The Heiresses (34 page)

“No.” Hestia held up a hand. “As I said, no discussion. I am your aunt and guardian and I have been itching to do something with that hair of yours for some time now. Ro, will you be joining us?”

Across the table, Ro started and blushed slightly, making Clio wonder what she was up to. “No, sorry. I have … an appointment to keep.”

“That’s settled, then,” Hestia said as she placed her napkin on the table. Clio wondered how quickly she would be able to lop off some hair and try on a few dresses to keep her aunt happy, while still being able to make it out to Richmond today.

*   *   *

Clio agreed to two day dresses, one of which she truly liked and the other which she didn’t fancy at all, but agreed to in order to save time and to keep the peace. The appealing one was navy blue and quite plain, but the little red hat with the tiny navy bow that accompanied it somehow made it special. The other one was quite a bright green, with a matching black and green polka-dot scarf. While Clio agreed with Hestia that the color suited her, overall the effect was rather overpowering for someone without the strong personality the dress needed to carry it off. Pleased that choosing two dresses had taken under an hour, Clio then agreed to having her long, curly hair cut into a chin-length bob, which the hairdresser, when she was finished snipping, pushed back on one side with a diamanté clasp.

“Oh, yes!” Hestia exclaimed when she saw the result of their morning outing. “It’s charming. I do love it, Clio! Don’t you?”

Clio stared at her reflection in the looking glass. “I suppose so,” she replied, uncertain. It looked awfully … short. And modern. Not alarmingly so—she had seen bobs on other girls becoming shorter and shorter by the day—but extremely short for her. She reached up and ran her hands through her curls, wondering what Edwin might think of her new appearance. She then pressed the thought back into the depths of her mind, worried she was somehow becoming attached to him. Which could never be a good idea with someone as changeable as Edwin. “Thank you,” she said with a smile, as she looked up from her chair at her aunt for a fleeting moment.

Hestia placed a hand on her shoulder and Clio brought her head back around until their eyes met in the looking glass. “It is my great pleasure, my beautiful niece,” Hestia replied. “The greatest pleasure of my entire life.”

*   *   *

“Oh, dear,” Hestia said under her breath, as she polished off a finger sandwich. She waved hesitantly at someone across the room. “I’m so sorry, Clio … a childhood friend,” she continued quickly and in a whisper. “Married an earl, you know, and I do believe she thinks me jealous all these years on. Amazingly, she doesn’t seem to have realized he’s a gigantic bore yet. Ah, Eloise darling, how are you?” Hestia stood up to embrace a woman who had appeared by their white-clothed table. “You must sit down for a moment or two. It’s been such a long time…”

Hestia introduced Clio to her friend and while the two women chatted away, Clio stared around herself silently, in awe. She had been unable to cease doing so ever since they entered the hotel, which was on Park Lane. Hestia had insisted on stopping for lunch on the way home from their shopping expedition. The room was, unbelievably, even more beautiful than the rich gilt one they had taken tea in on the day the girls first met. Here, the room was still large and lush, decorated in shades of warm cream, but somehow it felt more intimate, the roof curving over them protectively, offering comfort from the sudden rain shower outside. To add to the effect, lamps dotted around the room gave off a soft yellow glow, highlighting the pale yellow silk chinoiserie series of panels upon the walls.

After some time, Hestia’s friend rose once more. “I really must return to my little party. So inattentive of me, but I couldn’t resist when I saw you.” She paused, as if considering her next words carefully, before moving on. She leaned forward now, in a conspiratorial fashion, closer to the table. “I also wanted to let you know that I was very sorry to hear about your other niece. My own niece took a treatment there just last month. Drink, you know. I do so hope it all turns out for the best.”

Hestia’s inquiring eyes immediately moved to meet Clio’s shocked ones. “How kind of you, Eloise,” Hestia replied, in a voice that gave away nothing, as the woman left the pair to return to her table. When she was sure her friend was gone, Hestia whipped back around to face Clio, all the joy of the morning suddenly lost from her face. “Where,” she asked, barely containing her fury, “is Thalia?”

*   *   *

“Ro? Ro?!” Hestia burst through the front door of the town house, Clio trailing in her angry wake. She had given her aunt the expurgated version of events on the way back to Belgrave Square and, she feared, would now have to retell a lengthier version when Ro was located.

