“I thought it was only appropriate and practical,” Harper said.
“Very thoughtful practicality,” Albina added.
“Mother,” Temperance said, quietly.
Albina picked up her wine and said nothing further, but the expression on her face showed that she was choosing not to comment.
“What color is it?” Joseph with the innocent curiosity of a child asking a perfectly reasonable question. Albina made a sound into her wine glass that was almost certainly a laugh.
“Green,” Harper said.
Temperance looked at him. Something moved across her face that was too quick and too complex for him to read before she looked back at her plate, and she picked up her fork, “Thank you.”
He did not trust himself to say the right thing, so he said nothing, and ate his dinner.
There would be time for that later, though he suspected he would not make very good use of that time. But the intention, at least, was sound.
CHAPTER 13
“You are not listening,” Joseph said, from the middle of the music room floor. There was an air of impatience in his voice.
Albina did not look up from the piano keys.
“I am listening, it’s just that I simply find this particular piece very limiting.”
“It is a waltz,” Joseph groaned.
“I know it is a waltz. I have been playing waltzes since before your father was born.”
“Lady Wilmington.”
“Fine then.”
Temperance watched this from the chair by the window with her book open in her lap. She had been in the room for the better part of an hour watching Joseph move through his lesson with focused, slightly pained concentration.
It was not as though he was a bad dancer, rather Albina was proving to be a bad partner.
“You keep missing the step,” Joseph said again. “It’s as though you are not even trying.”
Albina laughed, and Temperance knew that her mother was getting some sort of entertainment out of this entire thing.
“But isn’t it so much more interesting to miss a step?” she replied. “It’s so boring when everything is in order.”
“Sure, but that barely helps me learn,” Joseph said frustrated.
“For the next dance, may I suggest that you change your partner?” Mr. Fowler suggested carefully. Joseph turned to look at Temperance immediately.
“Yes, will you do it?” he asked without missing a beat. “It would bring me great relief.”
Albina laughed again, as though her objective had been reached.
Temperance sighed as she set her book down.
“I should warn you,” she said, crossing the floor toward him, “that I am genuinely terrible at this.”
“How terrible?” Joseph asked.
“Considerably more than you are hoping.”
