Angel in Scarlet

by Jennifer Wilde

  I wasn’t likely to see Hugh Bradford again, and if I did he’d be rude and sullen and I’d probably give him the finger or slap his face again or do something equally outrageous. He was a lout, a bumpkin, rough and uncouth and a complete sod. I wasn’t interested in men, but if I ever was the man would be genteel and polite and charming. Certainly wouldn’t be a surly country ruffian who spent his days inspecting farm equipment and making certain the manure was properly spread. I took off the dress and hung it carefully in the wardrobe. It was a lovely dress, the finest I’d ever had, but where was I going to wear it? Downstairs to dinner? To the village on my errands? When I entertained one of the countless beaux who swarmed around vying for my favor? I slipped on my old blue cotton frock and went downstairs to peel the potatoes for dinner. Marie would have one of her snits if I didn’t have them ready in time.

  The winds continued to roar throughout most of March, making Marie testy and making me restless. When finally they died down it was almost April and the skies were a pure, pale white with only a touch of blue and the sun was a pale white disc. The trees were bare, the earth brown, but all the snow was gone and a faint green haze was beginning to appear. Spring would be here in no time, the flowers abloom again. A decade seemed to have passed since that spring day last year when I had picked the daisies and sprained my ankle and slapped Hugh Bradford across the face. That might almost have happened another lifetime ago, I thought as I came back from the village with the groceries Marie had sent me to buy.

  Marie wasn’t in the kitchen. She was in the parlor with my stepsisters, and all three of them fell silent when I entered. Janine was on the sofa as usual, but she wasn’t stretched out. She was sitting up, and her large blue eyes weren’t as placid as usual. They looked worried. Marie was sitting by the window in the familiar garnet silk dress and black apron she always wore when she was working, her thin, sharp-featured face painted as usual, orange-blonde hair stacked atop her head with ringlets spilling over her brow. Her eyes were glittering brightly, full of angry determination. Solonge stood by the window, breathtakingly gorgeous in a lime green frock. Her red-gold hair glistened like pale fire in the sunlight streaming through the window behind her. She looked defiant, I thought, looked impatient, too, all that vivacity and temperament held carefully in check. I had obviously stumbled in on one of the fierce arguments Marie periodically had with her daughters.

  “I put the groceries in the kitchen,” I said.

  “Go to your room, Angela!” Marie ordered.

  “Let her stay,” Solonge said. “She’ll have to find out sooner or later.”

  “This isn’t—”

  “Angie’s no longer a child, and she happens to be a member of the family, though you’re so busy clucking over us you seem to forget it most of the time. Sit down, Angie,” Solonge told me. “We’re in the middle of an earthshaking crisis.”

  “Crisis?”

  “Janine’s pregnant,” she said dryly.

  I stared at her, stunned, certain I must have misunderstood her. Janine pregnant? I could hardly believe it. Solonge, now, that wouldn’t have surprised me, although she always bragged about being so careful, but Janine was so indolent she could scarcely stir herself enough to go out with any of the youths who came calling. I couldn’t imagine her having enough energy to perform the gyrations necessary for pregnancy to occur.

  “Janine?” I said. “Pregnant?”

  “Unquestionably.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “Between naps,” Solonge said bitterly.

  Janine sighed wearily and leaned back against the pillow, idly rearranging the folds of her pink and blue striped frock. Silvery blonde hair atumble, cheeks a delicate pink, she looked at her sister with resentful blue eyes and said there was no need to be bitchy about it, accidents happened all the time, and then she swung her legs up and stretched out full length on the sofa, making herself comfortable.

  “I don’t know what all this fuss is about,” she added. “Teddy wants to marry me.”

  Marie drew in a sharp breath, her long jet earrings swaying as she jerked her head around to glare at her oldest daughter.

  “He would!” she snapped. “It would be a coup for him, winning the hand of one of my daughters. A bookseller! A pitiful clerk in a bookstore! Yes, indeed, that would be just dandy. The two of you could move into his elegant rooms over the store and live luxuriously on his generous salary. What does he make? Ten pounds a year? Fifteen?”

