The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(65)
“Oh, Emma,” sighed her mother. “What does a man have to do to win your heart? I really wish I knew, so that I could instruct some of them. You know how much I’d love to have a granddaughter.”
“Yes, Mother,” Emma replied wearily, “you’ve been saying the same thing every single day since I turned twenty.”
Her mother fell silent for a few moments and gazed sadly up at the sky.
“A little girl running about would bring the place alive, don’t you agree, darling?” she said presently, renewing her attack wistfully.
Emma snorted.
“Why are you so sure it would be a little girl?” she asked.
“I’m not, Emma. How could I be?” her mother parried. “I simply wish for a girl. Naturally, it is for God to decide the sex of his creatures.”
“If you say so . . .”
Emma understood perfectly well why her mother had said this. Hitherto, only women had inherited the Map of the Sky: first Grandma Eleanor, then Emma’s mother, Catherine, and after her, Emma. It was as if the selfsame drawing had mysteriously inclined the embryo that would receive it toward the female sex. So that if one day Emma were to fall in love, an event she considered very unlikely, she would naturally give birth to a girl. After which her womb would mysteriously dry up, as had happened to her grandmother and her mother, who following the birth of their first child and notwithstanding their respective husbands’ vigorous efforts, had been unable to repeat the miracle.
“And on her tenth birthday I would give her the Map of the Sky, I suppose,” she remarked sarcastically.
Her mother’s face lit up.
“Yes, indeed,” she said dreamily, “and it will be as magical a moment for her as it was for you, Emma. Why, I can still see the look of excitement on your little face when I unrolled your great-grandfather’s drawing.”
Emma sighed. Her mother was impervious to irony. It simply did not occur to her that anyone might say something for any other reason than to please her, and if she suspected otherwise, she would stop listening. Nothing and no one could ruffle Catherine Harlow, thought Emma. However, she refused to give up trying, she told herself, frowning as she saw one of the maids approaching the porch from the house carrying the mail on a small tray. After the dull procession of gifts came the string of invitations to dinners, balls, and sundry events that coming week. She hoped there would be nothing she could not wriggle out of by professing some passing ailment. She was fed up with attending parties and dinners where everyone engaged in slandering those absent whilst observing perfect table manners. Happily, this time only one sealed envelope lay on the tray. Emma opened it with her usual apathy and read the neat, elegant writing on the note inside:
My dear Miss Harlow: I do not know your heart’s desire, but I assure you I am the man who can satisfy it, impossible though it may be.
Montgomery Gilmore
Emma tucked the note wearily back into its envelope. As if she hadn’t enough suitors, now Gilmore seemed to be renewing the assault. The latest in a long line of admirers, each as wealthy as he was insipid, Montgomery Gilmore was an impossibly tall man, with a soft, round face, like a snowman when it begins to melt. He repelled Emma as much as if not more than the others, for not only did he lack the saving grace of good looks but also she found him far more conceited than his rivals. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say that he was less adept at reining in his natural boastfulness. The others were, in the main, consummate charmers, and those who lacked experience appeared to have swallowed whole the guide to being a model suitor, which included how to dissimulate their arrogance beneath an elegant cloak of modesty. This, on the other hand, seemed to be Gilmore’s first encounter with that universe known as womankind, and he behaved toward her with the same vigorous spontaneity with which he no doubt conducted himself in the world of business, which had been ruled over since time immemorial by men as exuberant as he. However, Emma was not a piece of property to be acquired, nor a contract to be argued over; she was someone who, while considering gallantry a tedious if necessary ritual, could at least appreciate when it was performed with a measure of skill. Accordingly, she demanded some minimum requirements of her suitors, which Gilmore insisted on ignoring.
Two meetings with the man had sufficed for Emma to realize that, although she might in time feel a lukewarm affection toward one or two of her other suitors, Gilmore could only provoke a growing revulsion in her. Both meetings had taken place at her house in the presence of her mother, as was customary with any serious courtship. During the first of these, Gilmore had simply introduced himself, vaunting his possessions and investments in order to leave Catherine Harlow in no doubt that the man courting her daughter was one of the wealthiest in New York. In other respects, he had proved a person of ordinary tastes, who held more or less conventional views on politics and other social affairs about which Emma’s mother had questioned him in order to test his integrity. And, yes, he had shown an indefatigable, brazen, almost exasperating self-confidence. This he had kept up during their second meeting, to which, to Emma’s astonishment, her mother brought along her father, who was not in the habit of deigning to meet his daughter’s suitors. Yet, when her parents had allowed the two of them to take a romantic stroll together in Central Park, the staggering self-assurance Gilmore had shown when describing his tiny empire suddenly crumbled, and he replied to her questions in a clumsy, stumbling manner. Then, in what seemed to Emma a desperate bid to prove once more that he was a worthy representative of a supposedly intelligent race, Gilmore fell into pride and arrogance. At no time did he make use of that amorous language most men employ when alone with the woman they love. Emma did not know whether Gilmore’s clumsiness in matters of the heart was due to his inability to treat love as anything other than a business transaction, or whether he suffered from a kind of crippling shyness that prevented him from enjoying intimate conversations with women. Whatever the case, it made no difference, for Emma did not feel the slightest attraction for that man who was by turns painfully shy and infuriatingly smug, and she was certain she never would. And so, as they were traversing one of the overpasses on their way out of the park, Emma demanded Gilmore abandon his futile wooing of her. To her surprise, he did not turn a hair. He simply shook his big head and grinned to himself, as though her opinion on the matter was of no consequence. Then, amused at his own ingenuity, he said, If I stop courting you, Miss Harlow, it will be the first time in my life I don’t achieve what I want. At those words, Emma had left him high and dry in the park, incensed by the impudence of that brute, who hadn’t the first idea how to treat a lady, and, what is more, appeared proud of it. The following week, Emma heard nothing from Gilmore. She concluded that upon reflection he had decided to give up courting her, a pursuit that required a great deal of effort for very little reward. No doubt he would be better off devoting himself to the more straightforward matter of business.