be here because I was reading and didn’t wish to stop,” Delia turned a page with a flick of her finger. “I’m now reading here.”
And also, content to stay, await the illustrious Madam Pomfret’s appearance so that the old woman could offer her prophecy for the end of Anwen’s, and her other attending sisters’, deaths.
A muscle rippled along Anwen’s jaw, and, restless, she stomped over to the window overlooking the streets below. As her sister had pointed out earlier, the sun shone brightly from a magnificent blue, cloudless sky. Smartly dressed couples walked arm in arm. Others held the leads of ornamental pups better suited for a lap than a walk.
Those strangers, each going about their business, without a thought about what the awaiting future did—or in Anwen’s case—did not bring. And it was not as though Anwen hadn’t come to accept her inevitable lot—she had. Neither, however, did it mean she wished to have all the details spelled out before her so she could spend her days worrying about that moment.
Alas, her sisters, they were obsessed. Her mother, too. Why, even her brother Clayton had been, until he’d fallen in love, married, and had children to distract him.
Anwen, though? As an almost thirty-year-old spinster, she didn’t have love or marriage or children with which to distract her. Nor would she ever have those things.
She’d been born needing spectacles and with mousey brown hair whose greatest distinction was a patch of white she’d been cursed with, and despite a lifetime of her parents professing her beauty, it hadn’t been long before she realized society didn’t agree—it didn’t agree, at all.
Her sisters? Now, they were each beautiful and unique and interesting in their own way and right. They hadn’t spent a lifetime searching for their own identity. They still had hopes of experiencing those things Anwen would never know before she perished.
From within Madam Pomfret’s perfectly polished crystal windowpanes, Anwen caught the approach of her mother.
Splendid. Having finished lecturing Daria, she’d now turn her attentions on Anwen.
Determined to cut her off at the pass, Anwen faced her. “Is it not enough I’m here? Must you dictate that I smile through the appointment, as well?”
“I did not dictate that you come.” Her mother infused more than a touch of defensiveness into her tone. “It was more asuggestion.”
“A suggestion?” Anwen quirked an eyebrow. “’I demand you girls finally accompany me, or else’?”
A pink blush filled the still youthly dowager-viscountess’s cheeks. “I did add ‘please’,” she pointed out, with a suitable degree of sheepishness.
Always loving, and devoted, it was nigh impossible to remain angry at their mother. Sighing, Anwen made to look outside again.
“Anwen,” her mother continued, with such a quiet earnestness it stayed her. “Did I ever tell you about when your father and I first met?”
At that abrupt shift in discourse, Anwen hesitated.
When she’d been a small child, she and Clayton had covered their ears and eyes whenever their parents had been romantic or even talked about anything romantic in front of them. When Anwen had at last been old enough to appreciate love and romance and think of her parent’s love story, it’d been too late. Her father had died, and Anwen hadn’t wished to cause her mother pain with thoughts of her late husband.
“No,” she finally said, softly.
“Your father and I moved in very different social circles,” she began.
“You would have.”
“Yes, you know how your grandparents were,” her mother said, a smile in her voice.
The dowager viscountess’s late parents had been stodgy and stiff, while the Kearsleys? Well, the Kearsleys—not unlike Anwen’s siblings—were wildly eccentric and vivacious and loud.
“Given that, when I made my Come Out, your father and I never crossed paths.” Her mother paused.
“Until at an event hosted by the Duchess of Mallen. The dowager duchess and I had grown up on neighboring estates and were the best of friends. We drifted apart only because she had her debut before mine, and then she married.”
Drawn into her mother’s story, Anwen turned around.
“The first event Lydia hosted was a great ball, which included hundreds of guests. She did not discriminate as your grandparents did, and as most lords and ladies still do.”
Her mother’s gaze grew distant, and Anwen knew the moment she’d become lost in her own telling; drawn back into the memories of a distant time, she still spoke of, as if they were as fresh as yesterday.
“My parents were in a dither. Our family’s longstanding connection to the duchess’s and Lydia’s status dictated we attend, and yet, in addition to the most respectable families, it also included some of the more scandalous ones, as well.”
“Like the Kearsleys,” Anwen supplied.
“Like the Kearsleys,” her mother confirmed. “In the end, we attended the duchess’s ball. As the hostess, Lydia managed to spirit me away from my mama. The duchess fancied herself something of a matchmaker. That night, she couldn’t contain herself. She explained she’d found just the suitor for me. She was going on and on…” A wistful smile teased at her mouth. “And I was barely listening, because from across the ballroom, my eyes collided with his, and it was like…”
Anwen hung onto that unfinished thought.
“Magic,” the dowager viscountess whispered. “Everything and everyone melted away. The orchestra and the set they played, faded. He strode across the ballroom and then stopped before us. He didn’t await an introduction or request one. He said: ‘My name is Norton Kearsley. I’m destined to die, but before I do, I would spend the rest of my life bringing you the greatest joy’.”
