A Fiery Dalliance

XI

She was a fiery milk cow. Perhaps she would produce hot milk. Oh, if Joe could have heard her thoughts in that moment, then he would have tormented her with his teasing.

Joe had answered exactly zero of her questions in the few days since he had told Perrie about the deafness he suffered in his left ear. Perrie had not incessantly asked about it, but she had tried to speak to him about it the following day just in case he'd changed his mind about telling her.

Therein showed Perrie's impulsive lack of tact, as she could see that it annoyed Joe to be asked, and he likely regretted telling her about his deafness. Joe had dismissed Perrie harshly, which had triggered an immediate reaction from her at being spoken to in that way. She had snuck into her father's study before breakfast and had smeared adhesive all over his chair.

Perrie had suffered the same fate when she had sat down for dinner that evening. Joe had appeared very pleased with himself.

"I will be a terrible wife, Grandmamma," Perrie said again, firmer this time. "If my husband ever looked at me the wrong way, I would probably put pepper in his tea." Who would ever love someone like that? Nobody.

"Pepper is good for the sinuses," Cecily replied confidently. "Now, stop this nonsense."

"The truth isn't nonsense," Perrie insisted. "Don't you think I ought to be a bit more like Mama?"

Cecily's eyes softened as she sighed. "Everyone could stand to be a little bit more like your mother, myself included," she agreed. "But I won't have you beating yourself into whatever shape you think best fits the mould of a society wife."

Perrie knew that she did not have the talent or patience to mould herself into what others expected of her. If she did, then she would have returned from Mrs Liscombe's ready and waiting to be a perfect spouse. She also did not have the desire to be that type of woman. Which left, again, with the fear that nobody would ever love her the way that she was. Who could?

"Do you really believe that you were a terrible wife, Grandmamma?" Perrie asked curiously, her voice soft and tender. She really knew quite little about the marriage of her grandparents, save for the fact that it was an unhappy one. And yet, every year without fail on the day after Christmas, her grandmother made the pilgrimage down to the tomb where her husband rested to spend time with him alone.

"Yes," Cecily confirmed almost immediately. She took a breath, before she said, "Yes," again. "I was a terrible wife to your grandfather, the same as he was not a very good husband to me. But I never gave him the chance to be a good husband, the same as I never made an effort to be a good wife. But we made our peace in the end, and Perry departed this life as someone who was very dear to me, and I'd not realised."

Perrie wished that she had been able to know her grandfather, her namesake. Both of her namesakes.

"I see a lot of myself in you, Perrie," Cecily continued. "But what you don't have is my spite, and I am thankful for that. Because of that, I know that your marriage, whenever it may be, will not be the same as mine. But for the love of God, please do not make me wait as long as Susanna did to see you as a bride."

***

Perrie and Cecily arrived at Ashwood Place that evening. Upon unpacking her trunk, Perrie was greeted with a rough sketch on a folded piece of paper. It was very poor, indeed. The artist was not clearly an ... artist. But it was of a female figure wearing a dress, and it looked as though it was meant to resemble a dress design. The artist had not bothered to draw beyond the silhouette, because the real joke was in the numbers scrawled.

Measurements for Little Imp Beresford

Shoulders: something.

Chest: imaginary.