Chapter 2 First Impressions #4
“My husband enjoys being opposed when opposition entertains him,” Helena said.
“He enjoys intelligence when it proves his own by reflection. He enjoys courage in others if he believes he can command the room in which it appears. But when he ceases to enjoy a thing, Miss Brown, he does not become loud. That is what makes people misunderstand him.”
“And what does he become?”
Helena’s eyes rested on the door. “Precise.”
The word entered Constance like cold air.
“I have known precise men before,” she said.
“Not this one.”
The silence after that was not empty. It asked for trust and refused it at the same time. Constance understood that Helena had given as much warning as she could permit herself.
“Lady Dacre,” she said, “I am here to catalogue books and papers. But I am not blind to rooms. If there are rules I must understand in order to do my work without harming anyone, I would rather know them.”
Helena’s face changed. Something like fear moved beneath the discipline and was gone. “There are always rules. Some are written. Some are taught. Some are learned only when one has broken them and cannot undo the lesson.”
“Who writes them here?”
“My husband believes he does.”
“And you?”
“I have learned to read them.”
It was not an answer. It was too much of an answer. Constance lowered her gaze to the devotional book because she feared her own face might show anger. Anger had no standing in this house. Evidence might.
The dinner gong sounded somewhere beyond the hall. Helena straightened as if the note had entered her spine.
“You must go down before me,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because if we arrive together, someone will decide there is a reason.”
“Is there?”
Helena looked at her. “Do not ask questions here merely because they are true.”
Constance wanted to answer with some defense of truth, some professional creed, some brave declaration fit for a woman who had slept safely all her life. Instead she held the devotional book carefully in both hands and said, “Then I will ask only those I am prepared to answer for.”
“That may not be enough.”
“It will have to begin there.”
Helena’s gaze softened for one brief, dangerous instant. “You speak as if beginnings are harmless.”
“No. Only necessary.”
Constance left first, as instructed. In the hall, Jasper was waiting near the dining room doors with Roland beside him and Marianne seated nearby like a judge who had found standing too demonstrative. Jasper’s eyes moved at once to the book in Constance’s hands.
“Helena has been giving you treasures.”
“She asked whether it belonged in the catalogue.”
“And does it?”
“Yes.”
“How absolute.”
“Only provisionally.”
“That is the scholar’s way of sounding modest while refusing retreat.”
Marianne looked up. “If only more generals had learned it.”
Roland laughed. Jasper did not. Helena entered a moment later. Nothing in her face suggested the conversation upstairs had occurred. She took her place beside her husband, and the household arranged itself around them with the smoothness of long practice.
Dinner that evening taught Constance more than the library had.
The silver was old, the glass fine, the courses abundant but not ostentatious.
Jasper spoke beautifully of politics, art, and the foolishness of men who bought first editions without understanding issue points.
Roland made jokes that hid petitions for money badly enough that everyone could pretend not to understand them.
Marianne corrected family dates with lethal calm.
Helena spoke rarely, but when addressed she answered with a precision that never gave anyone more than was asked.
At one point Roland mentioned a horse he wished to buy. Jasper set down his glass.
“You wish to buy many things, Roland. Wanting is your most reliable talent.”
Roland smiled, but his fingers tightened around his fork. “Then I am fortunate to have at least one reliable talent.”
“Fortunate brothers are usually grateful brothers.”
“Gratitude is difficult to perform on an empty purse.”
“Then fill it by discipline.”
“Discipline has never shown the slightest interest in me.”
“Because it dislikes pursuit.”
The table laughed lightly, or rather produced the sound expected when a host has been witty. Helena did not laugh. Constance saw her look once at Roland, not with affection exactly, but with recognition. Jasper saw it too.
“My dear,” he said, “you are compassionate tonight. Should I be alarmed?”
“Only if compassion alarms you.”
“You know it does when misapplied.”
“To whom was it misapplied?”
“To waste.”
Roland’s face darkened. Marianne cut into her fish with exact pressure.
Constance kept her eyes on her plate and listened.
The conversation moved on, but it had left a mark.
Jasper did not merely command. He arranged shame publicly, then made others complicit by requiring them to behave as if nothing had happened.
Later, when the ladies withdrew, Constance found herself in the drawing room with Helena and Marianne.
It was an awkward arrangement, since she was neither family nor guest, and yet too educated to be dismissed as staff.
Marianne solved the problem by taking up embroidery and ignoring it.
Helena stood near the piano but did not play.
“Do you sing, Miss Brown?” Marianne asked without looking up.
“No, Lady Marianne.”
“Excellent. Women who sing in drawing rooms often believe volume is feeling.”
Helena’s mouth curved faintly. “Marianne believes all feeling should be printed in small type and bound in sober cloth.”
“I believe feeling should not inconvenience furniture.”
“Then the furniture at Dacre House must be very grateful.”
The exchange should have been affectionate. It was not. Still, Constance felt an odd relief to hear Helena speak with a trace of wit. The woman inside the silk was not dead. She had merely learned not to move where Jasper could see.
Marianne looked at Constance. “My sister-in-law was considered very amusing before marriage.”
“Was she?” Constance asked before she could stop herself.
Helena turned slightly toward the piano. Marianne’s needle paused.
“Most women are amusing before marriage,” Marianne said. “Afterward they must become useful, ornamental, fertile, invisible, or troublesome. The fortunate ones manage two at once.”
“And the unfortunate?”
“They become examples.”
Helena’s hands rested on the piano. “Marianne, you are frightening Miss Brown.”
“No, I am educating her.”
“I have already been educated more than my comfort requires,” Constance said.
Marianne gave her a cool look. “Comfort is a poor tutor.”
“So is fear.”
Helena turned fully then. Marianne’s needle stopped again. The room seemed to wait to see whether Constance had said something unforgivable. Perhaps she had. She had not meant to speak sharply, but Dacre House had a way of drawing principles out of her as a blade drew blood.
Marianne resumed stitching. “That depends on what one needs to learn.”
The men returned soon after. Jasper entered first, with Roland behind him, the latter a little flushed and too cheerful. Jasper went immediately to Helena, who had seated herself with a book she was not reading.
“Come, my dear,” he said. “Lady Armitage asked whether you would attend her musicale next week. I said we should consider it.”
“Do you wish to go?” Helena asked.