Chapter Text
Amelia McMichael had had worse days.
When Alan had brought home his…she couldn’t bring herself to think fiancée, not under the circumstances. That had very nearly been the death of her; she counted herself lucky not to have fainted away. How proud she’d been, when he’d completed his schooling! A fine young physician- not that a trade was strictly necessary; wise investments had seen to that. But it wouldn’t do for him to seem idle, and how fortunate that his interests tended to something so perfectly appropriate for a well-bred gentleman. Having avoided one highly unsuitable match for him, she’d let her hopes rise anew. A proper daughter-in-law would soon come along. It was practically inevitable.
And then, in he’d bounded several months ago, leading that fat little fortune hunter by the hand and beaming at her as if she hung the moon. A working woman, a secretary, who lived on her own in some disreputable boarding-house and gallivanted about doing who-knew-what. Still, she had smiled and welcomed the girl quite warmly given the circumstances. Even though Alan waved away her concerns, she would appeal to his good sense until the minute he entered the church if necessary. It was all any mother could do.
Yes, that day had outranked this by far in unpleasantness, she reflected as she sipped her tea without really tasting it. Nonetheless, the woman perched primly on the chair across from her was somehow managing to even the score.
Amelia had done her best, over the years, for Edith Cushing. Motherless by age ten; raised by a man- small wonder she’d grown up so muddled. Not, she reflected, that the late Eleanor had been much better; indulging the girl’s every whim, even the oddest and least proper. What could you expect, from a debutante who’d run off with some rough workman over her family’s express disapproval? Carter had done well for himself, in the end, but still…well. All manner of things might have preceded the wedding. Failed pregnancies, for years on end, were surely the result of a disordered life- and who hadn’t seen the new Mrs. Cushing, wearing last season’s tattered gowns, on the streets of Manhattan in those early ears? They said she’d even run some mean little cottage bakery, to make ends meet. If she’d ever been a fit mother, by the time Edith came along, that bird had doubtless flown.
None of that for Eunice- Amelia shot a satisfied glance at the primly posed figure in peach satin to her left -no, she’d been quite firm in raising her daughter. She’d played the game the right way, above-board, and won. And gotten a fine, cultured, amiable young lady for her trouble.
Fine, cultured, amiable. And single.
While Edith Cushing, odd and morbid and spoiled, too much of everything in the worst ways, sat beside her doting noble husband with an enormous ring on her finger. Despite appearing more outlandish than ever before, known far and wide for her ghastly tales, she was the subject of quite a few adoring looks.
The smile on that deceptively delicate face widened when their eyes met. Amelia looked quickly away. It wouldn’t do to be caught staring. Even if Edith looked like a cat who’d swallowed an entire vat of cream.
“But how have you been keeping, Mrs. McMichael?” the chit asked sweetly. A gentle tinkle of silver spoon against china cup somehow sounded more like a sabre rattling on the field of battle. “Or, may I call you Amelia? We are both old married ladies now, after all.”
Well. That was certainly a surprise. For all her faults, the girl had at least been quiet and unassuming. If she would be outlandish, the least she could do was be easily ignored in the bargain.
But of course, it would not do to stoop to the level of ill breeding. After a sip and a politely raised brow, she replied, “Of course, child. And I am quite well, thank you.”
“Eunice?” Edith turned her attention slightly to the right, her tone still laden with false sugar.
The party in question didn’t even blink. Didn’t straighten her shoulders, purse her lips, or display any other little signs of displeasure a mother knew so well. Instead, she actually smiled- with every evidence of real happiness! -and said, “I’m doing splendidly, Edith, thank you. We just staged the most thrilling tableau at Newport- The Masque of the Red Death. You’d have loved it. I thought of you the whole time.”
Edith blinked. Amelia blinked. Even Lady Lucille’s eyes widened the tiniest bit.
Eunice giggled a little into the silence that followed, fidgeting with the long chain of her silver necklace. “Goodness, have I said something shocking? She would have loved it, you know.”
Sir Thomas, incredibly, found his voice first. “Yes, I rather suspect she would,” he replied, just a bit too cheerfully. And, with a rather pointed touch on Edith’s unoccupied hand, “wouldn’t you, darling?”
After a moment more of (frankly unseemly) gawping, Edith seemed to remember herself and stammered, “Y-yes, that sounds lovely, Eunice. It’s very kind of you to keep me in mind.” Her next sip of tea seemed rather larger than usual, as if to excuse her from further speech.
The strange being who seemed to have replaced her daughter- one who was actually kind to Edith Cushing; did Amelia even know her? -stirred her own cup and just continued smiling. Anyone might think she hadn’t just been friendly, for the first time in decades, to her oldest rival.
