Charity laughed. “It would be, indeed. But I could hardly marry him for convenience, even were he to ask me!”
“I suppose not.” Rebecca sighed. “So what were you talking about so fervently?”
“Slavery.” Charity hesitated. Should she go on? She could not put the moment off forever. “Becca, I have something to tell you.”
“To do with slavery?” Rebecca looked interested. “Has the next meeting been arranged? I believe I am well enough to attend now.”
“No, no. That is, it has, but that was not what I wanted to speak about.” Charity had known the subject would be difficult to broach; now that she had started, she had no idea how to continue. “Becca, it’s about Fotheringay.”
“Fotheringay and slavery?” Rebecca had caught an inkling of the truth. Her voice wobbled a little as she spoke.
“Yes.” Charity met her sister’s eye. “His money is from sugar.”
“No. No, that cannot be so!”
“The West Indies. Tortola is in the Caribbean. Fotheringay has a plantation there. I hoped, once I found out where it was, that somehow it could be proved wrong, but Lady Caroline made a few discreet inquiries. There can be no doubts, I’m afraid.”
“Oh.” Rebecca was white and silent. “I didn’t realise,” she said at last.
“Nor I.” Charity cast an anxious look at her sister. “I didn’t know how to, when to, tell you. How could I, when you were so close to birth? Or when Fotheringay left? When the twins were so small? Then as time passed…we were so happy here, you and I and the twins. I did not know how to bring the conversation up.”
“Poor Charity. You bore it all alone.”
“Not quite alone,” Charity said quickly. “The Sisterhood. Nan, Lady Caroline.” She could not say more, could not speak about how hurt she had been by Isobelle’s reaction. Not to anyone, and certainly not to Rebecca. While her sister was kind, she simply could not understand. Although Charity told herself she was over her feelings about Isobelle, it still hurt so very much. She did not like to think about it too deeply.
“Were they dreadfully angry with me?” Rebecca asked in a small voice.
Charity looked at her in surprise. “Of course not. Why?”
“For marrying him. Supporting the slave trade.” Rebecca would not meet Charity’s gaze. She turned her eyes downwards, as if fascinated by her clasped fingers.
“But you did not know!”
“Perhaps…perhaps I should have known. I did nothing,” Rebecca cried passionately. “I knew nothing of him. My mother said ‘marry him’, and that is what I did. I thought it was right. Or perhaps I should say that I never thought at all.”
“Becca!” Charity was shocked by her sister’s response. She had known that Rebecca would be distressed by learning that her husband’s fortune came in great part by slavery. But she had thought that Rebecca would be upset, maybe even angry, with Fotheringay. She had not anticipated her sister turning the blame onto herself. Charity flung herself on her knees by Rebecca’s side. “Why, Becca!”
For Rebecca was crying, heart-breaking sobs wracking her body. “I never questioned anything,” she sobbed. “I thought it was not a female’s place to do so. Father and Mother were so angered by your challenges. I did nothing, and thought it right.”
“Most people, our mother and father included, would say that was right,” Charity said gently.
“But you would not.”
Charity gave a soft laugh. “Am I really such a paragon that my views should be so respected? I never thought myself so!”
“But these ladies, your ‘Sisterhood’ of whom you speak so highly, they would think so too.”
Charity bit her lip. The conversation was quickly turning in a direction she did not want to go. Back to Isobelle, her laughing, careless comment: But Harry, why on earth should that worry you? Yet even Isobelle was a free thinker, confident that her own views were worth as much—nay, more—than anyone else’s, man or no.
“And they are great ladies, some of them,” Rebecca added.
“If it were known just what they are, perhaps they would not be seen so. But Becca, I never thought you would care like this. You are not trading in slaves, no matter what Fotheringay is doing. You cannot be held at fault. Indeed, neither truly can Fotheringay, no matter your or my opinion. He is breaking no law.”
“No written law, certainly,” Rebecca said, determinedly wiping the tears from her cheeks. “But a moral law, God’s law, what about that?”
