The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows - Olivia Waite Page 0,7
can have my cider if you want it.”
“No, thank you—I’ve a thin enough rein on my control at the moment, which spirits would undo entirely,” the lady murmured, the rich timbre of her voice rougher than Penelope had ever heard it. One corner of that long mouth tilted up. “Unless you want me to lose all control of my tongue. If I wanted to, I could send up such a shriek as would whiten the hair of every prune-faced hypocrite trying to playact plain and honest sorrow.”
Penelope cast an instinctive glance at Lady Summerville, who was indeed pursing her lips and relentlessly projecting an air of winsomely-carrying-on-through-near-collapse that would have done credit to any ingenue on the stage.
The poet caught the direction of her gaze, and leaned close. “Yes, to look at her you’d never guess how truly eager she is to punt me out of the house and take her aunt’s place. She expects to inherit everything, as Bella’s only living relative. Well, aside from Mr. Oliver—but he’s quite comfortable in the vicarage, I’m sure. He’s certainly richer than his sister and her lord, the title notwithstanding.” Mrs. Molesey’s chuckle was half creak, as though long disused. “I do hope she’ll give me time to change before she evicts me, at least. Black is an impossible color for traveling.”
Penelope’s laugh was helpless and far too loud. It paused all conversation and set every eye rolling her way.
She could see their thoughts as though they were written in the air: that Penelope Flood again—can she never be serious for a moment? She took a long pull of cider, blushing painfully, and smoothed at her skirts with her free hand.
The murmur of polite conversation rose up again like the tide.
Mrs. Molesey’s smile deepened enough to dimple. “So at least now they have someone else’s behavior to cluck about. Thank you, Mrs. Flood.”
Her cheeks burned. “It was the least I could do.”
The poet took another absentminded bite of bread, and Penelope bit her lip to prevent herself from saying something encouraging about it. Judging by her earlier declaration, Mrs. Molesey was liable to take to fasting just for the sake of being contrary. Her emotions ran volatile, though deep and true. Penelope could just see her reclining on an antique chaise in Grecian robes, head tilted proudly, one hand tragically on her brow, reciting shiversome verses about wasting away until death reunited her with her lost love.
Penelope had loved a few people in her time—but she’d never loved anybody to such poetic heights. That was the one thing she’d truly envied Isabella Abington and Joanna Molesey: not the adventures, not the fame, not even the artistic success both women had found. Maybe they all came as a set, and one couldn’t lay claim to a devoted, passionate love without flinging oneself into the world and hunting it down.
Penelope was the furthest thing from a hunter. She should probably resign herself to her fate: furtive affairs and transitory dalliances. And fewer and fewer of those as the years went on. Oh, and an absent husband—so long and so frequently absent that she tended to forget Mr. Flood even existed. And theirs had certainly not been a love match, in any case.
The sweet-tartness of the cider burned like acid on her tongue.
Mr. Nancarrow, the most expensive of Melliton’s solicitors, approached the sofa to interrupt Penelope’s gloomy reverie. His narrow face was set in its gentlest expression, but there was no softening the sharp angles of his chin and cheekbones. He bowed low and said: “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Molesey, Mrs. Flood, but I must ask you to step into the library with me for the reading of the will.”
“Both of us?” Penelope asked, surprised. She’d known Isabella had liked her, but enough to be included in the bequests?
“Both, please,” confirmed Mr. Nancarrow.
Penelope drained her cider and followed obediently as the solicitor led the way to the study, collecting Mr. Oliver and Lord and Lady Summerville along the way.
Chapter Two
The library was the primary battlefield in the war between order, as represented by the housekeeper and her strictly trained staff, and chaos, as embodied solely but sensationally by Joanna Molesey. Stacks of books the poet pulled out for use in her writing would be cruelly tidied away before she was finished with them; as a counterattack, she would rearrange selected shelves in unusually frustrating ways and see how long it took Mrs. Bedford to notice the Shakespeare volumes were out of order because Joanna