  “Teddy?” I said. “Teddy Pendergast?”

  “The same,” Solonge told me.

  “He isn’t a clerk,” I said. “He’s the manager. He’s very nice, always smiles at me when I come in.”

  “He smiled at me, too,” Janine said. “He has a very nice smile and the warmest brown eyes.”

  “What in the world were you doing in Blackwood’s?” I asked.

  “Browsing,” Solonge said.

  “It was starting to rain and I just stepped inside to stay dry and there was no one else in the shop but Teddy and he was very polite, very attentive. I love that thick bronze hair of his. I love his soft, caressing voice, too. He asked if I’d like some tea and I said yes and we had the tea and ate cakes I’d just purchased—those tiny iced cakes I’m so fond of. That’s why I had walked all the way to the village in the first place, to buy the cakes. Teddy is thirty-two,” she added. “I think that’s a lovely age for a man.”

  “He’s a vile seducer!” Marie exclaimed.

  “Hardly, Maman,” Janine informed her. “I asked him to take me upstairs to his rooms. He was very nervous, almost forgot to put the ‘Closed’ sign on the door. I had to remind him.”

  “I can’t believe it!”

  “You could if you met him. He’s much nicer than any of the boys you’re always encouraging me to go out with, the ones with wealthy fathers and money to spend.”

  “You slept with him! And you kept going back.”

  “Not that often,” Janine replied. “It’s a long walk to the village.”

  “And now the whole village knows one of my daughters—”

  “I only went at night, Maman, after the shop was closed, and I used the back door, the one that opens onto the alley. I always wore my long cloak, too, with the hood pulled up. I’m not a complete ninny.”

  “How could this have happened?” Marie wailed. “All my work, all my plans, and then you—” She shook her head, eyes pained. “I just can’t believe it.”

  “Teddy’s not an aristocrat, you see,” Solonge explained to me. “He’s not Oxford educated, doesn’t have a title, doesn’t have a private income or a father who owns a great deal of property. Hence, he’s not good enough for a great-great-granddaughter of the Marquis de Valois.”

  “I’ve had enough of your sarcasm, Solonge!”

  “It’s true, isn’t it, Maman dear? If Teddy were somebody, if Teddy had money, you’d have shoved her into his bed.”

  “I want my daughters to take their proper station in life.”

  “When are you going to give up that fantasy?” Solonge asked. Her hazel eyes flashed, and her voice was sharp. “Janine and I are never going to marry into society, Maman. We’re not aristocracy. I doubt seriously we’re even legitimate. If there was a de Valois in your life I feel sure he kept you stashed away in an apartment on the back streets of Paris. You should thank your lucky stars you found a perfectly respectable English schoolmaster to take us in and give us his name.”

  “You—you have no idea what you’re saying. You—you—how could you speak to me this way? I’ve struggled and struggled, I’ve worked my fingers to the bone, trying to bring you both up properly, trying to instill in you an awareness of who you are, and—”

  “We know who we are, Maman.”

  Marie said nothing for a long while. Her face had gone white, making the paint and the dyed hair seem all the more garish. Her thin lips quivered at the corners, and her eyes were filled with bitterness and something very like defeat. I knew that So
longe had struck a raw nerve, knew what she had said cut very deep and was undoubtedly true. I felt a curious sympathy for this harsh, unhappy woman who had clung to a fantasy for years because the reality was too painful to bear. Her long fingers clutched and unclutched her black apron, wrinkling the cloth, and then, after several long moments, she stood up, her back stiff. The defeat was gone now, a hard, determined expression on her face.

  “I won’t have it,” she said. “I won’t have a daughter of mine marrying a clerk. I won’t have either of you wasting away like I have. You’re going to have things. You’re going to have everything I never had.”

  Janine and Solonge exchanged glances. Janine’s limpid blue eyes were full of indecision. She sat up and brushed a silvery-blonde wave from her temple. I could see that the idea of marrying Teddy suited her nicely. I also knew she hadn’t the ability to stand up to her mother.

