CHAPTER FOUR
"Matilda wants to see you," Jack announced without preamble as he stepped through the door. "She told me to send you over as soon as I saw you."
Constance looked up from her needlework with a frown.
"Why?" She saw her sister often enough – perhaps less so since Peter's injuries had kept her at home, but still several times a month – but she could not think of what would prompt such an urgent summons.
Matilda was more than capable of managing her life and family without Constance's help; in fact, knowing Matilda, she would most likely scoff at any suggestion that Constance had meaningful help to offer.
Jack shrugged. "Something to do with Margery. I didn't inquire any further."
Of course. Constance set her needle down and scrubbed a hand over her face.
Her oldest niece – her only niece, until Sarah's birth two years earlier – had clashed with Matilda from the time she was old enough to walk and talk.
If her sister had hoped for a sweet, docile daughter, her hopes had been quickly and thoroughly dashed: Margery had inherited every bit of her mother's stubbornness, and was always quick to lock horns with her if they differed on anything.
Constance, Jack, and Will had had their tempestuous spells as children, but they'd all been in enough awe of their sister to settle when she scolded them.
Margery felt no such compunction. Perhaps that was why she'd always seemed to prefer her aunt to her mother – Constance had no interest in telling her what to do, and so had become by default a safe harbour from her bitter clashes with Matilda.
But Matilda had never encouraged this. She'd never discouraged it either, but she had commented more than once that Constance would spoil Margery irreparably if she were permitted to.
So to be summoned over a dispute between mother and daughter indicated either that Matilda had, unexpectedly, softened – or that she was simply at the end of her rope.
"I'll go," Constance said, standing and untying her apron and laying the garment across her stool.
"Peter's upstairs – he was sleeping, last I checked, but he may be awake by now.
He was in a good temper this morning, at least." She gave Jack a look of weary amusement.
"Try not to quarrel with him. I was enjoying the peace and quiet. "
Jack grinned as he leaned against the tabletop. "If we do quarrel, I'll promise to make it up before you get home, how's that?"
"As much as I may hope for, I suppose," Constance said, then got her cloak and went out the door.
When she arrived at Matilda's house – only a ten-minute walk, at a brisk pace – she found her younger nephews all playing out front, in the street.
They'd discovered a half-frozen puddle, and were taking turns jumping on it to see the ice crack.
One of them – Nicholas, the third youngest before Sarah and baby Sam – spotted her first, and sprinted over to throw his arms around her knees.
"Aunt Constance, Aunt Constance!" He beamed up at her, though his eyes were half-hidden behind a shaggy mop of hair.
"Have you come to play with us? I have a new toy wagon that's big enough for Sam to sit in, come and see! "
"I will, I promise," Constance said, gently disentangling herself as her other nephews came running up to greet her. "But I must speak with your mother first, all right?"
"Best not," said Tom – the second oldest, at ten years – with an air of wisdom that had Constance biting back a smile. "She's in an awful temper. She told us to go play out of doors and she didn't want to see us inside until supper."
"I'll see if I can cheer her, then," Constance said. She finally freed herself from Nicholas's grip, ruffling his hair to ensure there were no hard feelings, and went past the boys and into the house.
"There you are," Matilda said, in a tone that best suited someone who'd been waiting for hours past a missed appointment.
She was standing at the fire, stirring a pot with one hand while she balanced baby Sam on her hip with the other.
"This lot have been making an unholy racket all day, and I've a pounding headache on account of it.
And I've not yet got supper ready, nor finished the mending even though Sarah's dress is ripped all down the front and Tom's got holes in his tunic that need darning.
And I've had no time to visit the baker's, though we've only a quarter-loaf of bread to last us through to Sunday. "
"Did you need my help with the children, then?
" Constance asked, taking Sam out of her sister's hands and sitting at the table with him in her lap.
Sarah was sitting on the floor at her feet, playing with a rag doll; Margery was nowhere in sight.
