“Then why aren’t you . . . paying them?” Puzzlement underlined her mother’s question.
“Because they are not employees, Mother.” She spoke gently with her elucidation. “They are friends.”
Lila, silent through all that exchange, raised her cup to her lips and looked up at the ceiling.
Their mother whipped her head over to her younger daughter. “What is it?”
A blush bloomed on Lila’s cheeks. Lila, the only person who was even worse at dissembling than Sylvia. “I didn’t say anything,” her younger sister said.
The countess didn’t waste any more time pressing Lila. She narrowed her gaze on Sylvia. “What is it?”
Smoothing her hands over her peach skirts, Sylvia met her mother’s stare with a brave smile. “I take it you mean . . . who?”
“Sylvia.” Her name emerged as a warning.
“They are very dear ladies, who not unlike me have found themselves the unfair recipients of—”
“Who?”
“Lady Annalee,” Sylvia blurted, starting with what would be outrageous, but still the lesser so, to her mother.
Silence met that pronouncement. There was another moment of stillness as the countess turned motionless. “Lady Annalee?” A young woman who’d been at the Peterloo tragedy with Lila. Unlike Lila, who had dealt with the aftermath by isolating herself, Annalee had used alcohol and society as a distraction from her pain. As such, it was to be expected Sylvia’s announcement would be met with some degree of shock. “As in . . . Lila’s friend?”
“Yes.” Annalee may have not at first been Sylvia’s friend, but since Lila’s reentry to the living, Sylvia had become close with Annalee as well. “The very same.”
There came another wave of silence that Sylvia filled. “She was visiting with Lila when I also happened to be visiting, and we were both remarking on how unfair it was that grown, unwed women should be expected to live with their relatives, and then I said . . . ‘Why do we have to? Why can we not have a place of our own, as gentlemen do?’ And”—Sylvia lifted her hands—“here we are.”
Her mother stared blankly back. “Here we . . . ?” And then she erupted. In . . . laughter. Unrestrained mirth, which was the first ever shown by the older, proper matron.
She’d driven the countess to madness. Splendid. Sylvia looked over to her sister.
Lila lifted her shoulders in a confused little shrug.
This had decidedly not been the response they’d expected. Hesitantly, Sylvia allowed herself to join in that amusement.
“And here you, the least humorous of all my children, are telling jests.”
Indignation killed Sylvia’s laughter. “I beg your pardon?”
Her mother dashed the tears of hilarity from her cheeks. “You aren’t even friends with Annalee.”
No, she hadn’t been. As Annalee had been her previously reclusive sister’s closest friend, their mother was certainly entitled to some . . . confusion.
Lila took heart and came to the rescue once more. “They were not friends; however, I took the liberty of introducing them, and they’ve since become so. Isn’t that right, Sylvia?”
Steadied by her sister’s support, Sylvia nodded. “Indeed. We get on quite well, and—”
“You . . . get . . . on . . . quite . . . well?” Their mother’s disjointed question emerged garbled. “But her reputation. She is unmarried. She is . . . a scandal.” The countess hissed out that last word on a whisper. Though it was unclear which she found to be a more egregious offense.
“Mother,” Sylvia said gently but firmly. “I would not judge a woman unfairly. She conducts herself no differently than most gentlemen living their lives.”
“Yes,” her mother cried, nodding frantically. “That is precisely it. She is not a gentleman, and you are not one to invite scandal. I forbid it.”
Another time those three words would have effectively quashed any hint of rebellion from Sylvia. Not anymore.
Sylvia took a deep breath. “There is more.”
“Of course there is,” her mother muttered. She set her cup down hard. “What is it nowww?”
It was a dire day indeed when the dowager countess was a-muttering and sloshing tea over the rim of her glass.
Just get out all of it. “And we will also be joined by Valerie Bragger.”
There was a time when that name had brought only the greatest hurt and resentment and outrage. No more. Sylvia had come to find a compatriot in the unlikeliest of women.
“Your . . . husband’s . . . former . . . lover?” The countess strangled on each syllable of each whispered word.
Sylvia’s body stiffened. The truth of her late husband’s betrayal still landed a blow square to her chest. Not from any love that she carried or felt for the man who’d deceived her. That had died. Rather, it came from her own naivete. At having loved where she’d been wrong. At the lie she’d lived for so very long.
“Mother,” Lila said chidingly. “That isn’t fair.”
“Well, she was,” the countess hissed. “That is precisely what she was, and she isn’t deserving of Sylvia’s kindness”—the countess jabbed a finger down at the Aubusson carpet as she spoke—“or financial support or . . . or . . . anything. And furthermore”—her voice crept up—“you’ll simply dismiss the fact that she was following you and Vallen at one point. Now, this matter is officially at an end.” With that pronouncement, their mother grabbed a small plate, added a chocolate biscuit to it, and proceeded to nibble at the corners.
Yes, of course. Because ladies nibbled like mice. Just like ladies didn’t do anything that would earn any manner of attention from Polite Society. Living with one’s husband’s former lover would certainly fall into that category.
“It is not,” Sylvia said quietly.
And for a moment, as her mother continued to take those small bites and dab at her immaculate face with a napkin, Sylvia thought the countess might not have heard her. Or perhaps the dowager countess was simply ignoring her show of defiance? Or mayhap it was just that she was so unaccustomed to Sylvia being anything but an obedient wife, daughter, and mother that she couldn’t hear when Sylvia went against what was expected of her. “Valerie explained her reasons for seeking me out.”
“Following you,” the dowager countess snapped. “She was following you.”
Because she’d been filled with the same curiosity Sylvia had for her. That was something the dowager countess, however, would never and could never understand. “She is my friend.”
“You simply have not thought it through. You are a young mother. It will be expected that you carry yourself above reproach, and if you do not, then you risk losing your child.”
Vallen. The son whom she’d been carrying while her husband had been betraying her and their vows to one another. And whom she alone had cared for, after Norfolk’s death. Yet, even as his mother, she was held to entirely different standards than men . . . where if she did not conduct herself in a way society deemed appropriate, she might have her child ripped from her. Following Norman’s death, the court had approved multiple guardians for Sylvia’s son, and as such, there existed the possibility that Vallen could go to someone else’s care if she were found to be unfit.