The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 5

by Beth Brower

anyone with sense would marry the duke, have the vicar officiate, and hire the photographer to take a wedding portrait. Knowing you as I do, you’ve no intention of doing anything so prosperous,

The author certainly knows how to throw out hints that appear to be foreshadowing. For what it’s worth, this is exactly what I predict will happen.

Whereas most people go to Bath to get well, Cousin Archibald looks markedly peaked.

Something is going on with Archibald’s health I think.

“You never seem ruffled, Hawkes. How do you manage?” He did not answer until we’d stopped before Islington’s. “We all have our demons, Miss Lion.” “Our angels as well, I suppose.” “Sometimes they are the same.”

The kind of line that smacks of foreshadowing, but darned if I know what it’s hinting at.

“Some things must wring out every last ounce before the end. But your mettle is proven, Miss Lion. You will be weighed and not found wanting. Memories are preserved, sacrifices are honoured, and all the moments before half-open windows are known. In the end, all is mended.”

Then Tybalt did what no cat has ever done. He ran into the rain and right under Hawkes’s umbrella, arching his back as he meowed plaintively. Hawkes bent down and gave Tybalt’s ears an affectionate going over; then he lifted the cat with one hand and whispered something. Tybalt’s eyes went wide as he stilled. I realised that Hawkes was speaking in Irish Gaelic. I shivered. It reminded me of my father.

This is a whole lot of hinting at … something?

the act of marrying my father caused her to be cut off from a wealthy life.

Wait, what?

I dreamt all last night that Mother was at Lapis Lazuli baking gingerbread. I was helping. No one else. We made a house for Arabella, and Mary, and Saffronia, Roland, Pierce, and Islington, and Hawkes.

This feels like a prophetic dream. Interesting that Roland is featured. Is Beth Brower faking us all out and it will be Roland she ends up with?

He claimed his brown leather chair and I the sofa, preparing his tea how he likes it (which is not very much without whisky) and forcing him to take some gingerbread. “It smells like Christmas,” I smiled. “Cheery and solid.” He grunted and took a sip of his tea. Then, taking a flask out of the pocket of his coat that he’d abandoned over the arm of the chair, he made it more to his liking, and his second sip produced a sound of relief.

Pierce is an alcoholic.

“Promise me, Emma.” Had I not known she saw through the charade, it would have stopped my heart. “Don’t ask anything of Emma, Mother,” Jack tried. “I ask too much of her as it is.” It was a noble attempt, but Abigail would not be deterred; her frail hand gripped mine as tightly as it could. “Promise to watch out for Jack? He can do well…will do well. But he needs good counsel, someone who won’t”—she took a breath—“leave him behind.”

Calling it now: Jack will have a redemption arc that Emma will be heavily involved with.

For some reason he makes me think of the colour green. As if the entire hall was awash in it. I’ve no idea why.

Islington is associated with the green in Emma’s memory?

“He said he wished you to be wise, and good, and true to the beatings of your own heart, and hoped that you could be spared the extremes of society, both the very poor and the very rich, so that neither need nor indulgence would spoil the soul he loved more than anything else in the world.”

“He tends to do that,” Islington began slowly. “All the time we’ve been friends, any step Hawkes takes closer to friendship, he counters. He’s wary, for some reason.”

My answering sigh was full of rue.

I love the author's use of language. I’ve seen “rue the day”, but I’ve never seen the word rue used this way before.

I’ve decided positivity is the Everest of virtues. You have to not only confront the dismal realities of life but choose, ofttimes, to blatantly ignore them.

“Spectemur agendo,”

"Let us be judged by our actions."

The stars incline us, they do not bind us.

This is twice “stars” have been mentioned in relation to Hawkes, just in this book. First when Islington commented on the yellow chair that came to Emma via the luck she borrowed from Hawkes. Islington said it was bright and Hawkes replied it was “like a star”. Now he pales and nearly freaks over this saying stitched into a pillow that Emma gifted him for Christmas.