Scales and Sensibility by Stephanie Burgis
Chapter 9
Elinor might have imagined that first curtain-flutter from Hathergill Hall, but she couldn’t have missed the second one as Sir John flung the carriage door wide. She didn’t miss the flash of golden curls behind curtain, either...and it made her stomach clench with visceral dread.
She’d stepped out of another carriage in this spot six months earlier, still weary with grief and desperately missing her sisters but also brimming with a naïve, foolish hope. She had been so determined to make herself a new home. She’d imagined that she might be welcomed—even liked—by her extended family once they came to know her.
You’re not the despised poor relation anymore, she reminded herself. As Mrs. DeLacey, you’re the one Penelope ought to fear.
It was more than difficult to believe—but at least she didn’t have to suffer long in anticipation. The front door of Hathergill Hall was already opening as Elinor started down the carriage steps, steadfastly refusing Sir John’s offers of assistance. Penelope, still tying her china-blue bonnet ribbons under her chin, started out of the house—then jumped back, one hand flying to her mouth in theatrical astonishment.
“Oh my goodness! Papa, I had no idea you were already back. And with visitors!”
“I am indeed.” Sir John puffed himself up with delight. “Caught you on your way out for a morning constitutional, have we, pet?”
She smiled enchantingly, peeping out from under the broad brim of her bonnet like a naughty angel. “The weather is so lovely, I simply couldn’t help myself. You know how I dote upon nature!”
…And yet Penelope, Elinor noted, wasn’t wearing a walking dress or even outdoor shoes. If so much as a speck of dirt smudged those pink silk slippers—newly ordered from London—she was certain to throw a royal fit.
Had anyone else noticed?
Apparently not. Sir John was beaming down at his daughter on the drive, Aubrey was muttering to himself in the carriage as he selected the three or four bucket-loads of papers that absolutely had to be carried in his own hands to the house, and Mr. Hawkins…
…Benedict Hawkins was standing at the top of the carriage steps, gazing wide-eyed at Penelope, as if caught in a trance.
Elinor bit down hard on the inside of her cheek as she turned away. Stupid, stupid, stupid. How could she be disappointed? Gentlemen always looked at Penelope that way, even when she wasn’t smiling in the sunshine, golden hair glinting beneath her bonnet. As Elinor looked from Mr. Hawkins to Penelope, all the smothering despair and suffocation of the past six months sank once more across her shoulders with a crushing weight.
Had she actually forgotten, even for an instant, the kind of contrast that she and her cousin always formed? Of course he’d believe anything that Penelope said about her from now on.
She took a step backward without even realizing it. As Sir Jessamyn scrabbled to hide his face behind her head, her own chin sank down. Her eyes lowered, too, forming the image of invisibility and perfect submission that she’d learned to perfect during the last several months. No one ever wanted to look at heror be reminded of her existence…and when she was with Penelope, she was never allowed to forget that.
This time, though, Sir John gestured her forward, clearing his throat portentously. “Now, then, Penelope! Can you guess who I’ve brought you?”
The words brought Elinor to her senses with a snap. Sir Jessamyn was shivering against her neck. She swung her chin up and her shoulders back, desperately sweeping up the cloak of Mrs. De Lacey-ness around her.
Mrs. De Lacey wouldn’t be intimidated by Penelope. Mrs. De Lacey knew herself to be the most interesting woman in any room.
Elinor raised her eyebrows into an arch of haughty expectation and willed Sir Jessamyn not to lose control all over her. Not this time!
Penelope had looked straight past her when they’d first arrived, of course, because Penelope was never interested in other ladies, especially older ladies, when there were gentlemen about. Now, though, at her father’s words, she turned with a pretty, expectant smile. It lasted only a moment.
Then her eyes widened. “Papa! It isn’t—you can’t mean to say—”
“My dear.” Sir John positively glowed with pleasure. “I found her at The Lion’s Head, already on her way to meet you. Mrs. De Lacey, may I present my daughter Penelope?”
“Delightful.” Elinor forced herself to meet Penelope’s gaze, and offered her hand as courtesy demanded. She dropped it, though, at the very first brush of fingertips, and turned immediately back to Sir John, taking care to keep Sir Jessamyn’s face safely pointed away from her cousin. He was trembling with long, silent shivers, but as long as he couldn’t see her, he seemed able to bear it. “And your wife?” Elinor said expectantly to her uncle.
“Ah…well, she’s inside somewhere, I suppose, but…” His gaze darted back and forth between her and Penelope, whose lips had begun to push into a pout. “Penelope, Mrs. De Lacey has generously agreed to help with your début.”