"Or did you need me to fetch some bread for you?
Jack ought to have told me, I could have brought some of ours'.
" Privately, she knew none of these things were why Matilda had summoned her – she thrived on juggling a half-dozen tasks at once, and would be outraged at the suggestion that she required anyone's assistance to keep her household running.
But she did need to vent her spleen once in awhile, and Constance felt no reluctance to be the audience for it: it all rolled off her back, anyhow.
Sam gurgled in her arms, so she bounced him a little, then blew a sloppy kiss on his cheek to make him laugh.
"I can supply my own bread, thank you very much," Matilda said crisply. She lay the wooden spoon to the side of the pot, and came to sit across from Constance. "It's Margery I need your help with. She'll not hear a word from me, and this dawdling can't go on any longer."
"Dawdling over what?" Constance asked, genuinely curious.
She couldn't think what Margery might be putting off that was so urgent, Matilda felt the need to call her in to help push her.
Chores, perhaps; but what chores could she possibly be putting off, with six children in the household to tend to things?
"Her betrothal – Sarah, stop that!" Sarah, who'd been chewing on her doll's arm, dropped the doll.
"Her betrothal to Simon. The banns ought to have been read months ago, and the marriage performed by now.
But she kicks and squalls like a child whenever I bring the matter up, and she won't be budged.
She says I've no notion what I'm asking her to do, since her father and I get along so well.
So I thought hearing from you may shift her – you swore off marriage when you were her age, after all, until you accepted Peter. "
Constance was quiet at that. It was true, when she had been fifteen years old – the age Margery was now – she had told her sister that she intended to never marry.
And she'd meant it, at the time: she hadn't realized yet that being Peter's wife presented a neat solution to all of their problems. But she doubted very much that this was the message Matilda wished her to impart.
She, of course, had no idea why Constance and Peter had wed – and even if she did, a marriage based on deception was almost certainly not what she wanted for her daughter.
"Why the hurry? She's hardly fifteen. You and Richard weren’t wed until you were twenty, and Peter and I waited until we were near twenty-five. "
"And Simon is near nineteen, and almost finished his apprenticeship," Matilda said.
"Richard says he's only six months left, and then he'll be setting himself up in his own household.
He'll want a wife to keep house, and we always intended Margery for him, just as I was meant for Richard.
I don't know why she's carrying on about it like this. "
Simon was Matilda's husband's apprentice in his pottery shop, taken on when he was only nine years old, and Margery only five.
It was true that craftsmen's daughters often wed their father's apprentices – Richard had trained under their father, and so been a natural choice for Matilda.
It helped that she and Richard were well-suited, with Richard content to let his wife govern the household with a firm hand.
Constance had only met Simon a handful of times, and so had no idea if he and Margery would be happy as man and wife, but Margery certainly seemed to have her own opinions on the matter.
"Is he kind?" she asked. "I know you intended him for Margery, but if his character is in question –"
"Of course it isn't!" Matilda's nostrils flared.
"Do you think I'd give my daughter to a cruel man?
Honestly, you're as bad as she is, sometimes.
He's a good lad, and he'll make a good husband.
She'll never want for money, and she'll have a home and family of her own.
I don't know what more she could possibly want. I doubt she knows what she wants."
That, Constance did not believe: there were many things that could be said about her niece, but no one who knew her could doubt that she knew her own mind.
She could, however, fully believe that Margery had refused to explain her reasoning to her mother just for sheer stubbornness's sake.
Perhaps Matilda suspected the same. It would explain why she'd sent for Constance: Margery was more likely to speak openly to her, as they weren't starting out at odds.
"I'll speak to her," she said at last. "But I cannot promise that my words will carry any more weight than yours'. You know as well as I that she won't be budged when she's made up her mind."
"Oh, she'll be budged," Matilda said grimly, getting to her feet. Constance chewed on her tongue rather than point out that her sister's attitude was likely only making Margery dig her heels in harder.