An Innocent Affair

III

Cressie was quite certain that after quashing her guilt, her mind would never trouble her with thoughts of Jem Denham again.

"Oh, Cressie, my dear, you are going to be the most beautiful debutante this Season. I just know it." Mrs Martin clapped her hands together with pride as she took a step back to take in Cressie's appearance.

It hurt Cressie to see her mother so excited for her, because it meant that her determination and resolve to fight Mrs Martin fizzled. When she saw such hope in her mother's grey-green eyes, Cressie saw her own fate. No matter what, she would be wed before the Season was over. To whom, she had no idea.

Cressie prayed the man would not be an ogre.

Her head turned towards the sound of laughter. It sounded faintly outside, and peering through the front of the shop, Cressie saw a handful of children running past the window. What were they playing? What were they laughing about? Whatever it was, they sounded jovial and free from care or worry, or burdens to marry.

Cressie longed to join them. She longed to run. She didn't remember the last time she had moved faster than a lady-like promenade.

"Don't you agree?" Mrs Martin asked Miss Desjardins. "Is not my daughter a true beauty?" Mrs Martin had mentioned several dozen times how Cressie's beauty was as good as a dowry for some gentlemen, and that they would be relying upon her fair face and handsome features to bewitch her suitors into not caring for a dowry.

Miss Desjardins smiled politely. "Miss Martin is très beau," she agreed. "Would you care to wait out in the shop, Madame?" Miss Desjardins suggested to Mrs Martin. "I will assist Miss Martin in changing."

Mrs Martin nodded gleefully as she flitted back out into the shop. Cressie could see from where she was standing that her mother had immediately found a bin of fabric bolts and was inspecting the patterns with keen interest.

Miss Desjardins helped Cressie to step out of the gown in silence, before she spoke under her breath.

"Are you excited for the Season, Miss Martin?"

From the tone and volume of her voice, Cressie could tell that Miss Desjardins did not want Mrs Martin to overhear the conversation. What did she expect Cressie to say? Was Cressie really so transparent?

Her eyes found her mother once more and Cressie bit down on her bottom lip. Cressie's heart told her to fight, but her head told her to grow up. When she thought of what her mother had been through, and what she had done to essentially survive throughout her entire childhood, Cressie felt immense guilt for stomping her feet like a child when Mrs Martin spoke of her marriage.

Cressie understood she would need to marry eventually. All women did. For what were they without a husband? She would be seventeen soon. She was certainly not the youngest bride there ever was, nor ever would be.

Mrs Martin had sold every possession they had of value, giving them enough to participate in one Season, and one Season only. They bore a respectable name, even if the man who had given it to Mrs Martin was not at all gentlemanlike. They had taken a small but comfortable house for the summer off the main street of Grosvenor Square, and would be in a fit situation to receive callers.

It was certainly a charade, and one that would leave them destitute at Season's end if Cressie did not marry.

It was a heavy and heartbreaking burden weighing upon her young shoulders.

Cressie didn't want to marry. She wanted to run and swim and play and laugh and live.

But Cressie needed to marry, and she hated every bit of that knowledge.