Cardington Crescent - Anne Perry [16]
It was a futile exercise, and in the end she crept into bed and decided to be angry instead. It was better than weeping. Angry people fight, and sometimes fighters win!
She woke with a headache and a rush of the memory of failure. All the energy drained out of her, and she stared up at the sunlight on the plaster ceiling, finding it colorless and hard. If only it were still night and she could have more time alone. The thought of going down into the breakfast room to face all those bright smiles—the curious, the confident, the pitying—and having to pretend there was nothing wrong ... What everyone else could see of George and Sybilla was of no importance; she knew something the others did not, something that explained it all.
She curled up smaller, hunching her knees, and hid her head under the sheet a few moments more. But the longer she stayed, the more thoughts crowded her head. Imagination raced away, giving reality to every threat, every possible misery, till she was drowned with wretchedness. Her head throbbed, her eyes stung, and it was past time she got up. Millicent had already knocked at the door twice; morning tea would be cold. The third time she had to let her in.
Emily took extra trouble with her appearance, the less she cared the more it mattered. She hated color out of a pot, but it was better than no color at all.
She was not the last down. Sybilla was absent, and Mrs. March had elected to have breakfast in bed, as had Great-aunt Vespasia.
“You look well, my dear Emily,” Eustace said briskly. Of course, he was perfectly aware of the situation between George and Sybilla, but deplore it as she must, a well-bred woman bore such things discreetly and affected not to have noticed. He did not approve of Emily, but he would give her the benefit of the doubt unless she made such a charitable view impossible.
“I am, thank you.” Emily forced herself to be bright, and her irritation made it easier. “I hope you slept well too?”
“Excellently.” Eustace helped himself with a lavish hand from several of the chafing dishes on the massive carved oak sideboard, set his dish in his place, then went over and threw open the windows, letting in a blast of chill morning air. He breathed in deeply, and then out again. “Excellent,” he said, disregarding everyone else’s shivering as he took his seat at the table. “I always think good health is so important in a woman, don’t you?”
Emily could think of no reason why it should be particularly, but it seemed to be largely a rhetorical question, and Eustace answered himself. “No man, especially of a good family, wants a sickly wife.”
“The poor want it even less,” Tassie said bluntly. “It costs a lot to be ill.”
But Eustace’s pontification was not to be interrupted by something so irrelevant as the poor. He waved his hand gently. “Of course it does, my dear, but then if the poor don’t have children it hardly matters, does it? It is not as if it were a case of succession to a title, of the line, so to speak. Ordinary people don’t need sons in the same way.” He shot a sour look at William. “And preferably more than one—if you wish to see the name continue.”
George cleared his throat and raised his brows, and his eyes flickered first to Sybilla, then William, and lowered to his plate again. William’s face tightened sharply.
“Being sickly doesn’t stop them having children,” Tassie argued, spots of color in her cheeks. “I don’t think health is a virtue. It is a good fortune, frequently found among those who are better off.”
Eustace took a deep breath and let it out, in a noisy expression of impatience. “My dear, you are far too young to know what you are talking about. It is a subject you cannot possibly understand, nor should you. It is indelicate