“Yes, well, if it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
“What are you talking about?” she managed to bluster. Samwell smirked.
“All you were ever good for was to marry someone wealthy and keep the money in the family. You haven’t even held onto your looks, and that was all you had to bring to the table. Now we’re stuck with you, and you’ll be nothing but a drain for the rest of your life.”
Her first reaction was relief. He doesn’t know. Then the words hit her harder than any blow. Everything she had ever said to herself during long sleepless nights over the last six years, articulated first as a child and later as a young woman with more understanding, spewed forth from her uncle’s mouth. You are stupid. You are useless. You are a liability.
“At least I don’t go to the docks and act the clown for all my friends,” she said, struggling to keep her voice from shaking. She got up from the table, looking to make a quick escape, but he was between her and the door. “They’re all laughing at you, Uncle, and you think you’re still one of them.”
“You know nothing about it,” he said. “I’m the one who’s going to restore this family’s fortunes. And you’ll do well to do as you’re told, when the time comes, to do your part.”
“I’d rather be poor than be part of one of your schemes.”
He laughed at her and stood over her, his breath disgusting from alcohol and cigars cadged from his disreputable friends at the docks.
“No, you wouldn’t,” he said. “No one would, least of all you. But that’s not to say I might not leave you out anyway, just to teach you a lesson. Your sister will do just as well. Then we’ll see who would rather be poor.”
On that dramatic note, he turned and flounced off, his head high. If it hadn’t been so sad, she would have laughed. No. If it hadn’t been true, I would have laughed.
Once, they had been friends and she felt sadness in the pit of her stomach that all that was over. All because she had been angry at her Uncle Samwell that fateful night at the dinner party, and let her anger and hurt get the best of her.
With a quick, furious movement, she backhanded the candle. It skittered across the worn floor, to rest against the baseboard. She felt a mean satisfaction, and at the same time, shame at her temper. I don’t know who I’m more angry at, she thought. My uncle or myself.
“Tesara?” her mother called from parlor. “Did something fall?”
“Just a candle, Mama,” she called back, breathing hard, her heart galloping.
Her mother tsked, which she could hear even down the hall. “Do be careful, Tesara. I don’t want you picking up anything that could break.” Brevart said something that was too soft for Tesara to make out, but her mother’s reply was clear enough. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Brev. There’s nothing we can do about it now, and coddling her won’t help.”
The old sting was quick to pain and just as quick to fade. Over the past two weeks, her mother’s reaction to her maimed hand had been shock, anger, a sick sort of jocularity, and more anger, all aimed at Tesara. They had never been friends, even when Tesara was a child – especially when I was a child, she acknowledged with chagrin. She was mischievous and disobedient, and Alinesse was hardly maternal at the best of times. Now, however, Alinesse’s bitter disappointment in her life’s situation and her dissatisfaction with her younger daughter had merged into something else, something harder and more obdurate than ever before. A dim part of her understood. Sometimes hope made sorrows more painful. Alinesse was just trying to avoid heartbreak by turning her heart to stone.
Not a bad idea, Tesara thought. Not a bad idea at all.
Chapter Seven
With the prospect of no supper, it was not surprising that Uncle was nowhere to be found for the rest of the afternoon. Except for Brevart and Alinesse remarking testily on his ill manners, no one really missed him. With no wood there was no fire, and the house was dark, damp, and chill by the time Yvienne came home with news of having engaged a new housemaid who would start in the morning. Their parents asked all sorts of questions and speculated as to the new girl’s qualifications.
“Does she know how to make coffee?” Brevart asked wistfully. “I hope you asked her about coffee. It takes a special hand, and the last girl couldn’t do it.”
Yvienne assured them that the girl knew her business. “She is entirely amiable and competent,” she said. “And you know Mastrini’s. They have a reputation to keep up.”
Alinesse snorted with disdain at the idea of a staffing agency concerned with its image. “You may depend upon it, Vivi, that the staffing agency only cares for its fees. I don’t wonder but that they will send us the bottom of the barrel.”
“She’s not,” Yvienne said, just short of snapping at her parents. She looked tired and wan. Tesara decided to draw fire.
“None of that will matter if Uncle won’t leave her alone,” she said. As she had hoped, the goad worked.
“Tesara, must you?” Alinesse cried, and in the ensuing argument, Yvienne’s quiet announcement that she was going to bed barely made a ripple. As soon as she could, Tesara slipped away to follow her.
“A governess,” Tesara repeated. “Why on earth would you want to be a governess?”
They shared a single bed in their room and talked in the darkness, their voices low. There was no question of candles, as they were so dear.
