Portrait of a Scotsman by Evie Dunmore

Chapter 8

“Harriet. Tell your father that you were forced.”

Hours after the sun had set, her parents summoned her to the library and she had entered feeling sick and light-headed with nerves. Her father stood next to the fireplace and was staring into the flames with his hands shoved into his trouser pockets. Her mother hovered near a chair against the wall, her face so pale and shiny she looked embalmed rather than alive. She still pinned Hattie with an imperious look.

Hattie stood in the cold draft, stupefied. Her mother had been there; she had seen it. The mirrors on the right-hand gallery wall had turned out to be two-way mirrors. In the bright light of noon, the room had been a fishbowl; everyone standing in the dim corridor running behind these treacherous windows had seen them, and had seen them kiss—willingly. Was it true that all she had to do now to make this nightmare disappear was to tell an enormous lie? A shy glance at her father said he was ignoring her. Yes. The small syllable was just a breath away. Her mother clearly, desperately, wanted her to say yes. But what difference would it make? Forced or not, they would send her away. Besides, lying about such a matter was a wretched thing to do. She looked at the floor. “No.” Her life as she knew it was over.

“What was that?”

It was impossible to face her mother. “He wasn’t forcing me.”

“How, then! How could this happen?”

If only she knew. One minute, Mr. Blackstone and she had been sharing an impassioned discussion about art, and the next she had wanted to cling to him. It had felt as impossible to stop herself from kissing him as turning around mid-fall off a cliff. She had leaned in. And then, the shock. The frozen faces and the stares. A shudder ran through her; she wanted to crawl out of her skin to escape the pain of shame raking its claws against her gut.

She closed her eyes. “I’m so terribly sorry,” she whispered.

“None of that matters, as you well know,” her father replied.

Her studies at Oxford were done, she knew it confirmed then. She was to never take a single step alone again without a chaperone. People would whisper behind her back at every dinner, every dance, picking apart her loose morals. No decent young woman put herself into a position that enabled an unsuitable man to kiss her—actually, she wouldn’t receive any invitations at all. Her friends might turn away from her …. She pressed her hands over her stomach as nausea threatened to climb up her throat.

Her mother rounded on her father. “My daughter is innocent,” she said. “She was mauled by this man—it was plain for everyone to see.”

“Oh, there definitely was something to see,” her father said, his gaze still fixed at the fire hissing on the grate. “Though I hear it wasn’t clear who was mauling whom—apparently, she leaned in.”

“Mr. Greenfield—we know nothing about that man ….”

Now he faced them. “I told you, I have learned a few things,” he said. “He is at least as wealthy as the Astorp-Venables, and that is only to what he admits. He is nine-and-twenty years old. He is the illegitimate son …” He paused. Illegitimate. The word jarred like the sound of something precious smashing on the tiles. “The illegitimate son of a late Sir Murray,” he continued, “an estate owner in Argyll, though his stepfather gave him his name upon marrying the mother—as such, I’m uncertain why he felt the need to disclose his bastardy, but I assume he takes pleasure in adding insult to injury. His mother, also deceased, was in Sir Murray’s employ, I understand as a kitchen maid.”

“Illegitimate.” Her mother sat down hard on the chair. “Mr. Greenfield, how can you even contemplate such an absurdity?”

“Well, you announced to everyone that they were engaged all along.”

Engaged.Hattie saw that her parents’ lips and hands were moving, but not a sound reached her ears. She had missed that announcement in the aftermath, but now it was clear: they weren’t going to send her away. They were marrying her to Blackstone.

Her mother shot back to her feet. “I had to do something—everyone had seen it! These mirrors—they were like windows.”

“And you did the right thing, Adele.”

“I can’t abide it,” her mother said. “Harriet was to marry a peer—”

Her father threw up his hands. “Then she should have dallied with one—preferably in plain sight of the biggest gossipmongers of society.”

“He looks coarse and has a disagreeable disposition,” Adele cried, red in the face. “He will give her coarse-looking, disagreeable children!”

“He’s not my choice of son, either! If handsome grandchildren matter to you, support this match—as things are, it is the only chance for Wilhelmina to still receive an offer from fair Sir Bradleigh.”

