The Unsuitable

by Molly Pohlig

  And Iseult saw very little interaction between Catherine and Fordham, who communicated mainly through their servants, their children, and a complicated series of sighs and coughs. She had never seen even the smallest affections exchanged. Her cousin Elspeth she saw showered with somewhat sickly affection by her husband, and that did not appeal to Iseult either—to be fawned over and pawed at; both of them always had an eye on the rest of the room, as if gloating at their good luck.

  Other than that, other than married couples at the dinner parties she loathed, and people she saw from afar, the only marriages she had any knowledge of existed in books. Iseult was no fool; those weren’t real. Although she knew herself to be more unhappy than many people, she was sure that no one was as happy as people in books appeared, and there were even a great many people more unhappy than herself.

  If the stars were to align somehow. If Jacob did not wholly object to her, nor she to him. If both sets of parents could agree. If suitable housing could be found. If. Ifififif.

  She had to go and meet Jacob. She knew that. She was certain that to do otherwise would mean to be condemned forever to her father’s house. And when her father died, what then? No one had ever discussed that eventuality with her. But as uncharted as that future would be, would the alternative—being married off to a stranger—not be worse? She would be condemned to that companionship for much longer, unless the husband were to die young. And that couldn’t be the correct way to begin a marriage, gauging how long your prospective partner might live.

  It was at such times that Iseult did contemplate suicide. Each choice was the devil’s choice: continue to live with her father, or be sold to a stranger.

  She realized the sky was beginning to darken as evening fell, and she didn’t know what time it was. She looked up at the church’s crumbly, sooty tower, but the church bells were still.

  There was a rustle amid the wet leaves collecting at the corners of a nearby grave, and Iseult saw a hedgehog poke out his nose, sniffing the air, bobbing up and down, beady eyes reflecting the autumnal gloom. Iseult poked her toe out from under her great skirts, and the sudden movement startled the little fellow so that he snapped right up into a ball. How Iseult wished she could do the same.

  It was a defense mechanism she had affected for years, making herself impervious to input from anything outside herself, shooting out prickled barbs when the world came too close, relaxing only when the danger had passed and all was quiet. She didn’t know why, but it seemed to be the end of the road this time.

  Something was about to end. She felt her heart gallop, crashing about in her ribs. Whatever was about to happen was not what she wanted, although if you’d asked her what she did want, she would have had nothing to say. She wanted to go on unnoticed, unbothered, unperturbed. But her time was up.

  * * *

  She slunk in before dinner, and it was remarked upon that she was bedraggled and more out of sorts than usual. She refused help in dressing, even though she knew that would lead Mrs. Pennington to suspect mischief on her part.

  She was chilled and sneezy all through dinner, wiping her nose with her napkin because she knew it would irk her father. But he remained undisturbed.

  “Excellent of you to join me at last, Iseult,” he said, scraping his spoon along the bottom of the soup bowl to irk her. “I haven’t seen you since our lunch. I trust the food did not disagree with you?”

  “No, Father,” she replied, snuffling mightily.

  “Would you care to guess whom I lunched with today?” The long sighing scrape of his spoon on the china shot a shiver through her neck, so Iseult rolled her head slightly until there was an audible crack.

  “I’ve no idea, Father; with whom did you lunch?”

  “With our guest from the other night, Mr. Vinke.” He paused, waiting for a reaction that was not forthcoming. “Jacob’s father.”

  Iseult felt a tremor of unknown provenance, but kept it out of her voice. “Did you? Was it … enlightening?”

  Mr. Wince looked blankly at his daughter. “I would have said pleasant, interesting, but … enlightening? I’m not sure any new information was presented. We discussed Jacob’s prospects, of course, his relevant skills and education, whether or not he could be suitably employed in the steelworks, he’s really more progressively educated than I’d like, you see, we don’t want him thinking he can implement anything, well, experimental—”

  “And why, exactly, is it suddenly a foregone conclusion that Jacob will be employed in the steelworks? Because you lunched with his father? This is how you interview your workers now? Nepotism?” A fury had grabbed her, and she wondered if there mightn’t be a fine steam rising from the top of her head.

  “Frankly, I wasn’t aware you even knew the word ‘nepotism.’ I underestimated you. Well done.”

  Iseult slammed a fist onto the table, making the dinner, the dishes, the cutlery, the candle flames, and her father jump.

  “Would you care to tell me the cause of this particular outburst?” Mr. Wince said, his voice turning dangerous and low.

  She could easily match his warmth. “Are you giving Jacob a job in exchange for his willingness to take me? He can’t get a job elsewhere looking like that, I’m sure. So it’s not as I’ve always feared, exactly. You haven’t sold me. You’ve bartered me.”

  Mr. Wince threw his napkin on the table. “Look here, my girl. This man is possibly willing to marry you. It is immaterial to me whether I have had to bribe him with all manner of riches. I will be rid of you in any case. I should think you would thank me for taking the time and care to find a man who is at least morally decent. Believe me”—he spat, a finger in her face—“I could have made arrangements that would have been far more beneficial to me, and far less pleasant for you. If I’d have known you would be this ungrateful, I wouldn’t have bothered. Although I don’t know why I’m surprised. You were born ungrateful.”

