Page 33 of A Sorceress Comes to Call
Cordelia sat very still, not looking at her mother.
“Perhaps it was an alchemist,” said Hester. “Sold her a hair dye and said it wasn’t magic.”
“Oh, alchemists,” her brother said, snorting. “Loons, the lot of them, trying to turn lead into gold and blowing themselves up half the time in the process. I shouldn’t think there’s many of them left either.”
Cordelia was almost relieved when Master Strauss embarked on a long, meandering tale about a horse that had been dyed black and how the dye had run in the rain so that it became a purple-streaked horse. She laughed at that, possibly a little too loudly, and Master Strauss, encouraged, began recounting the pedigree of the horse in question unto the seventh generation.
“Cordelia, dear,” said her mother, when she rose from the table, “will you join me in the Blue Drawing Room?”
Cordelia’s heart sank, but she murmured, “Yes, Mother,” and was not entirely glad to escape the discussion of carriages and horseflesh after all.
CHAPTER 13
“I have told you not to fall in love with Master Strauss, have I not?” snapped her mother, as soon as the door was closed.
Cordelia gaped at her. “I—but I wasn’t—I haven’t—I didn’t even—”
“You appeared to be hanging on his every word,” said Evangeline, in a deceptively pleasant voice. “And batting your eyelashes, no less. Has young Master Strauss charmed you after all?”
“No!” said Cordelia a bit desperately, wondering how she had been batting her eyelashes, maybe she’d just been blinking, oh god, she was blinking wrong, she knew it, she’d been worrying about it ever since visiting the dressmaker. “He—uh—” She closed her eyes, feeling a blush climbing her face. “He had a pimple,” she said, to the backs of her eyelids. “I was trying not to stare at it, but it was… he kept talking and it was wobbling…”
She steeled herself for a lecture on ladylike behavior.
A snort broke the silence. Cordelia’s eyes flew open to see that her mother had a hand over her mouth and her shoulders were shaking with laughter.
Oh. Well. That’s… good? I guess? She was never certain what to do when Evangeline was in a good mood. Bad moods were at least predictable.
“Oh, Cordelia,” her mother said finally, wiping at her eyes. “Oh my. I should have known that no daughter of mine would be fool enough to fall for such a wretched boy.” She stood up and held out her arms. “Come here.”
Cordelia’s heart sank, but she knew better than to let her dread show on her face. She shuffled forward and let her mother embrace her. Wormwood tickled her nose, chokingly familiar.
“Everything is going so well,” Evangeline crooned against her hair. “The Squire just needs the slightest little push. Then we’ll have enough money to find you your rich husband, and we’ll be really wealthy. Then life will all be easy, you’ll see. Like it should have been all along, if your father had done the honorable thing.”
Cordelia stood quietly in her mother’s arms. Her skin crawled and she wanted to pull away, but she knew better. And part of her—a tiny part that she had never quite lost—wanted to be there and wanted it all to be true so that her mother would love her and maybe things would change. Maybe she would do everything right and she would never be made obedient again.
She watched that part of herself dispassionately, as if it belonged to someone else. She knew better.
Most of her knew better.
She wished that she could find that tiny part and drag it out and stomp it into the dirt. But she couldn’t, so she waited until her mother released her.
“This Lord Evermore may be promising,” said Evangeline. “He’s wealthy, by the sound of it. Charm him. It will be good practice, if nothing else. And who knows? Perhaps he’ll come up to scratch. If you don’t need to compete against other debutantes, so much the better. And he’s as old as the Squire, so we may both be widows before we know it!”
“Yes, Mother,” said Cordelia, despairing. Charm him? I don’t know how to charm anyone. But if she said so, she would practically be asking to be made obedient so that her mother could charm the lord instead.
“I promised to help Lady Hester with embroidery,” she said, keeping her eyes on the floor. If she didn’t look up, no one could read the hate in her eyes, for her mother, for herself, for the whole world that had conspired to put her in this position.
“Good,” said her mother. “Keep her distracted.”
As she climbed the stairs to the solar where Hester spent most afternoon, Cordelia thought to herself—That’s not why I’m doing it. At least, I don’t think it is, is it?
The thought nagged at her that by talking to Lady Hester, she was serving her mother’s purpose, even if she didn’t want to.
Would it really be so bad if her mother married the Squire, though? Hester was kind to her and answered all her questions like Ellen had, without making her feel like she was strange for asking. Alice was more than kind. And I could live in this house and not eat potatoes at every meal and not have to wash the dishes between meals because there’s so few of them. And even the Squire is nice, in a distracted sort of way. Would it be that bad?
Maybe it wouldn’t be.
But I also don’t want Mother to hurt any of these people. I don’t want her to turn the butler off without a reference, even if he scares me. And Alice stood up to her once, what if she remembers that? Cordelia shuddered at the potential ramifications.
