Winter Winds

Jessamine gathered the heavy skirt of her dress in her silk-gloved hands as she hurried down the back stair case, her small feet pounding on the wooden panels in a most unladylike fashion. After slipping through the unfurnished door, Jessamine entered the kitchens and immediately headed towards the plate laden with delicious foods waiting on the table.

“I managed to save you the best of the fish,” Sally murmured to Jessamine with a wink as she lumbered past with a pitcher of water for the kettle.

“Oh, thank you Sally,” Jessamine gushed through a mouthful of green beans, closing her eyes in pleasure as the savory flavors spread across her tongue.

“I’d eat quickly, Miss,” Grace advised as she removed a dozen or so scones from the iron oven in the corner. “Mrs. Whitaker won’t be happy if you—“ the last of her words were cut off by the bang of the kitchen door slamming into the adjourning wall.

The wooden panel flew open to reveal the willowy form of a furious, lavishly dressed, blonde woman.
“Jessamine Louise Whitaker, what the devil do you think you’re doing?” her mother hissed, the fury in her eyes sending the servants scurrying as far from her as possible.

“I haven’t had a chance to eat since—”

“Since you shared tea with Mary less than an hour ago,” her mother interrupted, her thin gloved hands placed firmly on her narrow hips in an all-too-familiar stance of displeasure.

“I was still hungry,” Jessamine murmured, casting her eyes down to the plate she held in her hands with a small sigh of longing.

“Then you should have arrived in time for dinner,” her mother responded coldly, stalking across the room and locking her daughter’s wrist in her painfully strong grip. “Now come along,” she growled, lifting the deep purple folds of her skirt from the floor as she dragged Jessamine behind her.

“The guests have moved into the ball room, and your presence is greatly anticipated. Despite the obvious failure your schooling has been on improving your character—for your behavior continues to serves as just as much of a disappointment as it always has—you are still regarded as the guest of honor tonight.”

“I’ve missed you as well, Mother,” Jessamine whispered harshly as they followed the sounds of gay voices and polite laughter that floated towards them down the hall. Her mother cast a tight, joyless smile in her direction before she gripped the knob of the door that separated them from their guests.

“You will not embarrass me tonight, Jessamine,” the woman hissed, her eyes narrowed to icy blue slits as she glared at the girl before her. Jessamine didn’t reply, and her mother’s bare shoulders relaxed as she interpreted the lack of response as submission.

Mrs. Whitaker’s face then slowly transformed, her features softening and her eyes brightening to reveal a face that could have easily launched a thousand ships. Jessamine’s grandmother had once told her in confidence that the family’s success and fortune was partially indebted to her mother’s skill. They never would have risen so high in society without her mother’s ability to mask her disagreeable personality and unpleasant disposition with such a gorgeous face.

It had long ago become clear to Jessamine that she too was expected to cover her true and unconventional persona with a cloak of beauty, and to show others only what they wished to see. Unfortunately for the family name, the very idea of concealing her wishes for an unworthy cause disgusted Jessamine to a greater extent than anything else she’d ever encountered.

“I cannot guarantee that my actions tonight will please you,” Jessamine replied in a fit of defiance, and her heart soared when she spotted a small crack forming in her mother’s armor.

She reached past the stunned woman to push open the door, then stepped over the threshold and entered the party.

Jessamine was assaulted by a surge of sound and light as she entered the main hall, and she quickly scanned the long room for a familiar face. Her eyes first went to the marble fireplace at the far end of the hall where a few couples stood around the blazing hearth. She recognized Evelyn Orlop, the rather friendly daughter of a famous Russian musician, but decided against joining her and her foreign friends beside the fire. Jessamine wasn’t in the mood for having to force pretty smiles and polite laughter as she listened to jokes in a language she didn’t understand about a topic she wasn’t interested in.

Jessamine looked to the other end of the hall, now actively searching for one girl in particular. If she was going to spend her entire evening trapped in this loud, brightly lit room, she preferred to do it by Mary’s side; at least then she wouldn’t be forced to entirely cage her personality in the fears of damaging her mother’s all too important reputation.

