A Study in Scarlet Women (Lady Sherlock #1)(11)
“He had one fiancée who jilted him because of his character flaws. And the woman he married to spite the fiancée dislikes him because he used her with little regard for her feelings. What reason does he have to dislike all women? Does he disdain all men because his father was an ass and his solicitor made a soup of his affairs?”
“By your standards it isn’t rational, I know. But you can’t expect to be treated rationally when you are a woman, Charlotte. I can’t explain why—that’s just how it is. And you must learn to accept it.”
Charlotte was quiet. Livia thought that perhaps for once, she’d put some sense into her little sister’s head. But as they walked back into the house, Charlotte turned to her and said, “I will try to understand why. But I will not learn to accept it. Never.”
Livia had long suspected that Sir Henry would not hold to his promise. And yet when it happened, when he broke his pledge, she was far angrier than her sister.
“It’s unconscionable, what he did. To lie to you so baldly, to ask you to act in good faith when he hadn’t the slightest intention of upholding his end of the bargain—” She sputtered, unable to go on.
Charlotte sat at the edge of their bed, the slow tapping of her fingertips on the bedpost the only sign of her agitation.
After a long minute, Charlotte said, “My timing was less than ideal. I didn’t know it before I spoke to him, but Lady Amelia Drummond was found dead this morning. Papa was in a minor state.”
Livia’s hand came up to her throat. “Oh.”
Charlotte played with a bow on her skirt. “This isn’t to say that he would have kept his word otherwise. If he meant to keep his word, he would have, whether or not Lady Amelia still breathed. But had there been any vacillation on his part, any remote chance that he might have changed his mind at the last minute . . . as I said , my timing wasn’t ideal.”
“Will you ask him again?”
“Do you think that would be any use?”
“No.”
“Neither do I.”
“Then what are you going to do?” Livia was fuming again. “Please tell me you won’t swallow this appalling deceit. Papa will feel no remorse. He will only be endlessly smug that he got away with this kind of disgraceful chicanery.”
Charlotte wrapped her hands around the bedpost. If it were Livia, she’d be imagining the bedpost to be Sir Henry’s throat. But Charlotte retained her usual tranquility as she replied, “No, I won’t let it pass without a suitable response.”
“Good!” cried Livia. Then, a little less certainly, “But what kind of response would do the trick? How can you both punish him and still extract the necessary funds for your education?”
“I have an idea. I will think about it.”
“Can I be of help?”
“It’ll be best if I handle it myself.”
Livia was taken aback. “You aren’t going to—you aren’t going to put arsenic in his tea or anything like that, are you?”
“No, of course not. Besides, his death would offer no financial advantage to us at all. That’s when his creditors will pounce. Mamma will have to sell the house to satisfy them and I will not receive a penny for my education.”
“Then what?”
“I’ll tell you when it’s done.”
A chill ran down Livia’s spine: Her sister could be ruthless in her own way. “Will you at least tell me when you’ll implement this diabolical plan of yours?”
“Soon. Within weeks, I should think.”
Livia took Charlotte by the shoulders. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret.”
Charlotte’s lips stretched into a smile that did not reach her eyes. “Would that someone had given Papa that warning.”
In the following days, Livia pestered Charlotte for more details about The Plan. But Charlotte only smiled, shook her head, and carried on as usual. It was the Season, with its attendant rounds of afternoon garden parties and evening dances. The whirl of merrymaking, however, had long ago lost what little appeal it had for Livia: The ultimate purpose of this yearly assembly wasn’t fun and games; it was for unmarried ladies to find husbands and married ones to jostle for social prominence.
Livia wouldn’t say she’d never met any gentlemen who appealed to her. But those of lofty enough qualities to interest her never seemed to be interested in her. And those who did bother to pay attention to her failed to spark the least reciprocal warmth on her part.
A sorry outcome, to say the least. After Charlotte’s thoroughly unromantic analysis of the institution of marriage, Livia had been on guard against runaway emotions that might lead to regrettable choices. But this resolute lack of runaway emotions was dispiriting in its own way. One ought to fall in love at least once, oughtn’t one? If only to understand what Elizabeth Barrett Browning had meant when she’d written, The face of all the world is changed, I think / Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul.
Yet this common, practically universal experience evaded Livia everywhere she went. And of course for her mother, Livia’s failure to garner a single proposal in seven and a half Seasons was a shameful burden to bear, a burden that Livia must hear of weekly, sometimes daily.
Lady Holmes’s latest tirade lasted the entirety of their ride home—they were alone in the carriage, it being Charlotte’s afternoon at the Reading Room of the British Museum, and the brougham was stuck in one of London’s horrible traffic logjams that took an hour to clear. Livia was exhausted by the time she escaped to her room. She feared she was coming dangerously close to the point when she would begin to encourage anyone, anyone at all, with a matrimonial interest in her—to get away from her mother, if nothing else.