Chapter 15
The dress was green.
It was, by any reasonable measure, a beautiful dress, and it fit with the suspicious accuracy of something that had been ordered by someone who had paid close attention.
Temperance had looked at it for a long time when the maid brought it up.
She had not tried it on yet, not sure if she was ready for that just yet.
She was sitting on the end of her bed looking at it when Albina appeared in the doorway in her house robe.
“That,” Albina said, “is a very fine dress. He has good taste.”
“He has a good tailor,” Temperance said. “It is not the same thing, and I’m sure that he must have just picked it up randomly.”
Albina set Soot down on the bed and came to stand beside her daughter, and they both looked at the dress together. Albina let out a small, impressed sound, which was rare as the woman had high standards.
“It seems like it will fit you well. And since you didn’t give him your measurements, it means that he measured you with his eyes,” Albina said.
“Mother,” Temperance said, blushing at how it sounded.
“I suppose that means that he has been paying more attention to you than I thought,” she mused. “What should we make of that?”
“Nothing, it is only a practical gesture,” Temperance said, in the same tone she had been using since the dress arrived. It had started to sound a little like denial. “He wants me presentable, so it’s only logical that he did so.”
Albina looked at her.
“Huh. Do you know that he picked out the dress himself? I think there is a great deal of thought that must have been put into it,” she replied, “or at least, consideration of some kind.”
“It’s just a dress,” Temperance replied, “I think you’re reading too much into it. I suggest you find something better to do with your time.”
“But this interests me greatly,” Albina grinned. “I did not expect the duke to take an interest in you like this.”
“And he hasn’t,” Temperance argued.
“You have always been blind to your admirers,” Albina shook her head, “very well, we don’t need to discuss it if it makes you uncomfortable. Come here,” she patted the footstool beside her chair.
Temperance crossed the room and sat on it, and Albina tucked a loose strand of hair behind her daughter’s ear with the absent, unthinking ease of someone who had done it a thousand times.
They sat in comfortable quiet for a while.
“Tell me something,” Albina said eventually. “About the nunnery.”
“Why are you curious all of a sudden?”
“It’s just… well, I suppose I see little Joseph around the house and it makes me wonder what you must have been like at that age,” Albina admitted.
Temperance was silent for a moment, not having expected her mother to talk about this. “I’ve told you things.”
“I want to know what it was actually like,” Albina replied, “I suspect the version which you have me had been changed to spare my feelings, but I want to know the truth.”
Temperance was quiet for a moment. There was a version of this conversation she could have had been put in the wrong place and left there.
She had rehearsed it, privately, but sitting here in the warm room with her mother’s hand near her shoulder, she found the rehearsed version inadequate and the true version too heavy for an evening that had been, until now, light.
“I am not sure if you really wish to know.”
“I do,” Albina assured, “I believe it is about time that you tell me these things.”
Temperance was quiet for a long moment, and then lost a battle with herself. It was her mother, and perhaps she deserved to know the truth.
“It was lonely,” she said, finally. “Before the others arrived. Alethea came when I was nine. Before that it was mostly just me and Sister Marguerite, who was not cruel, exactly, but was very interested in correct behavior and not very interested in much else.” She looked at her hands.
“I got in trouble constantly, for silly things like laughing too loudly, which apparently I did.”
There was a small pause.
“I still do, I’m told.”
“You do,” Albina said, listening intently. “It is one of my favorite things about you.”
Temperance looked at her mother, and composed herself.
“When the others came it was better,” Temperance said.
“Alethea and then the others. Having people who understood what the place was like. Alethea used to save pages from books she thought I would like and pass them through the gap under the dormitory door after lights out. Charity once convinced Sister Agatha that a compulsory nature walk was a form of religious contemplation, and we spent an entire afternoon outside doing nothing at all.” She paused.
“I am glad that they were there with you,” Albina said softly, “when I couldn’t be.”
“I don’t tell you the harder parts because there is nothing useful in it.
It is done and I came out the other side of it,” she said it gently, meaning it.
She could not give her mother the true weight of those years because Albina would carry it in a way that would hurt her, and Temperance was not willing to do that for the sake of her own unburdening.
Albina was quiet for a long moment.
“I have thought about it every day,” she said. “Since the moment I found out you were alive. Every single day, I have thought about what those years were like for you and whether you were cold or hungry or frightened, and whether you thought of me.”
“I didn’t know about you,” Temperance said. “I knew I had a mother somewhere. I assumed she had…. I assumed she hadn’t wanted me.”
Albina closed her eyes briefly.
