When: 21 June 1904
Who: Open to all
Where: Outside Lady Deverell’s
It had been a successful season for Leah Forester.
Not by the same definition as her mother, of course- there had been a decided lack of promenades and dances and social calls. She’d been inconspicuously absent at the masques and balls and garden parties. But who would notice? Certainly not her mother, who only recently realized the season was mostly over and her eldest daughter was no closer to marriage than before. Not her siblings, who Leah had seen only sparingly the last weeks and who she assumed had left her to her own devices.
Instead, she had spent her summer with her hair tucked under a hat and her shirt collar pulled close, and the burden of invisibility she’d felt her whole life had become her freedom. She’d written in the back booth of smoky pubs, had written by the riverbank surrounded by street artists and painters, had written in the windowsill of a sunny bookstore. She had stood in the back of readings with writers who’s names frequently appeared on her bookshelf (of course, all men)- sometimes even managing to drop her voice low enough to share a few lines of her own. She had existed, anonymously, in the bars and clubs occupied by the men her publishers likely thought her one of, had smoked cigars and drank whiskey alongside them. Her luggage was overflowing with notebooks overflowing with words. It was as if a second consciousness had taken residence next to her own. There was Leah, terrified, immobilized, restricted, and George St. Fore, creative and daring, more tangible now than ever.
Leah had never embraced risk. It used to suffocate her. But the more she’d taken, the more she’d leaned outside of her old life, the more she’d found herself able to breathe. And with this new life tucked inside of her and new color in her cheeks, she’d decided to assuage her mother and venture out into society today.
There was no need for a chaperone to accompany her to Lady Deverell’s- after all, it was mere minutes away, and who would worry about Leah Forester deviating from her path? And she wasn’t deviating, only... pausing. She had little interest in the supernatural, and even less in whatever watered-down facsimile of the supernatural this would entail. “If I die now, will I still have to attend as a ghost?” It was intended as a thought that became a mutter, and yet it was still uncharacteristic for her- she was humiliated immediately.