Chapter 8
It was in the most common of relationships, with one’s own family, that the sole gap in the propriety of Lucy Elliot appeared: sisterly irascibility.
‘Breakfast is getting cold,’ Lucy stated with no preamble.
‘Good,’ came the petulant reply. ‘It’s a hot morning.’
‘It is only hot because the sun is up and you remain huddled under blankets.’
‘I’m comfortable.’
‘You just said you were hot.’
Her sister pulled back the covers and yawned. ‘Fixed,’ she replied, and curled back into her pillow.
Deciding that further rational discussion was futile, Lucy took what she saw as a perfectly logical course of action, lifting a pillow from the sideboard and tossing it at her sister’s exposed head.
There was a grunt followed by a flurry of motion.
Lucy discovered herself flat against the wall and holding the pillow she had just flung.
Densely packed goose down proved to be an effective missile when hurled with sufficient force.
Once again Lucy had been caught off guard by the fact that ‘sufficient force’ was very definitely on her sister’s list of talents.
Though only a year older, Margaret Elliot loomed over her sister and mother and just edged out her father’s six-foot height as the tallest of the Elliots.
She had always been a tall, thin child, but as she reached into adulthood she grew out as well as up, her parents initially fearful that some illness might be to blame and that she might grow perpetually.
Instead, she settled in to her current frame, built like a fearsome farmwife and cursed to a life of customised dress fittings.
The Elliots were grateful that the extremes of their daughters had confined themselves to a single area: Lucy in her fastidious behaviours, and Margaret in her appearance.
In other aspects of life, Margaret was a mild, dutiful daughter, doing her best to fit what was expected of her.
She lacked the natural dexterity for needlework and the pianoforte, but worked at both diligently.
She had a solid background in French and Italian, and could sing well in both of them.
In recent years she had overcome the clumsiness of her rapid growth and acquitted herself well at dances, though she could do little to placate the awkwardness of the partners she overtopped.
In all the clashes of words and opinions that she and her sister had engaged in over the years, her size was the one area exempt from Lucy’s critiques, through her own discernment rather than any agreed-upon limits.
I cannot imagine a circumstance where any civil person should begrudge my being five feet and four inches, Lucy once reasoned to herself. And Margaret is no more responsible for her height than I am for mine.
Besides, there was no shortage of other things for them to squabble about.
‘Mother has news she wishes to discuss,’ Lucy explained. ‘Will you please get dressed, Margaret?’
‘Meg,’ groaned the voice from the bed as her sister rose slowly.
Lucy briefly resisted the urge to rise to the bait and then failed utterly. ‘Meg is the name of a servant or a farmwife.’
‘A name is no more than a descriptor, Lucy. I am the same person whether I am called Meg or Margaret.’
‘You will not be perceived as the same person,’ Lucy replied, acutely aware of the importance of social perceptions, despite her own lack of instinct for them.
‘But in that case, wouldn’t interaction adjust the perception of the person I’m talking to? We may shape how the name is perceived as much as the name shapes our perception.’
‘You are delving into philosophy again,’ Lucy protested. For Lucy, to divert an argument into philosophy was the last refuge of the intellectual scoundrel.
‘Well, David Hume does go into some depth on the concept of words, ideas and meaning.’
The scale of Margaret’s reading interests was of almost indecent breadth.
While she would never claim to be highly knowledgeable in any field, there was scarcely a topic on which she could not be found to have some foundation.
It made arguing with her both irresistible and infuriating.
Lucy’s knowledge was a tall, rock-solid island.
Margaret’s was a vast, scattered archipelago.
Any attempt to push her into the sea and she would skip merrily away.
‘I am quite certain,’ Lucy retorted, already spinning on her heels, ‘that no Meg I have ever met has read David Hume!’
It had not been her finest summation.
‘Wait. What does Mother want to talk about?’ Margaret asked.
‘There is a new occupant at Elsworth Manor,’ Lucy replied curtly. ‘And we have been invited to a ball.’