Page 10 of The Sisters of Sea View
“Of course. Excuse me.”
She turned on her heel and quit the room, chastising her foolishness. People did not come to a guest house to strike up a friendship with its proprietors. They came for clean and quiet accommodation.
Sarah told herself she would grow accustomed to her new role in time. This, after all, was as close as she would come to being mistress of a home, or at least its hostess.
She had thought she would have a husband and home of her own before dear Peter died. Now she was resigned to spinsterhood and serving her family.
Even so, a pair of sea-green eyes shimmered in her mind’s eye as she walked away.
3
Mrs. Wellard (Late of Manor House, Streatham)
Respectfully informs her friends, the nobility,
gentry, and visitors, that she has resumed
Reading to Invalids.
—Brighton Herald, circa 1830
At least it’s only a short distance and I am unlikely to encounter anyone on the way.
With a wincing glance at the mirror, Viola tidied her reddish-brown hair and put on her bonnet, preparing to depart.
She had been born with a notched or cleft lip—commonly called a harelip, a term she despised.
Her mother often tried to soothe her, saying the scar—from nostril halfway down her mouth—and the shortening of her upper lip were barely noticeable now. Yet mothers were not objective, she knew, and saw with eyes of maternal affection. When Viola looked into the mirror, the flaws were all she saw. To her, the vertical scar was lasting evidence of her childhood deformity, and the misshapen lip ugly.
During her younger years, people had either stared at her or quickly looked away. So she had taken to wearing a veiled hat or bonnet to cover her face whenever she ventured from home.
She remembered one of the village boys pushing up his own lip and mimicking her formerly lisping speech, and her sister Emily shoving him to the ground with surprising strength. And another time, a woman whose abdomen was mounded with child had screamed and run from her.
Many people still believed the old superstitions, that “harelips” were caused by an expectant mother seeing a person with that defect. Or by a wild hare crossing her path, which would leave the unborn child “hare-shotten.” Others thought it was caused by syphilis. Still others called it a curse.
Viola had once asked her parents what had caused her defect. Her mother admitted she had once seen a girl with the condition and had stared fixedly at her, in pity and fascination and a stilling sense of foreboding.
“Then it is your fault I am like this!” Viola had railed at the time.
It had been cruel of her, she knew, but she had wanted someone to blame. Why oh why had she been born like this? Was it Mamma’s fault, God’s, or her own?
With a final glance in the mirror, Viola pulled the veil over her face and turned to go.
At the front door, Sarah squeezed her shoulder. “Georgie will go with you. If the old curmudgeon treats you rudely or threatens you in any way, leave immediately. Understand? We will find something else for you to do.”
Viola nodded and stepped outside, hands perspiring within her gloves.
Their house was angled toward the sea. Behind it and half-shrouded by trees stood their neighbor’s house, and farther inland, Woolbrook Cottage, owned by General Baynes.
Together she and Georgiana walked the short distance up narrow Glen Lane and turned at the wooded drive. Reaching a low wrought iron gate, she pushed, and it gave way with a metallic squawk. Emily continued to Westmount’s front door, heart hammering in her breast.
What was she doing?
Georgiana hung back with the stray dog that followed her everywhere. “Is this the right place?”
Viola nodded woodenly and forced herself to knock. This was a mistake. They should turn away and retreat before anyone answered.
The door opened.
