would not give Harriet the satisfaction of an argument on this topic. It would not be the first between them in any case, and this was, after all, her wedding day. She should not have to defend herself.
She could have pointed out that her practice was every bit as ancient and powerful as Harriet’s, but she would have been wasting her breath. Harriet would prate on about doing good and healing people, work that gave Frances no pleasure. Half the time, she knew perfectly well, Harriet didn’t even use her ability. She just cooked up herbal concoctions and sold them, or, too often, gave them away.
Harriet was correct about George, though. Frances had forced him. Harriet might be maddening, but she was perceptive. She probably saw it in George’s face. Others merely saw an older man in love with a young woman. Harriet no doubt took in the glassiness of his eyes, the urgency of his touch on his bride’s arm, the hungriness of his hands when he encircled her waist.
But, Frances thought, Harriet was wrong about the maleficia. It had not harmed her. On the contrary, it had given her precisely what she wanted, and she had no intention of giving it up.
She settled herself onto the stool again, taking care to arrange her skirt around her ankles. “Harriet,” she said, striving for a suitably commanding tone. This was her house now. Everyone in it must do what she wanted. “Call Antoinette back. I’m about to go on my wedding journey, and I have no time for this.”
“I do wish you a happy honeymoon, Frances,” Harriet said. Frances didn’t believe she meant it, not for a moment. She went on, “But I fear you will regret what you’ve done.”
“I won’t. I already know that.”
“Very well.” Harriet turned and started for the door. With her hand on the latch, she said, “Treat Annis well, Frances. I mean to see to it that you do. And if she inherits the ability…”
Frances glared at her cousin’s lean figure reflected in her dressing-table mirror. Anger gave her energy. It enhanced her own ability, and for once she felt as if the flow of her power was equal to Harriet’s. Her fingers and toes tingled with the familiar feeling, with that vague hot thrill that was almost pain.
She said in a low, hard voice, “I mean, Harriet, to see that you stay away from us. I will make clear to George what a bad influence you are, associating as you do with the lowest classes, laborers and factory workers and their flocks of disease-ridden children. Imagine the illnesses you could bring into the house! My stepdaughter has no need of such an influence in her life.”
Only then did Harriet smile, a cool, remote expression that made Frances’s heart thud with fresh rancor. “We shall see about that, Cousin. It’s your family now. But in the meantime—for this short time—enjoy your conquest.” She opened the door, tossing her last comment over her shoulder lightly, as if it were too prosaic, too obvious, to be spoken gravely. “It won’t last.”
5
Harriet
Harriet heard the front door of the apartment open and close and Grace’s running chatter greeting the housemaid who came to clean. The maids were all employed directly by the Dakota, and allowing one into the apartment was the only concession Grace made to the way things were done in the building. She flatly refused to use the kitchen service or even the laundry service. She had announced, at great length, that she was a better laundress and a better cook than any who would hire themselves out to a building of what she called “French flats.”
The manager of the Dakota would be appalled if he heard the elegant dwellings of his building referred to as French flats. Fortunately, Grace had the wisdom not to refer to them that way in his hearing.
Harriet hurried her breakfast, then refilled her coffee cup and carried it to the herbarium, where she closed and locked the door against the clatter and bang of the housemaid at work. She was eager to begin sorting through her morning’s harvest.
Harriet was of a precise nature, particularly when it came to the herbs and flowers she worked with every day. The herbarium was a space meant to be the fourth bedroom of the apartment, fitted with an iron sink and hot and cold running water. She had hired a cabinetmaker to line it with shelves and to install the two long stone counters where