“Mr. Greenfield—”

“We can now disown Harriet and magnify the scandal,” he cut her off, “or we can send her away and become an object of gossip for decades anyway. Or we could try our damnedest to elevate Blackstone’s position, manufacture a respectable family tree for him, and stand by this match.” He was looking directly at Hattie with bloodshot eyes as he kept speaking to his wife. “Make no mistake, I was of a mind to let her fall, for someone so foolish doesn’t deserve to call herself my daughter. But the Greenfields never leave a Greenfield behind, no matter their failings, and if you believe for one moment that I’d break with that tradition, you are mistaken. We don’t abandon our own, and I shan’t dishonor my father’s legacy just because Harriet acted like a strumpet.”

The floor threatened to slide from beneath Hattie’s feet. “No.” She had shouted it, or perhaps she had whispered. “You can’t mean it.”

Her father’s eyes narrowed. “Can’t mean it?” he repeated. “What did you think was the conclusion to this spectacle, hmm?”

“Papa, you cannot mean for me to marry him.”

“I do. He called on me today to offer for you, and in my capacity as head of this house, I said yes.”

“Julien.” Her mother raised her hands. “Look at her. She doesn’t have the constitution to be a wife to such a man. Julien, she is stubborn but she is a sweet girl—”

“Ah, but she’s not as sweet as you think,” he said. “This one”—he jabbed his index finger at Hattie—“ran from her protection officer at least twice this year to hobnob around London unchaperoned, which is how she first came to Blackstone’s attention. The wanton display in the gallery wasn’t their first private encounter. Graves is out on the street now, by the way.”

Hattie’s stomach lifted as though she were falling into a pit. Poor, poor Mr. Graves. What a mess she had made.

Her mother’s expression was utterly horrified. “You ran away?” she said. “You were alone? Unprotected?”

“Please, Papa,” she said. “You are one of the most powerful men in England—”

“Most powerful?” He suddenly seemed twice as tall. “Most powerful, you say?” She flinched when he thumped his chest with his fist. “How powerful do you think I look,” he roared, “when I cannot even control the females in my own household?”

The raw aggression exploding from him edged the air from the room. There was one thing Julien Greenfield could not abide: appearing weak. The viscous slowness of a nightmare engulfed Hattie, except there was no assurance at the back of her mind that she would eventually wake from this. This was real. And she would have to live through every single dreadful consequence.

Her life might be over, but a new morning dawned nonetheless. She lay flat on her back and stared up at the bed canopy with the desperately tired eyes of a sleepless night. Outside her curtains, London was waking with a rosy glow; the first hackneys were clattering past the house and the unintelligible cries of a newspaper boy carried across the street. Her escapade with Mr. Blackstone was likely one of the headlines …. Mr. Blackstone, her future husband. Mrs. Whichever Blackstone. She didn’t know his Christian name. Her eyes remained dry; she had cried all her tears before midnight. Had exhausted all her options, too, for there were few:

One—running away. However, a scandalous young woman had nowhere safe to go, and her face went hot with embarrassment at the mere thought of implicating her friends. Besides, she wouldn’t reach the age of majority for another three months. She was the property of Julien Greenfield, and no one would dare steal from a man like him.

Two—eloping with another lover. Alas, there were none available at such short notice.

Perhaps this was her punishment, not just for stupid conduct, but for challenging fate by making rather too specific requirement lists about her husband. She might have fantasized about masked highwaymen and brazen privateers since borrowing her first romantic penny novel from Aunty’s embroidery basket—had secretly delighted in ruthless men who knew no fear and simply took. But visions of her real groom had been the opposite: a Skeffington, a Bingley. Kind, titled, young, and yes, lovely. Men with a dangerous glint in their eyes and a good sword arm were best left between book covers. Now her orders had been switched clean around.

The door to her chamber opened without a knock, and Mina marched in carrying a tray. Her puffy eyes and pink nose were well noticeable from across the room. Nausea spread through Hattie’s stomach, and she turned her face away.

Mina put the tray down on her night table abruptly enough to make the china rattle, then she tossed something onto the bed.

A newspaper.

Hattie peered at it gingerly from the corner of her eye.

BLACKSTONE ART GALLERY EXHIBITSMORE THAN MISS G BARGAINED FOR!

The headline was screaming at her in bold black letters that took up half the page. White dots danced across her vision. “This happened last evening,” she croaked. “How is it in the papers today?”

Mina didn’t grant her a glance; she was on her way to the door, her back stiff as a board.

