by Rose Lerner
As she walked up the steps of the boarding house that held the small library, her brother-in-law, Jack Sparks, strode out the door and nearly bowled her over. For a moment he looked so much like Will that she caught her breath. Tall and stocky with fine fair hair standing out from his head like dandelion fluff, he even moved with the same swift intensity she’d once loved. Later it had made her stomach turn over anxiously when she saw Will coming: What’s he angry about now?
Jack had never had the same effect on her. She smacked him on the arm. “Watch where you’re going!”
He started back. “Phoebe? What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to see my sister, you clunch.”
His frown smoothed out. “Oh, of course. Give Helen my regards.” He headed down the steps.
“Jack, wait.”
He turned back with a sigh. “I’m in a bit of a hurry.”
“This won’t take long. I was hoping you might advance me that half-a-crown for my election poem.”
Jack shifted uncomfortably. “Actually, Phoebe, I don’t need the poem after all. The Intelligencer is going to be neutral in this year’s election.”
He couldn’t have surprised her more if he’d told her he was emigrating to Canada. “Neutral? But the Intelligencer has been Whig since your father founded it!” The Sparkses had always been the most dyed-in-the-wool Orange-and-Purple family in Lively St. Lemeston. Jack, being the last Sparks, had taken it upon himself to be Orange-and-Purple enough for a small army.
“He and Will would understand.” A spasm crossed Jack’s face. “I think.” He pulled some coins from his pocket. “Of course I’ll still pay you the money. Here are two shillings, and I’ll owe you sixpence—”
Oh, how she wanted those coins. “Jack, you don’t have to pay me if you don’t want the poem.”
Jack drew himself up. “You’re family, and I made you a promise. I feel enough of a turncoat as it is. Take the money.”
She put out her hand, but something stopped her. “Do you need the money yourself? Is everything all right—?”
“Of course it is.” He grabbed her wrist none too gently, twisted her hand palm-up, dropped the coins in it, and crushed her fingers shut around them.
“Jack, if you need help—”
“Let it alone.” His thick, straight brows drew together and his face set. It was an expression that brooked no opposition, and while it didn’t drive her to oppose him on sheer stubborn principle, as it had on Will’s face, it still annoyed her quite a bit.
“Don’t tell me what to do—”
The door opened behind her, and a man in his thirties came out. “I’m sorry to interrupt, sir, but if you would give me a hand with Miss Jessop’s chair, I’d be grateful.”
Jack seized on this pretext with relief, hastening past Phoebe up the stairs. “Of course. My sister and I were just finished talking.” He held the door as the servant pushed the incumbent Tory MP’s daughter through in her wheelchair and then lifted her out of it so Jack could carry the chair down the short flight of stairs. “Pardon me, Phoebe,” he said pointedly. “You’re taking up most of this step.”
Phoebe’s jaw dropped. “No, pardon me.” She pushed past him, skirting around the servant and his charge with no difficulty whatsoever. The chair might be a great long wood-and-leather thing, with two heavy wooden wheels away and back from the seat and a small one jutting out in front below the footrest, but the steps were wide enough to accommodate three or four like it. She slammed the door behind her, only to flush when every head in the quiet library turned to look at her.
All but one. Helen remained bent over the newest Belle Assemblée. “Good morning, what can I do for you?” she said without looking up when Phoebe’s shadow fell across her desk.
Phoebe’s heart filled with helpless affection. “Morning, Ships.” She reached out to run her fingers over her sister’s painstakingly braided coronet of shining dark hair.
“Fee! How are you?” Helen ducked away with the ease of long habit. She was a very orderly girl and hated having her hair mussed.
“I want to remake one of my dresses. I’m going to Mr. Dymond’s voters’ dinner on Thursday. Would you like to come?”
A shadow passed over Helen’s face, her smile turning strained and the skin around her eyes tightening. “I can’t, I’d planned to start embroidering kerchiefs for the Gooding Day auction. But I’d love to help you remake one of your dresses.”
