The Stepsister's Tale. Tracy Barrett

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       Chapter 3

      Jane woke to the sound of someone moving in the South Parlor and stretched happily. Mamma was home—but then she bumped into the sleeping Maude, and the memories of last night flooded back.

      Jane’s dress lay crumpled on the floor. She pulled it on and stared down at herself. The dress was stained and wrinkled and a rip was starting under one armpit. She hadn’t noticed before how grimy it was. She tried to comb her hair with her fingers, but they stuck in a knot, so she gave up.

      In the South Parlor, Mamma was drinking a cup of tea. “Good morning,” Jane said, and stepped around the sleeping Isabella, who looked even more angelic than when she was awake. Rummaging in the chest, Jane found her best dress, the blue one with dingy lace around the neck and cuffs. Normally, she wore it only when the priest came to St. Cuthbert’s, the village church, on his irregular rounds. It was getting small, but at least it was clean and not too much mended.

      “What are you doing with your Sunday dress?” Mamma asked. Wordlessly, Jane pointed at the worn elbows on the one she was wearing. She poked her finger through a hole near the hem and waggled it at Mamma. “A true lady always looks well, no matter what she wears,” Mamma said, as Jane had been afraid she would.

      Jane sighed and put the blue dress back. It didn’t really matter, she supposed. Her best dress would still look like rags next to Isabella’s clothes. Even the girl’s nightgown was fastened at the neck with a shiny pink ribbon. “In any case,” Mamma went on, “we won’t be going to church again until next spring. Father Albert is getting too old to come all the way out here in bad weather, and autumn storms will be starting before long.” After the hot and dry summer, when the crops withered in the fields and rabbits and deer left their forest homes and appeared in the drive in search of water, the thought of a cool rain shower didn’t seem like bad weather.

      Jane picked up a basket of grain in the pantry and stepped outside. She strolled through the bare patch between the house and the barn, tossing the feed by handfuls to the chickens. The early-morning dust was cool and dry under her toes. She threw some grain in front of the hen with the sore foot, who pecked it up quickly before her swifter sisters could steal it. Mamma appeared in the doorway, looking off to the horizon—to prevent herself, Jane thought, from seeing her daughter working like a farm girl.

      “Mamma?”

      “What is it?”

      “Who is that man?” She didn’t know if Mamma would answer; Mamma so rarely talked about anything personal.

      “Your stepfather, dear.”

      You know that’s not what I’m asking, Jane thought, but what she said was, “I mean, how do you know him?”

      “Harry was a friend of Papa’s. His father was a wealthy trader. When Harry was a young man, he met Isabella’s mother on a journey across the border. He married her and stayed in her country for several years. I met her once, when they came to the city for Harry’s mother’s funeral,” she said in a low tone, as though talking to herself. Jane moved closer to hear. “She was a lovely thing. I never saw a man so besotted.” She shook her head and paused. “Isabella was very young at that time, but already she resembled her mother greatly. Harry moved back here with Isabella after his wife died, and I’ve seen him several times in the city since then.”

      The hens scratched in the dirt, seeking the last kernels.

      “Why did you marry him?” Tears stung Jane’s eyes. “Things were fine until now, with just you and me and Maude.”

      “Jane! How dare you question me—how dare you?”

      “Sorry,” Jane muttered. She kicked at the dirt, revealing a bug that a chicken instantly pounced on. She knew she should stop, but she couldn’t help herself. “Do you love him, Mamma? Do you love him the way you...” The way you loved Papa, she wanted to say, but she didn’t dare.

      Mamma didn’t answer. She looked at Jane with an expression that was hard to read. Sorrow? Irritation? Finally, she said, “There are many ways to love, and no way to explain them to someone who hasn’t felt them. There’s one’s first love, and there’s the love you feel for your children. Wait until you have your own children, Jane, and you’ll know why I would do anything—anything to keep you girls safe and happy.”

      “But—”

      “No, let me finish. I will say this once, and then you will never ask me again. Harry loves his daughter as I love you, and we love each other the way old friends do. He has no more family. He wants his daughter to have a respected name, and I want you girls to be out in society. He has...” She hesitated. Say it, Mamma, Jane thought. Say he has money. But money was one of the subjects that Mamma considered indelicate. They watched the hens gather the chicks under their wings as a hawk flew overhead. “We should have more help in the house—”

      More help? Jane thought sourly.

      “—and you should be going to parties and meeting young men and...” Mamma sighed.

      “We don’t need him, Mamma,” Jane said. “You have Maude and me, and Hannah Herb-Woman.” Still, the idea of meeting young men interested her more than she liked to admit. How could she ever meet someone, living far away from town and never going anywhere except church? She had never been invited to a party, and the thought of guests seeing their decayed ballroom was ridiculous. And even if she did meet someone, any man who lived up to Mamma’s standards would never be interested in a tall, gawky girl with work-hardened arms and a face darkened by the sun, especially one with no dowry and no fortune to inherit. But of course she couldn’t say that to Mamma.

      “Hannah and her family are good and honest neighbors, but they are not our friends, Jane. They are not of our station. You know that.”

      It irritated Jane when Mamma talked about their “station” as though nothing had changed since her own girlhood. “We see СКАЧАТЬ