The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 6

by Beth Brower

“Emma, you are twenty-one years of age. You can dress in proper attire to receive a guest.” And so I did. I chose my grey afternoon dress, which I can manage myself, as the bodice secures in the front. It buttons, marching in a virtuous line up my neck, obscuring my lion pendant. A fact which very well may have saved my life. For upon entering the drawing room, I was met by the end of the world. There sat Aunt Eugenia.

💀

“Lady Sheridan assures me you’ve a duke hiding up your sleeve. A thing hard for me to believe. If true, however, he should have been placed at Arabella’s disposal.” Resisting a comic glance up my sleeve, I played the fool.

I absolutely cannot with her. 😂

“Would the both of you care to join us for tea?” I managed, as one should ask when the world is ending.

Later, when Pierce and I were hiding in his studio with tea, I asked, “What did you tell them about Cousin Archibald’s screams?” Pierce—busying himself with putting away a backdrop he loathes—paused and looked over his shoulder at me. “I told them you had a parrot. And that with any luck, it would soon die.”

💀

and so I answered the door myself—thinking of Pythagoras as I did, so I would exude an ancient wisdom, and the professor would think, “Ah, this is a house of Serious Scholarship.”

I shall try to think of Pythagoras myself so that I may, too, exude ancient wisdom.

“one catastrophe at a time.

It had every potential to go wonderfully wrong.

“Animal, no,” he replied one afternoon, glancing up at me with a wink. “But wild, always. My girl, I wouldn’t have you be any other way.”

“Only that this exchange has been terribly domestic.” I stared a moment. “Domestic? How is— Ah, I see,” I said in realisation. “I’m sounding too much like a mother. How dreadful.” Pierce choked on his tea. “That’s not what I meant.” I understood. My cheeks warmed. I thought perhaps setting the house on fire was a reasonable distraction.

He could have been handsome, even his mustache was not too horrid—a grand concession for any female to make—but

Mustaches ARE horrid.

“I claim to be the right measure of pertinence in most situations.”