“Yes, miss,” Iona said, and scurried from the room with one last mournful glance back at the mess in the corner of the room.
Hazel sighed. She put a chair upright that had fallen on its side. The low murmurs of Iona’s sweet voice echoed from downstairs. Hazel heard Bernard’s rough reply, although she couldn’t make out the words, and then came footsteps.
Iona reappeared. “He insists on seeing you, miss,” she said. The two women made eye contact.
“All right,” Hazel said dully. “I suppose we don’t have time for a bath, but I can at least brush my hair while we find some clean stockings.” The two women worked with single-minded focus on making Hazel look as close to presentable as they could manage. After Hazel plucked half a dozen glass splinters from her palms, Iona helped her slide on her sturdiest pair of gloves, in a deep maroon that wouldn’t show if one of her scratches began to bleed. After fifteen minutes of their best efforts, Hazel looked … well, not good. She still had dark bags under her eyes from crying, and her skin was sallow; her hair, which as it turned out would have required at least an hour of careful brushing to look presentable, was concealed beneath one of Hazel’s least favorite hats. But she looked human and at the very least well enough to meet her cousin, a boy who had seen her splashing naked in the mud when they were toddlers.
“Bernard,” Hazel said when she reached the top of the landing and saw him standing below, “to what in the world do we owe the pleasure of your company?”
“You might apologize for keeping me waiting,” Bernard said to his cuff link.
Hazel furrowed her brow. “All right, then. I’m sorry, Bernard.”
Bernard puffed up. He was in a coat she had never seen before, bright robin’s-egg blue, paired with a yellow waistcoat and matching trousers. Hazel would have guessed he was in costume as Young Werther if there was any chance at all that Bernard had read it. He carried a bouquet in his hand of white lilies wrapped in ribbon. “For you,” he said, thrusting them at her. “They told me at the market they represent purity. And devotion. My father mentioned that you might have taken ill.”
Hazel forced herself to smile and dutifully lifted the lilies to her nose to smell them. The women at the market lied to you, she wanted to say. They said what it took to make a sale. They saw you in your bright blue coat and knew you wouldn’t know that white lilies are funeral flowers. “They’re beautiful,” she said. “Thank you.”
Bernard’s chest puffed out even further. “So, how are you feeling? Still sick?”
“You know how my mother overreacts when it comes to Percy’s health. I had a chill for a single evening, and she had to whisk him out of the country for his well-being.”
“I’m relieved to hear that,” he said, straightening his shoulders. “Not about your mother. I mean that you’re feeling well.” He cleared his throat and then continued. “I came to ask if you might promenade with me today in the Princes Street Gardens.”
This time Hazel couldn’t even feign enthusiasm. She thought of the mess she’d left in her room, the shattered glass and torn pages that represented all the wasted effort of her young adulthood, and when she opened her mouth, the first thing to come out was a guttural, sarcastic laugh. “You must be joking,” she said.
Bernard looked as though she had poured a kettle of hot tea down his shirt. “I—I can’t imagine—” he sputtered.
“No. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. I just meant”—my entire life has gone up in flames, all my work has been for nothing, and also I’m covered in blood—“that I still have a bit of the chill. I’m not quite well enough to … promenade.”
Bernard looked her up and down critically. “Well,” he managed, “I suppose you are wanting for a bit of color.”
A sliver of glass stabbed at Hazel’s heel from within her shoe. She bit her tongue to keep from yelping. “Well, if that’s all,” she said through gritted teeth, “I’m afraid I must cut our visit short.”
Bernard looked taken aback. “What?”
A lightning bolt of pain shot up Hazel’s calf. “My apologies, Cousin. I have to ask you to leave now.”
A shadow crossed Bernard’s face, something darker than Hazel had ever seen in his expression. Her cousin, usually jovial and good-natured, had grown up, and she hadn’t noticed. His jawline had sharpened, his brow lowered, his mouth tightened. “So,” he said, “to be clear. You’re refusing my offer of a promenade.”