“She is not ‘well.’” Mother sat on the edge of the cot and held Arabella’s head in her hands. “She is covered in blood, and what on earth is this horrific garment you are wearing? It exposes your limbs quite shamefully.”
Arabella had been dreading this discovery. “It is called a thukhong, Mother, and it keeps me far warmer than any English-made dress.”
“An ugly Martian word for an ugly Martian garment, one entirely unsuitable for a proper English lady.” She glowered at Arabella’s father. “I thought we agreed when she turned twelve that there would be no more of … this.” She waved a disgusted hand, taking in the thukhong, the blood, the desert outside, and the planet Mars in general. Dr. Fellowes seemed to be trying to disappear into the wainscoting.
Father dropped his eyes from Mother’s withering gaze. “She is still only sixteen, dear, and she is a very … active girl. Surely she may be allowed a few more years of freedom before being compelled to settle down? She has kept up with her studies.…”
But even as he spoke, Mother’s lips went quite white from being pressed together, and finally she burst out, “I will have no more of your rationalizations!” She stood and paced briskly back and forth in front of Father’s broad khoresh-wood desk, her fury building still further as she warmed to her subject. “For years now I have struggled to bring Arabella up properly, despite the primitive conditions on this horrible planet, and now I find that she is risking her life traipsing around the trackless desert by night, wearing leather trousers no less!” She rounded on Arabella. “How long have you been engaging in this disgraceful behavior?”
Arabella glanced to Michael, her father, and Khema for support, but in the face of her mother’s wrath they were as defenseless as she. “Only a few weeks,” she muttered, eyes downcast, referring only to the game of shorosh khe kushura. She and Michael had actually been exploring the desert under Khema’s tutelage—learning of Mars’s flora, fauna, and cultures and engaging in games of strategy and combat—since they were both quite small.
“Only a few weeks,” Mother repeated, jaw clenched and nostrils flaring. “Then perhaps it is not too late.” She stared hard at Arabella a moment longer, then gave a firm nod and turned to Father. “I am taking the children back home. And this time I will brook no argument.”
Arabella felt as though the floor had dropped from under her. “No!” she cried.
Without facing Arabella, Mother raised a finger to silence her. “You see what she has become!” she continued to Father. “Willful, disobedient, disrespectful. And Fanny and Chlo? are already beginning to follow in her filthy footsteps.” Now her tone changed, and despite Arabella’s anguish at the prospect of being torn from her home she could not deny the genuine sadness and fear in her mother’s eyes. “Please, dear. Please. You must agree. You must consider our posterity! If Arabella is allowed to continue on this path, and her sisters, too … what decent man would have them? They will be left as spinsters, doomed to a lonely old age on a barbarous planet.”
Arabella bit her lip and hugged herself tightly, feeling lost and helpless as she watched her father’s face. Taking Arabella, Michael, and the two little girls to England—a place to which Mother always referred as “back home,” though all of the children had been born on Mars and had never known any other home—was something she had often spoken of, though never so definitively or immediately. But with this incident something had changed, something deep and fundamental, and plainly Father was seriously considering the question.
He pursed his lips and furrowed his brow. He stroked his chin and looked to Mother, to Michael, to Arabella—his eyes beneath the gray brows looking very stern—and then out the window, at the sun just beginning to peep above the rows of khoresh-trees.
Finally he sighed deeply and turned back to Mother. “You may have the girls,” he said in a resigned tone. “But Michael will remain here, to help me with the business of the plantation.”
“But Father…,” Arabella began, until a minute shake of his head stopped her words. The look in his eyes showed clearly that he did not desire this outcome, but it was plain to all that this time Mother would not be appeased.
Arabella looked to Michael for support, but though his eyes brimmed with tears his shoulders slumped and his hands, still stained with Arabella’s blood, hung ineffectually at his sides. “I am sorry,” he whispered.
Khema, too, stood silently in the corner, hands folded and eye-stalks downcast. Bold, swift, and powerful she might be in the desert, but within the manor house she was only a servant and must submit to Mother’s wishes.
“Very well,” said Mother, after a long considering pause. “Michael may remain. But the Ashby women … are going home.” And she smiled.
That smile, to Arabella, was like a judge’s gavel pronouncing sentence of death.
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ENGLAND, 1813
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