“Mina.”

Her sister whirled back round like a cat whose tail had been grabbed. “Are you truly surprised?” she hissed. “Blackstone, in a compromising position with a Greenfield? It is remarkable that no special editions fed out last night!”

She closed her eyes. “Yes. You are right, of course.”

Mina was breathing heavily. “How could you?” she said, her voice low and shaky.

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Mama and Papa have been quarreling half the night, blaming each other for your waywardness. Aunty hasn’t slept a wink—she looks ill.”

She swallowed hard. “Aunty hates me, too?”

“Not entirely,” Mina conceded. “She blames much of it on our ancestors for moving to London and converting the Greenfields to the Anglican Church.”

“Lord.” And Zachary … the thought of her favorite brother knowing about her depravity made her shudder.

“If Sir Bradleigh doesn’t offer for me now, I shall hate you forever,” Mina said, her eyes glittering with barely checked tears.

She sat up straight. “Mina, he must; he adores you—”

Mina’s small hands sliced through the air. “Of course he does. And if it were my decision alone, I should just elope with him—but he is an honorable man with a reputation to heed, so we can’t; and currently I’m an inch from acquiring a reputation as damaged goods by association. Good heavens, just what possessed you to tryst with that man, and in public?”

“I—”

“Why not with Lord Skeffington—I thought you had a tendresse for him!”

She looked down at her hands. “I had,” she said miserably.

Mina was glaring at her. “I knew you were eccentric, but not that your tastes were so … base.”

“They’re not,” Hattie said, but she sounded small. Strumpet. She shook her head.

Mina crossed her arms over her chest. Her red hair moved around her angry face like flames. “You have lost the opportunity for a good match,” she said. “However, you can still make it right for me. Pray, make it right.” She swept out of the room with her snub nose high in the air. Undoubtedly, she would have made a magnificent wife for a knight.

But marry Mr. Blackstone? She fell back into her pillows, feeling faint again. If she didn’t marry him, these headlines were only the beginning. She would suffer a death by a thousand cuts if she refused his hand. Look, it is Harriet Greenfield, who committed carnal indecencies in public, oh, in a gallery you say, my word. She couldn’t even blame the gossips—granted, some took mean-spirited pleasure in eviscerating a scandalous woman, but most people were genuinely at a loss as to what to do with one. Few could afford to be seen conversing with her; once the good and righteous had formed a mob to uphold proper conduct, snubbing the downtrodden was the only safe way to avoid having one’s own moral character called into question, too.

She pulled the covers over her head. Her mind sluggishly circled over the same arguments only to reach the same conclusions: if she married him, scandal would be kept at bay. Cross-class marriages had become more common ever since Jennie Jerome had brazenly nabbed Lord Churchill off the marriage mart several years ago, thus opening the floodgates for other American dollar princesses eager to trade dowries for aristocratic titles. However, there was nothing to be gained for her family from the Blackstone match other than the avoidance of scandal; they required no funds, and Blackstone’s social rank was beneath theirs thanks to his murky origins. And all of this paled against her own personal cost: if she married the man, all hope for a future love match would be lost. In her nightmares, she was bound to a husband only to unexpectedly meet her soulmate, to lock eyes with him across a room and just know what she had lost by marrying the wrong person. Tragedy! Then again, that opportunity was lost now anyway. No gentleman with options courted damaged goods.

A knock sounded on the door. She remained hidden and silent. Someone was in her room and softly cleared their throat. Couldn’t be her furious sister, then. She peered over the blanket and found Bailey, her lady’s maid, at the foot of the bed, with her slim hands clutching nervously at her apron.

“I’m sent to inform you that Mr. Blackstone shall be here in an hour,” Bailey said in her gentle voice. “You are to meet him and Mrs. Greenfield in the Blue Parlor.”

She wasn’t ready; not now, not in an hour, not in a year.

“Bailey,” she said. “Bring me a sherry, please. No, make it two.” The two sherries had been a poor idea. The liquid burned like acid in her empty stomach on her way to the Blue Parlor. It threatened to surge straight up her throat when she entered and spotted Mr. Blackstone’s forbidding figure next to the fireplace. Her mother looked pale and pinched and had recruited Flossie for reinforcement.

This would not do.

She tried to stand tall. “Mama. I wish to speak to Mr. Blackstone alone.”

