“Oh, yes, I do agree.”
“Why are you surprised?” I turned to cock my head to my husband as I spoke.
“We didn’t know that Uncle Lawrence was getting married until a messenger
arrived yesterday,” Thomas said. “That was our first surprise. I suppose we were
all expecting a motherly lady, not someone so very young and beautiful.”
“I suspect I’ll become quite motherly in the years to come, Thomas.”
“What? Are you already breeding?” This was from John, his tone low and quite
vicious. He pushed away from the mantelpiece and took two long steps toward us.
My tongue was dead wood in my mouth.
“No, John,” my husband said easily, taking my free hand in his, “what she means
is that she’ll become quite comfortable with all of you in the years to come.”
I said nothing, just let all my new relatives look me over to their hearts’
content. What did they see other than a girl who was on the small side with
curling reddish-brown hair? I wasn’t plain, but I doubted that I could lay claim
to the “beautiful” that Thomas had just used to describe me. I knew I had nice
blue eyes, “all summery,” my grandfather had said, but the three of them were
too far away to be able to admire them, if they so chose.
Why hadn’t Lawrence told them he was marrying me? What was going on here?
Lawrence said to Amelia, “My dear, has Brantley told you when we can expect
dinner? Andy here has a healthy appetite. I believe her stomach began
complaining some ten miles distant from Devbridge.”
My stomach had growled, but not loudly.
I gave him a sunny smile. “Perhaps a pheasant or two, nicely baked, mind you,
would suit me just fine.”
He lightly touched his fingers to my cheek, caressing me. I froze. I knew he
felt me withdraw, even though I didn’t move or twitch or anything at all. And I
knew it, too. His smile never slipped.
“I’ll ring for Brantley and see about your pheasant.”
“Thank you, Lawrence.” He hadn’t meant anything. He was just showing me
affection. I had to accustom myself to that sort of thing from a man. From my
husband. It meant nothing. He was simply fond of me. I could deal well enough
with that.
Amelia had sat down again on a lovely mahogany chair with scrolled arms from the
last century and arranged her dark blue silk skirt. She was perhaps three years
my senior, no more. And lovely, what with hair as dark as a sinner’s dreams, as
my grandfather had said upon occasion, all done up atop her head in a knot of
loose curls.
I asked, “You don’t ride, Amelia?”
George barked because John was walking toward us. He strained against my arms.
“Why ever would you think that I don’t ride? John, don’t encourage that dog.”
“You are so very white,” I said. “I can’t imagine the sun ever touching you. You
look like one of the statues of the goddess Diana I saw in the British Museum.
George, maintain a modicum of decorum, if you please.”
“Too white, I tell her,” said Thomas. He was standing behind her, his hand
resting lightly on her shoulder. “Perhaps even dead-white in the winter, and
that’s just around the corner now. I don’t like death or anything to do with it.
My constitution, you know, isn’t what it should be.”
“I don’t like freckles,” Amelia said. “The instant a single sun’s ray gets to my
face, I grow freckles.” She smiled, and I was struck that the white skin on her
face had flushed a bit.
“Freckles have always reminded me of age spots,” Thomas said. “Age spots arrive
just before death. No, I don’t like freckles, either. Amelia, my dearest, I
prefer the dead-white skin to freckles. The more I think about it, the more I
believe I like all your white flesh. Yes, I now count myself content.”
John, who was staring at his brother, a look of bafflement on his face, said
then, “Thomas, what is all this talk about death? I see nothing at all wrong
with you. You are healthy as a stoat. You will outlive us all.”