Anwen’s heart tugged at the meeting her mother painted so vividly.
The dowager viscountess rested her palms upon Anwen’s shoulders. “And your father did know so much happiness because of the family we made and had. I want that for you, too.”
As had Anwen. And yet…
“It is different, Mama.”
Her mother had fallen in love with a Kearsley, but she’d not known the weight of the curse that followed those who bore the name.
“Because I’m only a Kearsley by marriage?” her mother astutely pointed out the very thoughts Anwen had let go unfinished. The dowager viscountess shifted closer. “The thing of it is…your father? He knew he was eventually going to die, but Anwen? He was determined to find joy before he did.”
She opened her mouth to say if her mother wanted her to focus only on joy and living, then she’d be best not to force them to come to Madam Pomfret’s, where they were certain to receive news of their deaths.
A silence descended over the room, the first of its kind that Anwen ever recalled in any household where Kearsley’s had assembled. As one, each Kearsley woman turned and looked to the person who filled the doorway.
Filled the doorway. It was a funny thought given the diminutive size of the woman whose presence commanded notice.
This was their mother’s renowned augur?
Over the years, Anwen had considered the mad prophetess her mother paid weekly visits to. Anwen had envisioned a towering, ancient, wild-haired, heavily wrinkled woman with gnarled hands, and mayhap an eye patch covering one of her glassy eyes.
Just a smidge over five feet, and several years younger than Anwen, the flaxen-haired Madam Pomfret was but a handful of inches taller than Anwen’s youngest sister, Eris, and thin as a whisp. And yet, fill the doorway, she did.
Her features were soft, and her gaze sharp, as she did a sweep of all the gape-mouthed Kearsleys—except Anwen.
From her spot at the window, Anwen attempted to make herself as small as possible—a feat that as a bullied wallflower, shunned for her streak of white hair and spectacles, she’d honed. There was an art to hiding in plain sight: drab dresses. Don’t don jewelry. And avoid eye contact. Always, avoid eye contact.
“Madam Pomfret!” the dowager viscountess gushed. There came the slight creak of the oak floorboards as she went to meet the prognosticator. “It is most wonderful to see—”
“You.” The seer’s quiet murmuring cut across the rest of that effusive greeting, and another hush descended upon the room.
Do not look up. There were two other young women present whom she could be speaking to. Likely was speaking to.
After all, Anwen had made herself so very, very small, and she was the most non-descript of the Kearsley girls and—
“You,” Madam Pomfret repeated, and this time, Anwen couldn’t help herself. Reflexively, she looked up and her gaze clashed with the young woman watching her.
Her, as in Anwen.
Anwen’s stomach dropped.
Madam Pomfret nodded.
Still desperate enough to hope, Anwen glanced wishfully about. Daria stared enviously back. Even Delia had parted with the pages of her beloved Shakespeare long enough to cast a jealous look Anwen’s way.
With all the same thrill undoubtedly known by those off to meet their executioners, Anwen returned her stare back to Madam Pomfret. This time, silent, the seer gave nothing more than a small nod; a nod confirming what Anwen had already deduced.
Anwen’s belly sank another inch, and she dug her toes sharply into the soles of her slippers. “Me?” she silently mouthed, pressing a hand against her chest.
Madam Pomfret nodded once. “With the streak of white.”
Well, that was pretty unequivocal.
Without waiting to see if Anwen followed, the fortune-teller turned and left.
Anwen stared after. Hope reared its head once more. Perhaps she’d tire of waiting for Anwen to join her. Perhaps—
Her mother gave her a more than modest nudge. “Go, Anwen.”
“I want to go,” Daria said. “Let me go in her stead.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” their mother insisted, not so much as glancing over at her stolid daughter. “It is Anwen’s turn.”
But Anwen didn’t want to go. She was content not knowing answers to questions her mother was determined to have answers to. Her feet twitched with the urge to flee, and she sprung forward on the balls of her feet to do just that.
Her mother caught Anwen’s hands in her own, stopping that flight before it started.
“Anwen.” Her mother spoke with a quiet earnestness. “You assume all Madam Pomfret only speaks to her clients about their demises. But that is not the case. She prophecies so much. You will see that. Now, go.”
Go.
Go.
Turn, run, flee. Toward Madam Pomfret? Or away from the fortune-teller. Everything was swiftly becoming scrambled in her mind.
As if she’d sensed her resolve flagging, Anwen’s mother gave her hands a firm, but supportive squeeze.
“You will be glad you did,” her mother predicted.
With that vote of confidence from the dowager viscountess and the envious stares of her younger sisters following Anwen, she quit the room. She looked left and then right down the corridor, but for the hum of a heavy quiet, empty of anyone and anything.
For a brief moment, she considered the path that led to the small foyer they’d been shown a short while ago. But something, with an inextricable draw, a powerful energy that pulled her the other way, deeper down the hall to the last room in the hall.
