Born Wicked

by Jessica Spotswood

Page 15

 

  “Happy to have me away from your flowers, are you?” There’s a gap between his two front teeth. It makes his smile a bit rakish and all the more charming. He reaches for a sheaf of papers, waving them at me. “It’s all a matter of following directions!”

  “Belastra!” Paul calls out, and Finn’s smile vanishes. “Good to see you. Taking up horticulture, I hear? Or are you planning to give me a run for my money?”

  “Mr. McLeod is an architect now,” I explain, then wince at the note of pride in my voice. I’m acting like a betrothed already, as though his accomplishments somehow reflect well on me.

  Finn scrambles to his feet to shake Paul’s hand. “Welcome back, McLeod. I trust you enjoyed your studies?”

  Paul shrugs. “Well enough. I didn’t spend as much time in the libraries as my mother or my professors would have liked, but I scraped by. Not like you. Cate, did I ever tell you how Belastra could identify any point on the globe? Always showed the rest of us up. The Brothers used to try to best him, but they never managed it either. And it wasn’t just geography. The man’s brilliant. ”

  “You give me too much credit,” Finn objects.

  Paul shakes his head. “You were best in our class in every subject. We were all in envy. ”

  “Funny way you had of showing it,” Finn mutters, turning back to his plans. It hits me suddenly that, all of Paul’s joviality aside, they do not much care for each other.

  Paul chuckles. “Poor Belastra got the stuffing knocked out of him on a regular basis. Schoolboys are cruel creatures. The Brothers rarely intervened, but your father! Lord, I’ve never seen him so angry. He was teaching Latin once and caught us kicking Belastra’s books around the school yard. The lecture he gave would have squeezed guilt from a stone. ”

  “Father can be quite eloquent when he wants. ” On the subject of books, particularly. I wonder if he would have been half so passionate if he’d caught the boys kicking Finn.

  Paul pushes against the frame of the gazebo, as if testing its soundness. “I’m surprised you’re not off at university yourself, Belastra. It would suit you. Me, I spent most of my time rambling around the city. ”

  Finn’s smile goes tight behind his papers. “Some would say that’s missing the point of university. ”

  I wince, remembering Father’s talk about what a fine scholar Finn would have made.

  “Well, in any case, I’m glad to be back. ” Paul gives me an unmistakably warm glance. “Let’s go down to the pond, Cate, shall we?”

  The trees around the pond bow their golden heads, making bright offerings to the sky. Paul picks up a pebble and skips it across the mirrored surface. I count aloud as I used to when we were children: two, four, six, eight hops before it sinks.

  I try to focus on the beauty all around us. On the geese, squawking their way south. On Paul’s reminiscing. But my eyes are drawn to the family cemetery on the other side of the pond. In the back, their flat headstones weather worn and crumbling, are the graves of Great-Grandfather and the two little girls who succumbed to the fever. Great-Grandmother is buried next to her husband. Father’s uncle, from whom he inherited the shipping business, another aunt and uncle, and a baby cousin who died in infancy all rest nearby. Then there’s the tomb where Father’s parents were buried: Grandfather before I was born, and Grandmother when I was so young, she’s only a hazy memory of the soft yarn I wound for her and the smell of the oranges she loved. Beside their tomb is the one where Mother rests. Beloved wife and devoted mother. There’s a quote, too. Poetry.

  Next to Mother’s tomb are five little headstones all in a row. Three brothers who died before they took a single breath. One who lived for two glorious months, months when Mother sang around the house. Then there’s the last little grave: Danielle. The one the midwife urged Mother against for the sake of her own health. The one who killed her in the end.

  She was only another girl anyway.

  I can’t help wondering why we weren’t enough—why Mother was so determined to give Father a son. A son could have guaranteed that the house and the business would stay in the family instead of passing to our cousinAlec. A brother could have provided a handsome dowry to ensure that we married well. But none of that is a substitute for a mother’s guidance.

  “Cate? Are you all right?” Paul’s peering down at me.

  I force a smile. “Oh, I was daydreaming, wasn’t I?”

  He grins, obviously jumping to the conclusion that it’s his proposal I’ve been thinking about.

  “That’s all right. I ought to be going. You know how Mother hates to let me out of her sight,” he jokes, checking his pocket watch. It was his father’s; he got it right before he left. I remember how proud he was, showing it off to everyone. Mother told him every gentleman should have one. “That would be a benefit to moving to New London, you know. If we stayed here, Mother would insist we live with them. She means well, but she’d drive you mad with all her fussing. And she keeps the house hot as Hades. ”

  I laugh, but only because it’s expected. I wouldn’t relish being Agnes McLeod’s daughter-in-law, with her constantly peering over my shoulder, communicating disapproval in her language of sighs. But I’d do it. If Paul weren’t so determined to move to New London, I could marry him and live right next door.

  Now it seems impossible. Unless Mother’s diary releases me from my promise, I’ll have to say no, and Paul won’t understand why. It will ruin everything, and I’ll have to find someone else to marry me, and quickly, too, before the Brothers feel the need to involve themselves.

  Unless—no. I shake the thought off as quickly as it comes. I won’t compel him. Bad enough that I’d have to keep secrets from him. I won’t have a marriage based on treachery.

  I frown at my reflection in the pond, wishing with every fiber of my being that I weren’t a witch.

  Chapter 5

  I’M ABOUT TO SCURRYUPSTAIRS when Elena pops out of the sitting room like a frighteningly cheery jack-in-the-box. Has she been lurking there, waiting for me to come in? I hope she doesn’t expect me to confide in her about Paul’s visit.

  “May I have a word, Miss Cate?”

  “I—yes, of course. ”

  She leads me back to the sitting room and gestures at the sofa. As though it’s her house, not mine. She sits in the high-backed blue brocade chair Paul recently vacated, but where he slouched, legs long, she perches delicately, her back ramrod straight, her petal-pink skirts pooling around her feet.

  “You don’t seem like the type for prevarication, so I’ll be blunt,” she says, folding her hands neatly in her lap. “You’re the eldest. Your sisters look up to you. ”

  I open my mouth to protest, but she waves away my words. “They do, whether they want to admit it or not. If my time here is to be a success, we’ll have to get along. I don’t imagine you wanted some stranger coming and traipsing around your home. But it’s obvious that your father is worried about you girls growing up without a woman’s influence, and I suppose a governess is better than a stepmama, is it not?”

  Lord, but people are taking me by surprise today.

  “I don’t intend to boss or mother you. I’m barely eighteen,” she confides. “It would be nonsense to pretend that I’m so very much wiser. But if we can come to a mutual understanding, I think my time here can be beneficial for both of us. ”