“It’s so delicious, I can hardly help myself,” Mrs. Fische burbles happily. “It’s not my fault you make the Lord’s own pot! Mrs. Bea’s blend, if I’m not mistaken?”
“Indeed.” Mrs. Lyon nods with pleasure as she returns with a fresh, gleaming tray. It is so nice to have nice things, after all. “A new recipe, just harvested from the community gardens. Something with apple blossoms, I think, I wasn’t really listening. You know how Mrs. Bea will go on if you let her.”
The sunlight turns the china to fire as Mrs. Lyon pours. The pattern glows incandescent—slim gazelles and fat sheep prancing through interlocking curls of long, braided grass.
“But the lock of hair, you see,” Sophia protests weakly.
She hates to contradict anyone. Especially since she is quite a ways younger than her teatime companions, especially Mrs. Fische. They know so much more than she does, about so many things. Silver hair, Mrs. F always says, is the medal won by wisdom. Sophia touches her curls self-consciously and wonders if she will get any silver of her own. She doubts it is possible. Not for such a silly little head and a silly little heart.
“I’m not at all sure what you’re trying to say, dear,” snaps Mrs. Minke irritably. Her dark eyes appraise Sophia up and down. “Do you think he’s been … disloyal to you? Is that it?”
“I don’t know!” Sophia says helplessly. She knows she oughtn’t. What will this do to the widening of Mrs. Moray’s eyes? But she’s so afraid. It dribbles out of her like blood. “Yesterday I could never imagine it. But today? And I can’t help but think he’s away so often with work … how am I to know what goes on when we’re apart?”
“But with who, darling?” Mrs. Fische tuts, looming greedily over the new pot of tea. “Old Mrs. Elke and Mrs. Hounde down at the farmer’s market? With those waistlines?” The other ladies laugh indulgently. “Perhaps Mrs. Hart, with her spots and nervous disposition? Or Mrs. Marten and her irresistible furry upper lip?” A reluctant smile begins to pull at Sophia’s rosy lips. In the friendly air of Mrs. Lyon’s sitting room, it really does seem so foolish.
“One of us?” Mrs. Minke squeals. “You don’t think your beau is gallivanting around with one of us, do you? Oh, you couldn’t. Just try to imagine it! Pawing at Mrs. L! Flip-flapping against old Mrs. F? Rolling around in the grass with me? You can’t. It’s too ridiculous! Who could compare with you, Sophie? You’re so perfectly lovely and perfectly good and perfectly sweet as a perfect orange. Everyone knows it. Don’t get your soft little neck twisted. As far as that man can see, you’re the only woman in the world.”
“As far as anyone can see. I’ve caught Mr. Lyon stealing a glance or three, I don’t mind telling you.” Mrs. Lyon rolls her eyes and tosses her thick, dark golden hair gaily.
“Oh, nonsense!” Sophia cries out, her face burning red.
“It’s true! Oh, pish-posh, it’s no shadow on my grass. He wouldn’t dare. I’d eat his head! But he gets such a hollow look in his big lazy eyes when he sees you coming up the walk without your fat slice of man at your side. I know that look. We all know it. The look of the hunt. Oh, I remember when he looked at me that way!”
“But your sweetie still looks at you as hungry as ever,” Mrs. Minke reassures her, patting her hand. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes. One quiver of your lip and he’s fit to hunt you and only you to the ends of time and back.”
The girls giggle and Sophia does feel better. She has been silly, really. Her husband works with all manner of animals, after all. It’s probably a snipping off some prize mare he forgot to tell her about. Far too coarse and thick and wild-smelling for a woman. A woman couldn’t smell like that. Sophia doesn’t smell like that. What was she thinking? It all seems so insignificant, now, in Mrs. Lyon’s sitting room, surrounded by bright lamps and good china and the laughter of good ladies.
Who, indeed?
A quiet, polite knock at the door cracks open the afternoon like a spoon tapping an egg.
“Oh!” Mrs. Lyon exclaims, clapping her big hands together. Her round butterscotch eyes shine. “We have company! Clear the tea things, Mrs. Minke, there’s a good girl. The Maestro doesn’t partake, you know.”
“You never mentioned company,” Sophia whispers.
Her shoulders tense. Anxiety simmers back through her veins in a sour flood. Sophia does not like to be surprised. It hardly ever happens to her. Perhaps once, when she first saw the enormous house on Cedar Drive. Possibly twice. When she met her husband for the first time, the size and the color of him, the hum of his voice, how completely her bones and her sinew and the musculature of her heart knew they belonged to him. Nothing was ever the same again after. Surprises did that to you. Nasty things. Lying in wait. A surprise, even a little one, means a change in the world, and Sophia likes her world as it is. She likes it so much.