Chapter 6
Six
If you ever encounter a pale-faced child haunting a library, don’t assume she’s childlike. Or a ghost.
The library was a generously sized room, its Gothic windows obscured by stone tracery. Yet oil lamps fixed to the walls made it reasonably bright, and two fireplaces kept it warm.
The closest bookshelf to the door held Latin tomes. I wandered to a double-sided podium displaying a leather-bound family Bible on one side. The volume was heavy, its cover and spine adorned with gilt, with the Burnsby coat of arms embossed on the cover.
I turned from the Bible to a Book of Hours lying open on the other side of the podium, its pages illustrated with sly dragons and crimson poppies. I dropped Peony’s leash and began turning the pages.
When I glanced up, the piglet had disappeared into the rows of bookcases that jutted from the opposite wall. “Peony!” I called.
Being an obedient piggy, she oinked from the shadows.
I followed the sound and found Peony gazing up at a young person curled in an armchair.
Surely this was Burnsby’s daughter. She appeared to be thirteen or fourteen years old, very thin, wearing an unflattering, girlish gown of bleached wool.
Black hair tumbled around her shoulders in disarray, and she frowned at me from under bushy eyebrows.
She had been leaning forward, trying to coax Peony to approach, but she stood when I appeared and gave me a perfunctory curtsy. “You must be the new wife.”
“What an unenthusiastic greeting,” I observed. “You must be Ophelia.”
“Do you wish me to address you as Lady Burnsby? I have this awful sense of déjà vu.”
Her French accent sounded impeccable to my untutored ear. I hesitate to say anything aloud in that language, having taught myself to read it without hearing it spoken.
“Genevieve will do,” I replied.
“Didn’t Lord Burnsby inform you that I’m a debased branch on the family tree?” She picked up Peony and sat back down, my piglet in her lap. “Alice, the wife before you, averted her eyes whenever I walked by.”
“How ill-bred,” I said flatly.
“She did the same thing to Aunt Mima, even though my poor aunt believed Alice was her sister. Half the time Mima thinks I’m her sister.” With a belligerent air, she added, “My aunt has to create an imaginary sister, since bloody Burnsby is her only sibling.”
I sat down opposite and gave her a look.
She fidgeted.
I kept my silence.
“Oh, all right,” she burst out. “I apologize! I shouldn’t discuss your husband in pejorative terms.”
“More to the point, he’s your father. But excellent use of pejorative. Mima truly thinks you’re her sister, not her daughter?”
Ophelia nodded. “I’m fourteen, so it would make more sense if I were her daughter, but she’s often confused.
Just so you know, she is more likely to respond correctly to a limited question with an answer of yes or no.
” Seeing I was confused, she added, “If I ask, ‘Do you have a sister?,’ Aunt Mima will say yes and beam at me. But if I ask, ‘Am I your sister?,’ Aunt Mima most likely would say, ‘No, dear. You’re Hecuba’s daughter. ’”
“That’s unusual.” But what did I know of addled brains? Nothing.
“She can’t remember most things day to day.” Ophelia started scratching Peony under the chin. “Is this a boy pig or a girl pig?”
“She’s a sow, the runt of the litter.”
“Of course! She’s missing those ridiculous bits that hang off male bodies.” Ophelia caught my eye again. “What? Am I supposed to ignore the undercarriage of a horse?”
The proper answer would be yes (balls and bubonic plague, remember?). “Most young girls are not so observant,” I ventured.
“I grew up here,” Ophelia said, her emphasis presumably referring to Sophonisba. “I have also read a great many tragedies, which have aged me.”
I smiled at her incredibly youthful face. “How did they age you?”
“Have you read Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus?”
I shook my head.
“Rape, murder, revenge. Tamora eats a pie made from her children.”
“I spent my girlhood reading guides to civilized behavior,” I confessed.
Ophelia rolled her eyes. “I needn’t bother with those, since I live in the abbey.”
“Don’t you ever leave?”
“No.”
I was stunned. It was immoral to keep a girl penned up in the mountains. “Now that I’m here, you needn’t stay. You can leave with me.”
She gave me a pitying look. “Burnsby won’t allow that. Have you been married very long?”
“Seven months,” I said, thinking that it felt like a decade.
“No one tells him what to do.”
“Then I shall be the first.”
She giggled at my dry tone. “I can’t imagine that Father appreciates your sense of humor.”
True. We had discovered that on our second day of married life.
“What are you reading?”
“Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” she said, eyeing me, as well she might, since the novel celebrates adultery. Lending libraries frequented by ladies never offer translations.
“Do you speak French as well as read it?” I asked, wondering if she, too, had taught herself.
