“They told me they were swept away by passion,” she said. “I don’t know if we had much passion, Harry and I. I thought we were in love but I’m too sensible for passion.”
“Not much passion?” He snorted. “You just hurled a chair across the room, woman.”
It was so ridiculous she had to laugh. “You say the sweetest things.”
He laughed too, and she thought that this was nice, chatting with him by the fire, curled up comfortably, warm inside and out. Maybe they could be friends some day.
“Harry and I were only engaged for a week before Charlie died, and I suppose I wasn’t good company after that,” she said. “He did visit me a few times, but I didn’t have much to say.”
Because her heart was so broken. Three years on, and still it hurt, the memory of the night when Charlie’s friends brought him in, sweating and bleeding from the knife wound between his ribs, yet making jokes all the while. She was not long home from a ball, where she and Harry had danced twice, and Harry had kissed her and said he’d always hold her in his heart. Papa was up in Scotland, and Mama had to be sedated, and so Cassandra helped the doctor, her white ballgown smeared with her brother’s blood, and she nursed Charlie for three days until he died.
“I liked Charlie. Everyone did,” Joshua said. “And you were better off not marrying Bolderwood if he couldn’t stand by you during a bad time.”
“Did your marriage have bad times?”
A bleak look passed over his face. How he must miss his wife.
“Nothing in particular,” he said, and added nothing more.
So this is brandy, Cassandra mused, as the silence stretched between them. It put several thick panes of glass between her mind and the world. Her emotions were curled up in a little ball, like Mr. Twit sleeping at the end of her bed.
She missed Mr. Twit.
“You’ve drunk all my brandy,” Joshua said.
She looked at the glass in her hand. It was empty. Oh.
“Lucy has taken to drinking brandy,” she said.
“What? She’s…how old?”
“Nineteen. I hide the bottles but she finds them. The first time, it was afternoon. Mama has this pet goat called Guinevere, and the goat gets into the roses. Lucy got the goat out and, under the influence of brandy, she brought the goat inside so it wouldn’t attack the roses, and she tied a bonnet on its head.”
“What for?”
“So no one would know it was a goat. It was a cunning disguise.” She laughed. It had not been funny at the time, although Lucy had been laughing. But Lucy had been drinking brandy, and now Cassandra was drinking brandy, and really, the brandy did a marvelous job of making things funny. “So there was this poor goat, in this giant bonnet covered with fake cherries and grapes, running around the house, dodging the servants, and bleating and breaking things and eating the flowers. Finally, we chased her outside. Poor Guinevere. She wouldn’t be caught again and wore the bonnet for an extra day until I could get it off her.”
He laughed. She did like his laugh. It warmed her like brandy.
“Another time, Lucy dressed up in one of Mama’s old gowns and a wig and sang bawdy songs.”
“What bawdy songs?”
“I am not singing a bawdy song.”
A slow, wicked smile spread over his face. “You know the words, don’t you? Perfect, polite, prim Cassandra, singing bawdy songs.”
“It was Miranda. She’s my older sister. Half-sister, I mean. From Mama’s first marriage.”
“I don’t care about Miranda. I want the song.”
“I mean, Miranda found this old songbook and dared me to perform one, but then…”
She’d been twelve to Miranda’s sixteen, and didn’t understand the words. She had sat at the pianoforte, heart thumping, her breath so short she wasn’t sure if she could sing, but she was determined to prove herself to Miranda, so she played the first two notes, and paused, and everyone was listening—the Bells and the Larkes were there too, as were the vicar and his wife and mother—and then—
“Miranda sang it instead,” she said.
Miranda got into trouble, of course, and enjoyed every minute. Mama and Papa never learned the plan; they’d patted Cassandra on the shoulder and said they were glad they could rely on her to be good.
That time, Cassandra had complained, because Miranda and Lucy were naughty and got all the attention, whereas she was good and got none. So Mama took her to Leamington