Page 74 of Dark Tides
“I am forgotten?”
She showed him a tentative smile. “Is it not for the best? Since there is nothing that binds you to them?”
He knew it was. “Then I may forget too?” he asked her.
“You forget too,” she assured him lightly. “It is the past. It waslong ago. A boy’s error. Nothing from the past shall haunt us. You are making a new England here, you can be free of the ghosts and sorrows of the past! The war is over, the plague has finished, the fire is out. All the old heartaches are healed. There is no need to feel old pain.”
He knew she was right; she was inviting him to enter a new world that had been here all along, but he had not realized he could enter it. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. “At last, it’s over.”
He sent Glib the footman to walk her to the wherry and pay for it, to cross with her and escort her to the warehouse door. The lad waited, hoping for a tip, but she slipped inside without a word to him and closed the door and leaned her back against it, savoring the success of her day—with the antiquities, with the buyers, and with James himself.
Alys came out of the counting house, frowning. “You’re very late,” was all she said in her level tone. “Ma and I have eaten, but I saved some soup for you.”
Livia’s frustration at the dullness of the woman in her poky poor little hall, with her offers of boiled-up soup and her complaint of lateness, suddenly burst out. “I don’t want soup. I’ve had the most wonderful day; I don’t want to come home to soup!”
Alys’s welcoming smile drained from her face. “Did you want something else? There might be—”
“Nothing! I’ve had the finest of food, a wonderful start. It was a wonderful day!”
“Your things sold well?”
“Beyond my dreams! James said—” She bit off his name. “It was a triumph. A hundred people came!”
“If you give me the money, I’ll put it in the cashbox?” Alys held out her hand. “I’ll take it to the goldsmith’s in the morning.”
Livia’s rage at the poverty of her home and the contrast with her triumph at Avery House spilled out in a torrent of words. “Look at you with your hand held out! Like a beggar! Of course, I don’t have the money now! D’you think I’m running a market stall? D’you thinkI haggle and trade and spit on my hand and shake it? That’s not how I do business.”
Alys flushed a deep red as her hand dropped awkwardly to her side. “What other way is there? You sell something, and you take the money. How else do you do business? Have you taken no money at all?”
“Of course, you have no idea! I create an interest, I make a fashion, everyone in London is talking about my antiquities. I have sold nothing! I would be mad to do so! But I have spoken to everyone. Between now and next month the orders will pour in and compete with each other. Of course, no money changes hands today! Do you think I am some grubby shopkeeper? A poor workingwoman?”
Alys was stunned into silence. Livia took off her bonnet and handed it to her, as if she were a servant. “Oh, tell Tabs to bring my soup, if that’s all there is?” she ordered. “And a little bread? And a glass of wine?”
“Of course,” Alys said, her voice flatter than ever. She stalked down the hall to the kitchen door and put her head around it and gave the order to Tabs. She paused outside the parlor; she could not bring herself to go in, hurt by Livia’s words but angry at the injustice. She opened the door, ready to speak but at once she saw that Livia’s mood had changed. She was stretched in the chair, her head flung back, her eyelids closed, a smile on her lips.
“You ought to have a bell for Tabs,” she remarked. “It is ridiculous to have to go to the kitchen for everything you want.” When Alys did not answer, she opened her eyes. “It was the most wonderful day,” she repeated dreamily.
“I don’t see how; if you come home as poor as you went out,” Alys returned.
Livia’s sloe eyes showed a gleam. “I know you don’t, my dear,” she said. “Which is why a woman like you runs a sufferance wharf—under sufferance to trade, and under sufferance to live—but I am, tonight, the acknowledged provider of the best and most beautiful architectural antiquities in London.”
“It is a sufferance wharf,” Alys conceded, resentment making her Sussex accent stronger. “Honestly run, with steady trade. You’re right we live in this world on sufferance. My mother was not suffered tobe herself; but horribly pursued and punished. My husband’s family would not suffer my presence; and I was driven from my home. I don’t blame you for looking down on us; but Rob would never’ve done so. He never allowed anyone to say a word against his ma or me. Rob was proud of us, proud of our surviving: poor women though we are, unfashionable women though we are!”
She turned and went quietly upstairs, as Tabs brought in the soup and the fresh bread roll and the glass of wine.
Much later, Livia came into the darkened bedroom. “Alys,” she said to the shadowy bed. There was no answer.
In the dark, she slipped off her beautiful gown and her silk undergown. Alys could hear the whisper of the material but she lay still and closed her eyes, pretending sleep. Livia did not feel for her nightgown under her pillow, she lifted the sheets and slipped into bed naked. The ropes of the bed creaked beneath her weight. Alys was far away over her own side, a cold space between them.
Livia slid up to Alys’s unresponsive back. She put a gentle hand on Alys’s hunched shoulder: “Forgive me, Alys. My sister, my love. Forgive me. I spoke unkindly. I cannot help that I am not like you, nor like your mother or your daughter. I’m a woman unlike any you have met before. I cannot be diminished, Alys. I would die if I were diminished.”
Alys said not a word; but Livia sensed she was holding her breath to listen.
“I could not bear to be like you, a woman driven down into work, driven out of her home. I wouldn’t stoop to it. I would rather die than be poor, Alys.”
Still, Alys said nothing,
“I’m not an honest woman, nor a straightforward woman, not in the way that you and your mother are. And I know I’m vain and flighty.” Her voice quavered with emotion. “I was vain this evening. I was cruel to you. I am a beautiful liar, if you like. I am all twists and turns andmisdirection. You cannot trust me. I recommend that you do not trust me. I am not actually evil; but I am not straightforward. I am not simple.”