Phoebe frowned. Helen could be a little self-contained and anxious, but surely the shadows under her eyes hadn’t been so dark last week. And surely even Helen wouldn’t turn down a party simply because she’d already settled it in her mind to embroider kerchiefs. “Is something wrong?”
“No, no, of course not.” Helen’s smile brightened again. That smile could light up a room. “I have a bit of a headache, that’s all. Mama was in a tear this morning.”
That explained everything. Mama in a tear was worse than a barrel of ale for making your head ache. “Ugh. Poor Ships.”
“Ugh indeed.”
“Do you know what’s wrong with Jack? He was jumpy when I ran into him outside just now, and he told me the Intelligencer won’t be partisan in the election.”
“Couldn’t say.” Helen flipped back through the pages of her magazine. “I was reading.”
Phoebe laughed. “Of course you were.”
Helen was no longer listening. “Is your dark blue dress clean?”
“I washed it yesterday.”
“Perfect. Look here, it says that ‘for evening, dark blue trimmed with white, and faun trimmed with blue, are very general’. If we buy a length of white lace, I can trim the bodice and the sleeves and add a white belt of sorts to raise the waistline—waists are shorter this month, it says. It’s a shame it hasn’t a demi-train, but…” They both knew neither of them would ever own a gown with a demi-train. “And you must buy a new shawl in some rich color. I saw a Turkish one with dark red flowers at the milliner’s that would do splendidly.”
Mr. Dymond liked Lord Byron; he would like a Turkish shawl. Phoebe was ashamed of herself for the thought. “You’re a gem, Ships.”
“I know.” Helen smiled at her again, but she still looked tenser than usual. Phoebe wondered for the thousandth time if she ought to ask Helen to come and live with her—and concluded, for the thousandth time, that she couldn’t afford it. She was never sure if that was true, or if she was selfishly clinging to her privacy.
“Here,” Helen offered, “why don’t you look at the magazine until my shift is over and see if there’s anything you particularly want to try?”
This was supreme generosity, but Phoebe could imagine nothing that would make the time pass slower. “No, you keep it.” She paused, embarrassed even as she opened her mouth. “Have you got any Byron?”
Helen raised her eyebrows. “Byron? You, Fee?”
Phoebe searched for words to explain her sudden feeling that she was missing something, had closed herself off from something and now wanted it back. She shrugged.
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Helen said. “There’s a three-month waiting list on both cantos of Childe Harold anyway.”
So Phoebe went to read Pamela for the tenth time. I’ve become about as lively as this town, she thought.
Nick rapped at his brother’s door. He could hear raised voices, to his dismay if not his surprise. Tony yanked the door open. Seeing Nick, he gave a nod of welcome and turned back to his wife.
“Can’t you at least make an effort?” Tony said.
“I am making an effort,” Ada said stiff-lipped, as her maid added a few extra ringlets to her coiffure. “Just because I don’t want to wear an orange-and-purple gown—”
Nick hated the smell of burning hair. He also disliked shouting. He leaned against the wall and tried not to be noticed.
Tony switched tactics. “You’ll look splendid,” he cajoled. “Like a Persian princess. Nick, wouldn’t she look splendid?” Nick didn’t answer. Tony
and Ada both glared at him. It was almost like spending time with his parents.
“I don’t want to look like some shameless heathen princess,” Ada said. “I want to look like an English lady, and I’ll wear my own clothes!”
Tony sighed and gave up the fight. “But you’ll dance with the voters, won’t you?”
“Tony, they’ll paw at me—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, stop whining. This is an important night for us, and you’re giving me a headache.” He turned away, rubbing at his temple with the heel of his hand.
Nick was getting a headache too. He had always hated these sorts of parties, his mother hissing at him to smile at the voters’ wives and daughters, but don’t smile too much, remember your manners and for God’s sake look as if you’re enjoying yourself, and if you do it wrong, the world will end. He’d thought he was done with them.
“Oh, I won’t embarrass you in front of your precious voters,” Ada spat, jabbing pins into her dark brown hair.