Her mother drew back, a hand on her chest. “Now, Harriet—”

“Alone, Mama.”

Something in her voice made her mother fall quiet. She wasn’t certain what precisely she would to do if they refused to give her some privacy, but it would be sherry-fueled and wildly embarrassing in any case, and her mother realized it. “Very well,” she said. “Florence.” She nodded sharply at Mr. Blackstone as she swept past. “You have fifteen minutes—we shall be right outside.”

Hattie stiffly lowered herself onto a chair. The stale smell of cold ash came from the nearby fireplace, and she clasped a hand over her unsettled stomach. Mr. Blackstone remained standing since she had not invited him to sit. He looked offensively well rested and was dressed somberly in black and gray again. His jacket, however, was made of velvet, an oddly soft choice for a hard man.

“Mr. Blackstone.”

He inclined his head. “Miss Greenfield.”

“Do you wish to marry me?”

“Yes.” He said it calmly and without hesitation.

Her heart sank. “You aren’t known for heeding convention,” she said. “You could shirk your responsibilities and throw me to the proverbial wolves without much consequence to your routine.”

He paused. “Is that what you want?”

“Well, I’d rather we not both suffer needlessly when it could be only me.”

“You seem to greatly underestimate your father’s reach,” Mr. Blackstone said dryly. “As it is, I’m in need of a wife. And I’d rather not throw you to the wolves.”

No—he’d rather devour her himself. Her fingers skated nervously over the trimming on her pale green skirt. His posture was relaxed, but his eyes missed nothing. She felt him studying her face and noticing every embarrassing detail: the shadows beneath her eyes, her swollen nose, the entire sleepless night. She’d rather not be here, exposed to him, but she had questions. Of course, asking him whether he indulged in excessive gambling or debauchery—common husbandly vices that normally blighted a wife’s life—seemed ridiculous.

Are you cruel?

Have you killed anyone?

Tell me how you came by all your ill-gotten gains.

“Do you recall my aunt mentioning how I beautify the world with a brush rather than my rational brain?”

He nodded.

“She said it because my head is not quite right.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes,” she said quickly. “I cannot spell properly. I have difficulty copying a row of numbers in the correct order.” He gave no reply, was just watching her calmly, so she added, “My father spared no effort: tutors, doctors, exercises—I’m a hopeless case. You can’t rely on me for your social correspondence, nor for controlling the household accounts.”

He contemplated that for perhaps two seconds. “It matters not,” he then said, “not to me.”

She blinked. “You don’t mind whether your wife is slow in the head?”

“You seem bright enough to me.”

“Sometimes I go to the wrong address because I misread the house number.”

He arched a brow and said nothing. He knew what she was attempting.

“Then there’s the matter of my attention,” she tried. “It is either scattered or directed with an unnatural focus. I lose track of time when I paint, for example.”

“And yet you study at Oxford,” he said. “You correctly identified a rare Han vase on the spot—few people in Britain can. I’ve no worries about your brain. Besides, I’m taking you as my wife, not as my accountant.”

Worse and worse. Apparently, he was one of those men who were content with their wives quietly doing doily work and breeding rather than making clever conversation.

“What of children?” She couldn’t keep the agitation from her voice. “What if my defect runs in the family—imagine your heir, unable to write.”

He shrugged. “My heir will be wealthy.”

This, apparently, settled the matter to his satisfaction. Frustration crackled through her like an electric current and launched her to her feet. “We have scarcely spent an hour in each other’s company,” she said, “nor exchanged a single letter. We know nothing about one another.”

He clasped his hands behind his back. “What is it you need to know?”

“I cannot see how you would possibly suit me.”

A sardonic gleam lit his eyes. “I suffer no misplaced vanities, Miss Greenfield—I know you wouldn’t have chosen me for a suitor. But be assured that I’ll keep you in the comforts to which you are accustomed as well as any man in your circles.”

She raised her fingertips to her temples. “I’m aware you are a wealthy man,” she said. “But I had very much hoped to marry a friend.”

“A friend,” he said, slowly, as if it were a foreign word eluding a confident pronunciation. His Scottish brogue was showing, too.

She half turned away to look out over the rooftops of London. “Yes, a friend,” she said thickly. “I wished for a husband who shares his time with me, who would enjoy inhabiting our own small world, which we alone created. And he would be kind.”

