Read Online Serial Monogamy by Kate Taylor - Free Book Online

He is getting whiny now.
    “But he’s the one with the problem. Send me his email and I’ll respond to his complaints. Politely.”
    “Okay.” He sounds relieved.
    I am just composing my polite email to Stanek, saying I heard he had some concerns about the fourth instalment and would be happy to talk to him that afternoon after my daughters’ ballet class was over, when the phone rang again.
    “Sharon. Bob Stanek. Is this just going to be about Ellen Ternan?”
    “No. Not exactly…”

The Dickens Bicentenary Serial: Chapter 5
London. February 16, 1858
    There was consternation at Park Cottage. Mrs. Dickens had left her card.
    Or, rather, her coachman had left her card, stopping the brougham in the middle of the street—to the annoyance of the coalman waiting in his cart to get by. The coachman had lifted the knocker and, when Mrs. Ternan had opened her narrow front door herself, handed her the small, engraved rectangle of Bristol paper. If he had expected a servant to answer or was surprised at finding himself in the further reaches of Islington, he gave not the slightest sign of it and, despite the gesticulations and shouts of the coalman, took time to give her the lowest bow before returning to his vehicle.
    “What are we to do now?” Mrs. Ternan asked her daughters that evening.
    “Does she want to visit?” Maria asked.
    “No,” said Fanny, “but her husband wants her to visit.” Maria giggled.
    Nelly caught the censorious look that her mother shot her sisters.
    “Why would he want her to visit?” she asked.
    “To show the world that we are ladies!” Fanny replied.
    “We are ladies,” Mrs. Ternan said firmly.
    “Yes, but there are gossips who say Mr. Dickens’ interest in Nelly is not altogether gentlemanly,” said Fanny.
    “Fanny!” her mother cried out in reproach at her boldness.
    Nelly, recalling a recent walk on Hampstead Heath, a gold bracelet and a welcome audition with the previously unmoved manager in Drury Lane, blushed fiercely and burst into tears.
    “It’s not my fault!” she protested.
    “Of course not, dear. You are blameless,” Mrs. Ternan said.
    “You were always the beauty,” Fanny said. It was not an envious or malicious remark; it was accepted family wisdom that if Fanny and Maria were the clever ones, Nelly had inherited her mother’s looks.
    “So what are we to do now?” Maria asked. “Invite her to tea?”
    “I suppose I must,” Mrs. Ternan said. “Leave a card with her indicating an hour I will be at home.”
    “Do I have to be at home?” Nelly asked.
    “I think we all have to be at home. That is rather thepoint, isn’t it?” Fanny said. “Maria and I can drop the card in. Or do you think we can trust Colleen?” Colleen was the char lady who came in daily to shovel coal and clean floors.
    “That is sweet of you, dear, but I suppose Colleen can go if we give her good instructions on how to find the place. And I will just pour the tea myself.”
    “They live in Tavistock Square. It must be a palace,” Maria said. “What will Mrs. Dickens think of us, without even a girl to open the door!”
    “She doesn’t have a footman to accompany her coachman,” Fanny pointed out.
    “Girls.” Mrs. Ternan drew herself up and spoke in a voice trained to carry to the back row: “Mr. Dickens is an artist. He has bought his fine house with his fine talents. But we are artists too, and have also worked with our talents for everything we own. That is not something that may be said of Mrs. Dickens. We have no reason to feel her inferior.”
    And so Mrs. Ternan waited precisely two days and then hunted out one of her seldom-used visiting cards and wrote on it in her finest hand
“Mrs. Ternan finds herself at home with her daughters on Tuesday afternoons.”
Fanny and Maria walked Colleen to Tavistock Square to hand it in, and the family prepared itself to receive a visitor.
    —
    To that point Nelly had not given much thought to Mrs. Dickens. She had met her