Page 22 of Better Love Next Time
The day Julian had stared at Kitty like she was a stranger and said, “Oh, you,” she had returned home to find her finest furry friend, Daisy, dead.
She placed a nibbles-worth of carrot next to the stone. “Good afternoon, Daisy. Surely not as grand as the lettuce in heaven but I want you to know that I miss you. And love you. Always will.”
Why did Daisy die? Why did her mother die? Why did anyone die? Father Dunlevy said that God called his flock home because he needed them. A glorious mystery to be revealed in time. A mystery: that God, who could have anyone to keep him company, to love, had taken her mother and Daisy. Even Julian, in a way.
Rolling to her back, she tried to find God’s reason in the lime-green leaves shaped like hearts and the clouds shifting between the branches.
“I miss you, Mama,” she whispered.
“Kitty!”
Kitty shot up. For a moment, she thought her mother had answered, but it was only Clara calling her to dinner. Dashing the tea to the earth, she hurried inside. Her father dined with her only on Sundays and demanded punctuality.
Clara Burton, once her mother’s companion and dearest friend, had agreed to teach Kitty her lessons after her mother had died, for half the wage of a real governess. She sorely lacked scholarship, for which Kitty’s father cared nil, so Kitty secretlyread books from their library. Books that her father was selling at an alarming rate. But Clara compensated with needlework, comportment, and music.
Clara met her at the door, hands clutched at her sprigged linen gown. One of the many Kitty’s mother had bequeathed to Clara before her death. “I’ve been searching for you for a half hour.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear.”
“I told Sir Jeffrey you were ill.” Clara knitted her thin brows with a harried glance toward the front of the old house. “Dinner has already been served.”
Clara guided her to the dining room with more antlers and grotesquely stuffed heads upon the walls. Kitty often wondered if any of the poor creatures watched their very selves be eaten. An insult in the extreme.
After a dismissive glance down his thin, hooked nose, her father ignored her through his soup. Which was as usual. He conversed with Shelley on the subjects worthy of his consideration: hunting, hounds, weather, and war.
One day, Kitty was going to eat in a room without stuffed creatures with glass eyes and drink champagne instead of watered-down sugared wine. And people would fall upon themselves to converse with her—or simply deign to talk to her—and it would be in French.
Yes, that was her new dream.To be seen.
Her father stabbed his beef roast and jabbed it at her brother, Shelley. “Best your sister forget about that St. Clair boy.”
Kitty started. How did her father know she had any feelings to forget?
“A title given by a heretical whoremonger, theirs is.”
Time for her father’s tirade on the eighth King Henry. The Babbingtons conformed to the Anglican faith but were cryptic Catholics. In their chapel, called a library, Father Dunlevy whomade a secret circuit about the neighboring counties, celebrated mass—called prayers—twice monthly.
Did it matter if she was Anglican or Catholic? Either God had selfishly stolen her loved ones.
“If my ancestors had given up the faith, I would be a duke,” her father said. “Nothing but commoners before that, the St. Clairs, digging in the dirt for their supper. Damn heretics.”
“Julian’s brother is heir to an earldom,” Kitty said. “I believe their nobility arose with the Conqueror.”
“Cut off a lot of heads, they did,” Shelley said to her father.
Kitty sliced a tiny piece of roast and chewed. And chewed.
“Right you are, son. No, ’tis best the boy’s done with Katherine. Wouldn’t want their greedy, heretic hands to get hold of Babbington lands. They’d want nothing more than to have it.”
Even when speakingonher, her father did not speaktoher.
He lifted a long finger. “Heed me. St. Clairs will do anything to get what they want. No sense of honor in any of them. And God forbid he continued his attentions to Katherine. She’d be having his children and carrying it on. Mingling our honor with their discredit. No. Your sister shall marry a man of the true faith and when Bonnie Prince Charlie rides in to save us all from the heretical whoremongers…”
What was a whore and how did one monger? It sounded more exciting than discussing the proper length for one’s stirrups.
Kitty played at the pianoforte, a variation of Vivaldi’sSummershe had been torturing for a fortnight, when she heard her name.
Kitty halted her play. Clara stood at the music room door. She spent much time watching and worrying over Kitty of late.She had offered to play with her while Georgiana forgot her for the Notfelle Hedge.
