The entrée knife clinked high and metallic against its mate. Saffy’s lips parted, she blinked: “Pardon, dearest?”
“To be married. Juniper’s engaged to be married.”
“But that’s ridiculous. Of course she’s not.” Saffy was genuinely stunned. “Juniper?” She laughed a little, a tinny sound. “Married? Wherever did you hear such a thing?”
A stream of smoky exhalation.
“Well? Who’s been talking such nonsense?”
Percy was busy rescuing a piece of stray tobacco from her bottom lip and for a moment said nothing. She frowned instead at the speck on her fingertip. Finally, she flicked her hand on its way to the ashtray. “It was probably nothing. I was just in the post office and—”
“Ha!” said Saffy, with rather more triumph than was perhaps warranted. Relief, too, that Percy’s gossip was just that: village talk with no grounding in truth. “I might have known. That Potts woman! Really, she’s an utter menace. We must all be thankful that she hasn’t turned her loose talk yet to matters of state.”
“You don’t believe it then?” Percy’s voice was woody, no modulation at all.
“Of course I don’t believe it.”
“Juniper hasn’t said anything to you?”
“Not a word.” Saffy came to where Percy was sitting, reached out, and touched her sister’s arm. “Really, Percy dear. Can you imagine Juniper as a bride? Dressed all in white lace; agreeing to love and obey somebody else as long as they both shall live?”
The cigarette lay withered and lifeless in the ashtray now, and Percy steepled her fingers beneath her chin. Then she smiled slightly, lifting her shoulders, settling them again, shaking the notion away. “You’re right,” she said. “Silly gossip, nothing more. I only wondered …” But what precisely she wondered, Percy let taper to its own conclusion.
Although there was no music playing, the gramophone needle was still tracing dutifully around the record’s center and Saffy put it out of its misery, lifting it back to the cradle. She was about to excuse herself to check on the rabbit pie, when Percy said, “Juniper would have told us. If it were true; she would’ve told us.”
Saffy’s cheeks warmed, remembering the journal on the floor upstairs, the shock of its most recent entry, the hurt at having been kept in the dark.
“Saffy?”
“Certainly,” she said quickly. “People do, don’t they? They tell each other things like that.”
“Yes.”
“Especially their sisters.”
“Yes.”
And it was true. Keeping a love affair secret was one thing, an engagement quite another. Even Juniper, Saffy felt sure, would not be so blind to the feelings of others, the ramifications that such a decision would have.
“Still,” said Percy, “we should speak with her. Remind her that Daddy—”
“Isn’t here,” Saffy finished gently. “He isn’t here, Percy. We’re all of us free now to do exactly as we please.” To leave Milderhurst behind, to set sail for the glamour and excitement of New York City and never look back.
“No.” Percy said it so sharply that Saffy worried for a moment that she’d spoken her intentions out loud. “Not free, not completely. We each of us have duties towards the others. Juniper understands that; she knows that marriage—”
“Perce—”
“Those were Daddy’s wishes. Hiscondition.”
Percy’s eyes were searching her own and Saffy realized it was the first time in months that she’d had the opportunity to study her twin’s face so closely; she saw that her sister wore new lines. She was smoking a lot and worrying, and no doubt the war itself was taking its toll, but whatever the cause the woman sitting before her was no longer young. Neither was she old, and Saffy understood suddenly—though surely she had known it before?—that there was something, someplace, in between. And that they were both in it. Maidens no more, but a way yet from being crones.
“Daddy knew what he was doing.”
“Of course, darling,” Saffy said tenderly. Why hadn’t she noticed them before—all those women in the great in-between? They were not invisible surely, they were merely going about their business quietly, doing what women did when they were no longer young but not yet old. Keeping neat houses, wiping tears from their children’s cheeks, darning the holes in their husband’s socks. And suddenly Saffy understood why Percy was behaving this way, almost as if she were jealous of the possibility that Juniper, who was only eighteen, might someday marry. That she still had her entire adult life ahead of her. She understood, too, why tonight of all nights Percy should lose herself in such sentimental thoughts. Though driven by concern for Juniper, motivated by gossip in the village, it was the encounter with Lucy that had her behaving this way. Saffy was drenched then by a wave of crashing affection for her stoic twin, a wave so strong it threatened to leave her breathless. “We were unlucky, weren’t we, Perce?”
Percy looked up from the cigarette she was rolling. “What’s that?”
“The two of us. We were unfortunate when it came to matters of the heart.”