  “I like Teddy,” she protested.

  “Shut up, Janine. I’m trying to think.”

  “You’d better think fast,” Solonge said dryly. “The blessed event is scheduled to occur in eight months, perhaps sooner.”

  “I don’t see why I can’t marry Teddy. I’m twenty-one years old. I’m already an old maid.”

  Not technically, I said to myself, but I didn’t dare say it aloud. I stood near the hall doorway, and all three of them had forgotten I was present. I felt like an intruder, an outsider, but that wasn’t at all unusual when I was with them. Marie pursed her lips, thinking hard, her eyes glittering. Solonge perched on the arm of the sofa beside Janine and began to tap her fingernails on the edge of the end table. How beautiful they were side by side like that, Solonge all fire and vitality, Janine indolent and lethargic, a vision of placid loveliness.

  “We’ll go back to Brittany for a visit,” Marie said. “I still have a friend there—Clarise Duvall. We’ve kept in touch through letters all these years. She’ll know what to do. She’ll help us.”

  Janine pouted. “But—”

  “I’ve put aside a little money—not quite enough to finance the trip, but your stepfather will provide the rest. I’ll see to it. The three of us will go back to Brittany for a long holiday. We’ll leave as soon as possible, and when we return no one will be any the wiser.”

  “Does Father know about Janine?” I asked.

  Marie looked at me, irritated at my intrusion.

  “Does he?” I insisted.

  “We haven’t told him,” Solonge said. “Janine hasn’t even told Teddy.”

  “I don’t want Father to know,” I said. My voice was firm.

  “He’ll have to know,” Marie said tersely.

  “No. He has—he has enough to worry about. I don’t want him upset. You can ask him for the money if you must, but you aren’t going to let him know why you want to go to Brittany.”

  Marie elevated one thin brow. “I’m not?”

  “You’re not,” I told her.

  She smiled then, a vicious smile. For a moment, for the first time, I actually hated her.

  “Because if you do,” I continued, “I’ll tell Eppie about Janine and Teddy and her pregnancy. If I tell Eppie, the whole village will know before nightfall.”

  I meant what I said. Marie could see that. The smile faded from her lips. Our eyes met and held, my own level and determined. I had never defied her before, and although my childish mischief had caused her to bewail her lot in years gone by, I had never questioned her authority or deliberately given her any trouble. Her yellow-green eyes were filled with anger, but there was a new respect as well. For that brief moment we might almost have been equals, and then she grimaced and lowered her eyes.

  “I suppose there isn’t any reason why he should know,” she said, and I could imagine what those words cost her.

  “None whatsoever,” Solonge agreed.

  “I must get to the kitchen. Dinner will be late tonight. I’ll speak to Stephen afterward. I’ll need your help in a few minutes, Angie. I do hope you remembered everything on my grocery list.”

  She left then, garnet skirt rustling, and Solonge gave me an admiring look.

  “The kitten has claws,” she said.

  “I—I couldn’t let her tell Father. He—it would upset him dreadfully. He admires Teddy, thinks of him as his friend. Teddy’s always ordering books for him. He—he’d feel betrayed.”

  “You’re absolutely right, darling.”

  I sat down in the chair beside the door, suddenly exhausted and feeling drained from my confrontation with Marie. I was amazed at my boldness and surprised by my easy victory. I vowed to be extra-nice to my stepmother. I wasn’t proud of myself for blackmailing her that way. I felt very bad about it. Marie might be harsh and bitter, might be sharp-tongued and frequently shrewish, but she wasn’t the evil stepmother I sometimes encountered in novels. She was unhappy and disappointed in her life, and I could understand why she wanted more for her daughters.

  Solonge got up from her perch on the arm of the sofa. “Well, sister dear,” she said, “you’ve gotten yourself into quite a mess, it seems. I hope Teddy Pendergast was worth it.”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to tell him,” Janine sighed.

  “Not a bloody thing, love. If you have any sense at all you’ll never go near him again.”

