Cardington Crescent - Anne Perry [14]
“So kind of you,” Mrs. March went on. “Too many young people have lost the consideration one would wish.” She looked at no one in particular, but the tightening at the corners of her mouth betrayed an irritation that was not in the least impersonal. Emily knew Tassie was going to receive a curt lecture on the duties of a good daughter the moment they were alone, foremost among them being obedience and attention to one’s betters—and doing everything possible in aiding one’s family to obtain for one a suitable marriage. At the very minimum one positively did not get in the way of such efforts. And Sybilla also would come in for some grim correction.
Emily smiled warmly back at her, even if it was amusement disguised, not sympathy. “I daresay they are merely preoccupied,” she said sententiously.
“They are no more preoccupied than we were!” Mrs. March retorted with a waspish glare. “We also had to make our way, you know. Being with child is an excuse for fainting and weeping, but not for sheer inconsideration. I have had seven children myself—I know what I am talking about. Not that I am not pleased. Goodness knows, it is more than time! We were beginning to despair. Such a tragedy for a woman to be barren.” She glanced at Emily’s slender waist with implied criticism. “She has certainly caused great disappointment to poor Eustace; he so much wanted William to have an heir. The family, you know, the family is everything, when all is said and done.” She sniffed.
Emily was silent; there was nothing to say, and that curious pity came back, violently unwelcome. She did not want to remember that Sybilla also had been an outsider in this family, a failure in the one achievement that mattered to them.
Mrs. March settled a little deeper into her chair. “Better late than never, I say,” she repeated. “Now she will stay at home and do her duty, fulfill herself, instead of all this ridiculous chasing of fashion. So shallow and unworthy. Now she will make William happy and create the kind of home for him he should have.”
Emily was not listening. Of course, if Sybilla was pregnant it might account for at least some of her behavior. Emily could quite clearly remember her own mixture of excitement and fear when she was expecting Edward. It was a total change in her life, something that was happening to her and was irreversible. She was no longer alone; in a unique way she had become two people. But for all George’s pleasure it had set a distance between them. And sharp in the middle of all of that was her fear of becoming ungainly, vulnerable, and no longer attractive to him.
If Sybilla, in her middle thirties, were facing this confusion of emotions—and perhaps also a fear of childbirth; the pain, the helplessness, the utter indignity, and even the vague possibility of death—it might well account for her selfishness now, her compulsion to draw all the masculine attention while she still felt she could, before matronliness made her awkward and eventually confined her.
But it did not excuse George! Fury choked Emily like a hot lump in her chest. All sorts of actions careered through her mind. She could go upstairs and wait until he came, and then accuse him outright of behaving like a fool, of embarrassing and insulting her and offending not only William but Uncle Eustace, because it was his house, and even all the rest of them, because they were fellow guests. She could tell him to restrict his attentions to Sybilla to those courtesies which were usual, or Emily would leave for home immediately and have nothing more to do with him until he made full apologies—and amends!
Then the rage died. A feud would bring her no happiness. George would either be cowed and obey, which she would despise—and so would he—and her victory would be bitter and of no satisfaction; or else he would be driven even further in his pursuit of Sybilla, simply to show Emily that she could not dictate to him. And the latter was