Tess pulled up a chair across from Neddie. “I have news for you, Mama,” she said, not caring that she was interrupting the lesson. Jeanne’s engagement was so momentous it couldn’t wait. Tess spilled the whole story, embroidering upon Richard’s sense of duty and omitting the kisses, innocuous though they’d been. “They’re going to announce it officially at the Queen’s Treaty Eve ball,” she concluded. Richard had sent a note saying so that morning. “You must come, of course. We’ll have to stand up next to the duke and duchess and—”
“She might have told me herself,” said Mama, slamming the bread dough onto the table and raising a cloud of flour dust.
“Jeanne’s stuck working today,” said Tess disbelievingly. There was no pleasing this woman, even when one had unalloyed good news. “You’re hearing the news before anyone at court. I thought you’d rather know sooner than later.”
“You thought to steal her thunder,” muttered Mama, laying into the dough with her fists.
A spark of anger warmed Tess’s chest; she’d chastised herself for this, but it still rankled when Mama pointed it out. “I’m here with Jeanne’s blessing. You know she dislikes a fuss.”
“ ‘Envy is the termite of good faith,’ ” said the older of Tessie’s brothers, the Abominable Paul, quoting St. Vitt. He smoothed his dark hair with one hand and smirked at her.
“I’m not envious,” said Tess, glowering. “What’s thirteen times seventeen?”
“Piss off,” said Paul, who was almost thirteen and could muster considerable venom.
“Language, Paulie,” said Mama, punching the dough. “It’s two hundred twenty-one, and you’re supposed to have that memorized by now.”
Tess stared at her mother incredulously. “Language? Mild chastisement? When you sold the house, did you also sell your temper?”
“Tess,” said her mother, with a quaver in her voice that made it clear she had not.
“When I was a wee lad, Paulie, I’d’ve been spanked for not knowing my maths,” said Tess. She’d gotten smacks with the spoon equivalent to the product she’d missed; 221 had been the most she’d ever received. Every other number would disappear from her head when she was old and senile, but 221 was emblazoned there forever.
She didn’t dare tell the whole story, though. Mama’s blond hair was drawn up under a cap and snood, and Tess could see the little vein already pulsing at her temple, a gauge for how high the steam was rising. As much as Tess told herself a lady-in-waiting was too big and dignified to be thrown over her mother’s knee, some part of her didn’t quite believe it.
Of course, Mama didn’t have to lift a finger to Tess, not when she had two fine deputies at that tiny table, ready to take up the mantle for her. “Maybe some of us are clever enough that we don’t need arithmetic beaten into us,” said Nedward the Terrible, who was ten, pushing sandy hair out of his eyes with the end of his pen.
“No amount of punishment could teach our Tess,” said Paul. “That’s why she ran off to St. Bert’s, for some learning.” This last word was accompanied by an unambiguous gesture.
That was cruel. Tess felt it keenly, even if she let her face show nothing. Worse, though, her mother said, “Boys! There’s no call to be that mean to your sister!”—as if Mama were the good one, looking out for Tess, trying to spare her feelings. Keeping her hands clean. Tess glared at her mother, blaming and raging. The boys had learned to be nasty from someone.
And yet blame never stuck to Mama. As much as Tess wanted to hate her, she understood too well what Mama had suffered at the hands of her husband and by the humiliations of his elder daughter. Mama got that look about her now as she plopped the kneaded dough into the baking pan, the long-suffering, mournful look. “Drop this off at Loretta’s on your way out,” said Mama, handing the pan to Tess. Dismissing her.
The flat, unlike the house where they had once lived, had no oven. One might simmer a stew in the ashes of the fire, or roast something small—a hare or capon—on a spit when the fire was roaring, but there was no way to bake bread unless you took it to the neighbors’.
Tess hefted the pan, adjusting the towel over the top, but didn’t leave yet. She needed an answer and would bear the hostile stares of her brothers until she had it. “Mama, I think I’ve fulfilled my duties tolerably well.” Argh, no, that was a terrible start, hedging and qualifying. She tried again: “I’ve done all the family has asked of me, with no thought for myself. Jeanne will be well settled; there will be money to send these two miscreants to law school and seminary. Enough to buy you back some things you’ve had to do without—the carriage, your gowns, a decent kitchen, and a place to entertain your family.” To say nothing of Papa’s once-resplendent library, but she didn’t dare mention it; Papa was forever ignominious and disfavored in Mama’s eyes.
“In light of all that,” Tess went on, not daring to meet her mother’s eyes, “I was hoping—”
“What, that you might get married, too?” crowed Neddie the Terrible.
Tess flashed him a dirty look, but Paul was already taking up the cry: “No, she wants to run off in search of World Serpents. Don’t you remember any of her old manias?”
“I thought she was crazy for boys, not monsters,” jeered Neddie.
“She was mad for both,” said Paul. “Nobody’s sure which got her in trouble.”
“Saints’ knuckles, will you stop?” cried Tess, slamming the bread pan down on the table between them, making them jump.
She looked to her mother; Mama’s eyes had gone icy and distant. “What an ugly temper you have. You’re supposing that your time is up, your task is complete, and you are free to go?”
“Something like that,” said Tess warily. These kinds of questions were usually a setup for a lecture on why she was wrong.
“And where do you propose to go, exactly?” said Mama, turning toward the fire and lifting the lid on the stew. It bubbled ominously. “You’ve spoiled your chances at marriage.”
“Not everyone marries,” said Tess. “I could work as a seamstress.”
“Or a harlot,” muttered Paul. Both boys burst out giggling. Mama said nothing, which stung as badly as whatever she might have said.
There was no way not to hurt. Tess gritted her teeth against it.
Mama scraped at the bottom of the pot, where the stew was sticking. “The boys are right: seamstress today, slattern tomorrow. It happens to undefended women all the time.” She straightened and stretched her lower back, her eyes on Tess’s. “You fell once, and we picked you up. We can’t keep doing that. A convent would keep you respectable and safe.”