Page 9 of A Sorceress Comes to Call
She could not escape the feeling that there was something very artificial about Evangeline. A physical artificiality, not merely her mannerisms. It had nothing to do with face paint or curling papers, either. Hester considered such things perfectly natural, even if she no longer bothered to use much beyond a little powder herself. No, it was something deeper and more fundamental. Hester could not escape the odd feeling that if she peered closely at the woman’s scalp, she would see hundreds of tiny holes where all that chestnut hair had been glued in, like a porcelain doll. She remembered her earlier flippant thought about the woman ripping her skin off during dinner. Suddenly it seemed much less amusing.
“Sister?” said the Squire.
“Eh?” Hester realized that her brother had been speaking. “What was that? You have to speak up, my hearing’s not what it was.” (This was entirely untrue, but she had found that it was a very good excuse when she had simply been ignoring a dull conversation.)
“I was saying that we must have Evangeline and her daughter down to stay with us, while they are waiting on the dressmakers.”
“It’s far too kind of you to offer,” said Evangeline, looking up through her eyelashes. “I couldn’t possibly impose.”
“Nonsense,” said the Squire. “What do you say, Hester, old girl?”
The old girl in question would have very much preferred to say no, but she did not. She knew that Doom would not be put off so easily. “Of course,” she said instead, reaching for her wineglass. “I should very much like to make your daughter’s acquaintance.”
Cordelia woke because her mother was shaking her awake. It happened often enough, but it seemed early. When she looked groggily out the window, the sky was still dark. “Is it morning?”
“Close enough,” said her mother. “Up, up!” She pulled back the blankets covering Cordelia.
“Today is the day we get out of this wretched town,” her mother said. Her eyes were shining and her skin was flushed and she looked young. “At last! Small-minded people. I’ll be glad to leave. Now pack your things and get in the carriage. We shan’t be back here.”
Cordelia blinked at her. It had just occurred to her that her bedroom door had been shut and her mother hadn’t said a word about it. This was unprecedented in her experience. “We haven’t got a carriage,” she said, and then softened it so that her mother would not think she was arguing. “Have we?”
“It’s a cabriolet,” said her mother. “Or perhaps a sulky. I can never remember the name.” She laughed carelessly. “Just big enough for two.”
“Where are we going?”
“To the coast. To the home of Squire Samuel Chatham, a ridiculous old man who will fall over anything in skirts, but who is old-fashioned enough to offer marriage if he thinks he’s thought of it first. I’ll be wedding him, and we’ll live in rather more comfort than we’ve managed here.”
Cordelia bowed her head. “We’re leaving now?” she asked.
“Not next week, silly child! The longer you dawdle, the longer this will take. We must arrive late enough that everyone is overwhelmed with pity for our long journey but not so late that everyone is asleep. Move!”
Cordelia obeyed. Her mother had provided a carpetbag and a bandbox. She packed her three dresses and two hats and her sewing kit and her daybook and pens, and the tiny carved wooden horse that Ellen had given her for her birthday years ago. It seemed unlikely that she would see Ellen again, and she wished there were some way to leave a note for her, but what would it say? Her etiquette primer said that letters of gratitude should be “simple, but strong, grateful, and graceful. Fancy that you are clasping the hand of the kind friend who has been generous or thoughtful for you, and then write, even as you would speak.” This advice did Cordelia no good at all, because she would have stammered awkwardly and probably said the wrong thing.
Thank you for talking to me and pretending I wasn’t strange.
No, you couldn’t write a note like that.
When she emerged with her bag, wearing her heavy coat against the cold, she saw the little two-wheeled carriage parked outside, Falada between the traces, and her heart sank. It was a cabriolet and she knew by the crest on the door that it belonged to Ellen’s father.
“This is Mr. Parker’s,” she said, in her most neutral voice.
“It was much too good for him,” her mother said. “We’ll sell it in the city.”
Cordelia swallowed. “Did he… did he give it to you?” She wanted to ask Did you steal it? but that would be an accusation and her mother did not respond well to accusations.
Her mother’s eyes were cold and bright, like fragments of sky reflected in a mirror. “He’s given me a great many things over the years. He didn’t want to part with the carriage, though, and I may have had to use some force.” She laughed and the sound was as cold and bright as her eyes. “Losing his carriage will be the least of his troubles now.”
Her benefactor was Ellen’s father? Cordelia’s mouth was very dry. Ellen had been her only friend, since Falada had proved false. And Evangeline had threatened to have Falada trample him to death, and if she was so pleased with herself, that could only mean that she had done something worse.
Guilt struck Cordelia all over, a cold rush from the soles of her feet up to her hair, and she clutched the carpetbag to her chest and bent over it.
“Don’t look so stricken,” said her mother sharply. “If not for having him as a benefactor, we’d have starved long ago. The problem is that men get bored so easily. Your father certainly did.”
It was all too much, too soon. “I thought my father was dead.”
“He is, and he brought it on himself, just as Parker did.” Her lips curved in a smile. She snapped her fingers and Cordelia knew that her mother’s patience was at an end. She climbed into the carriage with her carpetbag at her feet. Being made obedient would not help Ellen’s father, or expiate the sin that had, apparently, been going on for years.
I’m sorry, Ellen. I’m so sorry. Maybe I can write you a letter someday and tell you how sorry I am. She had written many letters in school, practicing her penmanship, though she had never sent one. Her mother had approved. Aristocratic ladies wrote letters to other ladies. It was a good skill to have, and so she had written out dozens of sample letters, thanking imaginary strangers for visits that had never occurred and gifts that did not exist.
