CHAPTER THREE #2
Isabel turned, and felt herself pale. Constance was standing behind her in the hallway, a cloak still clutched around her shoulders: evidently she'd just come in. She was looking from Isabel to Peter and back again, her brow furrowed. "Peter?"
Of the three assembled, Isabel recovered her wits first. "I was mistaken in coming upstairs," she said stiffly, "and for that, I apologize. Your husband may explain the rest. I will take my leave and not trouble you further."
She turned to go, but Constance stopped her with a hand on her arm. "Wait downstairs?" she said, and her voice was gentle. "I've business to attend to here -" At this, she leveled a look at Peter that would have quailed many men of Isabel's acquaintance, "but I will be down shortly."
She was offering an escape, which was what Isabel desired above all else.
She had no wish to linger in this room, with Peter glowering and Jack staring and Constance - she wasn't certain how to read Constance's expression, truthfully.
If she gave in to her basest instincts, she would simply flee the house entirely and not come back.
But Constance had asked her to stay. Whatever she may have in mind to say when she came downstairs - whether or not Isabel had offered any offense with her tongue-lashing of Peter - she ought to see matters through.
"Of course," she said, and retreated as fast as she could.
# # #
In the interests of discretion, Constance waited until she could no longer hear Isabel's footsteps on the stairs before she turned to Peter, her arms crossed over her chest. "Proud of yourself, are you?"
Peter scowled. "She had no right. To come in here or to speak as she did."
He was still on his feet, but not for long: Constance could see his legs shaking with the effort to hold himself upright. Before she could say anything, Jack murmured, "here," and lowered him to a sitting position on the bed. He glanced at Constance as he straightened. "I ought to be going -"
"You ought not," she said. Not only did she want both Peter and Jack's accounting of whatever had just happened, she did not wish to send Jack downstairs while Isabel waited.
She still bore in mind the way Isabel had frozen in his presence the previous week, and she did not wish to frighten her.
Particularly not when she'd already undergone the indignity of dealing with Peter.
"I've no notion why she came up here," Constance said, addressing her husband, "but neither have I any idea why you saw fit to speak to her as you did. For shame, Peter, has a year abed been enough to make you forget your manners entirely?"
"She, ah," Jack rubbed the back of his neck. "She heard him from downstairs - he got out of bed to use the chamber pot and then fell when he tried to rise again -"
"Must you?" Peter snapped. "Am I to be exposed thus for the amusement of the whole household?"
"It's nothing I've not seen or heard from you before," Constance reminded him, which only made him flush.
It was the wrong thing to say if she meant to soothe him, and she knew it - reminders of his infirmity would reliably sting his pride, and he responded to such blows with caustic sarcasm, always.
But soothing him was Jack's job, not hers', and she was still irked over his words to Isabel besides.
She'd only caught the tail end of it as she was coming up the stairs, but that had been more than enough.
"And, well," Jack went on as if neither of them had spoken. "You heard the rest. Or I assume you did. When did you come in?"
"Not five minutes ago, but it was enough." She looked at Peter. "In the future, I'll thank you not to insult guests in this home. It is my house as much as it is yours, and I've the right to entertain visitors."
"More right than me, I suppose, as I'm no longer capable of bringing money in," Peter retorted.
It was the type of self-pitying comment he'd taken to making since it had become clear that he would not resume his place in the tailor's shop; he made them because he knew that both she and Jack scrupled to offer a rejoinder in kind.
"And if the visitors go poking their noses where they're not asked for?
She saw Jack holding me up, she heard him speak to me.
What if she had heard something she could take to the law? "
"It would have to be incriminating indeed for her to take it to the law," Jack reminded him. "There's no law in either the church or the courts that forbids soft words. And she's no reason to involve herself in our business, besides."
"Or she didn't," Constance said dryly, "until you insulted her.
But Jack's right. She would have to stumble across the two of you in a far more compromising situation than Jack helping you up off the floor for the law to do anything about it.