“The Bible says—” Charity began uncertainly, but Rebecca interrupted.
“The Bible is certainly God’s word,” she said. “But it is God’s law written down by humans. And humans, we know, are fallible.”
“And what would God say of the Sisterhood, do you think?”
Rebecca blinked away the last of her tears and looked at the upturned face of her sister, kneeling beside her.
“I do not know,” she admitted. “But this much I feel sure about: there is, there must be, more sin in hatred than in love. Slavery is based in hatred. No one can love his fellow man and enslave him.”
“I did not know you thought so deeply.” Charity blushed. “Forgive me. That was rude.”
“No, merely honest.” Rebecca thought for a moment. “It is difficult to know how to put this into words,” she said. “I think that this time we have had together, since my husband went abroad…For the first time, we have been alone together, without our parents, without Fotheringay. And I have listened to the things you say—and, incidentally, read many of the tracts and books you leave around—without another critical voice telling you and me that you are wrong. And I have heard what you say and much of it sounds right to me. But I think most of all it is because of the twins.”
“I don’t understand.” Charity reached up and brushed the final smudge of tears from Rebecca’s face. Her sister was calm now—calm and more serious, more thoughtful, than Charity had ever realised she could be.
“I have my babies. My two beautiful babies—”
“And you are such a good mother,” Charity said eagerly.
“I am not sure of that. But I love them unconditionally. And I can’t help wondering whether the women’s movement, such as that described in Mary Wollstonecraft’s book, came from a mother of boy and girl twins.” Rebecca saw Charity’s face and smiled at the bewilderment on it. “No, do not think me crazed, dearest. I see Mary and Patrick, such wonderful babies, and I look out over a world which values one of my beloved twins above the other. I hear people say that they are valued equally, just in different ways, but that is not what I feel, what I see. I think of how Fotheringay rejoiced over Pat while ignoring our daughter, despite the fact that in their swaddling clothes he could not tell which was which. And I try not to speak badly of them, but I cannot help thinking of the way our parents treated you, and how they would not have done the same had you been the boy they craved. Even though I do not hold her responsible, I think about the way Mother believed she had the right to dictate my future in a way she would never have done had I been born male. And that is not the future I want for Mary.”
“Oh Rebecca,” Charity said, half-stunned by this unexpected version of her sister.
“I confess,” Rebecca admitted, her eyes gleaming now with amusement rather than tears, “that I picked up A Vindication of the Rights of Women originally because the author’s name was Mary. But when I read it, I couldn’t help thinking about what she said…Goodness,” she added, suddenly sobering, “how did we get to here from Fotheringay’s slaves?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, but I have come an awful lot further than you have! What other shocks have you got for me, dearest and most unexpected sister? To think that you have been fermenting all these thoughts and ideas inside your head without my realising a thing!”
“The question is, though, what we can do about our own situation with Fotheringay,” Rebecca reminded her.
Charity got to her feet, smoothing out the wrinkles th
at had begun to form in her dress as she knelt. “I do not think there is anything we can do,” she said seriously. “Of course, this is all new to you, whereas I have known for a while. We—I hope you do not think I have been speaking behind your back, but in meetings the Sisterhood have discussed the matter, and have got nowhere. It does make things difficult, of course. Neither you nor I can put our names down as subscribers to the Abolition movement…”
“Because?”
“It will be pointed out, quite correctly, the hypocrisy of our living on the proceeds of slavery whilst campaigning against it. I live off Fotheringay as much as you, remember, and with much less excuse.”
“I see.”
“It might give those opposed to Abolition the chance to criticise the movement. And,” she added thoughtfully, “those opposed to women having any say on matters such as this to claim it as proof that ladies lack the logic to understand such things.”
“When in fact what we lack more is independent wealth.”
Charity had still not come to terms with this new, knowledgeable Rebecca. She forced herself to say calmly, “Well, yes. Which is where Lady Caroline can lead by example. She has money, a title and a strength of purpose to ignore the male critiques of her position.”