Would a man like Blackstone know how to be kind? These were not the questions she should ask him, nor the things she should hope to expect. She had been taught the tenets of a good marriage and a good wife since girlhood and understood very well that a woman should desire marriage only insofar as it finally allowed her to fulfill her highest purpose: becoming a mother. Only a selfish girl would dream of romance and companionship with a man before she thought of all the lovely children she could nurture. She was selfish, then. She also understood a marriage was best when much of it was spent apart, giving a wife free rein over the domestic sphere, and in turn, she’d never prevail upon her busy husband’s time for attention. Unfortunately, she had a feeling she would desire a lot of attention from her husband. In her wildest dreams, she loved and was loved allconsumingly and beyond reason. The heated emotion in her chest boiled higher.

“I wished for someone who has fine hands,” she heard herself say. “Someone who is content to spend his Sunday afternoons reading to me, someone who takes me to Italy when the weather turns dreary in London so we can study the old masters and discuss them while drinking hot chocolate in the shadow of the Duomo.” She glanced at him. “Have you been to Florence, Mr. Blackstone?”

“Yes,” he said coolly. “I’ve been to Florence.”

“And do you read?”

“Aye, I know how to read,” he said, his voice colder still.

“I’m referring to novels. Do you have any favorite novels?”

His dark brows pulled together. “No,” he then said. “I read Trollope’s The Way We Live Now, if you’d count that. But no other novels, no.”

So he had read one novel in his life, one about a murky financier and banking scandals. She swayed on her feet. “I’m afraid we shall never suit.”

Mr. Blackstone bared his chipped tooth in what she supposed was a smile. “Courage,” he said. “We’ve ten minutes—you may find something to please you yet.”

Unlikely. And they both knew she would have to accept him regardless, unless perhaps he confessed to something truly outrageous, something of the magnitude of regicide. He wouldn’t confess to any such thing, and the purpose of this conversation had been to find something, anything, that would make the days leading to the wedding more pleasant. There had to be something good in the strange turn her life had taken. Thus far, his answers only filled her with more dread. She looked at him thinking that she had kissed him; she had kissed this snarling, taciturn mouth—twice. It had excited her. What had possessed her?

She slumped back down into the chair and gestured at the chaise lounge across. “Have a seat, if you please.”

He sat, unnervingly shrinking the dainty piece of furniture with his frame.

She decided to continue with something simple. “What is your given name?”

Apparently, it wasn’t so simple—he had stiffened infinitesimally at the question, and for a moment, his gaze went straight through her as though he were not seeing her at all. “My name is Lucian,” he finally said.

Lucian. The name meant light. His mother must have had a penchant for irony. Or remarkable foresight … Lucian—Lucifer—Beelzebub. She shivered.

“And how did you damage your tooth, Lucian?”

He absently ran the tip of his tongue over the tooth in question. “There’s no delicate way of putting that.”

“I presently feel rather unshockable.”

“It happened when I took a fist to my face,” he said. “And there was a ring on one of the fingers. A heavy ring.”

She cringed. The scar on his lip would have been a gaping gash. “Are you a violent man, then?”

He considered this a moment. “No,” he then said. “Sometimes the violence finds you.”

“Plenty of gentlemen never find themselves inconvenienced by a fist in their face.”

His features hardened. “I’ve never hurt a woman, nor a bairn,” he said. “And I’d never raise my fists to you—and that’s what you are asking, isn’t it?”

Indeed. “I’d rather my husband not hurt anyone at all,” she told him. “They say you have purposely ruined upstanding gentlemen.”

“Have I?” he said blandly.

“Well,” she said. “How would you phrase it?”

“Perhaps they just lived beyond their means?” he suggested.

“Most gentlemen do,” she said. “It is an unwritten rule to keep granting them credit.”

A tension radiated from his body, and for a beat, it hummed in the silence between them. “I’ve changed my ways in that regard,” he then said.

Her father had said as much at the dinner only a fortnight ago. “And have you any regrets about what you have done?”

The brief flash of contempt in his eyes was icy cold. “No.”

Best not to pursue this particular topic, then. He had probably decided how much he would reveal about himself before entering the Blue Parlor in any case. She was ill-equipped for debating such a man. She was ill-equipped to be anything to this man.

“People say you created your fortune from thin air,” she tried instead. “Is it true?”

