Lenore picked up her own sewing, a handkerchief with a complicated embroidered border whose completion had so far eluded her. Maybe because she found it duller than watching grass grow. “Mama, I don’t think Constance’s remark on the weather bore any connection to whether or not she approves of me being out and about.”
Jane’s needle flashed and flew, the taut fabric popping with each jab of the pointed tip. “It’s both improper and dangerous for you to be on London streets alone.”
“I brought flowers for Papa’s grave.” She remained silent regarding her conversation with the Guardian.
The whip stitching slowed for a moment before picking up speed once more. “And visited that airship harlot in Maldon.” Jane finally looked up at her daughter, her eyes, as dark as Lenore’s, reflecting the flames from the fireplace. “Your duty is to your family, Lenore, not her.”
Lenore groaned. “Mama, what duty is there in sitting for hours listening to Aunt Adelaide abuse our poor pianoforte and complain that the tea is cold or the fire too hot or the room too drafty? And Nettie is a respected captain, not a harlot.”
Jane hissed at the sudden snarl in her thread. “I’ve never understood why your father tolerated that woman.” Her eyes narrowed. “You realize she’s no longer welcome here?”
“So I assumed. Why do you think I went to Maldon instead of inviting her here?”
“Why do you even associate with her at all?”
This had ever been a point of contention, not just between Jane and Lenore but between Jane and Arthur. Lenore had once thought her mother feared the association between her husband and the airship captain was one of a more conjugal nature. As she grew older and observed the repartee between Arthur and Nettie, she abandoned the idea.
While their friendship was unusual and likely perceived as something else, the inventor and the captain were nothing more than professional colleagues of like minds. Had Nettie been a man, Lenore still didn’t think Jane would have approved of the friendship. The class divide was too wide and too deep, and one Jane believed never should be crossed.
Much to Jane’s disgust, Lenore didn’t agree and embraced her father’s more egalitarian views. “I associate with her because she is my friend as much as she was Papa’s.”
Simmering silence fell between them again and lasted through supper. Lenore wished with all her heart that she and Jane might one day reach past the endless squabbles and arguments and meet on common ground. With no other siblings and Arthur gone, they only had each other, and Lenore stared into the heart of that fact, both sad and frightened.
Jane finished her last course and excused herself from the table, the heavy slide of her skirts audible in the dining room as she ascended the stairs to her bed chamber. Lenore pushed aside the remains of her pudding and drained her wine glass, happier with the solitude than with her mother’s disapproving presence across from her.
Mrs. Harp entered to clear away the supper remains, and Lenore rose to help her. Constance Harp had been in service with the Kenward family since Lenore was still on lead strings, and more than a few times it was Constance she was tethered to in those early childhood years. Her grief over Arthur’s death was as profound as that of his wife and child.
She offered Lenore a sympathetic smile. “How was your papa, Miss Nora?”
Lenore followed her to the kitchen with the remains from supper. “Regrettably quiet. His manners regarding civil conversation have lapsed abominably.”
The housekeeper chuckled. “It’s good you visit him as often as you do. Good for you both.”
Lenore didn’t argue that. It was true. Visiting her father’s grave eased the grief. Her brief conversations with the fascinating Guardian presented their own charm as well. She said nothing of this to Constance. “I hope to convince Mama to accompany me next time.”
Constance took the dishes from her and stacked them near the dry sink. She dusted her hands and gestured to the door with a thrust of her chin. “It’s never been her way to reveal what’s inside. Give her time, miss. She grieves for him in her way.”
Lenore followed the direction of her gaze. Not once had she witnessed Jane shed a tear since her husband’s death. “I’ll trust your word on that, Mrs. Harp.”
When the housekeeper refused her help with the dishes, Lenore left the kitchen with promises to rise early to start the Friday ironing.
It was far too early for bed, and she was too restless to read or sew. The windows on the stairwell’s first landing revealed a back garden made bleak and bare by the winter cold. The rain had stopped, leaving the branches of cherry and apple trees Jane lovingly tended through every season to drip in the deepening evening.
Lenore had inherited a little of her mother’s skill with plants, but it was nothing compared to Jane’s innate magic. Her father often joked that his wife was the only person he knew of outside the Guild mages who could plant a broken stick in a coal heap and watch it flower into a great oak.
The greenhouse Arthur had built for his new wife nearly three decades earlier glowed softly in the darkness, lit not by candles or gas but by the numerous blossoms of white roses, lilacs, lilies and violets housed inside. Their soft luminosity reminded her of the Highgate Guardian, as pale as a new marble headstone draped in black weeds.
Each time they met, he drew her like a ship to a shore beacon and sent flutters through her belly. So oddly beguiling. Truth be told, his was a visage one might see in a danse macabre mural—spectral and strange as if bound to earth by the thinnest of threads.
Quod fuimus, estis; quod sumus, vos eritis - What we were, you are; what we are, you will be.
She shook her head to clear her grim thoughts and padded softly to her room so as not to disturb her mother. Dwelling on the legend of the Three Living and the Three Dead guaranteed nightmares, and she had no wish to lay awake half the night imagining skeletons dancing with the terrified living.
The temperature in her room made the rest of the house seem warm by comparison. Cold air drafted in from the partially open window, bringing with it the fresh scent of air cleansed by rain and a touch of the damp. She shut the windows and pulled the drapes closed before lighting an oil lamp with shaking fingers. The shawl she draped over her shoulders offered some warmth, and she added another from her wardrobe for good measure.
A book on steam engine design lay next to one of poems by the poet laureate Tennyson. Lenore traced the poetry book’s cover design. A finely made book with its gold-tooled leather and gilt-edged vellum pages. A beautiful book. An expensive one given to her by a man who’d likely spent three months’ hard-earned wages to obtain it.