“Oh, you didn’t,” he murmured, his lips at her ear. “Believe me you didn’t.”
2: The Library
You think I was too forward?” Genevieve asked a day or two after the soiree, when her friends had questioned her again and she had given them an abbreviated version of her conversation with the Colonel. “Was I too . . . unfeminine?” At Mrs. Blessingham’s school, girls were taught to be concerned about such things.
“You did rather spout,” Carlotta agreed. “And you know what Mrs. Blessingham says about spouting.”
Mrs. Blessingham went to some pains to teach her girls that when a man of the aristocracy asked a woman “What do you think?” it was almost certainly a rhetorical question. The covenants that governed the nobility, the covenants on which the world was founded, specified with absolute clarity that there should be no conflicts among noblemen and no stridency among noblewomen. Stridency among slaves, inferiors, and women had been tolerated during the human rights struggles of pre-dispersion times, but on Haven, stridency was eschewed, as it made people uncomfortable.
Therefore, said Mrs. Blessingham, young ladies would behave like young ladies, not like political agitators. It was uncovenantly to question men’s business or one’s own status. If one’s husband or father struck a horse or servant or child, or even oneself, the proper response was to retire, to see that injuries were attended to, and to assure that the occasion of anger was not repeated. Men were actually happier if they believed that women did not think of anything except babies and baubles and other such harmless, female kind of things. Happy men were tranquil men, tranquil men made a tranquil society. A tranquil society was the goal of women, sacrificing one’s own immediate gratifications for one’s family and society was Godly and laudatory, and doing it graciously, with unreserved resignation, displayed perfect purity of soul.
“Do you think we really have souls?” Genevieve had asked Barbara on one occasion when they were alone and no one could possibly overhear them and report them to the scrutator.
Barbara had frowned, something she rarely did. “Oh, Jenny, I had an older brother, Bertold. Sometimes I hated him. He’d hurt me. He’d twist my arm to make me cry, and then he’d laugh. But sometimes, just once in a while, he was happy, and when he was happy he was so funny and sweet. It never lasted long. He was killed because he was mean and hateful one time too many. He was Papa’s only son, and that’s why Papa is so set on … well, you know.
“After Bertold was killed, I just knew all the mean parts got washed away, and the funny, sweet parts of him were kept, like gold, panned out of gravel, and put in the treasury. Not all of him was worth keeping, but part of him … I don’t think it was lost.”
Barbara sometimes amazed Genevieve. She had such wonderful thoughts, though they, like the gold in Bertold’s nature, were sparse among the gravel of Barbara’s daily self. One had to go panning for them. And ideas weren’t universally admired, either!
“Women should not complicate any matter under consideration by offering opinions,” said Mrs. Blessingham. “To be a handsome, poised, amusing, seemingly passive but managerially brilliant woman is your goal.”
“I did spout at the soiree,” Genevieve admitted shamefacedly to Carlotta. “Father will no doubt be furious.”
Though Genevieve heard nothing directly from her father on the subject of “spouting,” it was the first thing that came to her mind when she was summoned to Mrs. Blessingham’s sitting room a few days later. On the way there, she wondered if Colonel Leys had told her father, or if someone else had, and if now he was angry with her. If he had heard she had misbehaved, his anger could be taken for granted. She was quite pale when she arrived at Mrs. Blessingham’s office. “Heaven, child, you’re pale as milk!”
“I thought, perhaps . . . Father . . . something . . .”
“It’s nothing that warrants worry! Your father merely sent a note to say he is bringing an important guest to the next soiree.” The older woman fixed the girl with a doubtful expression. “I would be concerned, of course, if your father intends to betroth you to someone. By the terms of the covenants, you should have another ten years before accepting that responsibility. I have told him as much, but he does not seem to listen.”