She finally spotted the brunette across the room near the large window, but was halted in her pursuit by a large hand on her elbow. Jessamine turned towards the pressure, and she didn’t even bother masking her sigh of contempt as her eyes fell on Matthias Trimble.

He was a boorish young man, with bristly dark hair that encompassed his head and dark brow, and he always looked as if his clothing had been tailored for a thinner and shorter man. Even tonight the black material of his dinner jacket strained at his broad shoulders, and Jessamine feared the seams might rip at any moment.

“Good evening, Jessamine,” he greeted, or rather purred, and Jessamine felt bile rise in her throat as Matthias began the standard pattern of their interactions: he would flirt, she would insult, and eventually her revulsion would rise to such a high degree that she would either publically humiliate him or storm away herself. Seeing as the servants would most likely have to endure a month of her mother’s wrath if she in any way caused a scene, Jessamine supposed she’d have to save the public shaming for another evening.

Perhaps she could get him to go away without even having to exhaust herself coming up with clever insults. Not to suggest that Matthias was clever in any way, or that Jessamine would have trouble countering any retort the bumbling idiot could come up with.

“Yes, my evening was quite pleasant, until your arrival discredited the rumor that you had been brutally gored to death by a wild boar in a hunting accident,” Jessamine told him, and she was sure to convey her barbed words with a polite tone. His eyes narrowed and he let out a disgruntled huff, and to her delight he merely lumbered away from her without another word.

Her mother would have slapped her harshly across the cheek if she’d heard Jessamine speak such unkind words to a guest, but Matthias’s past actions were so atrocious that not even a stinging blow from her mother could serve as a deterrent.

Jessamine had despised Matthias Timble since the age of eleven, during the time when she and Mary were still permitted to spend their days at the Morrison’s bookshop. Matthias had made a habit of barging in on afternoons when he knew Tom’s uncle was out on errands and had left Thomas in charge, and Matthias would unceremoniously dump books from their shelves as he cackled mercilessly. He would walk over them with his muddy boots, and if he was feeling particularly cruel, he would tear the pages from their biddings until he was surrounded by a cloud of crumpled parchment.

Thomas would, of course, not stand by and allow the monster to destroy his uncle’s shop without a fight. So Thomas would invariably end up with a black eye and a bruised cheek before Matthias could be pushed away by the delicate but forceful hands of the shop’s two inhabitants he couldn’t punch. Mary and Jessamine had always done their best to console Thomas afterward, but Tom’s hatred of Matthias had never faded, and thus Jessamine’s hadn’t either.

Jessamine had begun shamelessly informing Matthias that she would take delight in seeing his name in the obituary section of the morning paper after the evening when he’d had presumptuously decided it was within his rights to kiss her.

They’d been at a party, similar to the one her mother hosted now, although on a warm evening in June at some aristocrat’s summer villa. Jessamine had been fifteen at the time, and had stood alone on the balcony overlooking a garden, separating herself from the lights and chatter as she’d always preferred to do at social gatherings.

She’d assumed she’d been alone, so when Jessamine had felt a hand low on her back, she’d started to scream— only to have a second hand clamp over her mouth. She’d been terrified then, kicking and desperate to get away, and when she’d heard Matthias growl in her ear for her to “calm down and be quiet,” her panic had only increased. Then he’d spun her around, and she’d felt a tongue in her mouth and a hand squeeze her breast before she’d been left alone on the balcony once more.

Jessamine had n ever spoken aloud about the events of that night, mainly because the one boy she would have confided in would have put a bullet in Matthias’s brain and landed himself in prison—or worse.

So now, as Jessamine watched Matthias’s retreating form, she felt nothing more than satisfaction and relief. Matthias seemed to honestly not understand that her hatred was not some kind of playful banter that would end with their engagement, and he inevitably approached her at every social function she attended. And, because Jessamine was nothing if not resourceful, she continued to use his greeting as an invitation for harsh insults that only scratched the surface of the disgust and fury she truly felt.

Her mood now even gloomier than it had been when she’d entered the ball room, Jessamine heaved a heavy sigh and once again scanned the crowd for Mary. Her friend had moved from the window during her interaction with Matthias, and she was now proving harder to locate. Jessamine let out a huff of annoyance as, once again, the moment she caught sight of her friend she was approached by another young man.