Anwen looked inside, already knowing she’d find the seer there. Silently, the young woman motioned for Anwen to join her, and strangely, there was no great urge to flee; nothing compelled Anwen back the other way. Rather, a quiet peace called to her, and she followed that sensation, all the way over to the circular table where Madam Pomfret sat.
Anwen looked about, taking in her surroundings.
With its pretty pink upholstered chairs and equally pretty pink silk wallpaper and the pale blue buds overflowing their pretty pastel porcelain vases, the parlor may have been any young lady’s parlor.
Her gaze locked on a small bronze frame just over Madam Pomfret’s shoulder, and Anwen wandered over to inspect that painting of two young sweethearts; a lady in enormous white ruffle skirts perched upon a swing, and a handsome beau who arched over her shoulder; his expression adoring.
Of all the renderings she expected a seer might sport upon her walls: a dark, turbulent storm, angry Greek gods and goddesses, a romantic tableau of two lovers had not been one of them. In fact, one would never know the room in question belonged to London’s most feared fortune-teller.
In fairness, not everyone feared her. Most who employed her services revered her. Certainly, most of the young ladies and older ladies, and ladies somewhere in between as Anwen was, came to this place for glimpses into what would be a hopeful, happy future.
Not Anwen.
Anwen had the misfortune of already knowing what fate awaited her.
“Would you like to sit?”
That gently spoken question jolted across her disordered thoughts, and Anwen jumped. She turned back and found Madam Pomfret patiently staring.
Even as Anwen’s heart thumped a fast, angry beat, she forced a smile. “Do I have a choice?”
“One always has a choice,” the seer corrected.
“Only, that isn’t altogether true.” That wasn’t at all, true. Why, Anwen hadn’t even truly been free to decide to attend or, in her case, not attend, the appointment.
“Isn’t it?” Madam Pomfret asked.
“If people truly had control over their fates, then what is the good in having you tell us what our future holds?” She paused. “That is, unless, you believe a person has the opportunity to stop future events from happening?”
“The future cannot be stopped.” The seer shattered Anwen’s brief hope with the immediacy of her answer. “Whatever one’s fate, it is destined to happen.”
Her heart clenched painfully, and she made herself flash another wry grin through that contraction. “Then, I’d be remiss if I failed and pointed out that reality flies in direct contradiction to each person having a choice.”
“Our destiny is set. But life? It presents so many different paths, and those paths forward are not preordained. They just eventually all arrive at the same destination.” Madam Pomfret steepled her fingers together and peered intently at Anwen over the tops of them. “And the course we take? That, Anwen, we ultimately have complete control of, and in this, despite our eventual fate, the choices belong to us.”
Anwen spoke haltingly. “In taking certain paths, can one’s destiny be…delayed.”
“Fate is your future. It does not, however, know anything of time, as we think of it in this world, Anwen. There is no specific continuum it adheres to.”
She considered that a moment.
“If you tell me you don’t wish to sit at my table, Anwen, you will be free to take your leave,” Madam Pomfret said matter-of-factly. “I do not discuss my readings with others. The dowager viscountess therefore will remain none the wiser as to whether you have your fortune told or not.”
She didn’t want to be here. So why then, did she hesitate a moment more, then drift over to the other end of the table where Madam Pomfret patiently waited?
Perhaps because, after years of avoiding it, she’d finally come ’round to wanting to get the business of her dying over with. Or mayhap it was that her mother’s fortune-teller had a way about her that was both inviting and soothing.
Anwen pulled out the dark oak seat opposite Madam Pomfret and sat. The moment she slid into the stiff folds of the armless, hall chair, Madam Pomfret reached across the table.
Anwen hesitated. The seer’s hands were of like-size as Anwen’s. They were also un-callused and soft-looking. Somehow, despite the dread knocking around Anwen’s breath, something inside compelled Anwen to lower both palms into the fortune-teller’s.
Madam Pomfret gathered Anwen’s left hand between both of her hands.
She emitted a nervous giggle. “Does one pay extra for each hand?”
Her attempt at jest fell on deaf ears. Madam Pomfrets face remained set in an unreadable mask.
“Relax,” Madam Pomfret ordered.
Relax? Oh, yes, because any lady about to find out about her death was the sole of tranquility.
Anwen swallowed the knob which had formed once more in her throat and splayed her fingers wider. The seer trailed her three middle fingers over those on Anwen’s right hand. A heat and volatile energy which emanated from within the other woman’s digits. Anwen recoiled and reflexively yanked her hand back and hid it under the table.
“When you are ready,” Madam Pomfret murmured, holding her palms upright. “We will begin slowly.”
Closing her eyes, Anwen focused on steadying her fast-beating heart. Finding calm in the absolute quiet and stillness, Anwen opened her eyes and offered the seer her right hand.
“Your right hand, it is your dominant one that you use for turning pages in books and tweaking your sister’s ears.”
Anwen’s brows shot up. “You know all that?” She really was good...