  The two of them sat there, heaving, not looking at each other.

  Despite herself, Iseult’s voice broke on the next words. “He’s silver.”

  Was there, possibly, just possibly, a tinge of regret, of something like sympathy for his only child in his response? He exhaled. “I know.”

  Iseult looked at her soup; a scum of oil was forming on its surface. “But why? Do you know … why?”

  Mr. Wince rose, and Iseult could see him slide his hands into his pockets. “Does it matter, Iseult? No one … no one else will have you. Iseult. This … this is all there is. You will marry him.”

  She felt so at sea that she didn’t even flinch when he placed an awkward hand on her shoulder. Not her left shoulder; he knew better than that. There was nothing more to say, and Mr. Wince left the room, so there was no one left to say it to.

  * * *

  So she had one more morning. One more day in which to … plan? Plan an escape, a façade. No. She had one morning to wait. Her father sent her a note telling her that they would dine with Jacob’s family the next week and formalize the engagement, make plans for the wedding. She had the morning, and then she would meet Jacob, and find out what sort of person he was, or what sort of person he chose to present to her.

  She didn’t undress at all that night. She left the house before Mrs. Pennington was up, almost before the sun peeked its tired eyes over the dingy skyline. As she marched along the streets, she noted a faint stench, a sourness, arising from her. She did not care. No one could bother her this morning, her last morning.

  12.

  After hours of traipsing up one street and down the next, she had come to a decision. She made her way to the bench by the butcher, pleased to find that her resolution strengthened with each step. She practiced her lines. She would begin with a no-nonsense handshake, and say, “It appears as if our parents have already decided. It will be easier if we offer no resistance. Let us treat this marriage as a business arrangement, as our parents have. I shall expect nothing of you if you expect the same of me.”

  Her resolve wav
ered as she turned a corner to see that he was already on the bench. An elderly man passed by, openly staring at him. Jacob looked back at him unperturbed, and she felt surer as she approached him. She was still a few steps away when he turned his head and saw her. He brightened perceptibly and stood. She stuck her hand out too soon to seem natural, and was inhaling to unleash her prepared speech when he grasped her hand in both of his.

  “Miss Wince,” he said, smiling. “I’m so pleased that you’ve come. I was beginning to fear you would not.”

  Iseult’s train of thought was utterly derailed. She stood dumbly, staring at her chafed pink hand between his two silver hands, and thought it looked like an animal caught in a trap.

  “Are you all right? Perhaps you would like to sit?” He looked at her with concern, and Iseult felt a ripple of irritation.

  “I am quite well, Mr. Vinke. And I prefer to walk, if you don’t mind.”

  He bent his silver face in acquiescence, and the two of them started off down the road. Iseult’s mind churned furiously, trying to remember what it was she had come to say, while Jacob remarked upon various things in shop windows, the weather, and a number of other banalities. They paused crossing a street to let a carriage pass; there was a silence a hair’s breadth too long to be comfortable, and Iseult felt compelled to speak. So she blurted out the question that had been hovering on her tongue all day.

  “Why is your skin that color?”

  A small boy passing them snorted, and his mother shushed him and hurried him on, although not before sneaking a furtive glance herself. Iseult felt hot with shame, both at her rude question and at her own embarrassment at being seen in public with Jacob, for the knowledge that people assumed some relationship between them. “I’m sorry. You needn’t answer that.”

  “But it’s a perfectly natural question, Miss Wince. If your hair had a violet hue, I would certainly question you as to its provenance. If we are to marry, you’ve every right to know why I look as I do.”

  Iseult stumbled on the pavement at the word “marry,” and Jacob took her elbow to steady her. She flinched, but managed not to shake him off.

  “Since childhood I have suffered from a mild, noncontagious, but very irritating skin condition. It made every waking moment very uncomfortable for me. The only treatment that has been able to keep that sensation away contains a good deal of silver, which unfortunately does have one very obvious side effect when swallowed. But I find the stares of strangers much less intrusive than skin that feels perpetually aflame.”

  Iseult was unused to honest answers to honest questions, and merely said, “Oh.”

  They moved along in a slightly more companionable silence, Jacob ignoring their fellow pedestrians’ curiosity, Iseult pretending to ignore it by concentrating on the ground. They turned through the gate of a small park, which was blessedly empty, at least.

  More words popped into her mouth. “Are … are we to marry, then?”

  It wasn’t the way she’d meant to phrase it, but maybe she should cut through the niceties and get to the point.

  Jacob sighed and stopped walking, so Iseult stopped too. There was a very large, very dead rosebush in front of them, which they mutually, tacitly agreed to stare at.

  “I think we must. My parents have presented it to me as my only option, which I assume is how your father presented the matter to you.”

  Iseult nodded and reached out a finger to a bright yet forlorn inchworm on the dead bush. She felt a twitch at her shoulder warning against it, but she let the tiny thing wobble its way on.

  “It isn’t that I hold anything against you, of course. I know nothing about you. I had just always hoped that this was a decision I would make for myself. But look at me”—he extended a hand in her direction—“who would have me?”

