Father did something appalling. Of course there will be! Unless they all get together and hush it up. That’s exactly what could happen, isn’t it, Dominic?” That was a question, but she rushed on without waiting for an answer. Her shoulders were stiff; he could see the strain on the fabric of her dress. It was floral. She had not yet thought to change to black.
“That’s what they’re all doing right now,” she went on. “They sent that important policeman from Bow Street, which is miles from here, just so they could keep it quiet.” She nodded her head. “You watch. Any time now the bishop will arrive full of false sorrow and bending all his mind on how he can deal with it discreetly, pretend it was an accident, and everyone will heave a great sigh of relief. Unity will be forgotten in their desire to save themselves embarrassment.” She spat the last word. “For all their cant about God and truth and love, they’ll save their own faces and do whatever is expedient.” She moved her hand again sharply. The tears spilled over her cheeks. “I am the only one who really cared about her, who loved the person she was.”
He did not interrupt her. She needed to say it and not be argued with. And in truth, he was horribly afraid she might be at least partly right. Certainly she was the only person who grieved for Unity rather than for the situation. He would not offend her, nor demean himself, by trying to say otherwise.
She gulped.
“You didn’t know what it was like for her!” It was an accusation, and she stared at him challengingly, her blue eyes bright and hard through the tears. “You don’t know how hard she had to fight to be allowed to learn, to be accepted, or what courage it took. It’s all so easy for you. You’re a man, and no one tells you you are not meant to have any intelligence.” She sniffed fiercely. “People don’t conspire silently to keep you out, looks and nods, unspoken agreements. You simply have no conception.” She was thoroughly angry now through her misery. “Unity made trouble,” she went on. “She showed you some of your own prejudices, the fear and oppression you exercise without even knowing it.” Her hands clenched. “You are so convinced you are righteous sometimes I could hit you! In your heart you are all glad she’s gone, because she asked questions and made you feel uncomfortable. She’d have forced you to look at yourselves, and you wouldn’t like what you’d see— because you’d see hypocrites. God! I’ve never felt so alone!”
“I’m sorry,” he said with as much sincerity as he could. He thought she was wildly wrong; she seemed to have caught Unity’s passions as if they were a contagion. But her feeling was real, of that he had no doubt at all, and it was that he addressed. “I can see that you do mourn her more honestly than the rest of us. Perhaps you will be able to carry on her ideas and beliefs?”
“Me?” She looked startled, but then not entirely displeased. “I’m not fit to. I haven’t any education except to sew and paint and to manage a household.” Her face twisted with disgust. “Given a good housekeeper and a good cook, of course. Clarice was the one who studied … theology, of all the useless pursuits for a girl. I think she only did it to please Father and to show she was cleverer than Mallory.”
“Didn’t you learn French at school?”
“I had a French governess for a while. Yes, of course I speak French. But that’s no use, for heaven’s sake! Nothing ancient or theological is written in French.” She still dismissed it.
“Wouldn’t any branch of learning do just as well in which to succeed and make the same point about women?”
Her eyes blazed. “Is that what I am supposed to do? Are you now going to tell me Unity’s death is all part of God’s plan, which we are meant to accept but not to understand? Will it all be explained to me when I get to heaven?”
“No, I wasn’t,” he said tartly. “You don’t want to hear it, and I don’t think it’s true anyway. I think Unity’s dying was a very human plan, and nothing whatever to do with God.”
“I thought God was all-powerful,” she said derisively. “Which means that all this”—she flung out her arm—“is His fault.”