A Woman's Estate

by Roberta Gellis

  Arthur was relieved that his voice had emerged flat and dry, with no hint of the pain he felt. In a violent reaction from his relief he was suddenly sure that Abigail was lying, that her guilty expression when she mentioned the bookshop had covered some other activity. He was so furious that he never wondered what she could have to hide. All he knew was that she could not have spent more than five minutes in the bookshop if she did not have time to notice the books she bought were in foreign languages. Where had she been all day?

  “Of course they are in the original languages,” Abigail said defiantly, aware that he was annoyed but thinking it was because she was too learned. She was not willing to conceal what her father had taught her as if she were ashamed of it. “One loses so much in translation. I have read some of Goethe’s earlier works, Werther and Iphigenie auf Tauris, and I enjoyed them very much. He is a powerful writer. Bacchae is the only play by Euripides that I have not read. Papa did not like it. And, of course, he would not have Petronius in the house lest I sneak a look at it, so I decided, now that I am all grown up and have plenty of time, to discover what Papa was concealing from me.”

  “Are you trying to tell me you can read German, Greek, and Latin?” Arthur asked furiously. “I do not believe you.”

  “You do not believe me!” Abigail exclaimed, equally furious. “What kind of a fool would I be to lie about a thing like that?” She took a few steps and snatched one of the books he was still holding out of his hands. Opening the book at random, she began to read in quite faultless Latin and then translated. “‘Every kiss wounded me, every trick the depraved woman could invent, and still I did not know whether I was more angry with the boy for taking my mistress from me or my mistress for corrupting my boy.’“

  On the last few words her voice faltered, not because she was uncertain of the translation but because she had realized what the words meant. Satyrica was not the kind of book to read aloud. She stared angrily at Arthur, blaming him for her embarrassment as well as for his masculine arrogance, then slammed the book down on the table and reached for another.

  Arthur was equally enraged and embarrassed, not by the sentence Abigail had read or even by her ability to read it—which implied her ability to read the Greek and German also—but by the stupidity of what he had said. It was obvious that she would not claim to understand a language if she could not, particularly when a book in that language was in his hand. His fury at himself reflected back at her, and he did not stop to think that her ability to read the books she had purchased removed his original cause for anger. Instinctively he yanked away the books.

  “Why the devil does any woman need to know all those languages?” he snarled, and threw those he was holding down on the table.

  Although the question obviously acknowledged that Abigail could read the languages, it was scarcely one that was likely to soothe her. “Why the devil does any man need to know them?” she shrieked. “Women have brains the same as men and could use them just as well if they were not suffocated at birth. I enjoy reading and thinking, and if you do not like it—so much the worse for you. You need not remain in my company.”

  “Since you are so hot to claim the privileges of an enlightened mind, why don’t you stop behaving as if you deserved your name,” he snapped.

  Abigail knew quite well that Arthur was referring to the fact that the generic name for maidservants was “Abigails” and that he was accusing her of lacking the proper delicacy and dignity of an upper-class lady. Widening her eyes into a stare of innocence, she said dulcetly, “I cannot imagine what you mean. If you were not so ignorant, you would know that Abigail is a Hebrew word that translates as ‘my father is joy’. I can see nothing derogatory in being named Abigail.”

  Arthur stared down his high-bridged nose at her for a long moment and then, helplessly, began to laugh. “But I am not so ignorant that I do not know the meaning of your second name,” he gasped. “Evangeline from the Greek means ‘bringing good news’. Whoever named you seems to have been very glad to have you—and so am I.” He reached out and touched her cheek. “Abigail, you are the best news I have ever had in my whole life. Forgive me, and try to believe that I am not disapproving of your scholarship.”

  She shrugged. “Fortunately for me, it does not matter what you think. I can afford to be indifferent to your disapproval and even to pander to your self-conceit by tucking my books away where you will not see them.”

