Page 29 of A Sorceress Comes to Call
What do I say to that? Is there a right answer? “I’ll be careful,” promised Cordelia. “If I start to feel anything like that, I’ll tell you.”
Her mother nodded. “Good child. Now make yourself scarce. Go distract the Squire’s sister, if she’ll have you.”
“Yes, Mother,” said Cordelia, and fled, leaving scattered lumps of sugar behind her.
“Lady Hester?”
“Hmm?”
“What’s a compromising position?”
Hester’s hand jerked and she spilled tea into her lap. “What?”
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to—”
It took a few minutes to clean up both the spill and the apologies, but eventually Hester had dealt with both. “Now then,” she said, fixing her gaze on Cordelia. “Why are you asking about compromising positions?”
Cordelia swallowed. “My m-mother told me to avoid them. But they never taught us in school what one was, and she was in a mood where I didn’t want to ask.”
“Yes, of course.” Hester rubbed her forehead, wondering again how much she dared to say to Doom’s daughter. “A compromising position is when you’re… ah…” She looked at Cordelia’s small, guileless face and tried to figure out how to phrase it. “When you’re alone with a man that you aren’t related to, with no witnesses, and something might happen.”
“Like what?”
“That your… ah… virtue might be compromised.”
Cordelia looked blank. Hester stared briefly at the ceiling and was intensely glad that she’d never had children. “Fornication, child. If you’re alone with a man long enough that people think he’s had a chance to bed you.”
A squeak of horror was enough to tell her that she’d finally gotten through. Hester massaged her temples. She didn’t have a headache but it felt as if she ought to.
“What would happen?” breathed Cordelia in fascinated horror.
“Well, if he’s an honorable man, he marries you.”
“What if he isn’t?”
“Then if you’re unlucky, he marries you anyway. Otherwise he gets away scot-free and you’re ruined for polite society.”
“But that’s not fair!”
“Not remotely,” Hester agreed. Privately she was rather pleased to see Cordelia flush with outrage. Fight back a little, child. Even a rabbit in a trap can bite. “Even worse, you don’t have to have done a damn thing. Just being alone with a man for long enough without a chaperone is enough to condemn a woman in some people’s eyes, even if all they did was sit and read the Bible together.”
Cordelia’s eyes were round with horror. “What?”
“I know. It’s utterly ridiculous. It would almost be funny if so many girls didn’t suffer for it.”
“But why?”
Hester lifted her shoulders in a vast shrug. “Men are terrified of being cuckolded.”
“Of what?”
Hester gazed at the girl for a long moment, then reached into her housecoat’s inner pocket and removed a flask. She tipped the contents into her tea, took a long sip, and felt it burn all the way down. For medicinal purposes only, but I believe this counts. How on earth did Doom send this girl out so completely unprepared?
In her heart, though, she knew. Evangeline thought of her daughter simply as an extension of herself. Not the first mother to do so, nor the last, I imagine, though she’s taken it to an extraordinary degree. Since Evangeline knew all the intricacies of proper societal behavior, she simply assumed that her daughter must as well.
How did someone that utterly self-centered manage to raise a child at all? She must have had a nursemaid, but clearly not a tutor. Although the girl’s never mentioned a nurse… Not that you’ve ever really asked. But how else would Doom have managed to keep a child alive—magic? Hester snorted at her own thoughts.
“All right,” she said, putting the flask away. “Let’s start at the beginning…”