  “Only a misfit such as myself,” Iseult said, flicking the hapless inchworm to the earth and grinding it mercilessly under her boot.

  Jacob was quiet, obviously embarrassed. “That’s not what I mean, Miss Wince.”

  “Of course it is,” Iseult spat out. “I am well aware of my reputation after my father’s numerous failed attempts to pawn me off on someone, anyone. I am thought strange at the very least, silent and odd. At the worst I am thought possessed by some demon, most likely with blood dripping from my teeth. Believe me, Mr. Vinke, you have a much easier time of it. I am reminded every step of the way that I am not what anyone wants.”

  “I admit that I had heard things about you before we met.” Jacob still wasn’t looking at her, but at least he was speaking more in her direction. He coughed to get through the next words. “Unflattering things. But thus far I have seen no evidence of there being any truth in such rumors.”

  Iseult peered down at the earthworm’s mortal remains, waiting for Beatrice to pipe up with an opinion, a directive. But there was nothing.

  “Miss Wince?” Jacob ducked his head slightly so their eyes were on the same level. “I hope I have not said something to upset you.”

  Iseult stared at his lips. They would have been a nice shade of red, but the silver dulled them to a dusky, sickly shade, making a flake of dry skin at one corner stand out all the more. She wondered what it would be like to be kissed by those lips. She wondered what it would be like to be kissed at all. She didn’t imagine that it could be very pleasant. She preferred not to be touched.

  “Do you not find me … abhorrent?” Iseult asked, bracing herself for an internal pinch from her mother. None came.

  “Abhorrent? Not at all,” Jacob smiled and crinkly lines appeared around his eyes, making him look very old. “You are very different from anyone I have met before, I will say that. I have the feeling that you always speak your mind, even when it is not polite. And you do not see the world in the usual way, I believe. But abhorrent? No.”

  Iseult considered smiling, but wasn’t sure it would be appropriate. A fat sparrow flew onto the branch of the dead rosebush, which rustled its dryness violently in response.

  “It’s a strange situation we find ourselves in, isn’t it?”

  It seemed more definitely appropriate to smile at that, so Iseult did, making sure to keep her mouth closed. At school she had been mightily teased for her sharply pointed teeth, led by an especially keen right incisor. Her father had once taken her to an exhibition about primitive cultures (presumably because Mrs. Pennington and Aunt Catherine were so vociferously against it). There had been a portrait of a group of pygmies, which in itself would have been startling enough for a ten-year-old British girl, and their broad grins revealed mouths full of sharpened teeth like miniature daggers. Iseult was convinced that her father had brought her to show her this particular likeness, even though he didn’t mention it again afterward. But she was ever after conscious not to smile widely, lest people suppose she had been raised in the Congo.

  “I do not expect … love, Miss Wince. In either direction.” Jacob poked the remains of the poor inchworm further into the dirt with his toe, which struck Iseult as kindly, a rough burial after the brutal murder. “I have never loved anyone, and no one has ever loved me.”

  “Your parents?” Iseult asked. “Surely they must care for you, and you for them.”

  “No, I don’t believe there is affection on either side.” The inchworm rites completed, Jacob extended a hand toward the path and they began again to walk. “We tolerate each other. There is perhaps even a grudging respect at times. But at this point all I am is a hindrance to my sisters’ chances at marriage. I have two younger sisters, and I am standing in their way.”

  “Do you not love them?”

  “No.”

  Iseult was surprised, impressed at how matter-of-fact these admissions were.

  “They are naïve, silly girls, and they are ashamed of me. They would not survive a moment in this world without my parents’ money.”

  “My father hates me,” Iseult said. She was aiming for the same lackadaisical tone, but there were slivers of venom in her voice.

  “Why doe
s he hate you?”

  Iseult was pleased that he didn’t ask why she thought her father hated her, but rather trusted her judgment.

  “There are many reasons, but the reason for all the other reasons is that I killed my mother.” Iseult concentrated very hard on walking in a straight line and not seeming as if she were bracing for interference, which only caused her to bump into Jacob.

  “Why should he think such a terrible thing as that? Pardon me,” Jacob said, taking her elbow, most likely thinking she had forced a stumble in order to bring them into physical contact. Iseult wasn’t skilled enough in feminine charm to effect such a move. But he looked at her and smiled, taking her hand and wrapping it into the crook of his elbow. She willed herself to keep moving, speaking, breathing. She had better get used to this, if they were to marry.

  “Because I did,” she blurted, and the admission gave her the curious sensation of her hair being pulled at the roots, from inside her head.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Wince; I have tired you, and you are unwell.” He stopped their progress in the middle of the pavement, forcing other pedestrians to walk around them, and making them even more conspicuous than they already were. Her heart was pounding and she tugged him forward.

  “Please keep walking,” she heard herself sputter. Her eyes darted about for an escape and found it in a narrow lane that she knew to be secluded. She was ashamed as she hustled him down it, but they simply could not keep standing in the street like specimens in a carnival sideshow. Iseult pressed sharp shoulder blades into the cold wall behind her. Jacob looked at her solemnly.