Page 2 of Roses in Amber
"To the house." I took his hand and sat at his feet, thinking that if Maman was here, that if we were dressed as beautifully as we usually were, that the poses we all now held might have been rendered in oils, a family portrait full of affection and fondness. "There's nothing left. How is Maman?"
Father's expression became even more sombre. "Not well. The fire frightened her. I hope the warmth and safety of a salon will bring her comfort, but, girls," he said, and then, with a fond smile at Flint and Jasper, "children,as you boys are old enough to hear household truths now—"
"Some of us are hardly children, Father," Pearl said in her mildest tone, the one that warned most imminently of danger, and Father's smile broadened before falling away.
"No, some of you are not, nor have been for several years now. Still, you aremychildren, regardless of your age. We will not be retiring to the Queen's Corridor, nor to the Grande," he said, naming the two finest hotels in the town. I loved the Corridor, although the queen had never stayed there. It had been built along the road she took after the king died and she went to war to protect our country, and its walls were covered in mosaics that told the story of her victory…and of the loss she faced afterward, when her son the prince had vanished from the earth. She had been young then, and was very, very old now, but her health was reputed to be strong and I half believed the stories that she had sworn her soul to a witch in order to live until the prince's return.
"The Noble, then," Pearl said with a shrug. "Nowhere else could be considered fine enough."
"We will go to the Crossroads," Father said, and all three of us girls caught our breaths. Flint and Jasper, wide-eyed, looked between us, but still did not understand, when Pearl said, "But that's a commoninn,Father," how far we must have fallen to choose it as our refuge.
"All of our wealth was in the house, Pearl," Father said steadily. "Until the trading ships come in, we must be frugal."
"Frugal?" asked Jasper, and Opal slipped her hand over his shoulder, gentle and reassuring.
"It means we cannot spend money freely. That we must think of necessities, instead of luxuries. Simpler clothing, no new books, plainer meals."
"We will buy fine gowns for you girls," Father said, and in the momentary silence following that surprising remark, understanding fell.
Opal, softly, said, "You mean we are to marry at once."
"You've had many suitors," Father replied. "It will help stabilize our fortunes if you marry now, and well."
"We've had suitors we've turned down," Pearl said. "I'm sure no one will think it desperate at all if we suddenly decide now is the time to wed, particularly if we are to stay somewhere so common as theCrossroads,Father. You cannot have it both ways successfully. It is either the Noble," and I noticed that she had, at least, selected the least expensive of the three finest hotels in town, "or spinsters on your hands. Surely our name will give you enough credit to await the ships."
Father took a breath, and Opal's gaze met mine. A knot bound itself in my belly, pressing upward, and I clutched the bit of rose window still in my hand. I did not want to hear what he had to say next, but the words came anyway, relentless with calm. "I'm afraid our credit is already strained, Pearl. The past few seasons have not been as profitable as I might have hoped—"
A gasp parted Pearl's lips, the sound small and sharp enough that she might have taken a blow. Father's jaw rolled, but he continued. "—and our fortunes depend on the incoming ships."
"Why did you not tell us?" Pearl's voice did not rise. She was too cultured for that, but her eyes flashed with fury.
"Because no father wants to tell his children that they verge on destitution, and because we are not so desperate that a good season would not turn it all around. If the next ships had come in with little to show for their journeys, I would have told you then of our situation. The fire has forced me to do so now. I wish it was not so."
"And yet Pearl is right," Opal said in a thin voice. "The house fire is bad enough. If our fortunes are in decline, do we not need a pretense of continuing wealth to ensure good marriages?"
"Beauty rarely requires wealth to come along with it," Father said. "One excellent marriage will offer the other two better chances, and none of you are plain."
