When the Day Comes (Timeless #1)

by Gabrielle Meyer

Mother did not encourage any familiarity or affection with the staff and treated them with the same cool indifference she showed me.

I didn't expect that last word to be "me,"

But we took more baths than our friends and neighbors, who were still under the false belief that frequent bathing could lead to premature death.

!!

I perched on the edge of the chair, remembering how she had instructed my governess to put knives through the slats of my dining chair as a child, forcing me to sit erect.

That's awful!

We do not have representation in Parliament, and that is wrong.”

Taxation without representation.

But I was safe, dry, and warm, sitting close to the hearth with Phyllis Wheatley’s book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.

But I refused to set a date or acknowledge that I was engaged to be married—no matter what Mother and Lord Cumberland had decided. I had no idea what they discussed behind the drawing room doors in Berkeley Square or what stipulations they had agreed upon,

Girl-they are going to have you married in a couple of months!

We stopped at our box, and Mama followed the girls and me inside. We rented the box,

Whoa. I didn't know the boxes coud be rented.

Halfway, a sudden bout of dizziness took me unaware. I became winded and had to stop for a rest.

Oh no.

The contract she had written felt unnecessary, but she insisted.

I had a choice to make, and I had a feeling I would be called to make it over and over again, day after day. I had before me life and death, blessings and curses. I would need to choose life. If I couldn’t do it for myself, then perhaps I could do it for my baby.