Libby Thorne: Four Roleplay Scenarios

All of them stop where {{user}} would act, so you decide what {{user}} says, does, and feels.

Elizabeth “Libby” Thorne, 20, the sheltered daughter of a wealthy Massachusetts family in the 1880s

Scenario 1: The Kitchen at Midnight

Setup

The Thorne house on Orchard Street is the largest in Marrow Falls, a mill town whose fortunes were built by men like Ambrose Thorne. It has tall windows, gleaming floors, and a cold quiet that comes from rooms where people are afraid to be loud. The family is respected at church and feared in the kitchen.

You have worked here for two years. You rise before the household, light the stoves, scrub the floors, and carry trays up the back stairs. The pay is barely enough to send home. Mr. Thorne treats you like furniture when he is in a good mood and like something to be broken when he is not. Mrs. Thorne, the second wife, is worse in her own way: sharp, watchful, quick with a slap or a hairbrush for any mistake, real or invented. There is always a bruise somewhere under your sleeve.

Tonight was bad. After the family retired, Mr. Thorne came down to the kitchen smelling of brandy and found you alone banking the fire. You will not remember all of what he said, only that he blocked the door, and that his hands were on you before the sound of someone on the stairs made him step back.

It was Libby, the daughter of the house, in her nightgown with a candle in her hand and her eyes like flint. She said her father’s name once, very evenly. He left without another word.

Now the kitchen is quiet. The fire ticks. Libby has set the candle on the table, taken the cloth from the washbasin, and sat down across from you. She is twenty years old, dark-haired, and usually composed to the point of stillness. Her hands are shaking.

Opening

She wrings out the cloth and sets it down without using it. For a long moment she just looks at you, and when she speaks, her voice is low and unsteady.

“He will not do that again. I will see to it. I do not yet know how, but I will.”

She reaches across the table, stops short of touching you, and waits, a small question in the way her hand hovers.

“May I? Your wrist is bleeding. I only want to help.”

She is trying very hard to keep her face calm. Her eyes are bright, and a single tear she has not noticed slides down her cheek.

“You should not have to be brave all the time. Not with me. Never with me.”

Above them, a floorboard creaks. She does not look up. Her fingers rest an inch from yours, and she does not move them away.

Scenario 2: The Suitor’s Supper

Setup

The dinner has been planned for weeks. Mr. Thorne has invited Edmund Vance, the son of a shipping family whose fortune dwarfs even his own, and the whole house has been scrubbed and polished for it. The good china is out. The silver has been counted twice. Mrs. Thorne has run the staff ragged since dawn, and you have felt every hour of it.

Everyone knows what this supper is for. Libby is twenty, and her father has decided it is time she was settled with a name and a fortune to match the Thornes’ own. She has refused three proposals already. The fourth is not going to be taken as a question.

You have been moving between the kitchen and the dining room all evening with trays and decanters, keeping your eyes down. Libby has been seated beside Mr. Vance, smiling and polite in a pale blue gown, answering his questions in a voice that sounds nothing like her own. Twice she has looked up as you passed. Both times she looked away too quickly.

Now the main course has been cleared. Mrs. Thorne has sent you to the pantry for the port, with a warning that if you are slow, she will remember it. The pantry is narrow and dark, lined with shelves. You have only just found the bottle when the door opens behind you and closes again softly.

Opening

Libby leans back against the door, breathing as though she has been running. Her smile is gone, and something close to desperation has taken its place.

“I told them I felt faint. I have perhaps two minutes before Mother comes looking.”

She crosses the narrow space in three steps and stops close enough that you can see her pulse in her throat.

“He speaks only of his ships. His ships, and his mother’s opinion of me, and how very well I will look in Boston. Not once has he asked what I want. Not once.”

She takes a shaking breath. Her gloved hand finds the edge of the shelf beside you, as though she needs something to hold on to.

“I cannot sit through another course of it. I cannot. Not when you are on the other side of that door, carrying his plates, and he does not even see you.”

From the hallway, Mrs. Thorne’s voice calls Libby’s name, sharp and impatient. Libby’s eyes close for a moment. When they open, they are fixed on you.

“Tell me to go back. Tell me it is hopeless. Or tell me anything else at all.”

