Arabella whirled back toward them, her cheeks flushed, her copper curls quivering with indignation. “This cannot be allowed. Nuns, Gwen. He would lock you up with nuns.”
“It is a convent, not a dungeon,” Eleanor reminded, though her mouth was tight. “Some women like that life.”
“I am not some women,” Gwen said softly.
Arabella threw herself onto the settee in a storm of silk and indignation. “Nor am I. Nor is any creature with breath and a beating heart. Oh, Gwen.”
Eleanor crossed the room and sat opposite Gwen, arranging her grey skirts with the neatness of a woman who never allowed emotion to crease her seams. “Tell us exactly what he said. No embroidery, no muttered asides. Word for word, as far as you recall.”
Gwen recounted the conversation. Howard’s calm cruelty. Cordelia’s futile pleas. The words that had lodged in her bones like ice:three weeks.
When she finished, the room had gone very quiet.
Arabella’s eyes shone with tears. “He called you a burden.”
“He has called me worse.” Gwen shrugged.
“That is not an answer,” Eleanor observed. “It is a habit.”
Gwen tried to smile. “I have many habits, none of them very pretty.”
Eleanor’s gaze softened, just a fraction. “You are not a burden, and you know it.”
Gwen looked down at her hands. “I know that I cost him money. Gowns. Vouchers. The price of disappointment.”
“You cost him nothing that he did not choose to spend,” Eleanor scoffed. “He married your mother with the full knowledge of your existence.”
“And her dowry,” Arabella added hotly. “Do not forget that small detail.”
“We do not know what happened between them,” Eleanor said. “Speculation will not help.”
“Speculation comforts me,” Arabella insisted. “How else am I to survive another Season without a love match. I must have a narrative if I cannot have romance.”
“Arabella,” Eleanor warned.
Arabella sighed and leaned toward Gwen, taking her hand. “I am sorry. I am being flippant because I wish to throw something and cannot. I hate this man.”
“You do not know him,” Gwen pointed out.
“I know what he does,” Arabella replied. “That is enough.”
Eleanor folded her hands in her lap. “The question is not what we feel. The question is what we will do.”
Gwen lifted her head. “Do.”
“You will not go to St. Agatha’s,” Arabella declared.
Eleanor gave her sister a level look. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“I’ve decided that I will not allow it,” Arabella said. “If I must stand in front of the carriage myself, I will.”
“You are five feet nothing in your stockings,” Eleanor snorted. “They will simply drive around you.”
Arabella shot her a glare. “Poetic support, Ellie, not practical criticism.”
Eleanor sighed, but there was affection in the sound. “Very well. I am poetically enraged. Are you satisfied?”
“Somewhat,” Arabella muttered.
