Amy Snow (32 page)

“Ah, courtesy you're after now, is it? Then I shall tell you my name. I am Ariadne Riverthorpe.”

As at the ball in Richmond, a small cluster has gathered at the first sniff of confrontation. I can well imagine Mrs. Riverthorpe promises a good show. Mr. Garland, I think inconsequentially, will note that I cannot attend a ball without finding myself at the center of some disgrace.

The name is evidently known to Mrs. Beverley, for her pale-blue eyes widen. What little reputation I have is disappearing like rainwater down a drain. Mrs. Riverthorpe proceeds, supremely unconcerned.

“Dignity and reticence you want, is it? So a woman should shut herself away the instant she develops a wrinkle, should she? Cover herself in veils and keep quiet? Are
men
made to feel ashamed once they cease to be decorative? Are
men
such creatures of beauty, with their springy hairs and fleshy jowls and sprouting groins? I think
not
!”

A titter runs around the onlookers like champagne bubbles streaming to the surface.

All I can reflect is that I was mortified about saying “naked” in public at Richmond! At least I never spoke of a “sprouting groin.” Mrs. Beverley's pale cheeks are flooded with color.

“You are a hypocrite, Mrs. Beverley,” Aurelia's extraordinary friend continues. “You find your refuge in conventions and tell yourself that the bargains
you
have struck are morally sound, because they are socially sanctioned. Only the weak require such a refuge. So go home. Tell them all that Amy has a fortune now. Tell them that all they wished for her—the poverty, the ignominy, the obscurity—has not come to pass. She rejects it.”

Mrs. Beverley nods. “Oh, I shall tell them; you may be sure of it.”

She is joined by a stout, vague-looking gentleman, Aurelia's uncle, I presume, and Mrs. Beverley turns to him with something like a sob. Puzzled, he glances at the two strangers confronting his wife and guides her away. The little crowd disperses.

Mrs. Riverthorpe cackles. “Ha! Tiny little world, is it not? Inconvenient, but no harm done, I think.”

“Did she . . . did she . . . ?”

“What's the matter, girl, found a knot in your tongue? Where's my punch, anyway?”

Stunned, I refill the glass I am still clutching and hand it to her.

“Mrs. Riverthorpe, if I am correct, Mrs. Beverley believes, and you implied, that I am a . . . I am a . . . Now everyone at Hatville will think that I am a . . .”

“Precisely! Ha! You see how useful it is to have people so ready to think badly of you?”

“But Mrs. Riverthorpe, people were
listening
! It is not just in Hatville that these rumors will circulate, why, all of Bath . . .”

“I thought you did not care a fig for all of Bath.”

“Well, no, but . . .”

She leans close to me and fixes her beady eyes on mine.

“Amy, do not be such an innocent. It was that or have her think that Aurelia left you a legacy. She has been diverted. That is what you wanted, is that not so?”

“Yes.”

“And you care nothing for Bath society, is
that
not so?”

“
Yes!
But it is painful to have strangers believe of me something so grossly untrue, so vastly at odds with my sensibilities.”

“Pfff, sensibilities. Amy, you were born into disgrace and have been treated as such for most of your life. Everywhere you go people think of you things that are not true, not least that your devotion to Aurelia was a sham calculated to obtain her money! You're a young woman traveling alone in a society that absolutely reviles independence in a woman. You
invite
censure and misunderstanding! You can't
afford
sensibilities.”

I stare at her, lost for words.

“But be honest, Amy. You would not change a thing. You like to think that Aurelia has put you in an intolerable position, but you would not go back to your old life, sweet and dependent and downtrodden as you were. You would not go back!” So saying, she stalks off.

For a moment I stand speechless, watching her go. Then I spin on my heel and storm off in the opposite direction.

I flounce up the stairs towards the grand gallery and the doors to the balcony. I need cool night air to wash away the shame. I cannot bear to think that what Mrs. Riverthorpe says is true; I would have Aurelia back at any price. Wouldn't I?

A cluster of guests near the door slows my progress, and as I step past them, I see the scene reflected in a huge floor-length mirror with an elaborate gold-leaf frame. Innocent, fresh young girls, dressed in white or cream, are clustered around their mammas, looking as cool and sheltered as snowdrops. And there am I in the foreground, in my vibrant dress, red as wine. My hair has defied Cecile; hair and roses yield to gravity in a dark tumble. My face is flushed, my eyes are burning. I am the same age as those girls but my experience is all different. I falter as I pass them for they look so pretty and pale and safe.

And yet, if the choice were mine . . . For the very first time in my life, what I feel when I see myself is admiration. I am negotiating the world, no matter how clumsily. I am
not
sweet and dependent. I am fierce and free. It scalds me to admit it but Mrs. Riverthorpe is right: I would not go back.

The carriage ride home passes in prickling silence; I have a good deal of thinking to do, whether or not she approves of it. However, when we step into the hall of Hades House, eerier than ever with a single lamp throwing ineffectual beams along its shadowy length, I follow her to the drawing room without a word being spoken by either of us. We will take a glass of Madeira together.

A small fire burns. Mrs. Riverthorpe sinks onto a lumpy green chaise, and I suddenly understand that she is old. It seems a foolish thing to remark only now, two full days after meeting her, but Mrs. Riverthorpe is brute will and pure life force, all trussed up in extraordinary fabrics. It is hard to see her as elderly, for her every word and gaze and gown forbids it. Nevertheless, it is not every eighty-year-old who would stay at a ball 'til past two in the morning, taking on each and every individual she meets in some obscure battle of her own determining.