He wore a friendly smile as he came to stand before her, and Jessamine felt sure she recognized his rather distinctive bright orange hair. He stood with one hand in his pocket and the other loosely holding a glass of brandy, and he regarded her with his head cocked slightly to the side as he watched her with curious green eyes.

“Good evening,” she said politely enough when he merely continued to stare at her without an introduction. Jessamine frowned when he remained silent.

“Who are you?” she asked rather bluntly in a way she knew would earn her a glare from her mother.

But as the male guest, it was his responsibility to introduce himself first; so technically, Jessamine informed her absent mother, she was really just ensuring that their conversation followed the patterns dictated by societal convention.

“Charles McAvoy,” he told her with a little bow of his torso, and she didn’t even bother concealing the way her eyebrow arched in question at his odd behavior. Unless they had somehow all magically traveled to the Orient, Jessamine saw no reason why this man should bow to her. Perhaps he had spent a considerable time in China, she reasoned, but so had many Englishmen and they still managed to introduce themselves normally.

“But you can call me Charlie—everyone does,” he told her with a boyish shrug, and Jessamine’s eyes widened as she recognized the movement and the nickname. It was wildly inappropriate for him to suggest that she call him anything other than Mr. McAvoy until they’d engaged in at least a few conversations, but a distant memory she couldn’t quite place told her she’d already spent quite a bit of time in this man’s company.

Noticing her frown, Charles casually jerked his head to his left to where Mary stood in the company of group of guests Jessamine didn’t recognize.

“I’m Mary’s cousin,” Charles told her, and his smile widened into a grin as recognition flashed across Jessamine’s face.

She remembered Charlie, Mary’s lanky orange-haired cousin with a smattering of freckles and wild green eyes, but she certainly did not recall the man who now stood before her. She’d met him during her family’s visit to Mary’s country home one summer, when she was eight and he was around thirteen, and she could remember the three of them swimming in the pond in the mornings and chasing fireflies in the evenings.

She might have seen him once or twice a few years later, but her sharpest memories of him were from those few blissful weeks of summer. Charlie had been shy and nervous and even a bit intimidated by the two younger girls, but the Charles that stood before her now appeared confident and almost jarringly comfortable with himself. She found herself wondering if perhaps she’d changed just as drastically and hadn’t even realized it.

“That young man,” Charles said, without warning, and his sudden speech pulled Jessamine from her thoughts. Charles gestured towards Matthias, who now wandered about the room in search of another unsuspecting victim to bother. “Did he do you some wrong in the past, or do you treat all of your suitors with such harsh distain?” he questioned.

Jessamine gave Charles a disapproving frown, shocked by the familiarity of his tone as he merely took a sip from his drink and waited for a response. He smiled at her, clearly intending his words as a joke, but his jovial nature did nothing to improve Jessamine’s mood.

“I would say both of the options you’ve given me are quite applicable,” she replied seriously, hoping to drive him away with a rude but clear hint that she preferred to be left alone at the moment.

“Are you so determined not to marry that you scorn all members of the opposite sex?” he asked with mock offense, clearly not put off by her cold tone and unfriendly gaze as he dramatically clutched his free hand to his chest.

“Yes,” she declared strongly, and she allowed herself a small feeling of satisfaction as she watched his smooth brow furrow and his smile falter.

“Why?” he asked, and Jessamine bit down on the inside of her cheek to prevent herself from asking him quite plainly to go and find another guest to annoy. Instead, she decided to give him an answer that would surely deter him from any further inquiry.

“Because none of my suitors give a damn about me,” she told him bitterly, and the harsh words burst from her lips with more genuine frustration than she’d expected. “Yes, they ask me questions about my interests, my hobbies, and how I spend the troves of ‘leisure time’ I often find myself burdened with. But none of them actually listen to my answers or take heed of the exceedingly more important opinions I yearn to voice. They’re all far too occupied with the task of gauging how well I’ll do as a wife—if I’ll be an embarrassment to the family name, or a good investment of their time and money. But none of them seem to understand that my heart’s greatest desire is not simply to flounce down the aisle in a dress that strongly resembles a frosted pastry. I want, above all else, to be someone they can share a life with; a partner whom they can trust, depend on, even love.”