And if you were up to anything like that, I'd thank you to close and bar the door whether we've visitors or not.
This is still a working shop, and I should like to see some custom here from time to time. "
Peter snorted. "And how are matters progressing on that front?"
Constance said nothing. She simply leveled him with a hard stare, not blinking or otherwise averting her gaze until Peter broke and looked away, muttering, "I will still defend myself when I'm insulted. You've no cause to say she did not provoke me."
Constance looked to Jack, her eyebrows raised.
Her brother shifted from foot to foot and coughed, but did not answer.
His silence was answer enough. He would never speak against Peter - he had not done so in all the years they three had been tangled together - but neither was he any good at lying, on his or anyone's behalf.
She had learned that lesson well enough when they were children and he had been called upon to hide some piece of mischief from Matilda: it had invariably ended in both of them being cuffed about the head and sent to bed without supper.
"I know you," she said to Peter, "and that, I think is cause enough, for I've found myself on the sharp side of your tongue often enough to recognize its effects." She paused for effect, then added, "I did think you better than calling a woman a shrew."
"Shrewish," he said, but it was a weak defense. He fell back on the pillows with a deep, aggravated sigh. "Have you any other corrections to offer, oh Mistress Manners?"
"Not as of now," she said. "I've better things to do, and you ought to be resting. Jack, are you -"
"I'll stay with him," Jack said. "My master has no need of me this afternoon anyhow."
"Good." Annoyed though she may be with Peter just at the moment, she still did not want to risk him taking a bad turn while she was distracted.
"I'll be off, then. And I'll make your apologies to Isabel, though you may think on doing so yourself.
" She paused, but could not quite resist adding, "And then there's work to be done. We do have some custom, after all."
She left Peter still grumbling and Jack talking to him in a soft voice, and went downstairs.
She had no desire to be audience to whatever was passing between them now - close as they three were, some conversations still required privacy.
Besides, she was far more concerned with Isabel than her husband just then.
She found Isabel in the front room, sitting stiffly in one of the chairs by the cutting table.
Walter was playing on the floor at her feet, a rattle clutched in his fist - Isabel must have brought it with her, for Constance didn't recognize it.
She looked up when Constance came in, jolting in her seat as if she meant to stand.
"My apologies. I had no wish to cause offense with my presence. "
"You didn't," Constance said, dropping into the chair opposite Isabel's and gesturing for her to remain seated.
"At least, not to me. When Peter's in a foul temper, it's no use trying to avoid causing offense - he'll find it whether it's offered or not.
" She scrubbed her palms on her skirts, trying to wipe away the day's accumulated sweat.
"And for my part, I must offer my own apology.
I hate to see anyone ill-treated under my own roof, and Peter is - well, you saw him. I ought to have warned you."
"I don't know when you would have," Isabel said. "You'd no idea I was coming today, or that I was going upstairs." She bit her lip. "And I do apologize for that as well. I heard a sound and thought -"
"I know," Constance said. "Jack explained it. It was good of you to come to his aid, and I'm sorry you only received bitter words in return."
Isabel was quiet for a long moment, then said, "He sounded like my husband did, at the end. I suppose I've not yet forgotten how to be a nursemaid." She worried at a ragged fingernail. "Is he -" she began, then broke off, shaking her head. "Forgive me. It's none of my concern."
"There's nothing to forgive." Isabel had spoken briefly of her husband on her last visit, enough for Constance to gather that he was dead - but she had not said how he died.
If his wife had nursed him through a lingering illness, no wonder the sounds from Peter's room had caused alarm.
"Peter will be well, eventually. Or -" She passed a hand over her eyes.
"He will live. He will not, I think, be what he once was - but there are far worse things, for so long as he lives, he has choices.
He's not yet ready to see that, and the grief of it has curdled him.
A year is not so long to adjust, after all. "
"A year?" Isabel asked. "Since what?"