The next morning was very long. Mr. Rochart had wired Alistair that she would be picked up after lunch, and Jane longed for that time to arrive. She did not belong in that house, and every bored remark and cutting observation of the others over their strong tea or hair-of-the-dog cocktails confirmed that.
But if she did not belong there, did she belong at Silver Birch Hall? At least she was needed there. Perhaps she would never be comfortable anywhere; perhaps she had not that gift. Jane sat on a loveseat and tried to amuse herself by sketching the languid figures as she listened to Helen and Alistair and the remaining houseguests trade snide news from the wedding. Every one of them had a hangover, and they complained about that, and their gossip that morning was particularly caustic and cruel. The ropes of jewels and bright silk day dresses seemed too gay for the tired and cranky bodies underneath. Jane stirred milk into the bitter dregs of her tea and hoped for each lukewarm sip to quell the sick feeling from the aftermath of too much sugar, too much nerves, too much attention.
“Why, that’s Helen to the life,” drawled one of them, and Jane found a rope of pearls dangling into her sightline as Gwendolyn or Gretchen or Gertrude Somebody-or-other peered at her sketch. The woman had red bow-painted lips that did not match the lines of her mouth.
“Jane is quite talented,” agreed her sister.
“Are you going to color it in?” said Gertrude.
“I’m not very good with a brush,” Jane admitted.
“You should’ve studied art at a good school,” said Gertrude. “Then you would know how to use color, for a picture without color is like … what is it like, somebody?”
“Like a girl without a figure,” said Alistair. “Technically correct, but not worth looking at.” Gertrude laughed appreciatively.
The casual words flicked like a whip. Didn’t they think she would love to have studied with real artists? It was too easy to see that other life, the one without the war. Oh, she was not fooling herself, she would never have been a real artist, but with a better education she would have been skilled enough to teach. She might have been a special instructor at a private school, and she would not have been asked so casually why she chose to be so unskilled. A lack of money had killed off one avenue, a lack of normalcy the next, and she had been pruned into this strange and twisting branch that should never have grown at all.
Jane sat fuming until Gertrude and her candid observations withdrew to the card table, to flirt with Alistair and down her morning champagne.
Even dreadful mornings eventually end, and at long last a footman entered with the observation that there was a driver at the door for Miss Eliot.
If in the back of her mind she had thought that “I will fetch you home myself” meant Mr. Rochart would literally be the one at the door, she was disappointed. Not that she had dared think that.
Still, it was thoughtful of him to arrange her journey for her. He had selected a later train than the cheaper dawn one she had taken to get here, and he had wired for an agency to send a car. The footman hefted her trunk into the hansom while Jane said goodbye to her sister on the front lawn.
Jane looked at Helen in her pink crêpe de chine frock and collar of garnets and considered, briefly, how many paths a life might take. Her sister’s cheeks were pale from the excesses of the day before, and exhaustion hovered in her eyes. “I wish you well,” Jane said.
She meant it, but Helen trembled at perceived coldness, and for a moment the barriers of last night broke. She flung her arms around Jane, clouded her with the sharp smell of gardenia perfume. Her rings dug into Jane’s shoulder blades. “Don’t think badly of me,” she said passionately into Jane’s shoulder. “I mean to be good to him, you know. He’s better than you think. And I’m just so tired of being out of options.”
Jane patted the copper-blond hair. “It wasn’t so very bad, was it? The two of us?”
Helen pulled back, and Jane’s skin seemed cold where Helen’s body heat had been. “You’ll never understand, you know,” she said. “You’re too brave. You have a history of it, and I have a history of not living up to you. You have memories of being brave to sustain you when you are tempted.”
The look in Helen’s eyes made Jane falter. As if there was an old hurt in them that had never healed. As if, deep inside, Helen blamed Jane for going into the battle that morning when Helen could not. But that couldn’t be right.