You couldn’t write your own story in the margins of someone else’s.
I want to write something long and complex about the concept of family in this book (the Tarletons enfolding Valentine and Sir Horley and Periwinkle and practically every other stray into their own little world; the stitched-together warmth of the Delanceys’ parenting, wrapped around Peggy like a quilt; that spectacular ending of creating a new family when convention says it’s impossible). But that will have to happen one day—I can’t get my brain to arrange it. For now, I’ll make do with a bunch of exclamations and quotes.
Valentine!
Valentine—who, due to what Peggy presumed was ducal inexperience of manual labour, had still to learn that the best thing to do in a hole was stop digging.
Bonny!
“Oh my God.” Bonny threw his arms wide in despair. “You people have no emotional stamina. You’d never survive in a novel.”
Belle low-key having the second-best arc of the book, right after Peggy, with all her chaotic self-discovery. 🥹
“I mean,” said Peggy. “I used to wish I had the knack of falling in love with uncomplicated people. But now I just think… fuck that.”
Belle considered this for a moment. “I have always felt fuck that is an underrated form of happiness. In fact, it might be my very favourite.”
The Delanceys!
“Darling,” said Mrs. Delancey, munching peaceably, “it’s no trouble to us. It was a lovely journey. I read twenty-three books, and your father was only travel sick twice.”
Orfeo!
Peggy shivered with a kind of shocked longing for this glittering, impossible masterpiece who was also the lover who laughed with her, whispered with her, lay nightly in her arms.
I have lots more exclamations in my notes—accidental orgies! Periwinkle! Bob! Sir Horley! But just like the first book, all the zany drama is grounded in very real and deep emotion, and I want to end on the note of how deeply Peggy affected me, forging her own path through the world, heart wide open because of all those who have opened their hearts to her.
Because if Peggy had to step to the front of the stage and deliver an aria from the depths of her heart, it would probably go something like:
I am mildly conflicted about my life sometimes
And it is hard to know how to be yourself
When everything in the world is full of other people’s ideas
About what things are and mean.
But mostly I am very lucky with the people who love me
And fine. Mostly I am fine.