After the Wedding (The Worth Saga #2)(93)

She didn’t want to be any of those things. She didn’t particularly want to be good and ladylike, either, but it seemed that there should have been space for the person she was in this world without having to make her over into someone else entirely.

Maybe, deep down, she’d hoped that if she got this right, doing it her way, her sister would hug her. That Judith would say, I see who you are, and you are a good, loving person.

Apparently, she hadn’t yet earned the right to that praise. Theresa’s eyes stung, but she hadn’t given up. Not yet.

“Well.” Theresa’s hands wrung. “It was supposed to be a present for your birthday. If you don’t like it, I have about nine dreadful cushion covers that lie abandoned on the floor of my wardrobe. You can have any of them that you like. All of them, in fact. If you ever want to decorate a room with unnerving embroidery, they should prove useful.”

Judith didn’t say anything and Theresa huddled in misery.

She would plan better next year. With a full year to practice, maybe she could manage that damned embroidery. She’d give Judith the best raven that anyone had ever embroidered, and when she did— Judith made a pained sound, and Theresa finally looked up. Judith was crying.

“You are impossible,” Judith whispered. “You don’t know what you can and can’t do.”

“It was…really, it wasn’t even my first choice?” Theresa sniffed. “I really tried to do the cushions first. They’re so terrible. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that my love for you is…” She thought of those cushions and the diseased produce. “My love is like the rot on the fields. It grows with no bounds, even if you don’t want it to, and you probably have to burn it with fire to stop the spread of disease.”

Judith emitted something like a choking noise. She buried her face in her hands.

Theresa jumped off her bed. “I’m sorry!” Somewhere, she had a handkerchief. It was probably even clean. She crossed to her dresser, flinging open drawers. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I was only trying to help.” She found a piece of linen, shook it out, sniffed it—definitely clean—and waved it in her sister’s direction. “I’ll do better next time. I’m learning every day, even if it doesn’t seem like it, and—”

Judith crossed the room to Theresa, plucked the fabric from her hand, and dropped it on the floor. “Shut up, Tee-spoon,” she said. “I love you. This is the best birthday present I have ever had. And just because I don’t have the words to say it…”

She wrapped her arms around her, squeezing Theresa so hard that she could scarcely take a breath.

“You are impossible,” Judith said again. “You don’t know what you can and can’t do. I wouldn’t take any other sister, ever, in your place.”

Crying was a weakness. Theresa didn’t believe in it. But somehow, the kind of tears that made her angry—the ones that crept out when she felt small and inconsequential and incapable—were nothing like the ones that pricked her eyes now. Funny, how tears could encompass both frustration and accomplishment.

“I know I’m hard on you,” Judith said. “I just worry so much. You’re…you, and the world is…so…”

“Ugly?”

“Ugly is a good word. You’re fearless, and sometimes I think you’re like a kitten trotting into a lion’s den, meowing a defiant challenge. You’re going to get eaten.”

“The way I see it,” Theresa said matter-of-factly, “if I’m a kitten and they’re all lions, they’re going to eat me no matter how I act. I might as well enjoy myself before I’m dinner.”

Judith laughed. “That’s worse. You have no sense of self-preservation.”

“There are more kittens than lions,” Theresa replied. “They can’t eat us all.”

“There are a great many lions, and most of the kittens hide in caves.”

“But if we all descended into the lion’s den, we could mew them to death.”

“What are we even talking about any longer?”

Judith looked at Theresa and shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Theresa looked at the wall. “I am impossible. Maybe, deep down, I thought… If I could find Camilla this time, I could find Anthony…later.”

“Oh, sweetheart.”

“And…”

Judith hugged her. They didn’t move for a few minutes. Finally, Judith spoke.

“You know,” she said, “he sends letters.”

Theresa’s heart stopped. “You are in contact with Anthony? You have his direction?”

Judith shook her head. “Not entirely. We don’t know where he is or what he’s doing. We can put coded messages in the advertisements section, and sometimes, fourteen months later, he’ll provide an answer. He doesn’t really tell me anything. And—I need to warn you—he says things that are…of the sort that used to tend to set you off when you were younger, you know? I didn’t want to tell you.”

Theresa sat up straight. “You are telling me that I can send my older brother a message.” She felt her fingers curl. “That he is aware of my continued existence and has not come for me?!”