That brought her up short.
Damn Marchand and his bluntness and pointing out things she didn’t want to face. It was a relief as much as it was a trial.
She pondered this assertion.
“I should tell you, Mr. Marchand, that Hogarth did not precisely shame himself at university. He’s notthatkind of stupid. In fact, he greatly impressed all of his tutors.”
“What were his best subjects?”
“Fencing. Mathematics.”
“You’re having me on.”
“I’m quite serious. Even the fancy kind of mathematics. Formulas like hieroglyphics.” She waggled her fingers in the air, pantomiming the scrawling of equations. “That sort. The reason he went mad at the betting table had nothing to do with his ability tocalculatethings.”
“Hmm.” Marchand was pensive.
“Do you know, Mr. Marchand, my brother would tell me only two things about that whole night at Lucifer’s Fall. He said that I would have understoodwhyhe did it if I’d known with whom he was wagering. And I think I do understand, now that I know it was Sydenham. And—this is the odd one—he told me that Sydenham’s satyr waistcoat buttons were jeering at him.”
“Jeering?” Mr. Marchand said it so sharply she gave a start.
“It might have been ‘leering.’ I expect it was just because Hogarth was drunk.”
“Well, hewasthat,” Mr. Marchand mused.
He fell silent for a time.
“Marchand... what is the point of me if I can’t keep him from being stupid for the rest of his life?”
“Guinevere.”
Her head swiveled toward him abruptly, her eyes wide at the sound of her first name. The word was gentle, but etched in amazed exasperation.
“What is the point of this shrubbery?” He reached up and drew a leaf between his fingers.
“It’s decorative? It... looks fetching against this bench?”
“And?”
“It’s... a home for birds and insects and little rodents. A prop for lectures from supercilious men of dubious character.”
His eyebrows flicked. “So birds and insects no doubt think of it as one thing, and you think of it as another, and what do you suppose the shrubbery believes its purpose is?”
“Butdoshrubberies think, Marchand?” She tipped her head and wrinkled her nose.
“The shrubbery justis. It basks in the sun and soaks up rain and puts out flowers in the spring.”
“But I’m not a shrubbery?” she reminded him.
He sighed. “It’s a matter of perspective, isn’t it? What thepointof anything is? You are a grown woman. You don’t need a point. But should you be so inclined,youcan decide the point of you.”
He was again making the kind of philosophical sense that unnerved her because it called into question the way she’d lived her life to date.
“You don’t understand. I’mgoodat it,” she said stubbornly. “Ilikelooking after him.”
Did she? Or was it all she knew?
Was it all she knew because her promise kept her connected to people who were forever gone?
