I forgot to drink my coffee, watching Madge over the rim. She spoke of her children with pride, but there was a distance to it. She had always been cold, but now she struck me almost as a caricature of herself. Of who she had once been.
I flicked a glance at the painting.
“Ophelia and Imogen, my third and fourth, have presented Glim threads, naturally, but are too young to do much of note. Their nannies say, however, that they are both observant creatures, which is promising.”
“You have not seen this yourself?”
“I have been elsewhere.”
“Ah. Where is the fifth?”
“With Ophelia and Imogen. The infant was born this summer and has yet to show threads, but between my blood and Everard’s, I’ve little doubt she will be noteworthy. A Starlight.”
I blinked from my sister’s face to her stomach, and back to her face. “You’ve left her already?”
“The situation in Harrow is too serious for maternal indulgences,” Madge replied. “Her wetnurse is exemplary, what other use is there in my presence?”
I found I had nothing to say to that, because the answer was too vast, too intimate. My chest ached and my head filled with the recollection of how my mother had wept at Madge’s departure, all those years ago. How stricken she had been at Pretoria’s. And how, by mine, she had simply watched from the window, dull-eyed and distant.
Madge continued to paint.
“What is her name?”
“Who?”
“Your baby.”
“Oh. Venecia.”
I thought of the tiny child, this niece who would live out her days with only marginal connection to the woman who bore her, and felt my heart rupture anew. I could almost feel her in my arms, small and helpless, and resolved once more that I would not give the Guild the chance to do to me what they had to my mother—and to Madge.
“When was the last time you saw our mother?” I asked, attempting to hold my own emotions in check.
Madge’s brows contracted, ever so slightly, in thought. Or consternation. “I do not recall.”
“You painted it away,” I accused.
She shrugged. “Perhaps.”
We fell silent, after that. I set my coffee aside, and simply watched my sister finish her painting. She sat back as her threads quietened, smiling with professional satisfaction at the portrait before her.
It was exquisite, incomparably lifelike but still signature, edged with Madge’s soft, haloed style. She had captured herself perfectly, every illuminated strand of hair and the fall of every shadow. The only thing that differed from life were her eyes.
The eyes of the portrait were emotive, full of lament, and a lingering ghost of fear.
Nightmares, Madge had said. What did she fear, in the dark of the night? Whatever it was, it was trapped within oil, pigment, and canvas now, and there it would remain until circumstance—time, intention, or accident—destroyed the painting.
“Now,” Madge said, turning to me. “Is there anything you would like me to paint away?”
“No,” I snapped.
She looked startled by my response. “You sound as if I offered to torture you.”
“You do not paint Pretoria and I,” I stated. “You promised Mother that. You promised us.”
From Madge’s expression, she had disremembered that. “Ah. Yes. Well.” She glanced down at herself as if she had also forgotten her state of dress. “Time to prepare for the day. Shall I do your hair?”
I consented to dress in borrowed clothing and arrange my own hair, if only to distract from Madge’s terrible suggestion and arm myself with several more layers of fabric. I now regretted my refusal to dress earlier. I felt exposed in a way I should not have before my own flesh and blood as I donned Madge’s plainest ensemble, a pale blue skirt with a shirtwaist of exceptional quality and a matching jacket.