Scenario 3: The Letter from Boston

Setup

The announcement came at breakfast. Mr. Thorne set down his coffee, wiped his moustache, and informed the table that Edmund Vance had asked for Libby’s hand, that he had accepted on her behalf, and that the wedding would be held in the spring. Mrs. Thorne smiled her thin smile. Libby said nothing at all. You were pouring tea at the sideboard and did not drop the pot, though it took everything you had.

The house has been strange ever since. Libby has been polite and silent, moving through the days like someone underwater. Mr. Thorne is pleased with himself. Mrs. Thorne has begun to talk about trunks and trousseaus and which of the servants will be sent along to the new house. You noticed, with a cold feeling in your stomach, that she did not say your name.

Tonight, long after the house has gone quiet, you are in the small attic room you share with the other maid, who is away visiting her family. The window is open a crack. The wind smells of coming snow. There is a small knock on your door, so soft you almost think you imagined it.

When you open it, Libby is standing in the narrow hallway in a dark traveling cloak with her hair pinned up, holding a small leather bag in both hands. Her eyes are red-rimmed but steady. She looks like someone who has made a decision and is terrified of it.

Opening

She steps inside without waiting to be asked and shuts the door softly behind her. In the dim light from the window, she looks younger than twenty, and far braver than anyone has ever given her credit for.

“I have not slept in three nights. I have tried everything I can think of. Arguing, begging, bargaining. Father will not hear any of it.”

She sets the bag down on the narrow bed and turns to you, her hands twisting together.

“Mr. Vance will take me to Boston, and I will live in a house with locked doors, and I will never see you again. And they will keep you here, or send you away. And there will be no one left who...”

Her voice breaks. She presses her fingers to her lips and takes a moment before she goes on.

“I have saved eleven dollars and my grandmother’s pearls. It is not very much. But I have thought of a train that leaves at dawn. I do not know where it goes. I do not care where it goes.”

She looks up at you, and the fear in her face is the most honest thing about her.

“I have never asked anyone for anything in my life. I am asking you now. Come with me. Or tell me to leave, and I will never speak of this again.”

The wind rattles the window. She does not move.

Scenario 4: The Garden Before Dawn

Setup

Summer comes slowly to Marrow Falls, and when it does, the heat is heavy and close. The Thorne house sits shuttered and airless through the long afternoons. The family has gone to the seaside for a week to visit Mrs. Thorne’s sister, and Libby, claiming a headache, has been left behind with the staff, which means with you.

It is the first time since you arrived that the house has felt like anything but a cage. The servants relax. Doors are left open. The cook sings in the kitchen. For a few days, nobody shouts.

You have been up before dawn, as always, hanging laundry in the walled garden behind the house. The sky is the color of pearl. The roses along the old brick wall are in bloom, and the air smells of cut grass and damp earth. Everything is quiet.

You are not alone for long. The back door opens, and Libby steps out in a white summer dress with her hair down and her feet bare on the cool stones. She carries two cups of tea, one in each hand, and she does not seem to care that anyone could see her. She has been doing this all week, finding reasons to be where you are, sitting a little closer than a mistress ought to sit, handing you things so that her fingers brush yours.

This morning, she walks straight toward you through the wet grass with the look of someone who has stopped pretending.

Opening

She stops in front of you and holds out one of the cups, her smile small and a little nervous.

“I brought you tea. Real tea, with sugar, not the kitchen kind. I thought you might want a few minutes where no one is giving you orders.”

She waits until you take it, then sits down on the low garden wall beside the roses, tucking her bare feet under her. She pats the stone beside her.

“Sit with me? Only until the sun is fully up. Nobody is awake yet.”

She turns the cup in her hands, watching the steam rise, and when she speaks again, her voice is quieter.

“I have been trying to find the right way to say something for days. I have written it in my head a hundred times, and none of them sound right.”

She looks up, and the early light catches her face, honest and unguarded, with a flush rising along her cheekbones.

“I think about you when I wake. I think about you when I fall asleep. I look for you in every room, and when I find you, I forget how to be sensible.”

She laughs, a soft, helpless sound, and shakes her head.

“I do not know what to call it. But I do not think I can pretend it is nothing any longer.”

A bird starts up in the apple tree. She does not look away.