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“Catherine?”
“Oh, what do you care?” she snaps without turning around.
I care because something is very wrong and in a few moments two young men will be in our dining room, each completely besotted with her and at her mercy. When she first told me of her condition I had assumed that it was Mr. Pierce, and that it had happened that day we went to the pond. But she’s already starting to show—just a little—and that was barely over a month ago.
The curtains are closed, but she’s staring at the window, her eyes misty. For the first time in my life my older sister looks lost, and it’s unnerving. “Catherine?”
She’s playing with theCnecklace again, her face etched with misery. “If I told you,” she says, her voice low, “you would be sick.”
It’s the way she says it. The necklace runs through her fingers and something heavy sinks within me. I know. My first impulse is to tear the necklace from her neck, to hurl it out the window. It’s only a little thing, filigree gold, but I imagine it smashing through the window, landing in a pile of shattered glass on the lawn outside.
“They weren’t rumors,” I whisper. It was true, true all along. My head spins as another piece of my world crumbles beneath my feet. “Did he...did he force himself?”
“No!” She launches herself at me, taking me by the shoulders and shaking. “Never! Those vile things everyone said about me, about us...those self-righteous gossips, clucking like hens, they had no idea what really went on. They said that I seduced him, and that he was so depraved that he...” She spits. “None of them understand what we share, how it’s always been him and me. How ever since we were children he was there for me, my protector, my friend.”
Her fingers dig into my collarbone, sending ribbons of pain through my body. “You’re hurting me.”
Catherine looks at me blankly and then pushes me away, turning and standing with her back to me. “You don’t understand,” she says. “No one understands.”
I don’t want to understand. How did I never see it? Was it right there in front of me all along? All the times they walked arm in arm, laughing together at some private joke, was it as lovers? All the times that they shut me out, said that I would just get in the way... Maybe deep down I knew, but just didn’t want to admit that it could be possible.
My body is heavy and the room is too small. She’s still talking, looking at his miniature on her desk and stroking the little gilded frame with loving fingers.
“Do you know how hard it’s been? It’s like having half my being torn from me and hidden away where I can never find it. Everything, every part of me aches for him. And there’s nothing I can do about it! All I can do is sit here, growing big with his child. The most I can hope for is a marriage, a loveless one, but one that will at least save me—us—from further scandal. And even then, I’ll grow old without him. Oh.” She lets out a long sigh, her white shoulders falling like the broken wings of a bird.
She’s sick. There’s something inside of her, something damaged. That’s the only explanation. For all her vanity and all her games, her bright smiles...they just mask what lies beneath.
Her lips curl into a bitter smile. “You might have told Cyrus that there was a sister willing to overlook his character and lack of fortune in return for a husband. If I don’t get a proposal out of Mr. Pierce soon then, well...”
Swallowing hard, I force out the question I’m afraid to know the answer to. “Or Mr. Barrett?”
She can throw herself at Cyrus for all I care, but Mr. Barrett... I press my palms against my eyes, desperately trying not to envision them standing hand in hand at the altar, of Mr. Barrett taking her to bed in his house just beyond the trees. She would be sentencing him to a life without love, using him for nothing more than his name and protection.
Her expression loses some of its venom, and she looks faraway, thoughtful. “Yes,” she says, “perhaps there’s still hope with Mr. Barrett.”
Just then there is a knock at the door downstairs. Catherine and I look at each other. “Ah! Speak of the devil.” She takes a deep breath, pastes a bright smile on her face and trips out of the room, humming as if she hadn’t a care in the world.
I linger in the doorway, my chest tight, as I watch my sister walk away, swollen with our brother’s child.
15
AS SOON ASI set foot downstairs, I know this was a mistake. Mother is withdrawn, barely noticing as Catherine flits around her, placing fresh flowers in the vases. Even Father is subdued; he hasn’t pulled out any papers to show our guests, and he sits in his chair, swirling a glass of Madeira side to side without drinking. It’s too soon for entertaining, even if it’s only Mr. Barrett and Mr. Pierce. It’s too soon to make polite conversation and sit down together and eat and laugh as if nothing has happened. Catherine’s revelation rests on my shoulders heavy and constricting as a noose. When Ada shows Mr. Barrett and Mr. Pierce in, it’s all I can do to lift my head and murmur a greeting from dry lips.
Catherine and Mr. Pierce move off immediately together to their corner in the parlor, and I watch them with a queasy stomach. For as little thought as I usually give to Mr. Pierce, I can’t help the pang of pity for him that runs through me; he has no idea the breadth and consequence of the snare Catherine is setting for him.
“Miss Montrose.”
Mr. Barrett moves out of the shadowed doorway and gives me a stiff bow of his head. “I confess I was surprised to receive an invitation so soon after...” He trails off, frowning into the corner where Catherine is speaking in soft tones to Mr. Pierce.
“Yes, well, we wanted to...thank you.” I never would have agreed to this dinner, championed Catherine’s cause, if I had known then what I know now about her condition.
The conversation is stilted, painful, both of us going through the motions of saying the right things. What happened at the pond hangs between us, heavy and unspoken just as I knew it would. I can’t look at Mr. Barrett without seeing him emerging from the water, face white and jaw set, Emeline hanging from his arms. And he must look at me and see a foolish girl, jealous and petty, someone who would entertain a suitor at her own sister’s burial.
We sit down to an informal meal of roast beef and potatoes. Catherine and Mr. Pierce are the only ones who are oblivious to the mantle of gloom that sits over the rest of us, though even Mr. Pierce has the good sense to keep his voice low, his look deferential when speaking to Mother.
Ada has barely cleared the first plates away when Mr. Pierce pushes back his chair and stands up. “I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid I have an engagement in town and must say good night.”
“Oh, that is too bad,” Mother says, but the relief in her eyes at having one fewer person to entertain is palpable.