CHAPTER TEN #3
"I can hardly credit it, that a girl would not wish for a husband of her own," Belia said once Margery was gone. "I was desperate to be wed, at her age."
"Margery has always known her own mind," Constance said. She picked up Leah's second dress where it lay on the table. "Will you try this one next, Leah? The embroidery is not finished yet, but we must be certain of the fit."
The rest of the afternoon passed in relative peace; Margery returned empty-handed after a quarter hour, but voiced no further objections to Leah's plans, so Isabel counted her gambit successful.
After Leah and Belia had left for home - the second dress was, indeed, to Leah's liking, which left Isabel with only the sleeve embroidery to finish - and Margery had been dispatched back to her mother, Constance shut and bolted the front door, leaning back against it with a sigh.
"I've no quarrel with any of them, but God knows Leah, Belia, and Margery all at once are a stronger taste than I'm fitted for. "
Isabel went to her and took her hand, leaning against her until their shoulders bumped. More than that still felt tremulous, out of reach - but she wanted that point of contact. "They're all certain of themselves, to be sure."
"One way of putting it." Constance turned to the side so that she could take Isabel in her arms, leaning up to press a kiss to her cheek. "Though I suppose it serves them better than if they were weak-willed. No one will ever force Leah into a match she doesn't want."
Isabel twined her fingers around Constance's.
Her mind felt clouded, partially with exhaustion - Walter had gotten her up before daybreak, and she hadn't had a moment to stop and rest since - but also with Margery and Leah's argument, and the feelings it had stirred in her.
"A strong will is nothing," she said, "without the power to wield it.
Leah is fortunate that what she wishes aligns with what her family wishes for her.
If it were otherwise - if she were at odds with her mother, as Margery is - what choice would she have? "
Constance pulled back to give Isabel a searching look. Isabel could not think what she was searching for. She wanted to drop her gaze, but she held firm in spite of it. She wanted to be braver than she was.
"For you . . ." Constance held up their interlocked hands and turned Isabel's hand over in her own, smoothing her fingers across Isabel's palm. "When you made your match . . ."
Isabel said nothing. She did not know what Constance meant to ask, and she would not attempt to anticipate her.
"You told me you chose it," Constance said finally. "That you blamed yourself for all that came after, because you had brought it upon yourself. But if you truly had no choice, as you say Margery and Leah do not, then can you say honestly that you own the blame? Surely both cannot be true."
Isabel gave up holding her gaze and looked down at their hands instead.
Constance was rubbing a thumb over the lines on her palm; the sensation was ticklish, but not uncomfortable.
"I," she began, then paused to re-gather her thoughts.
"The circumstances were not the same. I had no mother to press me on the matter. I had only myself."
"And your brother," Constance said. "You had to support him, you told me yourself. Was that not what swayed you?"
"To what end are you asking?" Isabel pulled her hand away, feeling suddenly, unaccountably, irritable.
"Either you believe I had a choice, and what happened after was my own doing; or you believe I had no choice in the matter, and neither do Leah or Margery or anyone else.
Either way, you contradict yourself. Which is it? "
Constance did not attempt to take her hand again, but neither did she move away.
"I don't know," she said. "I don't know what I mean to ask, or why.
I suppose I only -" She sighed. "Nothing we do is easy.
Nothing a woman wants comes without risk.
Even this -" She bent to kiss Isabel's palm.
"-would not be chosen for us by anyone but ourselves, but we have chosen it in the face of all impossibilities.
I think we must grant ourselves some choice, even in the midst of it all, or we will batter ourselves to death against walls we believe we cannot climb. Do you take my meaning?"
Isabel wasn't certain she did. She also wasn't certain it mattered.
Choices, choices, choices; she was tired of making choices, tired of trying to reason out which ones were available to her and which would remain out of her reach.
She didn't want to think about choosing this, here, because if she thought too long about it, she might decide it wasn't possible after all.
So she didn't answer, didn't say anything.
She leaned against Constance instead, resting her cheek against Constance's hair, and letting them both stand there in silence.
A choice to do and say nothing was, she supposed, still a choice in itself.
Perhaps it was the only one she truly had.