"There's no way for us to marry without looking as though we are hastily seeking refuge in another home." I glanced at the rose, hidden in the skirt of my nightdress, then looked back at my father and sisters. "On the other hand, it might seem a perfectly reasonable time for us to do so. It will be months, even years, before our home is reconstructed, and we girls cannot be expected to live in a hotel forever. Society would accept that Father and Maman and the boys might live somewhere more modest for a while, but why would three women of marrying age remain unwed under these circumstances?" I tried to smile, though it felt weak. "You know there are those who say we only stay at home because no one else can match the luxury of our father's house. If he can no longer provide that luxury…."
Pearl examined me as though I had briefly become something new and interesting. Like the puzzle so many others saw me as, perhaps. "I didn't know you could be so mercenary, Amber."
"Well." My smile strengthened. "I do expectyouto make that first marriage, Pearl. Yours is the ruthless beauty."
She lowered her lashes in a display of modesty that no one who knew her would believe, then brought her gaze to Father again. "I need at least a month at the Noble to make a marriage, Father. Even I can't do it from the Crossroads."
He looked at her and, though I could see it was against his better judgment, bowed his head. That moment was the first I truly realized my father could not tell his daughters—and perhaps his sons—no.We had always teased him about it, but I had never fully believed it, and I did not then understand the price we would all pay for his generosity.
We spent less than a day at our neighbors', and yet the retreat to the Noble came as a relief. Maman joined us, elegant with fragility as Father escorted her from the neighbors' house to the hired coach. I could not begrudge the neighbors for not wanting us, all still stinking of smoke and ash, in their own coach; it would be difficult enough for their servants to air feather mattresses and scrub the smell out of bedclothes. Should it settle into the leather of their carriage, they would carry it with them for months. I did, for the first time in my pampered life, worry a little about the expense, but that was beyond my purview, and if it did not fall out of my head, neither did it keep me from sleeping, as the days went by.
The first day we luxuriated in baths, each of us girls and father having clean, hot water poured for us, because the filth of soot and smoke blackened the tub so badly with Father's bath that we could not be expected to get clean without new water. The boys had to share a bath, but even they were glad to be rid of the smoke scent, and exhaustion claimed us all as its own that night.
In the morning we were visited by a dressmaker beside herself with concern over our displaced state. We girls received half a dozen new dresses each, with cunning overlays and wraps in different colors that could be switched around to make our wardrobes look thrice the size they were. Maman had three gowns of her own, and Papa two suits; the boys made do with a jacket apiece and two sets of new trousers, tights, blouses, and shoes, the last of which were the quickest in coming, as the cobbler had pre-cut soles ready for the stitching, and we all needed shoes badly.
Most of our servants had been let go, for we had nowhere to house them and no work for a groundskeeper or cook even if we could pay them. Father had his manservant, who helped with the boys, and we four women shared a lady's maid who fussed us into our new gowns and did our hair and made us presentable to the world. Within a week of our house burning, we were comfortable enough at the Noble, taking two rooms for sleeping and a third as our public room, that we might have visitors without being exposed to all the city who came by.
And all the citydidcome by: there was nothing as good as a tragedy to rile peoples' interests. It would have been, by gossips' estimations, vastly superior if someone had died, but there was a breathless interest in us having all survived, as well. Maman had not yet recovered from the shock of it all and played the role of invalid well, while Opal, the gentlest daughter, cared for her in a way that made other mamas imagine she might care well for their own darling sons and grandchildren.
Pearl proved magnificent in adversity, not by denying her aloofness but by playing to it: she sat in the window of our salon, looking shockingly dramatic as she gazed over the city. I didn't believe she had actually lost weight, but rather applied some subtle color to her cheekbones, making them all the more extraordinary. From the street she looked like a princess trapped in a tower. Our first visitors were Maman's closest friends, who went away to witter about Opal's kindness and Pearl's luminescent beauty. (I, being only seventeen, was largely expected to sit quietly, be useful, and eventually take advantage of my older sisters' good marriages.) The wordsdeathly palewere heard on the wind, and suitors who had once been spurned now returned to see if the city's legendary beauty was, indeed, at death's door.