“What is it?” Ro asked as she appeared at the top of the stairs, along with Haggis McTavish. “Is everything all right?” She descended quickly. “Is Thalia with you?”

“So you truly don’t know.” Hestia looked from one girl to the other.

“Know what?” Ro paused, one hand on the banister.

“No, she doesn’t,” Clio answered. “Perhaps we should sit down in the drawing room and I’ll tell you both the story in its entirety.”

*   *   *

It took at least half an hour for Clio to tell Thalia’s story from beginning to end, including the truth regarding what had happened to her at Lintern Park. At the end of her recounting, both Hestia and Ro were speechless, which was saying something. By now Clio knew they were both rarely without an opinion.

Finally, Hestia spoke. “That Thalia’s guardians would do such a thing … it makes my blood boil. And that you would institutionalize your own sister, Clio. You know what happened to me; how could you not consult me on this?” She shook her head, barely meeting Clio’s eye. “On any of this?”

“I wanted to, but that’s what I was worried about—that you would jump to conclusions. The nursing home is nothing like an institution. It’s lovely and the staff there seems very kind. Also, the doctor Edwin introduced me to—the father of his friend who also went to the home—he was a very reasonable man and awfully concerned about Thalia. What was I to do? Ignore her actions until something terrible happened? Until she killed herself?”

“Don’t say that.” Hestia’s hands went to her ears. “I can’t even bear to think about it.”

“She needs medical attention, Hestia. These are serious issues. As I said, Edwin heard of reports that she was unconscious twice in the one evening and Ro and I both saw her carrying morphine and a syringe in her handbag. These are things we can’t help her with. I know you are obviously wary of such places, but it is a different place and a different time. Just go and visit her and you’ll see for yourself.”

Hestia glanced from Ro to Clio and back again, before crying out, “Oh, I’ve been far too lenient, haven’t I? It
is
a different time and a different place. It’s a different world we’re all living in.”

“There’s something else you should know, too…,” Clio began, hesitantly, after mouthing the word “Charles” silently at her sister, who nodded in return.

“Something else?” Hestia sucked her breath in sharply. “What?”

Clio quickly explained Charles’s letter to them.

Hestia closed her eyes when Clio was done. “That awful, evil, wicked little man. We will triumph over him. Somehow.” Her eyes opened once more. “Please tell me there is nothing else, Clio.”

“There’s nothing else,” Clio affirmed.

“Well, that, at least, is something.” Hestia gave Haggis McTavish’s ears a ruffle before rising with a tired sigh. “Now, you must promise me you will both stay here and behave like ladies while I visit your sister. I’m beginning to see that there is more to this mothering business than meets the eye.”

*   *   *

In the week that followed, Clio visited Thalia dutifully every day. If Hestia or Ro were with her, Thalia would deign to invite Clio into her presence. If not, Clio sat on her own, simply watching over her sister protectively from a distance.

“I’ve just given her quite the talking-to,” Edwin said as he approached Clio in the garden of the nursing home late one afternoon, when Hestia and Ro were not present. The days were becoming so long and shadowless now that summer was upon them that Clio found she needed to be careful of the time, lest she find herself still in the garden at six o’clock at the end of visiting hours. “This situation is ridiculous,” Edwin continued. “How dare she think she can make you sit over here?” His raised voice caused a few of the patients to glance over at them.

“Shhh … Edwin, sit down!” Clio told him, pointing toward a nearby deck chair, which, after a moment or two of indignant huffing and puffing, Edwin dragged over beside Clio’s.

When he had finally settled himself into its depths, he inhaled slowly and deeply, as if trying to calm himself from Thalia’s slight. “Don’t you ever get annoyed about anything, Clio Silsby?”

“I do believe you’ve seen me annoyed, Edwin.”

He laughed at this. “Well, yes, I suppose I have. Annoyed at anything or anyone other than me, though?”

“Not really,” Clio admitted, with a small smile, folding her hands in her lap. It really was a glorious day. “The thing with Thalia is…” She stopped, realizing what she was about to say. “Oh, this is going to all sound very silly.”

“I’m sure half of everything that comes out of my mouth sounds very silly. You may as well try it once to see what it feels like. Go on.”

“Well,” Clio continued, with a slight nod of her head, “and, by the way, you must never tell Thalia this—the whole situation reminds me of something that happened to me as a child.”

