“We will all go inside now,” I said, firmly. “And meet her where she is.”
From down the row, the cook gave me an approving nod.
Of all the staff there had been no nursemaid, which explained, amongst many other details that would come to light, both Elin’s absence and why she was alone in her room.
“Elin,” Robert called softly from the doorway. “Your papa is home. And I’ve brought you your new sisters.”
She was playing with her dolls, turned away from us, sitting in front of empty plates laid out on a child-sized table. I could not see her face, but the conflict that must have been upon it reflected itself across her shoulders. I was not offended by her shyness. She was a motherless girl surrounded by baby dolls. And a new familywasan unexpected arrival,even if her father had written ahead. I watched as she lifted an empty teacup to a doll’s lips and poured air down its throat.
When the pouring was finished and still she did not turn, I took Rosie’s and Mathilde’s hands and brought them one step forward into Elin’s nursery. All three of us looked around in astonishment. There was a peach chaise and peach walls and peach tapestries and peach curtains. The room was like being inside a cloud if a cloud was also filled with toys. The surfaces were covered in every manner of doll and animal. Exquisitely realistic dolls with porcelain faces and curled hair. Little-girl dolls in lace gowns and baby dolls in bundles and blankets and cradles. Unable to contain herself, Rosie shook off my hand and ran forward, stopping short in front of one doll that was discarded, face up, on a cupboard. Extending a hand, she touched it gently with the tip of her finger, turning back to me after, eyebrows raised in a belated request for permission.
Mathilde took another step forward, into the room. “Hello,” she said, thinking carefully about her words, and straining to make a good impression. “I am Mathilde. It is lovely to make your acquaintance.”
“You havesomany wonderful things.” Rosie spun to take in the room once more.
Still, Elin had not turned. “Elin,” Robert called, again. “We have visitors. Come say hello to your papa.”
Because it was a direct order, she stood, and, without looking at us, went toward her father. When she was near enough, she closed the distance between them with a quick run into his arms and buried her face into his chest. I firmed myself against a pulse of my own grief.Henry!I wanted to say his name aloud.
I had seen, when we walked through the great hall, a portrait of a woman I could only assume was Robert’s first wife. The resemblance between the woman and the girl in front of me was striking: bodies so slender you had a sense of the bones beneath skin, hair so blond it was at risk of losing its color, and eyes so blue they managed to be both startled and startling at once. It was difficult to decide if they—bothmother and daughter—were stunningly beautiful or strange and unfamiliar. Either way, it was difficult to stop looking at Elin.
When a proper amount of time had passed, I began to speak to my new stepdaughter. “Hello, Elin,” I said, softly. “My name is Etheldreda. I have been very much looking forward to meeting you. As have my two little girls, Rosamund and Mathilde.”
Still, she did not look at us, and instead began to sing a nameless tune into Robert’s chest. He chuckled and looked over. “She’s like this. Head in the clouds. She has the heart of an angel—you will see.”
She fit his description. The girl was light personified. Pale skin, white eyelashes; her color had evaporated. She’d float away if she were not anchored by her father’s arms.
“Elin, darling,” Robert continued, “perhaps you might choose a toy to share with each of the girls.”
Mathilde’s hand, still clasped in my own, jumped. I heard, from Rosie, a quick intake of air. There had been no new toys or gifts the past year. Elin pushed back from her father’s arms, and for the first time, turned to face us with those startling eyes. She opened her mouth. Her gaze flitted up to the ceiling, down to the floor, up once more, and then, in one smooth collapse, she fell, lifelessly, against her father.
I ran a few steps forward, dropping Mathilde’s hand, as she spun around in surprise. Rosie cried out. But Robert, cradling Elin fondly, quickly explained: She had only fainted. A harmless ailment. It happened often, and at random.
As the initial days passed, I had a chance to observe for myself.
When Elin was gently scolded by the housekeeper for opening her nursery windows and letting the rain warp the sill—Elin fainted.
When Mathilde, tentatively, shyly, asked if they might play together—Elin fainted.
When she learned that I, Robert’s new wife, would be taking her seat beside him at the dinner table—Elin fainted.
When Rosie found her unlatching the door to Lucy’s mews, and walking away with the opening ajar—Elin fainted.
When she was questioned after Mathilde’s wooden animal went missing and it was discovered in Elin’s room—Elin fainted.
She was but a child, acting against change and grief in childish ways. But it did not take long for me to come to my own conclusion. We don’t all draw our angels with the same hand.
The differences between my new husband and I quickly made themselves known. Though I was out of black, my loss was still new and fresh. In contrast, Robert’s first wife had passed years before. Now he spoiled his daughter, lavishing her with gifts and ribbons, and more of those discomfiting dolls. In return, Elin, his angel, his small fountain of girlish virtue, dined with the adults, had no friends her age, and was her father’s primary talking companion. I believed in rules and had children who knew how to follow them. Robert could not deprive Elin of a thing, for she had already been deprived of a mother.
Jealouswas not the right word for what I felt. Rather, Elin and her deceased mother were an unaccounted-for imbalance in my life, like I had calibrated the scales and then found extra weights on the table. Elin’s mother had decorated Bramley Hall, and—though I tried to expunge her, the nice ghost—you could not enter a room without seeing all she touched. She was there in each silk and brocade, the elaborate carvings in the stairwell, and the crest that marked the lintels.
A few weeks after our arrival, I was wandering the hallways, familiarizing myself with my new home, when I came to a stop in front of my predecessor’s bedchambers. I had already discovered, during previous meanderings, that the room had been left untouched. Half-full bottles of oil and perfumes sat on a polished vanity. Vases decorated the bedside tables. Heavy curtains muted the light from the oversizedwindow and contrasted with a delicate lace canopy hung over the bed. Through the open archway to the dressing room, I could see the graceful specters of outdated dresses.
I had paused to marvel at these details—a pair of silk dressing slippers still awaited their mistress at the side of the bed—before realizing someone was in the room. Elin stood in front of a row of dolls she’d placed on a chaise that faced the window.
“Look, ladies,” she instructed. The dolls were her pupils. “This is where my mother painted.” She gestured toward an empty easel and stool across the room. “Papa says a woman is capable of never-ending accomplishments. She must think of herself not as a piece of art to be finished, but an ongoing project.”
She went over to the mantel, where a small selection of volumes were wedged between bookends. “And here are her books. A lady must be learned and well read.” Selecting a thin booklet, she opened it, paged through, and sounded out the words: “‘Let every young woman aspire to high degrees of purity, excellence, and unsullied virtue. Since mothers are never mothers until they have become daughters—and mothers are the ones to go on to raise sons—let us presume that the education and instruction of daughters is the responsibility not just of the daughter herself, but society as a whole. Such a charge is… indubitably’”—she slowed, struggling with the word, before picking up her pace once more—“‘paramount, as mothers, in their omnipotent influence, may sow the seeds of malevolence with as much fervor as they sow good. Hence, the inculcation of virtue becomes an endeavor of the utmost gravity in the education of all of the world’s daughters.’”