“Miss Greenaway too, I imagine?” Rebecca said.
Charity felt a pain in her chest as she thought once more about Isobelle. “Well, the money is in trust with Lady Greenaway, you know,” she hedged.
Rebecca smiled, following a different train of thought. “It is so funny,” she said, “hearing you speak of Lady this or that, as if it were quite natural. When I think of how much Mother would have loved such friendships, and yet you have come so much closer than she ever did!”
“I found it strange myself, to begin with,” Charity agreed. “Indeed, in a way I still do. But they don’t treat me as their inferior, you know.”
“I can’t imagine you allowing them to do so,” her sister said. “It is strange that you must be so underappreciated by your own family, yet those whom they would treat as superior to them see so much more in you. I know I feel shy and—and ignorant in their company, but you face them as if no such anxiety could possibly exist.”
“I am not underappreciated by all of my family,” Charity said, holding her hand out to Rebecca. “Although I am beginning to believe that I have been committing just that sin in reference to you.”
“Oh, but I was unthinking,” Rebecca said absently, taking Charity’s hand but with her eyes on the small carriage clock on the mantelpiece. “Until the twins were born, I was.” She got to her feet. “And it is time I went to them. Nurse says I should make them wait for my attention, but I do not see why, when both I and they get pleasure from it.” She turned when she got to the door, laughing back at Charity. “I have got so very independent of thought since their birth, you know!”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
To Charity’s great relief, Rebecca did not fall apart under the shock of discovering her husband’s business was underpinned by slavery. She was thoughtful, certainly, and distressed, without doubt. But her reserves of strength were much greater than Charity had imagined. Charity was beginning to realise she had been greatly underestimating her sister. Nan, when she was told, smiled.
“Good for her. There is more to Mrs Fotheringay than meets the eye. I suspected so.”
“Did you?” Charity asked, much surprised. “But anyway, she has taken the news much better than I feared. And now, at least there are no secrets between us.”
Nan nodded. “It is so good to have family you know you can rely on. My parents are wonderful, but they are of a different generation. We do not always see eye to eye, though I know they will love and support me in whatever I do. But my brother, well!” She smiled fondly. “He is a different matter, as I’m sure you noticed.”
“Yes.” Charity smiled too. “Rebecca wants me to marry him, you know.”
Nan looked up. “But I thought…You said—no secrets?”
“Oh, she knows that I am not interested in gentlemen. I think, though she would not admit it, that she hopes that he, or someone, might change my mind on that front. But she wants me to have a settled home. It has not occurred to her that I might be cheating Captain Musgrove if I married him just for that reason.”
“I see.” Nan was thoughtful.
“Pray reassure your brother that I have no expectations from him,” Charity said hastily. “Indeed, even were he to ask, I could not agree. But he is certainly the best gentleman of my acquaintance. And Rebecca clearly agrees. Having married from obligation herself, she would not wish any man upon me save the very nicest.”
“He is certainly that. But a settled home? I’m not sure there’s any such thing with a sailor, you know. He spends so much of the time away. We are not sure how much longer we will have him from on this furlough, you know. The moment the ship is ready to sail once more, he will be off again.”
“But do they not—excuse me for the personal question—do they not object to the fact that he has…” Charity could not think of a tactful way to finish the question, but Nan knew what she meant.
“One arm?” she asked. “Certainly other men have been drafted out for such a reason. But Lord Nelson, you know, was similarly bereft, yet it was his leadership which won the Battle of Trafalgar. My brother is no quitter, and the Navy wished to keep him in post.”
“That makes sense.” Charity nodded. “Incidentally, I am instructed by my sister to tell you that you and he are both extremely welcome to visit again. Indeed, she would very much appreciate it if you would.”
“Oh, that’s nice of her!” Nan said. “Tell her we should be delighted. Just send us the invitation, and we shall be there.”