“My aunt tutored me before she became too forgetful.” Ophelia stuck out her chin. “I’m reading it for the third time. I adore the Viscount of Valmont.”
“I prefer the Marquise of Merteuil, especially the moment when she claims that she was born to avenge women and master men.”
“Alice would have fainted if I’d mentioned adultery,” Ophelia said. “She was so ladylike that it was challenging for her nerves to be in this house.”
I felt a pang of sympathy. The abbey must have been a miserable experience for a woman afflicted by ladylike sensibilities.
Even I was close to miserable.
No, I was miserable.
“I shall not reprimand you for reading a book describing such liaisons, since you grew up with Sophonisba Ainsworth,” I said.
“I learned about adultery when I was six years old,” Ophelia announced, waggling her brows as she took another stab at shocking me. “Before that, I didn’t understand Sophonisba and my father’s relationship. My mother was a lady.” Her hands tightened on the book.
She looked both shamed and hurt, though it was her father’s sin, not hers.
I decided on the spot that her favorite novel was a good way to discuss adultery.
“You know all the fuss in Les Liaisons Dangereuses about doors: always ajar, closed, locked, or smashed open, with everything intriguing concealed behind one?”
She nodded.
“In my experience—”
From behind me, a deep voice said, “Ought you to be sharing inappropriate reminiscences with a young girl, Lady Burnsby?”
I had been so focused on the conversation that I hadn’t heard anyone enter the library. Godric strolled forward, folded his arms over his chest, and frowned at me.
“Sir Godric,” I said, serene mask locked in place. “Ophelia and I are discussing a French literary masterpiece.”
“She was consoling me,” Ophelia said. “After all, I have grown up in a den of iniquity.”
“An exaggeration, surely,” Godric said, but his eyes were wary.
“Ophelia’s father and brother allowed her to grow up in company with a fallen woman.”
(Godric’s jaw tightened, because—guess what—I was right.)
“My father thinks his name would be tarnished if I were known to exist.” Ophelia capped that observation with a shrug intended to convey indifference. “Aren’t you both supposed to be in the drawing room? I’m sure I heard the gong.”
“I’ve been trying to find you, Ophelia,” Godric said. “I hoped we could meet Lance’s bride together.”
She shook her head. “I’m not welcome in the drawing room. Can I keep Peony with me?” My piggy had taken the opportunity to nap, her nose snuggled blissfully against the girl’s middle. “I’m sure she’d like to visit the nursery.”
“Who has made you feel unwelcome?” Godric said, his scowl suggesting that he was thinking of Sophonisba Ainsworth.
“Lord Burnsby instructed me to avoid his presence whenever he is in residence,” Ophelia reported. “I’m supposed to stay in the nursery.”
Godric appeared shocked into momentary silence.
“Nonsense.” I stood up. “You can be my ally.”
“Your what?” Ophelia asked.
“My friend in time of need.” I bent down and scooped up my piglet. “Let’s drop Peony in my chamber. I’ll brush your hair, and you can escort me to the drawing room to greet Miss Ainsworth and the young Burnsby bride.”
Godric cocked an eyebrow. “Young, as opposed to?”
I ignored him because at twenty-five, I was supposedly young, but I felt as old as my husband.
Ophelia frowned. “You need a friend because Sophonisba stole my father? I think of her as—”
Godric interrupted. “Some things are better left unsaid.”
“I disagree. Plain speaking helps.” I turned back to Ophelia. “I feel humiliated by Miss Ainsworth’s presence, and I’d be grateful for your company.”
“Why should you be humiliated?” she demanded, scrambling to her feet, her book tucked under her arm. “He has the concubine, not you.”
(The very point I was planning to raise through discussion of Les Liaisons Dangereuses!)
“Concubine is not accurate,” Godric remarked as we walked from the room. “Concubines are biblical figures, sometimes taken as second wives.”
Sophonisba basically was a second wife. And I, therefore, the fifth.
Thankfully, Ophelia was not concerned with semantics. “I’ll come with you to the drawing room, but I don’t care to have my hair brushed, and I’m definitely not joining you for dinner.”
“Being well groomed is the best armor against impertinence.” The moment I rattled off that decree, I remembered that my impeccable chignon had never discouraged criticism of my marital choices.
Yet another rule disproved.
“My eyebrows are untamable,” Ophelia said. “I’ll never be well groomed.”
“I like them.”
She turned to me, incredulous. “You do?”
“Mine are invisible, so my maid draws them in with charcoal.”
Godric made a choked sound, which confirmed—I suppose—a sense of humor. I stepped forward and trod deliberately on the back of his shoe.
“I will never have to use charcoal,” Ophelia said with some satisfaction.
“Exactly.”