Charles stared at her with that same mystified expression, his brow furrowed as he tried to comprehend the enigma that was Jessamine. To her disappointment, it seemed she’d piqued his interest even further rather than prompting him to scurry away from her with his tail between his legs.

“You have grown into quite an unusual young lady, Jessamine,” he told her after a long pause, and he shook his head with an admiring smile. He raised his glass towards her, almost as if making a toast to her unconventionality.

Jessamine stared at him, her goal of driving him away suddenly forgotten. He took great care in the way he said her name, she noticed—like he was testing out the way it felt in his mouth after so many years of disuse, and was surprised to find that he liked its new taste. Jessamine momentarily wondered how he would taste, and the thought was so unlike her, so unexpected and unsettling, that she immediately pushed it away and returned her focus to the conversation at hand.

“Given the embarrassing behavior of the other members of my sex, I can only interpret your comment as a compliment,” she muttered with a meaningful inclination of her head in the direction of Margaret Howard. The rosy-cheeked debutant Jessamine was referring to didn’t understand a word of German, but was nodding enthusiastically to the foreign ramblings of a bright-eyed scholar from Berlin.

Charles laughed heartily at her comment, tossing his head back as the sound of his mirth floated through the crowded room. Jessamine wasn’t sure when she’d decided to entertain him rather than scare him away, but she found that she liked the sound of his laugh. It was slightly terrifying the way he expressed his thoughts and opinions so openly, and she watched him with her mouth slightly agape. The sight of such a care-free and genuine display of emotion was a refreshing shock to her after so many months of rigid propriety.

His outburst caught the attention of most of the guests, but Charles’ grin didn’t fade –in fact, he met their collective gaze with a practiced, almost proud air.

Jessamine caught sight of Mary’s knowing smile among the faces turned in their direction, and she felt her cheeks flushed bright red as she unintentionally confirmed her best friend’s suspicions. She shook her head slightly, silently trying to convince Mary that she wasn’t currently being courted by her cousin. But the damage had been done.

Jessamine silently cursed the spectacle she and Charles had apparently become as Mary quickly parted from her group of friends and hurried towards them through the still ogling crowd. After months of not seeing her closest friend, she would now have to endure the inexhaustible wrath of Match-Maker-Mary; Jessamine would have much rather preferred to retreat to a corner and mock the other guests as she and Mary had so often done in the past. Charles and his unusually direct yet oddly charming disposition had only served to further sour her evening.

“Ah, I see my mission for the night has been prematurely completed,” Mary called as she approached, her lips spreading into a smile across her round, almost cherubic face. She took hold of Jessamine’s hand and slid her other arm through the crook of Charles’ elbow, leading them through the room like a proud father escorting his newly wed daughter and her nervous young husband. “I was in no mood to spend an hour trying to convince Jessamine to socialize, so I’m ever so pleased you two have already met. Or reacquainted yourselves, I should say; you do remember Charles, don’t you Jessie?” Mary asked with a prompting raise of her eyebrows, and Jessamine gave a slightly dazed nod in response.

“Wonderful, just what I’d been hoping for! The two of you are getting along fabulously, I can already tell. Jessamine has clearly managed to entertain you with her unique style of humor, hasn’t she Charlie? Her originality is only one of her many attractive qualities, I’m sure you’d agree. She’s pretty as a flower, isn’t she? It’s the hair, I think. It’s such a lovely color, like light shining on an ocean of fresh wheat. And she has such kind, warm eyes—not the kind of girl you’d easily forget, our Jessamine,” Mary continued, taking turns beaming at each of them as she talked.

Jessamine wondered how many guests would stare and gossip about ‘that strange Whitaker girl’ if she dashed from the room at this very moment.

She honestly had forgotten how just how talkative Mary could be when excited, and now her friend’s babbling had single-handedly placed her in the most uncomfortable position imaginable. Mary was clearly under the incredibly incorrect impression that Jessamine and Charles were on the road towards romance, and her obvious attempt to assist with the courtship only made Jessamine want to curl up under a table and never again emerge into the light of day. She knew she needed to put an end to Mary’s babbling as soon as possible, but she had no idea how to go about correcting Mary’s assumption without making the encounter all the more uncomfortable.

