CHAPTER SIX #4
I don't doubt it, Isabel thought. Up keeping watch until all hours, desperate to know where her daughter had gone but with no way of finding her in the darkened streets – the only thing that surprised her was that Matilda had been able to fall asleep at all.
Poor woman. Even if she had driven her daughter off to begin with, she surely hadn't meant for any harm to come to her.
The whole episode really did remind her forcefully of her quarrels with Matthew when he was younger – though at least he wouldn't have faced the same dangers, roaming abroad after dark.
Was this what she had to look forward to with Walter, once he was a little older?
She hoped not. But then, she herself had given her parents no such trouble while they lived: perhaps the difference between a compliant and a rebellious child was nothing more than luck.
"Mmm," Constance said. "Well I would say that neither of you have much to boast about as regards how you've conducted yourself, but that's no reason to stay away from home forever. If she made some apology to you, would you accept it?"
Isabel glanced up to see Margery glowering again. "She won't."
"She might," Constance said. "If you apologized as well."
"I won't," Margery said in a flare of temper. "Not if she still means to go and see the priest. I won't go with her, and I won't apologize, and I won't do as she says. Would you, if you hadn't done anything to be sorry for?"
"I don't know," Constance said, still gentle. "Do you think you've done anything amiss?"
Isabel gave up on concentrating on her sewing – the seam was nearly finished anyhow – and looked up to see Margery chewing on her lower lip again.
"I," she started. "I – miii-iii-iight have said – that just because she's wasted her life cleaning up after stinking children and keeping Father's house for him doesn't mean I have to do the same thing.
I suppose that – might have been unkind. "
"It might, at that." Constance's voice was dry as dust. "Was that all?"
"Yes," Margery said, and Isabel believed her. If she was willing to admit to that, it didn't follow that she would be reticent to confess anything further. "And she called me unclean and a child and –"
"I know," Constance said. "And it was wrong of her, and she ought to say as much. So will you go back and apologize?"
Margery's voice went hard again. "Not if she's still set on speaking to the priest. Would you?"
Constance made no reply, and it took Isabel a moment to realize that Margery's question had been addressed to her. "I –"
"Isabel needn't answer that," Constance said firmly. "If she doesn't want to."
"No, it's all right." Isabel took a deep breath, smoothing a hand over her sewing. When she looked at Margery, the girl stared back, her expression mulish.
Just turned fifteen, Constance had said.
At Margery's age, Isabel had been huddled under an eave with her brother, trying to decide where they would sleep that night.
She'd been married within the year. It had never occurred to her to fight against her fate – what would be the use?
She had a duty, and she did it. But now, looking at Margery and thinking of the long years that had followed her marriage, she wondered if she oughtn't have at least tried to find a different way.
"Where would you go?" she asked. "If you did not return, how would you live?"
Margery's mouth set in a stubborn line. "I'd find work. And lodging. Or –" She looked to Constance. "I could live here, and help keep house –"
"No, you couldn't." Constance's tone was gentle, but her words were firm. "I've Peter to care for and the shop to run – I can't look after you as well. There's no space, anyhow, but with Peter, Jack, and I all living under this roof."
It occurred to Isabel for the first time to wonder how they all fit into the house now. Peter slept upstairs, and Constance on the first floor – so what was left for Jack? Did he bed down in front of the hearth at night? Another thing that was none of her business, but still – she wondered.
"Then I'll find some other place," Margery went on, not dissuaded in the slightest. "And sleep in their attic and do their cooking and cleaning and mending. I'll even watch their children, if I have to. Anything to keep from getting married."
"But you haven't got any such place now," Isabel said. "Have you?" From the look on Margery's face, the answer was clear. "I should not leave my home until I knew where I was going. A safe place to stay is not a thing to be given up lightly."
Go, and be damned to you, Joanna Faintree had shouted at her the day she announced they were leaving.
Bedevil some other woman, for I'll have no more beggars under my roof.
It had only strengthened Isabel's resolve to leave.
