A Study in Scarlet Women (Lady Sherlock #1)(5)
Sir Henry sighed. “Do you hear your mother, poppet?”
“But Papa, why should I talk when I’ve nothing important to say?”
Sir Henry barked with laughter. “Why, indeed. You’re wise beyond your years, my dear poppet. And you have my blessing to be as silent as you’d like.”
This was said with a glance at Lady Holmes, the corners of whose lips turned down decidedly. With an exaggerated half bow, Sir Henry offered his wife his arm; she flattened her lips further but took it. Henrietta grabbed his other arm. Livia and Charlotte resumed walking hand in hand.
The next day was Sunday. After the sermon, the vicar announced from the pulpit that Miss Tomlinson had made him a very happy man by consenting to be his wife. Soon news was all over the village that those odd pictures on the noticeboard had been the vicar’s way of proposing, as he and Miss Tomlinson were both fond of puzzles and rebuses.
Sir Henry pranced around the house, looking delighted and smug. Livia was happy for Charlotte, a little jealous that she wasn’t the one to decipher the message, and strangely despondent. It would take her a long time to understand that the asphyxiated feeling in her chest had nothing to do with Charlotte but everything to do with their parents.
Sir Henry disdained his wife as Lady Holmes disdained her daughters. They weren’t happy together but Lady Holmes was the far unhappier one.
It had been frightful for Livia to understand this. Her mother had seemed immensely powerful, an Olympian figure striding about her fine country house, emanating command and superiority. But she was impotent before her husband’s contempt.
Nor was she, in the end, the kind of household authority figure that Livia had first believed. What control Lady Holmes exerted was largely illusory, maintained tenuously and with frequent outbursts of anger and violence—that extraordinary slapping technique had not come about without assiduous practice. The servants despised her, Livia barely tolerated her, and Bernadine’s condition was always worse when she was near. The only one with whom she got along was Henrietta, who happily flattered and even emulated her.
Once in a while Livia came upon this domestic despot sitting by herself, in a corner of the parlor, looking pale and lost. But then Lady Holmes would see her and shout at her for being a disagreeable sneak who never knew when she wasn’t wanted and Livia’s sympathy would evaporate as she broiled in humiliation.
She was twelve when she realized that the same could happen to her. That she, too, could marry a handsome, well-liked man and still be miserable.
That very same week Charlotte made her observation about Mrs. Gladwell.
Mrs. Gladwell was the widow of Sir Henry’s cousin, a stylish, vivacious woman in her late thirties. She lived twenty miles away and occasionally called on the Holmes household. Mrs. Holmes didn’t care for her. She sniffed whenever Mrs. Gladwell’s name was brought up and deemed her “common.” “Vulgar,” even, sometimes. Sir Henry, however, always insisted that Mrs. Gladwell be made to feel welcome, since she was family.
Mrs. Gladwell spent part of the year in Torquay, a balmy seaside resort. Upon her return she would call upon the Holmes girls, gifts in tow. For that reason, even Henrietta, otherwise a reliable ally for Lady Holmes, couldn’t disapprove of Mrs. Gladwell with any kind of sincerity.
In the course of that particular visit, Henrietta, who loved her wardrobe, received a chic new straw boater. To Livia, who wrote copiously in her diary, Mrs. Gladwell gave a handsome journal with an image of the Devon Coast on the cover and a bottle of novelty ink that was a beautiful lilac. And Charlotte, whose one true love was food, but whose diet Lady Holmes carefully watched for fear she would balloon to an unacceptable size, got a scrapbook of preserved seaweed, with dozens of delicate feather-like specimens ranging from pale green to robust maroon.
That evening, the girls were home alone with their governess, Sir Henry and Lady Holmes having gone out to dine at Squire Holyoke’s. While Miss Lawton was supervising Bernadine at her bath—Bernadine suffered from occasional seizures and could not be left alone in a tub of water—Charlotte had taken Livia by the hand and pulled her into Sir Henry’s study.
“We’re not supposed to be here!” Livia had whispered, her heart thudding. She liked a minor dose of the forbidden as much as the next girl, but Henrietta was home and Henrietta lived to snitch.
“Henrietta is changing,” said Charlotte.
“I guess that’s all right then.” Henrietta, at sixteen, dined with their parents when the latter were home and otherwise alone at the big table. She loved the ritual of changing into her dinner gown and could be counted on to spend forever coiffing her hair and trying on different petticoats until she found one that best complemented the shape of the dress. “But why are we here? What do you want to show me?”
Charlotte lifted a paperweight from Sir Henry’s desk and held it out toward Livia.
“I’ve seen it.” Livia, too, sometimes snooped around Sir Henry’s study. “He got it from that place he went to in Norfolk on the trip with his classmates.”
Twice a year Sir Henry went on a gentlemen-only excursion with old boys from Harrow. He’d returned from the latest one three days ago and Livia had peeked in on the paperweight when it was still sitting in a box that declared A gift for you from Cromer is within.
“Look closer,” said Charlotte.
Charlotte was no longer the mute she’d once been, but still she didn’t utter much beyond what was required, the “Morning, Vicar” variety and the occasional “How do you do?” to people she was meeting for the first time. So when she did speak, Livia paid attention.