Penelope nodded, and they walked through the gardens and into Abington Hall proper, where Melliton society had gathered to mark the loss of their most prominent personage.
People looked up, then quickly looked away again, dismissing Penelope.Oh, those lightning glances seemed to say,it’s onlyher.You know, merchant’s daughter, the eccentric one? Wears men’s clothes around, does something with bees, I don’t know what. What on earth can one actually do with bees?
These were the cream of the local gentry: the men with gold watch chains and the women in gauzy silks, purchased with the rents from the tenants and smallholders Penelope drank with most evenings in the Four Swallows. Or else these fine folk claimed the profits from the boats other men steered up and down the river Ethel, carrying goods to and from London and more far-flung counties. Even if they’d never dream of opening a ledger themselves, or paying an invoice, or asking what kinds of goods they traded in, or who died producing those goods.
These were the people who thought to have money was everything, but to earn it was a scandal. Penelope’s family had enough money to be acceptable, but not nearly enough to make her friendship valuable.
Mr. Oliver nodded farewell and went to murmur among them, using all the correct words and expected phrases.
After the freshness of grass and apple blossom, Penelope found the hall’s warm, close mix of scents and polishes and perfumes painfully cloying. She quickly made her way to the drinks on the sideboard, and let the fizzy richness of Mrs. Bedford’s cider drive away all other fumes and flavors. The Abington Hall housekeeper was a ten-year champion brewer at the town fair, and Penelope never missed a chance to sample her creations.
Most of the mourners around her were dressed in sober grays and browns and purples as they went through the careful minuet of grieving in public. Smiles reined in, voices hushed, a certain stiffness about the shoulders that said they were burdened by sorrow but not too much sorrow, an embarrassed sort of sadness—as though Death were an acquaintance whose face was familiar but whose name you couldn’t quite recall, and you were trying to nod politely as you hurried down the street before they could detain you long enough that you’d be compelled to stop and chat.
Only the family were in the black of full mourning: the vicar, his sister and brother-in-law Viscount and Viscountess Summerville, and of course Mrs. Joanna Molesey, Isabella’s longtime companion and friend.
Rather more than a friend, according to the gossips.
Penelope knew that not only were the gossips right, but in this instance they dreadfully understated the case: having spent many hours visiting the two women at home, and hearing about their shared adventures abroad, Penelope was in no doubt that Miss Abington and Mrs. Molesey had loved one another as deeply and passionately as any two people ever could. Mrs. Molesey was an accomplished poet in the habit of reading early drafts of her work aloud, and at home her sly and witty love lyrics were always addressed to an alluring and unnamedshe, though the published poems often changed the pronouns. When they didn’t, they bore the delicate subtitle:In imitation of Sappho.
Penelope was not the only one able to decipher such a code, and so Melliton society often moved in uneasy ripples and eddies around Mrs. Molesey, even as they basked in her fame and intellectual luster.
Right now the poet herself sat in splendid isolation on a scrolled bench against one wall: chin high, steel-gray hair swept back, her face ghostly pale against the black bombazine of her gown. All around her, mourners in pairs and trios kept themselves at careful oblique angles—they knew they couldn’t turn their backs outright, not today of all days, but they still wanted not to engage if they could avoid it. As though the palpable weight of her grief were enough to drag all of them down.
Well, Penelope was humble enough in the instep that few of the high-born people in this room really noted what she did. And she wasn’t afraid of grief. She plucked a few small morsels from the sideboard and cut directly through the crowd to the bench.
“When did you eat last?” she asked Mrs. Molesey, then shook her head. “Never mind—you should eat something now.”
The poet accepted the offering of bread and cold meat, and even nibbled on a corner of a slice.
Penelope’s spirits rose. “You can have my cider if you want it.”
“No, thank you—I’ve a thin enough rein on my control at the moment, which spirits would undo entirely,” the lady murmured, the rich timbre of her voice rougher than Penelope had ever heard it. One corner of that long mouth tilted up. “Unless you want me to lose all control of my tongue. If I wanted to, I could send up such a shriek as would whiten the hair of every prune-faced hypocrite trying to playact plain and honest sorrow.”
Penelope cast an instinctive glance at Lady Summerville, who was indeed pursing her lips and relentlessly projecting an air of winsomely-carrying-on-through-near-collapse that would have done credit to any ingenue on the stage.
The poet caught the direction of her gaze, and leaned close. “Yes, to look at her you’d never guess how truly eager she is to punt me out of the house and take her aunt’s place. She expects to inherit everything, as Bella’s only living relative. Well, aside from Mr. Oliver—but he’s quite comfortable in the vicarage, I’m sure. He’s certainly richer than his sister and her lord, the title notwithstanding.” Mrs. Molesey’s chuckle was half creak, as though long disused. “I do hope she’ll give me time to change before she evicts me, at least. Black is an impossible color for traveling.”
Penelope’s laugh was helpless and far too loud. It paused all conversation and set every eye rolling her way.
She could see their thoughts as though they were written in the air:that Penelope Flood again—can she never be serious for a moment?She took a long pull of cider, blushing painfully, and smoothed at her skirts with her free hand.
The murmur of polite conversation rose up again like the tide.
Mrs. Molesey’s smile deepened enough to dimple. “So at least now they have someone else’s behavior to cluck about. Thank you, Mrs. Flood.”
Her cheeks burned. “It was the least I could do.”
The poet took another absentminded bite of bread, and Penelope bit her lip to prevent herself from saying something encouraging about it. Judging by her earlier declaration, Mrs. Molesey was liable to take to fasting just for the sake of being contrary. Her emotions ran volatile, though deep and true. Penelope could just see her reclining on an antique chaise in Grecian robes, head tilted proudly, one hand tragically on her brow, reciting shiversome verses about wasting away until death reunited her with her lost love.
Penelope had loved a few people in her time—but she’d never loved anybody to such poetic heights. That was the one thing she’d truly envied Isabella Abington and Joanna Molesey: not the adventures, not the fame, not even the artistic success both women had found. Maybe they all came as a set, and one couldn’t lay claim to a devoted, passionate love without flinging oneself into the world and hunting it down.
Penelope was the furthest thing from a hunter. She should probably resign herself to her fate: furtive affairs and transitory dalliances. And fewer and fewer of those as the years went on. Oh, and an absent husband—so long and so frequently absent that she tended to forget Mr. Flood even existed. And theirs had certainly not been a love match, in any case.
The sweet-tartness of the cider burned like acid on her tongue.
Mr. Nancarrow, the most expensive of Melliton’s solicitors, approached the sofa to interrupt Penelope’s gloomy reverie. His narrow face was set in its gentlest expression, but there was no softening the sharp angles of his chin and cheekbones. He bowed low and said: “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Molesey, Mrs. Flood, but I must ask you to step into the library with me for the reading of the will.”
“Both of us?” Penelope asked, surprised. She’d known Isabella had liked her, but enough to be included in the bequests?
