pocket for another bit of apple. She gave one to the carriage horse, too, a thickheaded creature called Andy. Andy took her offering with no particular show of gratitude, but she patted him anyway. In the opposite stall, Chessie, named for his rich chestnut color, extended his neck in expectation of his own treat. Robbie’s stolid gelding stood drowsing next to Chessie. Robbie called him Tater, for his dull brown coat, and he was even older than Sally. Robbie was supposed to accompany Annis when she went riding in the park, but once she had started riding Bits, poor Tater, with his lumbering trot, couldn’t keep up. Annis told Robbie he didn’t need to chaperone her, that no one could bother her when she was riding Bits. He had given in, lamenting as always that he would lose his job.
Bits was four now, and Annis had been riding him since he turned two. Under Robbie’s guidance she had trained him in the classical fashion, the longe line first, with just a halter, then bits of tack and an empty saddle, and then, finally, Annis on his back. Robbie said he never saw a horse take so easily to a rider, but Annis wasn’t surprised. Bits always understood what she wanted, from a slow walk to a trot, from a canter to a gallop. He was as eager as she for their more daring rides, the ones they made when no one could see them. He loved to run, and they both loved jumping. He sailed effortlessly over fallen trees, mane and tail rippling. He popped over rows of shrubs as easily as a leaping deer, making Annis feel as if she could fly. She definitely didn’t want to take such jumps in a sidesaddle.
As she started toward the house, she reflected on her good fortune. She had her horses, and Robbie, and Mrs. King. Frances had been cross that morning, but maybe she had been right to accuse Annis of being selfish. It was true she thought of her horses more than she thought of anything else. Or anyone.
Whom did Frances have? Her husband spent no time with her. She didn’t seem to have friends, not real ones. It could be that Frances, for all her airs and bad temper, was lonely. Impelled by a stab of compunction, Annis hurried her steps. She would explain to her stepmother that she had been joking about wearing trousers. She would clean up a bit before luncheon, perhaps get Velma to do something about her hair.
Frances would like that. Perhaps she would forget about complaining to Papa.
4
Frances
Frances didn’t know how Harriet knew what she had done to George. Harriet did know, though. She often knew things she shouldn’t. It was exactly like her to make an issue of it, to act superior, to pretend she had Frances’s interests at heart.
Frances’s mother had been a Bishop, like Harriet and her grandmother Beryl, but their familial connection was a distant one, traced over two centuries through the two lines of Bishops.
Harriet’s upbringing had been as different from Frances’s as could be. Harriet had lost her mother when she was five and had gone to live with her grandmother in a comfortable house in St. George. They employed a housekeeper and a cook, and a woman came in every day to clean. They had no idea what it was like to be poor.
Frances knew it all too well, and she bore the scars on her soul to prove it. Her mother had married badly, against her family’s wishes, and her husband had abandoned her when Frances was an infant. She had worked as a laundress, or as a seamstress when she could get the work. She had barely kept a roof over her daughter’s head, and there were times when they had no money left over for food. Frances had grown up in uncertainty and want. It was unfair for Harriet to criticize her desire for a better life.
Her wedding to George had been a quiet event, as befitted a second marriage, and that suited Frances well enough. Until her allowance began, she had no money for anything like a Worth wedding dress, such as one of the wealthy Manhattan brides would have worn. She had no trousseau to speak of, either. She had scraped together enough to order a traveling suit of blue silk with leg-of-mutton sleeves and a matching cape. For the ceremony she wore a modest gown of cream brocade with ecru lace