A spray of swan-white spills out.
The fifth dress.
‘Radzimir!’ says Aoife with satisfaction as she joins me. ‘Hard to find not in black, but here it is. Lightened your cousin’s wallet considerably. Take it out! It should fit perfectly – it’s the same style as the red and black, Madame Franziska and her minions stayed up all night finishing it!’
Mourning silk for my wedding gown. How appropriate.
She’s fair giddy, is Aoife, with all her successes. If she had any less dignity, she’d be dancing. How sad that she’s so happy to make me so miserable; that the sale of her only grandchild is such a delight. I don’t touch the dress, though it seems pretty, teardrop-shaped crystals sewn onto the bodice catch the light, and I can see feathers – swans’, no doubt – and roses have been embroidered across the fabric, all in white silk thread.
‘Why did you tell me,’ I ask, ‘that my parents were dead?’
‘Because they are.’ She runs a finger along an stitched rose stem. ‘They took a fever when you were three, you know this. You were ill too, but you were the only one we could save.’
‘No.’
‘What’s wrong with you, child?’
‘Isolde wrote letters to Óisín.’ I can almost feel her shake as if hit. ‘After they had left me behind. After they had stolen something from you.’
I peer at her. She’s looking at me for the first time since I entered the room, properly looking. Does she notice the shadows beneath my eyes from the sleepless night, the tautness in my cheeks, the lines on my forehead, the bruised red of my lips where the footman kissed me hard? Can she divine, simply by staring, what he did to me, all at my will? Do I look angry to her or just ruined? And is she simply trying to calculate how she might still win?
‘What did she say?’
‘Enough.’ I’m not a fool, I won’t offer her information she can use. Didn’t she teach me better than that?
‘Your mother… your mother… Isolde…’ Aoife sinks into one of the chairs by the fire, all her manic energy fled. I sit across from her. She shakes her head, closes her eyes. ‘Your mother…’
I wait.
Then her eyes fly open and they’re nothing more than black pits and her lips draw back over teeth longer than they should, yellowed like a dog’s, and silver tendrils of hair appear to come free of the chignon tight-bound at the back of her head. And I know these things do not happen, but they seem to and these are the details I notice, and then she begins to rage.
‘Your mother was a disobedient whore! She cared nothing for this family and what we – I – did for her! She ran away and got pregnant, then came crawling back and Óisín forgave her like the weakling he was. Let her and that cullion live in this house as if nothing had happened, and then to show her gratitude she stole from us!’
‘What did they take?’ It’s all I can do to keep my voice steady in the face of her fury. But she’s not to be diverted from her course.
‘And they left you. And you Miren, were a price to be paid. You are mine to do with as I wish and you will marry Aidan and you will save this family and you will make good on your mother’s debt!’
‘He wants to hurt me,’ I say, and lift my hand, draw back the cuff of the yellow dress, show her the marks Aidan left.
She tilts her head, hesitates, then says, ‘You just need to learn how to manage him, Miren, that’s all. Don’t be such a child. This isn’t about you or your whims, this is about the O’Malleys, about saving the family, building us up again, making us count for something.’ Her voice goes quiet and she reaches out as if I might take her hand as a gesture of accord or peace or submission at the very least. I do not and her tone becomes a winter wind. ‘You will marry him, Miren, you will have his children and you will dispose of them as you are ordered.’
And she doesn’t seem to realise she’s just used up her last chance.
‘I’ll not marry him, Grandmother, make no mistake.’ I rise and go to the door.
‘You’ll do what you’re told!’ Her voice reaches me as I touch the handle, and it’s filled again with all of Aoife’s fire and spite. ‘You’ll do it or so help me I’ll throw you in the sea myself!’
‘Just like you used to when you taught me to swim and I survived that.’
I leave the library. Something thuds against the door as I close it behind me and I’ve no doubt she’ll have thrown a book or whatever she could get her hands on. I must flee. I’ll need money if nothing else; the ring on my finger will fetch a goodly sum, and the earrings and bracelets, but I doubt I can sell any of them in Breakwater. Someone might recognise them – especially the engagement piece –might report me to Aidan before I can vanish. I cannot take a ship for I’d be easy to trace on a passenger list, but I need to get as far away as I can. I remember Aoife locking me in that room in the townhouse. So I go to the one person whom might make me feel safe for a while.
* * *
But I can’t find Maura in the kitchen. One of the new girls is there – for a moment I’m still so jumbled from the argument with Aoife that I cannot remember which one she is, then recall that Ciara is thin, Yri plump. Aoife’s always said it doesn’t matter what you call servants, but Maura and Óisín taught me different: Óisín said it made people think you cared, Maura said