But as it turned out, events were to prevent such an innocent seeming arrangement from taking place. Not a week later, Rebecca burst into the room where Charity sat playing the piano. Charity finished off the last lines of the sonata with a flourish and then looked up at her sister, smiling.
“There! How does that sound?” But the look on Rebecca’s face stopped her. “Becca, what’s wrong?”
Rebecca was breathing fast, her face blotchy white and grey. “I don’t know how to tell you. But I know I must.”
Charity got up from the piano stool, pushing it so violently away that it rocked heavily. “Tell me what? Mother? Is she—is she dead?”
“No, Mother is fine, at least I think so. Listen, Charity, you know I was out this morning?” Charity nodded impatiently. “There is a rumour that I heard about an accident, a serious one…no, not a rumour, I think. Truth. I believe it was true.”
“What is it? Becca, what can it be that makes you look like this?”
Rebecca breathed out deeply, a shaky breath which trembled as it exited her body. “Charity, it’s Miss Greenaway. Your Isobelle.”
Charity jerked as if Rebecca had just hit her. She had not known what she was expecting Rebecca to say; all she knew was that it wasn’t this.
“What? What has happened? What sort of ‘accident’?”
“She…her carriage overturned. Her phaeton.”
“Her phaeton?” Charity was suddenly finding it hard to breathe. She remembered Isobelle’s pride in her beautiful little carriage with the matching greys, and heard again her ex-lover’s confident words about her driving. “Do you mean she’s…?” She couldn’t frame the word.
Rebecca reached out and took Charity’s hand. “Not dead, Charity. But…but injured. I think—it is not hopeful.”
Charity looked down into her sister’s worried face and squeezed her hand hard. “Thank you, Becca. For telling me. For…for caring.”
“You’re my sister,” Rebecca said quietly.
They stood together for a minute or so in silence, and then Charity stepped away, drawing herself up. “I must go to her.”
“But do you think…” Rebecca hesitated. “This isn’t the moment for a social call. I don’t mean she wouldn’t want to see you, but I’
m not sure what the situation may be. I believe the doctor has been round more than once already. I don’t think she…”
Charity shook her head and pushed a stray strand of hair out of her face. “Not to visit, Becca. To look after her.” She saw her sister’s expression. “I’m good with ill people, you know that,” she pressed. “It’s the only time Mother ever wanted me around.” Rebecca winced at this, and Charity smiled at her. “I didn’t mean that badly, but you know it is true. So if Isobelle really is seriously injured, I could help.”
“But her family will surely—”
“She hasn’t got any,” Charity interrupted. “At least, there’s her mama, but her mother is an invalid herself. She won’t be able to care for Isobelle. I could be of some use. Fetch and carry, whatever is needed.”
Rebecca shook her head. “I still think you shouldn’t…”
“I know.” Charity smiled at her. “But you know I’m going to anyway. Forgive me?”
“I would forgive you anything. Charity, you know what is best, of course, but…” She trailed off at the look on Charity’s face, set and determined. “Take care of yourself, dearest. That is all. Ask Wilbur to take you round, and do not worry about how long you may take. I will not need the carriage again today.”
“Thank you.”
Charity ran to her room to change her dress, calling for the maid as she did so. She was always a speedy dresser, but this time she must have broken all records, wriggling into her clothes with little care for the delicate materials. Finally, less than an hour after Rebecca had broken the news, the carriage drew up at the Greenaways’ house.
There was a small, familiar figure on the doorstep. Charity tumbled out of the carriage in her anxiety to get to her.
“Nan!” Charity half-ran towards her, her hands held out. If she could have seen anyone at that moment, she would have wanted it to be Nan. “Have you been…Do you know…How is she?”
Nan looked tired, Charity saw, and worried. She had never seemed to adore Isobelle in the way most of the rest of the Sisterhood did, but then Nan always was more reticent. Never cold, always welcoming, but not prone to the exuberant bursts of emotion that Isobelle, Lydia, Louisa—even Charity—gave way to on occasion.
The Sisterhood Page 25