(A sentiment, now more than ever, which her mother could hardly encourage. Twenty-five, while not yet in the realm of spinsterhood, danced on the edge of the danger zone. Eunice looked a picture in her violet-sprigged silk frock, perched just so on her tufted chair as Amelia had drilled into her, but one unwise association could spoil everything.)
The child clearly had no idea of the danger she was in, as she turned and serenely asked, “Lady Lucille, did you find the journey pleasant? Such a long crossing- I do hope you chose a well-appointed steamer.”
Amelia’s lips thinned. There, now, was an acquaintance she had encouraged- until that benighted, yellow-haired little slip had tainted everything. Polite, poised, appropriately ladylike…Lucille Sharpe was all the things her new sister -in-law was not. Even if she did seem to blink about half as much as most people.
The jade-colored eyes in question widened just slightly at being addressed, and Amelia wondered for the hundredth time why she’d never married. There was a woman who would have made some man a first-rate wife, no doubt.
“It was tolerable,” came the silk-smooth reply. Perfectly modulated, every time, how did she do it? “I am not much given to traveling- it does rattle one’s composure so -but dear Thomas and Edith are ever my rocks of strength.”
Amelia could not, she found, picture a rattled Lucille Sharpe. The very effort made her head ache a little.
“But we’re yesterday’s news,” Edith cut in. “It’s the happy couple we should all be fussing over!” She turned a warm, genuine smile in That Girl’s direction.
“Charlotte, since Alan has been so closed-mouthed about it all, you must tell me. How did you two meet?”
Amelia fought back a wince, forcing her face to stay smooth. Now there was a story she could die happily never hearing again. Not anywhere nice or respectable- not a ball or a tea party, not through family friends or on the shore in Newport. Not at any place, in short, where one might make an appropriate match. No, the interloper now sitting calmly in the McMichaels’ parlor as if she had any right to be there had snared poor Alan-
“-at work, actually,” Charlotte replied as if taking up the train of Amelia’s thoughts, quite insensible of the dreadful secret she had just revealed. “I’m a secretary for Ritter and Grindle- the importation firm, you know- and our office just moved into Alan’s building last year.”
“We both decided to take our lunches, since the weather was fine,” Alan cut in. Did he have to look so happy, regarding that temptress as if she’d hung the moon?
(A traitorous little voice in her head whispered that, if he must be trapped, at least he seemed to be thoroughly enjoying captivity.)
“I was reading a book of Poe’s mysteries- Dupin and all that.” The already perfect fall of her blue skirt seemed to need further adjusting, absently. “They say Doyle was greatly inspired by him, and I wanted to see the likeness for myself. And of course, Alan couldn't resist offering his own thoughts on any who-done-it. Like a dog with a bone, as I'm sure you know.”
Well, she would look happy; she was marrying enough money to buy that tiny ancestral farm in wherever-it-was a hundred times over.
“A happy accident,” Sir Thomas smoothly interjected, setting his cup on an intricately carved Chinese end table. “I’m so pleased for you both.
Why, oh why, hadn’t Eunice been enough for him? It wasn’t as though Edith had tried to charm him in the slightest- she never did, one of those bluestockings on whom beauty and birth were thoroughly wasted. And there had been her own poor girl, trained for twenty-five years against this very moment, doing and saying everything as perfectly as an actress onstage. Only to be left flat for a born spinster who hadn’t even wanted his courtship in the first place. “A parasite with a title-” how long had that particular radical streak lasted? As long as it took those kind blue eyes to look at Edith twice?
Was it merely the prospect of a fortune unencumbered by other beneficiaries that had tempted him away? True, he had little wealth of his own- well, how many lords and earls and baronets still did, after years of propping up the ancestral pile on farm rents? -and Edith was a sole heiress. But she’d coached Eunice through careful hint-dropping about the generous marriage portion settled on her in Poor Departed Christopher’s will, and even so…
It might, she supposed, have been love. Watching Sir Thomas stare at his wife in quiet moments, or rush to retrieve her fan when she dropped it, one could easily get that impression.
And wouldn’t it be just like a man? To throw away a perfectly sensible match for love? They, thoughtless creatures, could generally afford it.
At least (she reflected as she glanced at the antique grandfather clock in the corner and prepared to gently suggest dressing for dinner) another nice young man had at last begun paying court to Eunice. Preparing to take command of his father’s law firm, respectful, handsome enough that no girl could have anything to complain of- yes, he was a far more suitable prospect than the opportunistic Miss Gordon. In short, Charles Sumner was the perfect future husband.
Which was why she almost swallowed her tongue when Eunice looked up and said, as mildly as a summer afternoon, “Do you know, my beau Charles Sumner was murdered yesterday?”
Coughing and spluttering, despairing over the tea stains now dotting her dress, Amelia absently noticed that the shocking Edith Sharpe for once looked as shocked as she felt.