The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion #1

by Beth Brower

His man, Parian, was in, for it was he who answered the famous blue door and—after breathing out through his nose several disapproving times—allowed

I imagine her smiling broadly at him the whole time.

She is the most promising unpromising girl of sixteen I’ve ever met.

This refusal to blame myself does not mean I don’t feel absolutely ill when I think of my father’s books and to know I could have had both, a solid foundation of knowledge and an entire bookshelf filled with my father’s observations.

Oh, this makes me sick too.

“Flowers inside the brown coat of a poor girl is immoral,”

19th century Brits are insane.

And I would have felt the collapse of my heart no less keenly than when I did finally hear the news, but he would have been beside me. Those grey eyes looking at me right up until the point when my heart remembered it had to keep me alive for several more years yet. And once I’d recovered—not from the bitter truth, but from thinking it would take me down with him—he would have lifted his chin and given me that sought after mark of his approbation: the single nod, followed by a smile braced with as much determination as he could manage.

Curiosity being one of my taskmasters,