“Oh!” Penelope’s incipient pout vanished, transformed into a beaming smile. “Then I am so pleased you could come after all, Mrs. De Lacey! It will be a marvelous ball, you know. The very best people will be coming from miles around. I knew you couldn’t bear to miss it, even with a sore throat. No matter what Elinor—well. I knew that you must choose me in the end!”
“Indeed,” Elinor murmured. “My throat is...much improved.”
“We must write to the newspapers immediately, Papa! When everyone reads that Mrs. De Lacey will be in attendance at my début ball—”
“I beg your pardon,” Elinor said, “but we won’t tell the newspapers beforehand, if you please!”
“What?” Penelope and Sir John both spoke at once.
“Not tell the newspapers?” Sir John demanded
“But—but—!”Colour mounted on Penelope’s cheeks.
“Not until after I’ve left Hathergill Hall,” Elinor said firmly. “I am having a quiet rural retreat. I don’t wish it to be disturbed.”
“A quiet rural retreat?” Penelope breathed. “Quiet? Rural? But my début—”
“We’ll write immediately after your début, pet, once Mrs. De Lacey is gone,” said Sir John. “I’m sure she won’t mind that.”
“If you must.” Elinor tried not to imagine what the real Mrs. De Lacey’s reaction when she saw that notice.
Elinor would be long gone by then, and this illusion would be safely past, too. Surely.
She slid a nervous glance at Sir Jessamyn. He had finally stopped shivering, but he was hunched with unusual stiffness on her shoulder, head lowered, peering carefully away from Penelope through slitted golden eyes.
With a pang of empathy, Elinor recognized the pose. He was trying to be invisible…just as she had when they’d first arrived. It appeared that they had both learned that lesson in their time here before.
How dared Penelope make him feel so small and helpless? For the first time since she’d arrived, Elinor didn’t have to pretend the assertiveness that held her chin upright and her eyes raised in absolute equality with everyone around her.
No one had the right to make Sir Jessamyn feel that way. Elinor was damned if she would ever let it happen again!
“I believe there are more introductions to be made, Sir John.” She waved a careless hand at the men behind her without turning to look back. If Benedict Hawkins wanted to keep on gaping at Penelope, let him. “In the meantime, though, my dragon will require more food soon, and I should like to retire to my chamber to rest from my journey.”
“Of course, of course. The maids—”
“—Will show me to my room, I am sure.” Elinor swept past him, ignoring the gathering storm on Penelope’s pinkening face.
“But my début—! You can’t leave before we even begin to—”
“I’m sure it can all be arranged this afternoon.” Elinor kept a steadying hand on Sir Jessamyn’s back as they brushed past her cousin, and she felt the long shiver that rippled through his body. But there was no tell-tale chuckle as he tucked himself even tighter around her neck. Brave dragon, she thought, with fierce pride.
Out loud, though, all she said was, “Goodbye, Penelope.”
* * *
It wasthe first time she had ever gone against her cousin’s wishes without a punishment. Perhaps it should have felt like victory. But as Elinor followed a hastily-summoned maid up the main staircase of Hathergill Hall, exhaustion wrapped around her like a fog. All of the piled-up drama and panic of the last twenty-four hours felt so heavy, she nearly staggered under its weight. If she could only make it to her bedroom and be safe...
“Ma’am?” The maid’s voice pierced her fog. Elinor snapped back into awareness to find the girl staring at her in open puzzlement. “I’m afraid we haven’t quite reached your room yet.”
“I beg your pardon?” Elinor frowned—then felt a lurch of horror as she looked down at her own hand. Her fingers rested on an all-too-familiar door handle. Without even thinking, she’d already begun to swing open the door…
…Into the bedroom that she’d slept in for the past six months.
She snatched back her fingers as if she’d been burned. “Ah. I see. That is…” She drew a deep breath, searching for inspiration.
Had she ever really looked at this particular maid before? She knew Carter, Lady Hathergill’s abigail, only because Carter also arranged Penelope’s hair. The housemaid who stood before her now, though—was her name Sally? Or was Elinor only imagining having heard the housekeeper address her that way?
At home, before her parents’ death, Elinor had known not only the names of their two maids, but all the familiar details of their families and lives. Saying goodbye to them had been one of the many painful wrenches of the past year. But Elinor’s home, comfortable though it had been, had been no Hathergill Hall. Matters were run very differently here.
