Page 63 of Confounding Oaths
In the spun-sugar labyrinth of her heart, Miss Bickle was struggling to reconcile a set of conflicting impulses that she very much did not wish to reconcile. “Ithink,” she began tentatively, “that it might be quite bad actually. Possibly even very bad. Which seems so unfair because enchantments should by all rights be enchanting,not horrible.” She frowned with such exaggerated sorrow that she looked like a theatrical mask depicting tragedy. “Why must things always be more horrible in reality than they are in concept?”
“That depends on who you ask,” Lady Mary replied. “Some would say it has to do with original sin. Others would suggest that we, as a society, have an unfortunate habit of making things worse than they need to be.”
Miss Anne, having recovered from any shock or disappointment she might have experienced earlier in the evening, was now settling comfortably into the happy familiarity of complaining about her sibling. “Well, as I see it, Mary has made her bed and should lie in it.”
“If it please you, miss,” observed Nancy, who had been maintaining the traditional invisibility of the serving classes, “she’s not.”
This was, it seemed, new information to the elder Mr. Caesar. “What do you mean?”
“Her bed. She’s not slept in it. And you’ve seen her not eating. Whatever’s happened to her it’s not right, and though it’s not my place to say I’d not call it her fault neither.”
“Well, who else’s fault is it?” demanded Miss Anne, with entirely predictable petulance.
“Not everything is somebody’s fault,” the younger Mr. Caesar told her. “And I don’t think you’d be such a pill about this if it weren’t for Mr. Bygrave.”
Despite being young himself, and having had two younger sisters for many years, Mr. Caesar appeared still to have vastly overestimated the constancy of youth. “Oh, but I don’t give a fig forhim,” Miss Anne replied, breezily. “Lieutenant Reyne is a finer man by far, do you not think?”
“He is certainly handsome,” agreed Miss Bickle, unhelpfully.
“Andmanyyears your senior,” added the elder Mr. Caesar.
Miss Anne looked affronted. “Certainly he cannot be more than two and twenty.”
“And you are fourteen,” her brother reminded her. His tone was reproving but, worn out after the night’s events, his heart was not entirely in it.
The look of affront remained attached to Miss Anne like a stubborn tick. “So was Juliet.”
“Did you, by any chance, watch thesecondhalf of that play as well as the first?” asked the younger Mr. Caesar.
It should, I think, go without saying that I would personally advise the reader to take dating advice from any being in the cosmos before they listened to the bastard bard.
The question of the precise minimum age at which happy mothers can be made being if not resolved then at least momentarily set aside, Mr. Caesar bowed a stiff farewell to his parents and made for the door.
“And where are you going?” asked his father.
“The Folly.”
The elder Mr. Caesar’s disapproval was seldom spoken aloud, and seldom needed to be.
“If any of the men hear word of Mary, they will report back there,” his son replied. It was an excuse, and with the possible exception of Miss Anne, the whole room knew it.
“Ah.” The elder Mr. Caesar rose from his chair. “Then I shall spare you the journey. I need a walk anyway.”
“There’s no need, Papa,” Mr. Caesar insisted. “That is—”
“That is, you would rather be there than here?” asked Lady Mary. There was no accusation in her tone, just a terrible certainty. One that had the virtue of accuracy.
“Not at all,” Mr. Caesar protested (and yes, that talentlessfuckstain Bill has a line about that too). “It is merely that the gentlemen there know me and they do not know you and …”
“John.” The elder Mr. Caesar was speaking sternly now. “I am sure these past days have been hard for you, but—”
“Days?Tryyears,Papa.” The words were out of Mr. Caesar’s mouth before he could subject them to his usual scrutiny. And once they had begun he found they would not stop. “Have you any conception of what it is like living in your shadow and Mama’s? To have everybody I meet say, ‘Oh, you must be that one’s son’? To know they’re saying the same and worse about my sisters and that I can do nothing about it?”
It was perhaps the longest thing of significance he had ever said to his parents. Possibly to anybody, or anybody other than the captain. And though he saw how it stung he could not quite bring himself to regret it.
Still, the words hung in the air like gunsmoke.
“Your father and I have … we have done our best to give you ordinary lives,” said Lady Mary. The elder Mr. Caesar, it seemed, was not able to reply at all.
