Page 43 of A Sorceress Comes to Call
Mrs. Green scoffed. “Do not mistake genius for price, dear Imogene. I know precisely what suits me and I refuse to chase the latest fashions. There is nothing like fashion to make one look terribly dated.” She swept her hand down the length of her dress, a sleek wrap in glowing saffron silk. “Last year’s fashions were all lace and ruffles. I refused to add a single ruffle, which means that I may continue wearing this gown in style and that I did not spend last year looking like a birthday cake. An enormous savings in both money and dignity.” She caught Cordelia looking at her and added, “Beautiful women have an easier time of it, at least while they’re young and beautiful. The rest of us must develop style. It’s not so easy as beauty, but it lasts longer, and it’s less brittle.”
“Brittle?” asked Cordelia, puzzled.
“Oh lord, here she goes,” muttered Imogene.
“Brittle,” said Penelope, nodding. “Physical beauty is fragile, my dear Cordelia. Say that you are a great beauty, a diamond of the first water, beloved and admired by all.”
Cordelia tried to imagine such a thing and found it vaguely horrifying. “Wouldn’t people be staring at you all the time?”
“Yes, and that’s exhausting, too. You can never scratch an itch or blow your nose or do any of the indelicate deeds that come of mortal flesh. God forbid you get the hiccups.” She sat up very straight, sweeping her hands as if she was lecturing from a podium. Imogene rolled her eyes and rescued the deck of cards before she knocked it on the floor.
“Now,” Penelope went on, “say that you, our diamond, are at an assembly. There is dancing, there are refreshments, and some fellow bumps into another one and both are drunk and they launch themselves at each other in a bout of impassioned male fisticuffs. Right! Left! Parry! Jab!”
“Careful!” Hester had to duck the jab. “This isn’t a boxing ring.”
“Neither is the assembly. In fact, they are battling by the refreshment table. An immense ice sculpture stands atop it, crowned by a frozen representation of a herring—”
“Why a herring?”
“It’s the Herring Ball, obviously. Don’t try to distract me with trivia, Imogene. At any rate, a careless blow strikes the sculpted herring’s tail! It flies off the table and you, our diamond, are in its path! The sharp ice slashes across your flawless cheek, blood goes everywhere, ladies faint in the aisles, the two gentlemen immediately challenge one another to a duel for having injured you, and you are carried away to the doctor.”
Cordelia’s eyes were very round. Imogene nudged her and said, “This is one of her better ones. Last time she gave this speech, it was a fall from a horse spooked by a rare butterfly released by a rogue lepidopterist.”
“The doctor does his best,” Penelope continued, pretending not to hear. She clasped her hands to her bosom. “But alas! The stitches, no matter how perfectly aligned, are stitches still. The side of your face has an immense scar, from eye to chin, and your beauty is forever marred in the eyes of the world.” She turned on Cordelia. “Now! What do you wear?”
“I… uh… I…” Cordelia had no idea how to answer. “A veil?”
“The most practical answer, yes, but it dooms you to live forever behind a veil, lest you expose your fractured beauty to the assembly. Such is the problem of beauty. Once it is imperfect, the admiration it has won you is at an end. Whereas if you have invested your time into cultivating style—” She swept her hand down the length of her gown again. “—you simply do what you can with face powder, put on a particularly daring hat, and go out to the next assembly. People will think you are terribly brave and fall all over themselves to compliment your hat.” She lifted her chin and winked at Cordelia. “So ends the lecture.”
“I f-feel like I should applaud,” Cordelia said. Was that sorcery? She said all that, and it really seemed like it meant something, but maybe the sorcery made me feel like it meant more?
“Oh, don’t. It only encourages her.” Imogene looked over the top of her cards. “Also, it’s your turn.”
“Bah. And here I hoped to distract you so that you will not take all of my meager savings.”
“Surely you must have some gentleman who is even now showering you with expensive gifts?” said Hester.
“Alas,” said Mrs. Green mournfully. “My last benefactor fell in love, if you can imagine it. I begrudge nothing for love, you understand, and I would dance at their wedding if it were not totally inappropriate to invite one’s former mistress to your wedding, but it has left me in a sad state of affairs.”
Wait… is she saying that she was someone’s mistress? And everyone knows about it?
The thought was far more shocking than mere sorcery. Cordelia thought she must certainly be mistaken. Except that Lady Strauss, dealing out cards to all three players, said, “And here I would swear that I heard you were passing the time with young Baronet Vann.”
Mrs. Green curled her lip. “That puppy. Oh, he fancies he’s in love with me, but I am not so desperate as to take a child’s allowance, even if he could afford me, which he can’t. That is part of why I came out here, dear Hester, not merely for your company. I am hoping that he will find someone else to trail after. The boy makes me feel positively maternal.”
It occurred to Cordelia that this was the sort of thing that her mother might like to know. Being a mistress wasn’t respectable. Would she try to use it against Mrs. Green, even having been one herself?
Silly question. Of course she would. Cordelia looked up at the side of Mrs. Green’s face, with its network of smallpox scars that had left the skin there sunken and cobbled. Not so far-fetched as a herring ice sculpture, but still, Cordelia suspected that she understood why Penelope set such a premium on style.
She wrenched her gaze back down to her cards. Hester leaned forward and tapped one. “Play that,” she said, “it’ll take the trick.”
“No helping,” said Lady Strauss.
“You didn’t bother to explain the rules,” said Hester, “so it’s the least I can do. Play the three next, Cordelia.”
“Pah.” Lady Strauss tossed her hand down in defeat and dealt out another round. She glanced over at Penelope. “You could do worse, you know. Vann’s father will leave him a fortune.”
Mrs. Green snorted. “If I thought it had a chance of giving the old tyrant apoplexy, I might take up with the boy after all, simply to rid the world of a dreadful wretch. But you can never count on people to die just because it would make your life easier.”