Sally was only one of the many maidservants in Hathergill Hall who lit the fires and cleaned the rooms, neat in their uniforms and utterly impenetrable in their silence—at least in front of the Hathergills and their guests. Elinor had never paid close attention to her, any more than—she’d imagined—Sally or any of the other servants had ever paid close attention to Elinor, a poor relation whose opinion and influence could not matter.
Now, though, she looked into Sally’s startled grey eyes and remembered with a jolt that these servants might be too well-trained to draw the attention of any members of the family…but that didn’t stop them from observing everything around them with keen intelligence.
It wasn’t only her own family that Elinor had to fool this week with her disguise.
Forcing a laugh, she stepped back. “No, I can see that this wouldn’t be my room. It’s rather small and dark, isn’t it?”
Then she remembered who she was talking to, and winced. The maids in this great house slept two to a room in the dark upper attics, without any windows to brighten their cramped quarters.
“Yes, ma’am.” Sally lowered her eyes submissively. “If you’ll follow me…”
Elinor followed, silently cursing herself at every step.
When she’d first arrived at Hathergill Hall, she’d been surprised and chilled by the anonymity of the servants, as well as by Penelope’s treatment of them. But perhaps she had absorbed more than she’d known—or hoped—from her cousin’s attitudes.
The room Sally led her to instead was large and airy, with long windows overlooking the gardens and wallpaper striped a bright yellow and white. It was exactly what Mrs. De Lacey would consider her due, but it took Elinor a long, frozen moment at the door before she could bring herself to step inside as if it truly belonged to her.
Foolish, she told herself as she sank onto the canopied bed at last. Dangerously foolish.
“May I bring you anything else, ma’am?” Sally asked.
“No,” Elinor said, and then added, because she couldn’t help herself, “thank you.”
She saw the flash of surprise on the girl’s face even as Sally dipped her head in a curtsey. The door closed quietly behind her, and Elinor closed her eyes with a groan. “Argh!”
Sir Jessamyn nosed her cheek with an inquiring cheep. She sighed and reached out to stroke his face. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m fine. I’m a fool, that’s all.”
The cuddling helped, though. After a few minutes, she managed to open her eyes again, and Sir Jessamyn seemed to take it as a sign. He uncoiled himself and hopped down onto the bed. As he paced around the flowered bedcover, searching for the best patch of sunlight in which to bask, Elinor opened her eyes, rubbed her forehead and forced herself back to work.
All she wanted was write to her sisters now, to unleash the unhappiness and fear that she felt. But any letter that she wrote would be passed through the butler at Hathergill Hall, and Mrs. De Lacey couldn’t possibly write to Elinor’s sisters, not without arousing the suspicion of the household. Mrs. De Lacey would only send letters to her fashionable friends, her London correspondents, or…
“Oh!” Elinor straightened with a jerk that made Sir Jessamyn raise his head, golden eyes glittering with lazy curiosity.
“That’s it!” she said. “Oh, Sir Jessamyn. I couldn’t afford to travel to London to search for employment. But I don’t need to anymore! Sir John orders all of the newspapers from London and Bristol. I’ll search the advertisements and apply for a post from here!”
She stood up, filled with new resolution. “All I have to do is ask for the morning papers to be delivered to me every day once Sir John is finished with them. Who knows? By the end of the week, I may have found us a new home. If they’re reasonable people, they might even pay for our transportation.”
Sir Jessamyn lowered his head back to the cotton bedcover, clearly unexcited about going anywhere. His jewel-coloured body sprawled in a long line of contentment, bathing in the sunlight from the windows as Elinor started for the bell-pull that hung by the door.
“Where do you think you should like to live?” she asked him. “Clifton is said to be a lovely town. Or perhaps Taunton or—oh!”
A soft knock had sounded on the door. Elinor blinked, her hand still halfway to the bell-pull. Had Sally somehow known that she was wanted without being asked? No, that was absurd. Why would a maid bother to knock? It had to be one of the family members—probably Lady Hathergill, roused to unusual exertions by news of her famous guest.
“Come in,” Elinor called.
She smoothed down her gown and lifted her chin, ready for her final reintroduction. Lady Hathergill, at least, had never said anything openly cruel in all of Elinor’s time here. So she mustered quite a creditable smile as she turned towards the opening door. “How nice—” she began.
Then her mouth dropped open as she saw who stood just outside her bedroom.
“Mrs. De Lacey,” said Benedict Hawkins in a low, urgent whisper, “I beg your pardon for such a shocking intrusion upon your privacy, but I really must speak with you in private.”