  Janine’s blue eyes looked regretful. “I suppose you’re right,” she agreed. “He did have a beautiful, soothing voice, though, and the nicest smile.”

  “Do you love him?” I asked.

  “He made me feel good all over,” she said dreamily. “When I looked at him I felt hungry—like I feel when I see a box of creamy chocolates. I just couldn’t resist him.”

  Solonge gave her sister a thoroughly exasperated look. “Jesus!” she snapped. “You really shouldn’t be allowed outside without a leash. There are a number of things you need to learn, love, the first one being that a girl always takes precautions. Men are too bloody anxious to think about such matters.”

  “I’m going to miss Teddy,” Janine confided in a sad voice. “It was so sweet of him, asking me to marry him like that, and he didn’t even know I was pregnant. I wish Maman weren’t so difficult.”

  “In this particular case she’s dead right, much as I hate to admit it. After you got your fill of chocolates you’d be trapped, living in two tiny rooms over a bookstore with a man who couldn’t afford to give you a bloody thing. Next time you feel hungry, love, make sure the man has enough money to keep you in style.”

  “I thought you were on my side.”

  “I am,” Solonge said. “You’re never going to marry into society, nor am I, but you can bloody well do better than Teddy Pendergast.”

  “If we’re going to Brittany we’ll need some new clothes,” Janine said, stretching out again. “I really would like a new bonnet, one of those straw ones trimmed in taffeta ribbons like we saw in the magazine from London. I think blue ribbon would be ideal—”

  Janine didn’t get a new bonnet, but she and Solonge did get new frocks. I spent endless hours with scissors, needle and thread, making them up in my attic room, a watered blue-gray silk for Janine, trimmed with pale blue lace, a golden-yellow taffeta for Solonge. I studied the London magazines in order to give the garments a modish look, and Solonge said I had a natural sense of style and was much better than the dreary old seamstress who used to sew for them. She slipped me two pounds and told me to treat myself while they were gone.

  “Don’t ask where I got the two pounds,” she added wryly.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I replied.

  “You’re growing up, darling. Thank God you’re not growing up like Janine and me. I fear both of us inherited very bad blood, but you—you’re intelligent and gifted and kind. Make the best of it, love.”

  Though I wasn’t really envious, knowing the purpose of their trip, I was wistful on the day of their departure. It would be lovely to take a trip, I thought, to see new places, meet new people, to have an adventure. A private carriage had been hired to take th
em to the nearest post station, and a husky footman in brown hoisted their trunks up on top of the vehicle, Solonge watching with an appraising eye. Marie wore a black silk dress and a black bonnet with garnet trim and looked chic indeed as she snapped orders and hustled her daughters into the carriage. Father and I stood on the front porch. I never learned how Marie got the money from him, but I did know he hadn’t an inkling of Janine’s condition.

  We waved as the carriage pulled away with the pyramid of trunks strapped onto the roof, and then Father sighed wearily and said it looked like the two of us would have to make do with each other’s company for a while. I said it shouldn’t be too taxing. Father smiled and patted me affectionately, smiling again when I said I wasn’t sure what kind of meals we’d have as I wasn’t very handy in the kitchen. I’d probably set the house afire, I added, and he said he supposed we’d just have to risk it. He curled his arm around my shoulders and led me back into the house. It seemed very still and quiet. That afternoon Father left the door to his study open for the first time I could remember.

  April was a lovely month, warm and pleasant. Flowers bloomed riotously in the gardens, as did the weeds, and Father and I spent many hours outside, raking and weeding and cutting back. He tired easily and often just sat out in the sunshine while I crawled about on my knees and got dirt under my fingernails and soiled my old cotton dress. It was nice to dig in the soil and pull up the weeds and clip the rose shrubs, nice to be out in the fresh air and smell the loamy earth and flowers and listen to the birds making fluting noises in the boughs of the oak trees. Father enjoyed it, too, and I felt it did him good. Many times he dozed there in his chair with a book in his lap, rays of spring sunshine bathing his face.