“Tell me about your day.”
Daisy looked over at her mother. Her hair was beginning to go white in wisps. Daisy still thought her pretty. She had a lovely smile. But speak of unrealistic wishes. Here was one. A single woman could hardly support an aging mother on her own.
Daisy knew it. The doctor had known it. Her mother knew it. Her friends tried to hint at it, to tell Daisy that she should—gently—do her best to disentangle herself.
Daisy held on through sheer stubbornness. They would make do as long as Daisy had good work. As long as neither of them got sick. As long as nothing bad ever happened, she could manage it all.
She couldn’t think of her mother, and her mother’s future, without feeling a little ill.
She didn’t want to talk about her day. She considered all her possible responses.
“I did some research,” Daisy said instead.
“What sort of research?”
“Research into the sorts of new businesses that are opening shortly.” Daisy frowned and speared a bite of potato.
“Oh? Anything interesting?”
Daisy considered the white lump on her fork. “There’s a shop that is selling…um. Velocipedes.”
“Whatever is a velocipede?”
“It’s…” How to even describe the thing? “A metal frame. With wheels. Difficult to describe.” She trailed off, mid-twirl of her fork, and looked at her mother’s pursed lips.
“That’s a thing that people would purchase? Why?”
Now that she’d ridden one, she could understand. There had been a moment of exhilaration. A sense that she could fly.
Daisy shrugged. “It’s not much stupider than, say, a carbolic smoke ball.”
“A what?”
“Another thing.” She frowned. “For invalids. It’s supposed to prevent influenza.”
“Fools and their money.” Her mother sighed. “Fools and their money. Drat it, why don’t we know more fools?”
Daisy smiled. “I shall have to expand the circle of our acquaintance.”
Her mother turned and contemplated Daisy. “You know, Daisy, it’s probably time that you start looking for a fool.”
Her heart sank. “You mean so that I can sell him a carbolic smoke ball?”
Her mother reached out and touched her hand. “To marry.”
Daisy looked away. She felt raw. Unready for this conversation.
“Youth won’t last forever,” her mother said. Her fingers tightened on Daisy’s hand. “I know you’re telling yourself that you have time…”
Daisy’s fingers lay quiescent under her mother’s while her stomach churned. You are remarkably good at lying to yourself. Crash was wrong; she knew perfectly well how things were.
“You have to take care of yourself,” her mother was saying. “Establish yourself. Have you seen a girl working in a flower shop above the age of thirty?”
Daisy shook her head.
“There’s a reason for that.” Her mother’s grip tightened subtly on Daisy’s hand. “It’s like those flowers you sell. Nobody wants them after they’ve begun to wilt. I know I sound terribly mercenary, but Daisy, dear, you don’t have to love him. You just have to be able to pretend well enough.”
Here was the thing: Daisy wouldn’t be marrying for herself, and her mother knew it. On her own, she might support herself indefinitely.
The person she could not support was her mother. Her emporium was a dream. No, worse; a distraction. It was a plaything she held up to pretend her future might be different than it was.
But this was the stark reality she faced. She needed to find a fool who wouldn’t mind—or notice—her lack of virginity. If she didn’t, one day she would have to walk away from the woman who had raised her because she could no longer afford her care.
It didn’t matter how little Daisy wanted that to happen. It didn’t matter how sick she felt at the thought. Coins didn’t lie.
Daisy could only hope she hadn’t ruined her chances at marriage. If she couldn’t marry, if nobody ever wanted her…
She couldn’t think of that.
She had to think of that.
Crash was right. Daisy was remarkably good at lying to herself. One day, she’d stop hoping to come to her own rescue. One day, she’d recognize that there was no escape. She’d do her best to find herself a fool of a fiancé, because she knew she wouldn’t leave her mother. She couldn’t.
When that happened, when she smiled at some man with half her sense, Crash would think the worst of her. He’d call her a liar and a cheat and more. He wouldn’t be wrong.
There were some things one could not say to one’s mother.
I cannot marry yet. There’s this man I hate—incidentally, the one who took my virginity—and he would poke fun at me.
No, it was time to grow up and face the truth. She couldn’t care what Crash would say.
She smiled at her mother instead. “I know.” Her cheeks hurt, holding that false expression.
Today was Monday evening. On Saturday, the judges would award the bequest to someone else. They would crush her dream. They’d make it clear that she’d told herself lies. At that point, she would have to accept what she had to do. She would have to stop hoping for an escape.
It was as inevitable as her mother’s rheumatism.
“Sunday,” Daisy said. “This Sunday. That’s when I’ll start looking.”
Chapter Five
Daisy was glad for work early the next morning, even though she woke with every muscle in her body shrieking in protest at their ill-usage the day before. Work gave her an excuse to wash quickly and hide the bruise on her hip before her mother noticed. Work allowed her to leave before the sun rose.
She didn’t have to think of her presentation or what would come after she lost. She arrived at the shop in the early morning hours and lost herself in her work, bunching together little bouquets of forced violets and tying them with ribbon. It was quiet work, comforting work; she didn’t have to talk to anyone while she was doing it. She could just match flowers together and tie them with cord. White and purple; pink and lilac. Each little bouquet was a bit of happiness that she put together for someone else.
Today, though, she couldn’t entirely lose herself in the activity. Her mother’s words came back to her.
It’s like those flowers you sell. Nobody wants them after they’ve begun to wilt.
Bouquets of temporary happiness. Purchased for a penny; discarded the moment they became inconvenient.
She could almost imagine Crash leaning close to her and whispering in her ear. You a
re remarkably good at lying to yourself.
She shoved her mental image of him away.
At least she enjoyed her work. She made people happy. She made them smile.
The shop bell rang and a woman peered in. She was wearing a sober working-woman’s skirt of dark wool and a dingy gray shirtwaist—likely once white—with ink stains on the cuff.
Daisy summed the woman up with a single glance. She was likely one of the unmarried women who labored in the backroom of one of the nearby shops. Daisy had talked to many such women. She probably lived in a rooming house with dozens of other women. She saved her coins, one by one, dreaming of another life, a better life.
It would never come. Women never worked their way up. They started their life near their pinnacle and had only to fall from there.
Daisy had been instructed to shoo women like this away when she first started.
“They’re trying to poach our heat,” Mr. Trigard, the owner of the shop had grumbled. “They know we must warm the place for our flowers, and they’re looking for a handout. They’ll never purchase a thing.”
For the first month, Daisy had done as Mr. Trigard said. Then he’d started trusting her, and he’d stopped coming in.
It turned out that inhospitality was not one of her talents. She’d given up and started making them bouquets in her spare moments. Not the exquisitely put-together sprays of baby’s breath and rosebuds that she constructed for the gentility. Instead, she made little things, pretty things, with left over bits: flowers cut too short, extra sprigs of leaves, scraps of ribbon that would otherwise have been discarded.
Her creations could be purchased for a halfpenny.
The woman looked from bucket to bucket, her lips pursed.
That was the thing about working in a flower shop. One learned to assess customers. A maid in crisp, brown livery buying for an entire household didn’t want to dilly-dally over her purchase. She wanted Daisy to tell her what was available right away.
A woman who wandered in, glancing about timidly, was exactly the opposite. If Daisy launched herself in her direction the instant she entered the room, she’d disclaim all interest and slink away.