“Your father told me you died,” she said. “He came to me two hours after you were born and he told me you had not survived, and I believed him as I had no reason not to. He was my husband.” She said the word with the flat.
“I believed him for twenty-two years.”
“I know,” Temperance said, suddenly feeling a strange weight in her chest.
“You know that I would have come looking for you much sooner had I known.”
“You don’t have to justify anything to me,” Temperance replied, “it is very clear to me that you have accepted me so graciously, and we cannot change the past, so what use is it in dwelling in it?”
“But I don’t wish for you to feel unwanted.
Your father had different ideas, of course,” Albina stated.
“But his views did not correspond to mine. He only wanted an heir, and I suspect that was what I was for him. And when it became clear that I could not give him one, he decided to change his behavior towards me and become entirely cruel.”
Temperance looked at her mother’s hands, resting in her lap.
“You never said,” Temperance said. “How bad it was.”
“No,” Albina agreed. “And I won’t, particularly. It is done, as you say.”
“Giving me a taste of my own medicine?” Temperance managed a weak smile, “I suppose I cannot blame you.”
“What I will say is that when I found out you were alive, that is when the solicitor came and told me, after your father died, it was the first thing in twenty-two years that felt like something given back.” Her voice was very quiet.
“When you returned home, I knew and I was so angry at everything that had been taken and so grateful for what was left that I didn’t know what to do with either feeling, so I simply made you tea and talked about the weather. ”
Temperance laughed, softly.
“Now that I think about it, you talked about the weather for twenty minutes.”
“I suppose it was less heavy than discussing everything that had happened before,” Albina admitted.
Temperance looked at her mother, and felt only love. It was an overpowering sort of feeling, and she reached out to grab her hand.
“I need to tell you something,” Temperance said.
Albina looked at her. “Let’s not speak about the past anymore.”
“Oh, no, it’s nothing to do with the past,” Temperance bit down on her lip. It was something that she never expected herself to say out loud, but she had been contemplating on it these past few days. “I am going to marry.”
“I beg your pardon?” Albina almost stood up. “I don’t think I’ve heard you right.”
Her reaction almost made Temperance laugh out loud.
“I know it’s a surprise coming from me, but I’ve changed my mind. I think it will... It will be good for the both of us. Having a man by side will allow me to take better care of you.”
Albina looked at her for a long moment. There was something moving in her expression that was complicated, not entirely comfortable.
“You are doing this for me?” she said.
“I am doing this for us,” Temperance said.
“Temperance…”
“Please don’t make a big deal out of it.
I am not a martyr about it,” Temperance said, before Albina could go further.
“I want you to understand that that I am not sacrificing anything I value more than I value your stability. I have thought about it clearly and it is the right decision and I am at peace with it.” She held her mother’s gaze.
When she didn’t say anything else, Temperance went on.
“What I need from you is not an argument about whether I should do it, as the decision has been made already. I need is for you to trust that I know what I’m doing.”
“You are the most stubborn person I have ever met,” Albina said finally.
“I am your blood, after all.”
Albina reached out and took Temperance’s hand in both of hers.
“You are not responsible for me,” Albina said.
“I want you to know that I know that. Whatever you decide to do, I want it to be for yourself as well. Not only for me.” She paused.
“I have had enough of people making decisions entirely for someone else’s benefit.
It does not end well, as a general rule. ”
“I know,” Temperance said. “But this is different.”
“How?”
Temperance thought about it honestly. “Because the person I am doing it for is someone who would do the same for me without a second thought,” she said. “Which changes the nature of it entirely.”
Albina looked at her. Something in her expression shifted, softened, became the version of her face that Temperance had catalogued quietly over three years and still found, every time she saw it, the most extraordinary thing she had ever been given.
“I would have come for you,” Albina said again. “If I had known, I want you to know that. I would have come the same day.”
“I know,” Temperance said.
“I would not have waited a single moment.”
“I know,” Temperance said again, more gently. “I know, Mother. Please do not explain yourself to me anymore.”
Albina pressed her hand once, firmly, and released it. She looked at the window for a moment, at the dark garden and the still night beyond it, and then back at the dress on the bed.
“It really is a beautiful dress,” she said, in her ordinary voice, the light one. “The color is exactly right for you. He must really know what suits you.”
“Don’t,” Temperance said.
“I was simply making an observation, and I think it’s good if you know this,” Albina went on.
“Goodnight, Mother.”
Albina left, giggling to herself. Temperance sat on the end of the bed in the quiet room, with the candle burning low and the dress on its stand beside her, and she looked at it for a long time without coming to any conclusions that she was prepared to act on.
“It doesn't mean anything,” she told herself. For now, it would have to suffice.