Nick had never liked Ada; he had thought her proud and stiff from her first Season, when Lady Tassell had invited her for tea and whispered to him and Tony that her father had a great interest in West Sussex. But now he was uncomfortably reminded of himself at fourteen, saying the same thing to his mother as he yanked the knot tight on his cravat.
“How can you stand it?” he asked Tony. “It’s like public days at Tassell Hall all over again.”
Tony glanced at him. “I never minded as much as you did. And it’s worth it to win the seat.”
“Why? What do you want the seat for?”
Tony gave him an irritated look. “What do you mean? Every seat the Whigs have is one step closer to Reform…”
Tony kept talking, but Nick stopped listening. It was the same smooth answer Lady Tassell always gave, the same recitation of party goals and agreed-upon doctrine. It didn’t explain the heart of it. It didn’t explain why Tony cared.
He realized Tony was waiting expectantly for his response. “Sorry,” Nick said.
Tony sighed. “You aren’t going to embarrass me tonight, are you?” He didn’t even sound angry, only resigned.
Nick felt sorry and ashamed. It wouldn’t kill him to make an effort for once. He met Tony’s eyes and shook his head.
Tony didn’t look very reassured, but he didn’t pursue it. He went to his wife, put a hand on her shoulder and leaned in to whisper coaxingly in her ear. She stilled and trembled like a nervy horse, meeting his eyes in the mirror. “I just don’t know what to say to them,” she said softly.
“Just smile,” Tony told her. “You’re so pretty when you smile.”
Nick saw the corners of her mouth tilt upwards a little, a hopeful curve, and Tony smiled back. Maybe there was a chance for the two of them after all.
“I won’t have to eat any more of that awful curried blood pudding, will I?” she asked.
Tony stepped back sharply. “Ada, the butcher is one of our key supporters!”
It was going to be a long night.
Helen would be there soon to help her dress for the party. Phoebe was embarrassed by her own excited anticipation. It had been so long since she had gone to an evening gathering of more than three or four. She had forgotten how overblown one’s hopes could get, as if a few hours could change everything.
To distract herself, she sat at her writing table and thought about poor Ann, still feverish in a ditch. Perhaps the girl could die in childbirth, but her child could survive and grow up virtuous and poor in the home of a passing Good Samaritan.
She had written a dozen tales with babies in them since her miscarriage. She’d thought herself inured to it. But tonight, imagining a swooning Ann holding her crying newborn child for the first and last time, she was swamped with fresh longing and grief.
All the better to write the passage, she told herself, blinking back tears and taking up her pen.
Someone banged on the door so loudly the hinges rattled. It couldn’t be Helen; her sister always knocked quietly. She wiped at her eyes as she stood, ready to be annoyed if it was Mr. Gilchrist again.
But it was Helen, her face blotched and wet, her lips trembling and her chest heaving. Helen had cried like this as a child, shaking and heaving and uncontrollable, sometimes for half an hour at a stretch; the last time Phoebe had seen it had been at their father’s deathbed five years before. “What’s wrong, Ships?” Phoebe tried to sound calm. “What’s happened?”
Helen tried to draw herself up and walk into the apartment, but she stumbled blindly over the threshold, and when Phoebe caught her she collapsed gratefully into her arms. “I’m sorry, Fee,” she choked out. “I’m so sorry.”
For a moment Phoebe was so frightened she couldn’t speak. “S-sorry for what?”
“I’m—I’m in a family way,” Helen said, and then went stiff and silent, gulping down her sobs convulsively, waiting for Phoebe’s response.
Chapter Four
Panic stopped Phoebe’s throat like an accidentally swallowed boiled sweet, turning an ordinary moment into a life-or-death struggle. She strove for breath, irrationally angry at Helen for making her feel this way. How could you be so stupid? Luckily the lump of panic stopped the words before she could say them.
“Mama told me—she told me not to come home again,” Helen sobbed. “She kept asking me how I could be so stupid. She called me a—”
“Mama is a harpy. You know she is.” Oh God, what was she going to do? “Who is the father?”
“Don’t ask me that. Please, Fee.”