Furthermore, although the idea was incredibly unlikely, perhaps Charles had in fact intended to peruse her affections. He may have even enlisted Mary’s assistance in the matter—although if that was the case, he surely now regretted the decision as Mary made her lack in discreetness very clear. There was no way Jessamine could currently inform Mary to her lack of romantic feelings towards Charles if this disaster was his attempt at winning her heart; she may have currently felt both bitter and unsociable, but Jessamine had never considered herself cruel.

“Mary, Jessamine and I were just discussing the impressive amount of hatred she harbors for the male sex,” Charles casually interrupted as if mentioning tomorrow’s weather.

His unexpected statement effectively washed away any preconceived notions Mary may have held about any romantic involvement between them, and it set Jessamine at ease as he discredited any theories of his affections. But while she was grateful for the clarification, Jessamine couldn’t help but wish Charles had gone about it with a little more tact as Mary came to an abrupt halt at his words.
Mary stared at Charles in shock before turning to Jessamine with her small mouth slightly agape in a very unladylike expression of incredulousness; Jessamine could only offer her a half-shrug and a weak smile in response.

“Jessie, you cannot keep doing this,” Mary hissed as she dropped Charles’ arm and pulled Jessamine a few steps away. Despite Mary’s clear attempt at privacy, Jessamine noted that Charles quite openly listened in on their conversation as he casually took a sip of his brandy.

“The last thing I want is for you to end up as a spinster, but you must realize that if you continue to make it your mission to scare away every decent suitor that approaches you, you will be left with no other option,” Mary told her harshly.

“There is another option,” Jessamine told her, Mary’s words reminding her of the lecture she’d received from Jane less than an hour ago. “The world isn’t only made up of men of no substance who have nothing better to fill their days with than tobacco and liquor,” Jessamine spat, and she wanted to slap the glass from Charles’ hand as he smiled into his drink at her words.

He had no right to laugh at her opinions, especially when they were not directed towards him, but more frustrating was the unsettling spark of pleasure she got from the realization that something she’d said had pleased him. She didn’t want him to find her heart-felt proclamations amusing, and what’s more she desperately didn’t want to enjoy the fact that she amused him.

“Don’t bring Tom into this,” Mary whispered, drawing Jessamine’s attention back to the conversation, and she took a moment to bring her focus away for Charlie.

“But that’s already what this is about, isn’t it?” Jessamine challenged, pulling her hand out of Mary’s as she rested her hands on her hips. “You’re only trying to give me away to your cousin because you’ve never liked the idea of Tom and I being together, and you’re doing all you can to make me forget him,” she added, leaning forward and lowering her voice as a few of her mother’s friends wandered past them.

“Of course I don’t like it!” Mary cried in a low voice, her brow creasing as she stepped closer as well. Jessamine glanced over Mary’s head to see Charles watching a group clustered around the piano, and she felt slightly relieved as she confirmed that he’d given up on listening and wouldn’t be privy to this part of the conversation.

“You cannot be with him, Jessie,” Mary continued. “I understand that you love him. I really do. And I wish I could be happy for the two of you and support you the way I so desperately want to. But this isn’t a perfect world, Jessie. You simply and absolutely cannot be with him. It’s…well, it’s dangerous and reckless and wont’ end in anything good. I thought that maybe if I provided you with an alternative it would make it easier for you to move on and—“

“Yes well your interference was both unrequested and unpleasant, so I’d advise that you do not repeat it in future. It would be more practical for you to focus your energy on your own romantic life rather than mine,” Jessamine told her, and with that she turned away from Mary and stalked from the room.

She knew her last remark was rather unkind, but Jessamine had already done enough explaining herself this evening, and she was tired of others invading her privacy and trying to tell her what was best for her life. She loved Thomas and no amount of lecturing was going to change that—and her affections certainly wouldn’t be swayed by an unusual flame-haired boy who seemed to only communicate in unconventional statements.