Surely, she'd thought at the time, nothing could be worse than life as an unwanted cuckoo in some other family's nest. Would she make the same choice now, knowing what she knew about what awaited her?
Hadn't she kept making that same choice, over and over, every year since? She could have done as Margery was threatening to do and ran. She never had. She hadn't even thought of it.
Constance's foot nudged hers under the table.
When she looked at Constance, she saw gratitude writ large on her face.
"There you go," she said to Margery, though she was still looking at Isabel.
"Give it awhile longer, at least. If you want to go out and work, then do it. But don't run off just yet."
Margery sniffed. "And if Mother tries to take me to the priest?"
"I'll go back with you," Constance said firmly. "And I'll speak on your behalf. So long as the two of you can come to some kind of accord, there's no need for either of you to do anything drastic."
Margery sniffed again. Her gaze darted around the room, then found Isabel. "When you were," she started, then stopped. "If Mother has her way – if I'm married –" She spat the word out like it was an insect that had been slipped into her food. "What will – do I –"
Constance got up and went around the table, seating herself next to Margery and bending to murmur something in her ear. This, Isabel thought, was the point at which her presence became intrusive. She slid off the bench and stood, rolling her work up once again.
"Oh –" She had not moved quietly enough to prevent her being noticed. Constance was looking at her. "You needn't, if you –"
"It's all right," Isabel said. "I've errands to run anyhow. And –" She glanced up at the ceiling. "A call to pay. Amends to be made."
Constance nodded, clearly too distracted to take in what she was saying.
Isabel bent to stow the work in her basket – it was nearly done, but there were finishing touches to be added to the embroidery – before heading not for the front door, but for the stairs.
She doubted either Constance or Margery noticed her going.
# # #
Once she reached the landing, she hesitated.
Peter had had a bad night, Constance had said: in all likelihood, he would be in no fit state to entertain visitors, much less a near-stranger whose previous intrusion had provoked nothing but ill feeling.
But she had to at least make the attempt.
If he chased her off again – well, that would be that, and she'd know better than to try again.
Before she could talk herself out of it, she crossed the hall and knocked lightly on the bedroom door.
"Go on," said a voice from beyond. She took that for what it was worth, and gave the door a tentative push.
It opened to reveal Peter sitting up in bed, picking aimlessly at the coverlet with one hand while the other dangled uselessly from the side of the bed.
He did not look up at her first entrance; it was only when she stood there a moment without speaking that he finally said, "if you've come to check up on me, I told you I was well enough –" He looked up then, and his voice died in midsentence.
"You thought I was Constance," Isabel said, pointlessly. It was something to say, at least.
He snorted and tossed his head. "And how did you reach that conclusion?"
She did not dignify that with a response. "I've no intention to stay," she said. "I only came to apologize for our last meeting – for my intrusion. It was poorly done of me not to knock."
He looked at her for a moment, his expression unreadable. "You know," he said, "Constance was of the opinion that it was I who owed you an apology. She was quite inflexible on that point."
It was pointless to feel buoyed by this information, but Isabel felt it strike some tender part of her anyway, settling over old aches like an ointment.
She couldn't recall the last time anyone who wasn't Matthew had taken her part, and certainly not to their own family.
"Well," she said, "you may keep your own counsel and do as you see fit.
" He had not, she'd noted, actually offered an apology.
"But for myself, I would not be easy in mind until I made my own amends. "
"Your mind is easily unsettled, then," Peter said. "I had all but forgot the matter already, so be troubled no longer."
"Your magnanimity is noted," Isabel said, almost without thinking.
She had come up intending to make peace with Peter, but there was only so much needling she could withstand.
She bore it all day at home; she would not do so here, in the one place where she was safe.
Now that she had let the words fly, she braced herself for a sharp retort: she was entirely unprepared for what Peter did instead, which was to throw his head back and laugh.
"I was mistaken as to why Constance likes you," he said, once his chuckles had subsided. "I thought you another stray she'd taken in, but you've a proper bite of your own, don't you?"