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It started with her father, and now it had all spiralled out of control.
(Destitution always came so rapidly.)
Stephany knew her father’s business was not going as well as he made it out to believe. In the dead of night while everyone was asleep, she made a habit of sneaking into her father’s office and ruffling through his papers, taking in as much information and making sure it was all correct. What she hadn’t seen were all the debts that were piling up, hidden away safe at the office. Only when the men came to take their things did she find the truth, and the gaps in the numbers made sense.
What came next was her mother Lavinia begging her sister for money, and Stephany’s uncle told of a cousin in need of a wife.
She left before she could hear anything else.
(She couldn’t bear anything else.)
She wanted to run, to pack her things and leave and never return. On the road she could learn and maybe, even, run her own business someday. But they were the dreams of men, and she was no man. She had been reminded of that since the day she learned to count.
A handmaiden just recently fired had convinced her to stay. You don’t know life outside these walls, Fanny, she had said, fingers dancing longingly down the sides of Stephany’s face. It is worse than even here.
(You will not survive out there did not slip out of her mouth as she ran it across her jawline.)
A week later they said their goodbyes with chaste kisses and fingers pressing too hard into skin, and Stephany was dragged to Button House. Only a few days went by before she was clad in white and walked down the with the eyes of the father that betrayed her trust on her every step, and she was given into a life she never wanted.
At least she saw her handmaiden again whenever she visited her mother. If George ever saw the bruises he never said anything. In turn, Stephany never spoke of the men that visited more than they should.
(Secrets made home in Button House as much as their owners did.)
They lay together, as husband and wife should. She bore his children and raised them, as the job of a woman was. She thought she could do it and still be herself, still visiting her mother every weekend she could, and come home with new bruises from the longing of her handmaiden.
She was wrong. Oh, she was so very wrong.
She lost the droplet of freedom and independence she had barely managed to hold on to with her first child, a daughter like her. The near-weekly visits to her now-sickly mother’s house turned to once a month, then every couple, and then she only went for visits during holidays and birthdays.
(Her handmaiden never left her mother’s house. Such a shame for a woman so earthly.)
She lost her love of numbers after her second child, a son that looked oh so much like his father. He took them from her, she always believed, as his love of mathematics grew the more hers left. She was still good, the numbers still spiralling around in her head, but she loved teaching her son more than the world wanted a woman to be smart, and she let the numbers go.
(How she hated her mother being right.)
Her third child, another son, didn’t take anything; instead, he gave her pain from a harsh pregnancy and an even harsher birth, rending her unable to carry another. For that, she was grateful. The pain came from her parents not having anymore grandchildren. She silently revelled in it.
She taught her daughter the way she had been taught: A lady doesn’t slouch, Mirabelle. A lady waits for the man to give orders, Mirabelle. Mirabelle fought just as her mother, the Lady Stephany Button, and longed to be taught alongside her brothers. She wished to run and play, but that was not how a lady behaved.
(How she wished she lived in a world that valued their women. Oh what a world that would be.)
The men came and went, mostly the same but sometimes just once, slinking off to join George in the office his family were forbidden to enter. Stephany knew what they were doing, she heard the noises. But she stayed silent, as she had for all those years.
Then a man came that looked like her old handmaiden, of whom she hadn’t seen since the passing of her mother years prior. She wanted to see her again, and there was no better time; her children had children of their own, and the house was empty besides George and his litany of men. So she packed her bags, wished her husband farewell, and journeyed to her mother’s old house, now owned by a cousin. The handmaiden still lived there in her twilight years, her daughter taking over her job.
You’ve changed, Fanny, her handmaiden had said, and Stephany agreed with her.
(Their hands remembered their bodies, time melting away and making them young again.)
When she returned home she found her husband in bed with two men. They shouted at her, and she left embarrassed. She could only think they finished before they left, and George yelled at her some more.
She stepped away, not wanting to hear it. She was tired from travelling and from living a life she didn’t want. She had ignored the years of adultery from her husband who felt similarly to her, yet she could not enjoy it as much as he had. She hated to say it, but she was bitter and angry. Angry at her husband and angry at the world. Her entire life she’d been told what to do, never having a say in it herself. She was sick of it and sick of George.
(She yearned for a life that could never be hers.)
She felt the hands too late, and then she was falling. Her last thought was of her handmaiden, and how she had seen her one more time before her end.
On the ground, surrounded by strange characters, she looked up at her husband. He didn’t look remorseful. The groundskeeper did as he spoke to George.
She was told she was dead, and a relief she never thought could happen flooded over her. She was free from her husband, but trapped in another hell.
(A hundred years later, in a hastily-throw together wedding hall, Fanny watched Claire and Sam get married, and imagined herself and her handmaiden in their place.)