  “But I don’t want you to tuck them away,” he said softly. “I would like to know what you think about Goethe and Euripides. We do not have to go to the theater or some other place of amusement every evening. We could talk of books—”

  The eyes Abigail turned on him made Arthur drop his hand and step back. “So you can gently guide the strivings of my feeble female intellect?” Her voice was deadly soft, rich with contempt. “I do not need you to patronize me, Arthur. It was—and still is—my business to know a great author from a merely good one. I made—and make—my living by knowing one Greek and Latin and Hebrew text from another. I kept a shop in America—a bookshop—and my main business was with male scholars, who depended on my opinion and my recommendations for what they should buy and read. I and my children would have starved, Arthur, and that drunken, useless sot Francis, who was too noble, too high-bred, to serve in a shop, would have starved also, if all those brilliant, scholarly men had not agreed with the recommendations of this ignorant, silly woman and continued to buy from my shop rather than from other booksellers.”

  She shrugged again and began to move around the table toward the door, but Arthur caught at her arm and held her. “For God’s sake, Abigail, I didn’t know. I couldn’t know—and anyway I wasn’t patronizing you, damn you. I really would like to know what a sensible woman thinks of Goethe and Euripides. Sometimes women have a completely different outlook on a subject, which sheds new light on it. My mother has pointed out more oversights and stupid errors in government bills than most of my fellow M.P.’s, but Mama doesn’t read—except novels and poetry.”

  Abigail was looking at him with a very puzzled expression. “Are you trying to avoid acknowledging what I said about keeping a shop?” she asked. “I understand that shopkeeping is not at all a well-bred activity.”

  “No, it’s not,” Arthur replied dryly, “but it’s a more sensible one than starving. I certainly don’t care. In practical terms, I wouldn’t tell Lady Vernon or Mrs. Basingstoke, but Roger and Leonie would enjoy hearing about it. They kept a shop, too—in Paris during the revolution. Roger pretended to be a gunsmith. It wasn’t elegant, but it was better than being guillotined as a traitor or an English spy.” He drew her closer, unhappily aware that although she did not try to fight free of him, there was an inner resistance in her. “Abigail, I love you. I’m sorry I snapped at you when you came in.”

  “Men always get annoyed if they have to wait,” she said rather indifferently.

  The remark was a reply to Arthur’s apology, but it had little connection with what Abigail was thinking. She could see that Arthur’s statement that he did not care about the shop was only half true. Almost certainly he did not care about her activities while she was in the United States, however, the swift change of subject after comparing her business with Roger and Leonie’s—which doubtless had been gratefully abandoned after they were safe—was significant to Abigail. Plainly he cared too much for her to abandon her because she was in trade, but the fact still made him uncomfortable.

  Unaware of Abigail’s thoughts, Arthur answered what she had said. “No, it wasn’t the waiting,” he explained. “It was—I just felt you were eager to get rid of me this morning, and it set me on edge.”

  Abigail was surprised that he had been able to pick up her mood and glanced at him, only to be surprised again at the pain she could detect in him despite the controlled neutrality of his expression. She realized for the first time that she must have hurt him, and that made her understand how unfair she was being. Arthur had not meant
to hurt her any more than she had meant to hurt him. He could not help the prejudices he had been raised with—either those against women or those against trade. It seemed odd, though, that he should be so vulnerable, considering that she was scarcely the first woman in his life. Then she thought that might be the reason. He might have been hurt in the past by women who had lied to him and used him for purposes that had nothing to do with affection. Sorry for the pain she had unwittingly caused him, Abigail relaxed into the curve of his arm.

  “I was glad to have a day to myself,” she admitted gently, “but not because I was eager to be rid of you, Arthur, only because I felt I had better not make my business dealings too obvious. Perhaps I should have told you.”