I realize that she reminds me rather of Aurelia. True, Aurelia was young and beautiful and charming, but perhaps so was Mrs. Riverthorpe once. In sheer presence, determination, and brilliance, they are alike.

The thought makes me feel more tenderly towards her as I hand her a glass. I notice that her clawed hand trembles a little in the taking of it.

“Well, and what might Miss Amy make of tonight's interesting events? If it is not too soon to ask such a question. If she does not need a few weeks to work it out.”

Her derision feels perfunctory; she even smiles at me. She must be tired.

I fill a glass of my own and take a seat opposite her. “I believe I may need a lifetime to work it out. It felt like a dream to me, Mrs. Riverthorpe—people from Hatville, people from Twickenham, all the pieces of my life colliding.”

“It is not unusual. One cannot spend five minutes Bath without seeing a dozen people one knows from somewhere else.”

“So I am beginning to understand! My circle of connections is not large yet even I have seen two people I know.” I do not mention Henry. I do not want her mocking me. “Oh, that Aurelia's aunt could believe
that
of me!”

“You were hardly assured of her good opinion previously. I am sorry to disillusion you, but your association with me alone calls your respectability into question. There are rumors aplenty about me, you know. Never care what anyone thinks, Amy. Or if you must, never let them see it.”

“Are they true, the rumors?”

“Does it matter?”

“No, but I am naturally curious. You were a friend of Aurelia's. I am staying in your home. Yet I know nothing of what your life has been.”

She laughs, not her usual shrewd cackle but wearily, in a way that makes my bones dissolve.

“You could never know what my life has been. Oh, I don't mean to disparage you—no one could understand it. There is a pattern laid out for women in this world of ours, Amy, and Lord help us if we do not follow it.

“But if life throws challenges at us that fall outside that pattern, what may we do? It makes me laugh that women are permitted so few alternatives, and are then punished for resorting to the ones they have. It makes me laugh that women are reviled for using the one true power they possess in a way that benefits
them
! It makes me laugh that we are doomed to a life of obloquy for stepping outside the twisted paradox that nature and training make of us. A good many things make me laugh, Amy, and not one of them funny.” And she rocks mirthlessly back and forth in a grim parody of laughter.

“You sound just like Aurelia.”

Her face softens. “Once, I was very like her—a lady too, with a great many expectations upon me. I was young, about your age, when I was seduced by a scoundrel who abandoned me. I had run away with him, so my choice was very public, there was no way to pretend it had not happened. A similar thing had happened a few years earlier to another young lady of my acquaintance. She killed herself from the shame of it.”

She rises and stumps over to the fire and jabs it with the poker. It flares up as though protesting, but it does little for the chill. She sits once again on the chaise, facing me very squarely, one arm resting on its mahogany arm, the other stretched out along its back. No demure hands clasped in lap for
her
.

“It was generally acknowledged, then, that she was an innocent victim. Her act of self-destruction, you see, was regarded as a sign of her sensibility and essential virtue despite erring. She did a most excellent job of restoring her good name. The only problem was, she was dead.”

“Clearly you made a different choice.”

“Indeed, I did. Anyone who had rather be dead than disgraced is a fool.”

The darkness seems to gather ever closer around us. “I . . . I agree with you, Mrs. Riverthorpe. And are you”—the word “happy” does not seem appropriate—“when you look back, does your life please you?”

To my surprise, she looks at me consideringly, as though it is a good question. “I suppose if God thought my sin was so unforgivable he could have finished me off himself, but he did not. Amy, that was
five and sixty
years ago now. They have not all been easy, they have not all been pretty, and they have been
filled
with trials, but they were
my
years—all mine—and no one can tell me I should not have had them.” She nods decisively and throws her Madeira down her throat.

“I have been talked about, you may believe it. Many of the stories about me are true. And many are not. That is the way of it, once you step outside the cage. But I will not deign to correct a single one of them. So here you find me. Not respectable, but powerful, which is a different thing altogether.”

I am silent a while, digesting her words. I cannot deny that I admire her spirit to live public and proud, instead of hiding away in obscurity. The original parties must all be long departed now—her parents, her seducer, her scandalized neighbors. Yet old taints cling and drift like the smell of onions, as I well know.

I imagine if Aurelia and Robin had been discovered. She would have faced down any scandal head-on, even relished it, had she been healthy. But tired and weak and facing death, well, she had other battles to fight. I am beginning to understand this odd friendship with Mrs. Riverthorpe now. I am beginning to understand the great lengths to which Aurelia has gone to reveal the truth of her last years to me and only me.

“What I find incomprehensible is why anyone would
choose
this life,” I say at last. “I could not bear it. To be always on display, always suspicious of people's motives, wondering what they are saying about me.”

“Do you really think it is different anywhere else?”

I remember Hatville: endless overheard slights and slurs.

I remember London: the cold, affronted glances of the wealthy folk in the Pantheon as I searched amongst them unchaperoned.

I remember Mrs. Ellington: “You presume to name it a friendship? How can such a thing exist between the wealthy young daughter of the finest family in Surrey and one such as yourself?” I feel my heart sink a little more with every reflection.

Then I recall Henry and Albert. The Wisters and Bessy. Above all, as clearly as if I saw her only yesterday, I recall my dear Aurelia, always overjoyed to see me. “Come on, Amy, it's a beautiful day, let's go down to the stream!”

I blink back hot tears. My throat clogs and I swallow my Madeira in a draft, get up once more to pour another.

“It
can
be different. Maybe not in any one
place
, but in pockets in many places—perhaps
any
place! I have always thought myself unfortunate, Mrs. Riverthorpe, but I am not so, for I have known true friendship. Of all the blessings in life, this must be the brightest and best.”