Free The Gilded Cage by Lucinda Gray

me. I mean to catch him alone, to tell him that our near-kiss was a foolish thing, that it mustn’t be repeated.
    â€œYou look splendid,” said Grace, admiring the outfit she herself picked out for me.
    Carrick stands aside and offers an arm to help me into the carriage, but I pause. “Perhaps Jane and I could travel alone, in the second?” I ask, nodding toward John’s carriage.
    Grace bristles. “That wouldn’t be…”
    â€œOf course, cousin,” says Henry quickly. “We will see you at the church,”
    Jane goes to her father and he nods kindly at me. Taking his seat alongside his driver, he leaves the carriage for Jane and me. As the horses’ hooves click, I lean back and breathe a sigh. A few more moments alone will help me compose myself.
    Walthingham has a chapel of its own, and I would have preferred to say farewell within that private space, but Henry has said it would be inappropriate with so many others wishing to pay their condolences to my dead brother. Why, I do not know. No one here truly knew him.
    The church is a narrow gray building with a single spire. We disembark at the gate and join the small gathering of gentry wending their way toward my family’s tomb.
    I keep my face impassive and my neck held straight beneath the heavy black bonnet, and turn my mourning ring inward until its beveled enamel bites into my palm. The flash of pain keeps me from drooping into despair before this sea of curious eyes.
    More people even than attended our ball have turned out to observe the sudden passing of George Randolph, the new heir of Walthingham. Here and there I see a face I recognize from that glittering night. Lady Flint, looking sallower than ever in starched black. The first man that I danced with, sitting ill at ease with his fellow soldiers. And the woman who wore green satin and made me believe that something vicious stalked the grounds at Walthingham. Her son is beside her, but he won’t meet my eyes.
    Though they’re here as mourners, these people seem more interested in gawking at my clothing than in paying tribute to George. And Grace has made certain that I’m worth staring at. My hastily bought mourning clothes include a Russian wrapping-cloak, worn open over a crepe-trimmed black column. The toes of black leather boots peep out below, and I clutch a reticule frothy with lace.
    I hate my finery, and even more, I hate Grace’s insistence that I perform this show of grieving for the sake of people I hardly know, who hardly knew George. She insists that I honor my dead in the proper way, but proper to me is how we observed my parents’ passing: two pine boxes, prayers as they were lowered into the earth. We wore dark colors but could not take more than half a day away from the farm. Hard work distracted and healed us, slowly. Here there is nothing to carry my mind from my loss. Just dressing and undressing, broken sleep and grief-shadowed waking hours.
    I bring my hand in its dull black glove to the silver filigree brooch at my neck, wound round with a lock of my brother’s hair. Grace keeps her head bowed and her arm through her brother’s. Though they’re not visibly close, not like George and I were, I still feel the beginnings of pity as I contemplate what will happen to her once Henry marries Jane. Women are useless enough among the rich, and unmarried women even more so.
    Jane begins to move away, but I cling to her. “Please, stay with me,” I say. Grace again looks a little confused, but I avoid her gaze.
    The wind blows bitterly as we cross the frozen ground, and the air tastes burnt and thin. George will be buried here, beside our grandfather, instead of with our parents in the rich soil of home. His body will never be joined by that of a wife, or a child. Perhaps my own will join his, one day, should I die unmarried. Jane and I stand at the graveside together, our two bonnets bowed side by side.
    The