Here she broke down sobbing and I could do nothing but stand by, awkwardly stroking her back. This wasn’t the way things were between us. She was the older sister, always comforting me. Helping me when I skinned my knees and wiping my tears. It was a new world as I contemplated how to take care of the sister who’d taken care of me.
After a moment, she bravely swiped at her eyes. “Well, romantic trouble isn’t so terrible in the scheme of things, is it? Given my good fortune in comparison to others, I’ve no right to feel sorry for myself.” She smoothed the bodice of her gown, such that the sunlight streaming into the airy windows made her rings glitter. “Scarcely a couple I knew in London made a match based on love. They marry for land and titles and are happy enough. Church and I have respect . . . at least, we had it. That’s why, if I return to him, I must return as the Angelica he used to know.”
I missed a breath. “If?” The word escaped my lips, but Angelica barely seemed to notice.
If she returned to him. Why, there couldn’t be any choice about it, could there? Divorce wasn’t impossible, but it wasn’t easy or desirable. Not for women like us. Not without adultery or some other provable cruelty, and even then it was a scandal. Women sometimes lived apart from their husbands if they had means. If they had somewhere to go. But even then, their children could be taken from them . . .
“I have to stay gone long enough for him to miss me,” Angelica explained with a little shrug. I realized that this was a new scheme, and it settled a knot into my stomach. “Long enough to convince myself there are people who still love me. Because I feel as if no one else could possibly love me if my own husband doesn’t.”
That’s how it was, wasn’t it? A wife’s purpose was to make her husband happy. To give him children and merit his love and esteem. Even though Angelica had done that, people would fault her for the cracks in her marriage. Especially if she let them show.
I’d never before considered the unfairness and injustice in that. And in defiance of the very idea, I threw my arms around her. “Oh, but you are loved! We’re going to remind you of it every day. I promise we’ll never let you feel lonely here. Not for a moment.”
I stayed at her side the rest of that afternoon as weary servants scurried back and forth to the market. When I finished nursing ten-month-old James, and put the children down for a nap on Angelica’s enormous canopied featherbed with its damask drapes and claw-shaped feet, I helped her rearrange furniture and spoke cheerfully, trying to raise her spirits. I asked about her children, about London, about any subject that would not tread too near her troubles. But my poor sister’s spirits had been shattered to pieces.
All those years ago, she’d put her faith in love, and now . . .
When Alexander returned that night for dinner with his gentleman friends, I whispered, “Please compliment my sister’s gown.”
Alexander arched a brow, as if he hoped some amusing game was afoot. “Hmm?”
Clutching his arm with urgency, I leaned closer. “She’s very much in need of kindness.”
My husband cocked his other eyebrow only briefly before turning his charm on my sister like a cannonade, blasting her with compliments until, for just a moment, I imagined we were back in a Morristown ballroom where he’d called her the Divine Mrs. Carter.
When Angelica’s servants brought expensive port and custard-filled profiteroles purchased at the nearby patisserie, he conversed with her in French.
I didn’t know what he said, but whatever it was made her laugh with delight.
And I was grateful. So very grateful.
A little mesmerized, too, by the way Angelica managed to affect a mask of joy in the presence of her guests. While the baron told jokes in his harsh guttural accent, she fed his dog little tidbits, as if she didn’t even mind the creature in her house. Not a trace of her misery slipped out as she poured wine and sang songs and insisted that we all play cards together despite the mixed company.
She was, I realized, an extraordinary actress. And as the exhausted servants cleared away the dishes, I wondered how much of what I’d always taken for my sister’s confidence and daring was a shield for vulnerability that I never knew was there. I’d always been too busy and curious about the world to dwell on insecurities, but I’d certainly felt myself to be less beguiling—less interesting—than my sisters, so it was a revelation to learn that my bold, charming Angelica might harbor such feelings. Knowing this made me all the more affectionate and protective toward her.