“How’s that?”

“I’m embarrassed to say it now, but it all concerned a dog. You see, this dog appeared in our village one day, in very poor condition, and I think my mother may have initially fed her something, because she kept appearing near our back gate, which led onto some fields. She was very fearful of people, but I won her over in the end.”

“How did you do that?” Edwin urged her on.

“By starting at the kitchen door. First I sat just outside the kitchen door and then, each day, I inched a little closer up the path to the back gate. After two weeks, we were close enough to touch and then, one day, she licked me through the fence. We kept her until she died around two years later. She was a lovely dog, though always quite fearful. I’d often wondered if she was sent to us as some kind of lesson, and now I can see that maybe she was. So, that’s what I’m doing with Thalia. Inching forward. It may take some time, I’m afraid. It may even take years.”

Edwin emitted a low whistle. “It just might. What I don’t understand is why Thalia is so downright nasty to you? She’s only mildly scathing toward Ro.”

Clio shrugged slightly. “She’s angry, Edwin. She might have had money, but I had the sort of childhood every child should have.”

“Well, that’s not your fault, is it? Why should you be punished for it?”

“Who else is she to blame? Anger is misdirected quite easily, I think.”

Edwin turned to look at Clio, their eyes meeting for a long time, before Edwin suddenly rose from his deck chair. “Well, I don’t think she…,” he began, then suddenly changed tack. “No, I can’t hold off any longer, I’m sorry…” He dropped suddenly to one knee in front of her. “Will you marry me, Clio?”

“What?” Clio immediately unclasped her hands and sprang from her own deck chair like a jack-in-the-box. “Edwin, are you insane? What kind of joke is this? Get up! Get up!” She reached down and dragged him up from his bowed position by his shirt collar, all the time hoping, praying, that Thalia had not seen any of what had just passed. Craning her neck around Edwin’s now, thankfully, upright form, she was relieved to see that Thalia was engrossed in reading a magazine. “This isn’t funny, Edwin,” she chastised him with a hiss.

“It wasn’t meant to be funny.” Edwin bristled, fixing his shirt.

Clio looked at Edwin properly now, expecting to see that trademark smirk of his upon his face. However, it was nowhere in sight and she saw that he was, for once, quite serious. “Edwin!” she said under her breath. “You did mean it!”

“Well, yes! Of course I did. I wouldn’t have asked otherwise. What, do you think I go around asking every girl I meet to marry me? I’ve never asked anyone before!”

“But…” Clio was shocked. “How can you ask me that? Here?” She glanced around them once more.

“In a garden?”

Clio’s brow furrowed. “No, not in a garden. In the garden of the nursing home where my sister is receiving treatment! Where I placed her because she has been caught in the web of several kinds of addictive medicines. Where she has told me things about her previous life”—she stalled here, not wanting to elaborate any further—“that I could barely stand to listen to and that made me want to be violently ill.”

Edwin seemed confused by this. “But it’s still … a garden. Look, it’s really very pretty. Romantic, even!”

Clio’s mouth fell open in disbelief. “And all this time I thought you were here to offer support to Thalia. And to me!”

“But I was. I am…” Edwin shook his head. He honestly seemed surprised that his proposal was going badly. That Clio had not immediately accepted him. “Of course I am!” He reached out for her. “We could move—my cousin is still asking if I will help him on his farm in Kenya. We could live there, then find a place of our own. I know you’ve mentioned you’d like to go there…”

But Clio only pulled away, willing back her tears. “To answer your question, Edwin, no. No, I will not marry you, wherever you might choose to live. And please do not follow me back to the train station.”

*   *   *

As Ro traversed the streets of Mayfair beside her aunt, she was ready to admit defeat. Despite the warm, bright days, she felt lost—as if she was completely adrift in a sea of fog that spanned the vast ocean of London. She no longer had any sort of plan for the day ahead when she awoke each morning. She had no idea how to move forward in this disordered, chaotic life she had been handed. No clue as to how they might find any more information about Clio’s father, wrangle their fortune from their half brother, or make their way in this confusing, confounding world. It did not help matters that her attention was constantly focused on one thing and one thing only as she regained consciousness each morning: how she might possibly see Vincent that day. Or, if she knew she would be unable to see him within that twenty-four-hour period, how long it would be until they would meet once more.