  Arthur was so relieved to feel the resistance fade from her body that he managed to swallow the impulse to ask angrily whether she had come to London to be with him or to order books. He had always been aware when other women used him, and most of the time he was merely amused, sometimes slightly annoyed if he disapproved of the usage. It was different with Abigail. He had been so sure she had devised this plan only to be with him. Worse yet, he was shaken by the knowledge of how close he had come to losing her altogether, and had no wish to test the strength of the bond between them again.

  “I’m glad you weren’t so bored with my company that you needed a breath of fresh air,” he said.

  Abigail smiled and extricated herself gently from his arms, but she held his hand and squeezed it. “You are never boring, Arthur. I must pay you that compliment and add to it that you are the only young man about whom I have ever been able to say that. Papa was never boring, and a number of the men who used to come to the shop were willing to talk about interesting things—but they were all graybeards with canes.”

  “I am too frightened just now to dare again say I do not believe you,” Arthur said lightly, hoping Abigail would think he was joking and not realize that he was speaking the exact truth, “but were there no gentlemen under ninety who spoke to you?”

  “Oh, hundreds,” Abigail replied, going to the bell pull and ringing for a servant. “And many of them would insist that I serve them, even if my clerk was idle. They were amusing for twenty minutes—after all, I am not so unfeminine as to have shed my vanity and it is pleasant to hear oneself praised—but after twenty minutes, few were able to avoid repeating themselves, and then they bored me half to death. Do you want tea or wine, Arthur?”

  “Were you often subject to insult?” he asked in a strangled voice.

  “Insult?” Abigail repeated, turning to face him. “Oh, no. My dear, you are thinking of the condition of shopgirls in England. In America, I was a person to be respected. A bookseller with a good business—and mine is good, I assure you—is not considered common.” She smiled at him cynically. “Rich businessmen are the nobility of America. I am not really as out of place as a countess as you might think.”

  “Don’t put words into my mouth, Abigail,” Arthur snapped, anger at being baited taking the place of hurt.

  She laughed aloud as she seated herself. “There!” she said. “You sound much more like yourself. And you still have not told me whether you want wine or tea.”

  “Wine,” he growled, just as the footman opened the door, his irritation at her bold admission that she was managing him mingled with amusement. Abigail was never boring, either. By turns she could drive him mad with fear, rage, or love, but never for a moment was she dull. “Yes, wine,” he repeated, and sighed. “I need it.”

  Abigail gave the order and then frowned. “I hope that only refers to our personal difference and not to the news you obtained about Metternich and Bonaparte.”

  Arthur looked at her blankly for a moment, and then realized that he had come home bursting with excitement to tell her something wonderful. It was his frustration at having no one with whom to share his news that had reminded him of Abigail’s eagerness to go out alone. Remembering what he had heard at the Foreign Office lifted the small cloud that had remained on his spirits, and he smiled.

  “No, nothing to do with that,” he said eagerly. “In fact, I will have to ask for another glass so that you can share my wine in celebration. Wellington has won a great victory in Spain. I told you, I think, that he had got his army through the mountains and outflanked the French. They met at a place called Vitoria, and Wellington beat them, took all their guns, and sent them running for France with Bonaparte’s brother Joseph, the puppet king Boney forced on the Spanish, leading the way.”

  “Hurrah!” Abigail cried, infected with Arthur’s enthusiasm and forgetting for the moment the effect the victory might have on the American war.

  Arthur leaned down and kissed her. “Well, it’s not quite time for hurrahs yet. Bonaparte’s Marshal Suchet is still holding Catalonia, and there are a number of fortress cities still garrisoned by the French. It may be a few weeks more before Wellington can drive for the Pyrenees, but Bonaparte is finished in Spain.”

  By the time Arthur was finished talking, the footman had returned with a tea tray and Arthur’s wine. Abigail, who drank very little, said she hoped Arthur would not think her unpatriotic if she drank to Wellington’s success in tea, and Arthur, who correctly associated her distaste for wine with Francis, laughed and replied that it would be most appropriate because the general liked women to be feminine. However, after she took her patriotic sip standing and reseated herself, Abigail had remembered what the end of the war would mean to the United States and remembered that Arthur had originally set out to discover whether or not Bonaparte had accepted Metternich’s offer for Austria to mediate peace.