“What? Why not? Ships—”
“I can’t talk about it. I can’t tell you—it doesn’t matter. I can’t marry him.”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t.”
“Ships, did he hurt you?”
Helen shook her head jerkily. “It was all my fault. Mama was right, I’m a stupid sl—sl—” She couldn’t even bring herself to say the word out loud.
“Don’t say that. It isn’t true. This man is responsible. If you—God, if you really can’t marry him—” What was going to happen to her beautiful little sister? She drew in a deep breath. Helen was counting on her to be strong and worldly, and know what to do. “He can at least help with money.”
Helen shook her head. “He can’t. He said there’s no money, and if I tell anyone, he’ll ruin me. He’ll tell everyone what I did.”
“What?” Phoebe couldn’t comprehend the magnitude of this atrocity. Someone had bedded Helen and then threatened her? Helen was practically a baby herself!
“What am I going to do?”
Phoebe poured her sister a lukewarm cup of tea, her hands shaking. “Drink this, sweetheart. It’s going to be all right, I promise.” Helen obeyed, her sobs quieting. Phoebe tried to think. Then she tried to think about something other than tracking down the piece of filth responsible for this horror and ripping him into tiny pieces. “How—how far along are you?”
“Six weeks.” Helen pulled a delicately embroidered handkerchief out of her pocket and blew her nose.
“And you’re sure?”
Helen nodded. “At least, six weeks ago is when we—” She flushed. “My courses are usually regular as clockwork, and they’re a month late.”
Phoebe took a deep breath. She felt a pang even asking, but she said, “There are—herbs you can take. If you don’t want the baby.”
Helen’s hands moved to cover her stomach protectively. “No.” She swallowed. “I mean—is that what you think I should do?”
I don’t know. “What do you want to do?”
Helen shook her head helplessly. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”
“If you got married, you could keep the baby. Otherwise, you’ll have to give it up.” Phoebe couldn’t imagine giving up a child, but women did it all the time, didn’t they?
“I—who on earth would I marry?” Her mouth contorted as she evidently began going through the men she knew.
There were dozens of men in Lively St
. Lemeston who would kill to marry Helen, illegitimate child on the way or no. But God, she was so young. Only sixteen. Too young to be pushed into a choice the magnitude of which she couldn’t possibly understand. Marriages could go wrong so easily.
On the other hand, Helen had never been pregnant before. Her child hadn’t started to kick. To have that, and then give it up—
But if Helen didn’t want to cause abortion and didn’t want to marry, then there was only one other choice that wouldn’t ruin her. “I’ll take care of this,” she told her sister. “I’ll take you away, and you’ll have the baby somewhere far away. We’ll find a nice family to raise it, and no one will ever know.”
“How—we can’t possibly afford that.” Helen’s eyes looked huge, her features so small beside her wide handkerchief.
No. They couldn’t. But there were two families in town at the moment who could, and would, to secure Phoebe’s marriage and her vote. The Dymonds and the Wheatcrofts.
Phoebe could feel all her anticipation and hopes dying in her breast as she thought it, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was Helen. “You are not going to die in a ditch, Ships.”
Helen frowned. “What?”
“Never mind. Here, let’s fetch out the blue dress.”
Nick tried to keep his hand light and relaxed on his walking stick, but Moon’s anxiety radiated from him in shimmering waves, like heat from the Spanish ground. He laid his other hand on Moon’s back, and Moon jumped.
“I’m sure she’ll like you,” Nick lied. “Don’t worry.”
“I’m not very good with women,” Moon said for the fiftieth time.
Nick took a sip of punch to hide his sigh. Orange-and-purple ribbons were wound around the columns in the small but elegant local assembly rooms. His mother had donated a large sum for their construction just before the by-election of 1792, as had Lord Wheatcroft. The rooms were full of voters, clusters of professional men and their well-dressed wives and children in a sea of tradesmen and their families. Almost everyone wore either orange or purple or both, or at least a rosette or armband, even though Nick knew that about half of them had no intention of voting for Tony and had only come for the free food and punch.