“Thin air,” he mocked. “That would be nice. But no. I became wealthy after trading bills of exchange and have become exponentially wealthier since. I had the capital for trading from selling company shares that had done well,” he added. “The funds to purchase those shares I had from renting out and selling property.”

“And who gave you the starting capital?” Her strength was fading. Her palms felt sticky. The sherry was roiling in her stomach. She was kept upright only thanks to the comfortingly snug lacing of her corset, and Blackstone seemed to notice. Perhaps that was why he decided to indulge her. “When I was thirteen years old, an antiques dealer near Leicester Square took me as his apprentice,” he said. “He died several years later and left me the shop. I sold it and invested the money in property with better-value growth potential.”

She had an idea of the sums required for investments her father would call worthwhile, and a shop—even if near Leicester Square—hardly had the potential to enable a man’s ascent to the upper echelons of the financial elite.

“My work with antiques gave me a taste of how the monied lived,” Blackstone said, his tone laced with faint derision. “Must’ve given me grand ambitions above my station early on.”

His ambitions had brought him far, she had to grant him that. Was she to be the jewel in his ruthlessly acquired crown?

She avoided his eyes when she asked her last question: “What of your wedding vows?”

He paused. “What about them?”

“Do you intend to keep them?” Or do you plan to take lovers and risk exposing me to scandal and diseases?

He was silent until she reluctantly met his gaze. Surprisingly, he looked serious. “I always keep my vows, Miss Greenfield,” he said. “I’ll keep my vows to you.”

Regrettable. It left her with no acceptable reason to refuse him. She folded and unfolded her hands, her movements slow and shaky.

“I have conditions,” she muttered.

He tilted his head. “Then, let’s hear them.”

“I wish to finish my studies at Oxford.”

“That would be highly unusual.”

“So are the circumstances of our match.”

He considered it for what seemed an eternity. “All right,” he finally said. “But not five days a week, surely.”

She had expected this; he didn’t strike her as a man who contented himself with less than half. “Four days, then. It’s only eight weeks per term, after all.” She was prepared to go down to three days. Three days was what Annabelle had negotiated with Montgomery, and Blackstone could hardly be more demanding than a duke.

“Four days,” he agreed, unexpectedly. “What else?”

“I require my own studio at your house, and your word that I may continue painting.”

“Done.”

“And I shall ask my father to put a trust fund in my name.”

He looked bemused rather than offended. “You won’t find me tightfisted, if that’s your worry,” he said. “And your father and I agreed on two thousand a year in pin money.”

Two thousand! Admittedly, a hefty sum for her incidental expenses.

“I shall ask him regardless,” she resolved when she had recovered her voice.

The scarred corner of Blackstone’s mouth quirked. “Very well.”

He could of course hinder her from accessing the money, but she had been interested in his reaction. It was satisfactory enough, she supposed. She rose, so he rose, too.

“I should like to shake hands on the conditions,” she said, expecting him to finally lose his patience, but he didn’t—he offered his hand. A trap—his palm engulfed hers, and the warm confidence of his grip made her weak in the knees. She glanced up at him shyly. “Is there nothing you should like to know about me?”

He retained his businesslike expression. “I know all I need to know,” he said.

He didn’t care to know about her, then. Meanwhile, she had asked all the questions and still felt she knew nothing.

On impulse, she leaned in. “Tell me something no one else knows about you.”

The cold depths of his eyes went very still. “I already have,” he then said.

“You have?”

He nodded. “My name.”

“Lucian?”

“Yes.”

Disturbing. Her gaze dropped to the floor, defeated at last. Then Blackstone shocked her again by raising his hand to her face and tipping up her chin with his thumb. A nervous sensation fluttered in her belly when their gazes locked. He looked as though he meant to say something, but instead, he was watching her closely while he brushed the backs of his knuckles over the curve of her jaw, then over the softness of her throat beneath. It was a liberty a lover or a husband would take, the kind of caress that left confusing heat in its wake, and her breathing quickened. He had to feel her treacherously galloping pulse against his fingers.

He dropped his hand. “Harriet,” he murmured. “I think we’ll suit just fine.”

She hadn’t a fraction of his optimism, and when the doors opened and her mother and Flossie marched back in, she couldn’t help but think that this was how Persephone would be dragged into the underworld in 1880s London: not screaming, not twisting wildly, but painfully composed while Hades wore a velvet jacket.