  “Am I right in assuming that Bonaparte knew he had lost Spain and that the article in the paper this morning hinting he agreed to the peace conference was true?” she asked.

  “Yes, it was true,” Arthur replied, sitting down beside her and putting his glass on the table, “but I don’t think Bonaparte can have had the news from Spain yet—or at least, he hadn’t had it when he accepted Metternich’s offer. That, I understand, was made on the seventeenth and Vitoria was fought on the twenty-first. Information is slower coming from Paris than from Spain because Wellington sends a courier direct, whereas anything from Paris must go by way of Austria or Prussia.”

  “But Bonaparte will have heard of the defeat of his army in Spain, perhaps that the whole country is lost to him, long before the peace conference,” Abigail said. “Do you think that might make him accept the terms offered? I remember that Perce said they were generous.”

  Arthur shrugged. “I am not a fortune-teller, but I agree with Perce. If Bonaparte has a grain of sense, of course he will accept.”

  Abigail’s heart sank. If Bonaparte made peace now, there would be plenty of time to send the hardened troops that had been fighting in Spain to Canada before the winter storms and before the cold made fighting on the northern front very difficult. It would be safe enough for Lord Liverpool, the prime minister, to send the troops, Abigail thought sadly, because Bonaparte would not make peace if he could restore the strength of his army in less than a year. But even a year of the full power of Britain turned against poor little America might be too long. Not that America would yield and accept colonial status again, but the country might be forced to accept harsh and humiliating peace terms. In turn, these might cause such dissension among the states that the union might be shattered.

  Abigail’s worried frown made Arthur ask, “What is it, my dear?”

  “But did you not say,” she reminded him anxiously, “that that would be the worst thing for us and for everyone because Bonaparte would only use the peace to rebuild his armies and then find some excuse to break the treaty?”

  “Yes, I did,” Arthur replied, “and I am not the only one who feels that way. I have heard that Castlereagh intends to do his best to induce Prussia and Russia to make the terms harsher, but I do not think he can succeed. The trouble is that the Russo-Prussian alliance is very shaky, and they have always complained that the
British do not do their part, which makes them resentful of any suggestions. Their response is always that we do the urging and they do the fighting and bleeding.”

  “But how can they say that?” Abigail’s voice was now full of indignation. “This is only a small country. We cannot have a large army. We do not have enough men who can be spared from the fields and other business. Our strength is in our navy. And we saved Spain and Portugal single-handedly.”

  Arthur smiled at her fervor. He knew now that although Abigail was prejudiced in favor of the United States and had strong republican sentiments, that did not in the least imply any affection or even softness toward Bonaparte. He had learned in other discussions with her that this attitude was owing little to her parents’ influence but much more to the treachery with which Bonaparte had treated American merchants and ship owners, some of whom were her personal friends. Still, he was beginning to think that her attitude was more typical of many Americans and of the government of the United States too, than many men in Parliament could be brought to believe.

  “I’m afraid they have never agreed that Portugal and Spain were of great importance,” he pointed out. “And I admit that Portugal is mostly our trading partner. But there is no use in worrying now. The truce between the French and the Russians and Prussians is to be extended until the seventeenth of August. If Castlereagh and Liverpool were not already of my opinion, I might have urged Roger to try to point out to them the dangers of a peace with France, but they will do all they can to prevent it without any prodding. So—”

  “Why can you not speak to Castlereagh or Liverpool yourself?” Abigail asked, before he could finish. “Are they so high and mighty that they speak only to other ‘lords’? Are baronets not sufficiently important?”

  Arthur laughed aloud, not only because of Abigail’s low opinion of the British social system but also because he suddenly felt very warm and happy. It was clear she was indignant on his behalf because she felt he was wise and important and should be consulted.