The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows - Olivia Waite Page 0,6
luncheon for the mourners.”
Penelope nodded, and they walked through the gardens and into Abington Hall proper, where Melliton society had gathered to mark the loss of their most prominent personage.
People looked up, then quickly looked away again, dismissing Penelope. Oh, those lightning glances seemed to say, it’s only her. You know, merchant’s daughter, the eccentric one? Wears men’s clothes around, does something with bees, I don’t know what. What on earth can one actually do with bees?
These were the cream of the local gentry: the men with gold watch chains and the women in gauzy silks, purchased with the rents from the tenants and smallholders Penelope drank with most evenings in the Four Swallows. Or else these fine folk claimed the profits from the boats other men steered up and down the river Ethel, carrying goods to and from London and more far-flung counties. Even if they’d never dream of opening a ledger themselves, or paying an invoice, or asking what kinds of goods they traded in, or who died producing those goods.
These were the people who thought to have money was everything, but to earn it was a scandal. Penelope’s family had enough money to be acceptable, but not nearly enough to make her friendship valuable.
Mr. Oliver nodded farewell and went to murmur among them, using all the correct words and expected phrases.
After the freshness of grass and apple blossom, Penelope found the hall’s warm, close mix of scents and polishes and perfumes painfully cloying. She quickly made her way to the drinks on the sideboard, and let the fizzy richness of Mrs. Bedford’s cider drive away all other fumes and flavors. The Abington Hall housekeeper was a ten-year champion brewer at the town fair, and Penelope never missed a chance to sample her creations.
Most of the mourners around her were dressed in sober grays and browns and purples as they went through the careful minuet of grieving in public. Smiles reined in, voices hushed, a certain stiffness about the shoulders that said they were burdened by sorrow but not too much sorrow, an embarrassed sort of sadness—as though Death were an acquaintance whose face was familiar but whose name you couldn’t quite recall, and you were trying to nod politely as you hurried down the street before they could detain you long enough that you’d be compelled to stop and chat.
Only the family were in the black of full mourning: the vicar, his sister and brother-in-law Viscount and Viscountess Summerville, and of course Mrs. Joanna Molesey, Isabella’s longtime companion and friend.
Rather more than a friend, according to the gossips.
Penelope knew that not only were the gossips right, but in this instance they dreadfully understated the case: having spent many hours visiting the two women at home, and hearing about their shared adventures abroad, Penelope was in no doubt that Miss Abington and Mrs. Molesey had loved one another as deeply and passionately as any two people ever could. Mrs. Molesey was an accomplished poet in the habit of reading early drafts of her work aloud, and at home her sly and witty love lyrics were always addressed to an alluring and unnamed she, though the published poems often changed the pronouns. When they didn’t, they bore the delicate subtitle: In imitation of Sappho.
Penelope was not the only one able to decipher such a code, and so Melliton society often moved in uneasy ripples and eddies around Mrs. Molesey, even as they basked in her fame and intellectual luster.
Right now the poet herself sat in splendid isolation on a scrolled bench against one wall: chin high, steel-gray hair swept back, her face ghostly pale against the black bombazine of her gown. All around her, mourners in pairs and trios kept themselves at careful oblique angles—they knew they couldn’t turn their backs outright, not today of all days, but they still wanted not to engage if they could avoid it. As though the palpable weight of her grief were enough to drag all of them down.
Well, Penelope was humble enough in the instep that few of the high-born people in this room really noted what she did. And she wasn’t afraid of grief. She plucked a few small morsels from the sideboard and cut directly through the crowd to the bench.
“When did you eat last?” she asked Mrs. Molesey, then shook her head. “Never mind—you should eat something now.”
The poet accepted the offering of bread and cold meat, and even nibbled on a corner of a slice.