we should present our household as it truly is, rather than make a false show with ill-trained servants. Which would you find more genteel? A household with limited means who chooses the best their budget allows, or a household that borrows lackadaisical help?’
It pleased Malta to see both her mother and her grandmother surprised. Her mother smiled proudly as she said, ‘The girl has sense. Malta, I am sure you have seen to the heart of it. It pleases me to hear you speak so.’
Her grandmother’s approval was more wary. She pursed her lips at Malta, and gave a brief nod. Malta looked at her mirror, turning her head to see how well her mother had succeeded with her hair. It would do. She glanced once more at her grandmother’s reflection. The old woman was still perusing her. Malta decided it was hard for Ronica Vestrit to accept anyone else as clever. That was it. Her grandmother was jealous that Malta could think things through as clearly as she could. More clearly in fact. Her mother, however, had been proud of her. Her mother could be won over with her cleverness. Malta had never considered that before. A sudden inspiration came to her.
‘Thank you, Mother. I love what you have done with my hair. Now let me fix yours for you. Come. Sit down.’ She rose gracefully and drew her startled mother to her seat before the mirror. She pulled the long pins from her dark hair. It cascaded to her shoulders. ‘You dress your hair as if you were a dowdy old woman,’ she said artlessly. She did not need to point out that her grandmother wore hers in an identical fashion. She leaned down to put her cheek beside her mother’s, and met her eyes in the looking glass. ‘Let me arrange it with some flowers, set off with your pearl pins. It is spring, you know, and time to celebrate the blossoming of life.’ Malta lifted the silver-handled brush and drew it through her mother’s hair. She cocked her head to smile at her mother’s reflection in the mirror. ‘If we cannot afford to buy new robes and gowns before Father returns, perhaps we could brighten some of our older ones with new embroidery. I am sure it would please him. Besides, it is time I learned your rosebud stitch. Perhaps, after Reyn’s visit, you could teach me.’
Ronica Vestrit was sceptical of her granddaughter’s sudden sweetness. She felt diminished by her own pessimism, but dared not set it aside. She cursed the circumstances that had put her family’s reputation and finances into the awkward hands of this giddy girl. Even more frightening was that those awkward hands were greedy and grasping, and that Malta’s foolishness was fuelled by cunning. If the girl had only applied her keen mind to doing what was genuinely best for her family and herself, she would have done the Vestrits proud. As it stood, she was a dangerous liability.
As Ronica silently withdrew from the room where Malta plaited her mother’s hair into coils, she reflected sourly that if luck favoured her, perhaps Reyn Khuprus would take Malta off their hands. It would be restful to have the conniving little wench out of the house; then Ronica imagined Malta as Jani Khuprus’ daughter-in-law, and winced. No. Malta was a Vestrit problem. It was best to keep her at home until she had been taught to behave as befitted her family. Sometimes Ronica thought the only way to do that would be with a strap.
She sought the relative peace of her own chambers. With the coming of spring, Ronica had had the room cleaned and freshened as she did every year. It had not helped. The memory of the odour of sickness lingered. The sunlight spilling in the tall windows seemed false. The clean linens on the bed looked glacial white and cold, not fresh and inviting. She went to her own dressing table and sat down. She looked at herself in the mirror. Malta was right. She had become a dowdy old woman. She had never considered herself beautiful, but when Ephron had been alive, she had maintained herself. Since he had died, she had forgotten. She had stopped being a woman at all. The lines in her face had deepened; the skin of her throat sagged. The few pots of cosmetics on the table were dusty. When she opened her jewellery chest, the contents seemed both familiar and foreign. How long had it been since she had last taken pains with her appearance? How long since she had cared at all how she looked?
She took a deep breath. ‘Ephron.’ That was all she said, simply speaking his name aloud. Part plea, part apology, part farewell. Then she reached up to release her hair. She shook it down to her shoulders, frowning at how it had thinned. She lifted her hands to her face, prodding the papery dryness of her skin, and trying to smooth away the lines that framed her mouth. She shook her head at herself and then lowered her head to blow the dust off the cosmetic pots. She opened the first one.
She was just finishing by applying perfume when Rache’s hesitant tap came at her door. ‘Come in,’ Ronica called casually. Since Nana had left, Rache was the sole remaining house servant in the formerly bustling household. When the slave-woman entered, Ronica instantly knew why she was there. Only a visit from Davad Restart put such a look of guarded hatred in the woman’s eyes. Rache still blamed him for her son’s death on board Davad’s slave-ship. Any mention of the Trader wakened that look in her; it was the only time when the young woman seemed truly alive. So although Ronica sighed and begged, ‘Please, no,’ she knew the man was already in the sitting room.
‘I am sorry, ma’am,’ Rache said in a nearly toneless voice. ‘It is Trader Restart. He insisted he must see you.’
‘It’s all right,’ Ronica replied with a deeper sigh. She rose from her dressing table. ‘I’ll be down as soon as I’m dressed. No. Do not trouble to go and tell him that. If he cannot be bothered to send a runner ahead of a social call, then he can simply wait until I am ready. Help me with dressing, please.’
She tried to make it a joke on Davad that the two of them could share, but Rache’s mouth remained in a flat line. He had deposited Rache at the Vestrit household when Ephron was dying, ostensibly to help. Ronica suspected it had been to get rid of Rache and her murderous gaze. Technically, she supposed the woman still belonged to him, a slave under Jamaillian law. Bingtown did not recognize slavery. Here in Bingtown, she was genteelly referred to as an indentured servant. There were a great many ‘indentured servants’ about Bingtown lately. Ronica treated her as she would any hired servant.
Ronica took her time choosing, finally selecting a dress of pale green linen. It had been so long since she had worn anything but a loose household robe. She felt oddly naked in it, even when the skirts were sashed about her waist and the over-blouse laced up from behind. She paused to look at herself again in the mirror. Well. She did not look lovely. She did not look young. However, she once more appeared as a matriarch of a Bingtown Family should present herself. She looked both groomed and dignified. She paused at her jewellery cask, to rope her throat recklessly with pearls and hang more from her ears. There. Now let the little minx insinuate she was a dowdy old woman.
She turned from the mirror to find Rache watching her with widened eyes. Ronica felt almost flattered by the serving woman’s surprise. ‘I will see Davad now. Would you bring coffee and simple cakes from the kitchen, please? Nothing elaborate. I do not wish to encourage him to linger.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Rache sketched a curtsey and left silently.
Ronica’s skirts whispered as she walked down the hall to the sitting room. The pearls were cool against her skin. Strange how a change of garments and a bit of care for her appearance made her feel so different. Her deep mourning for Ephron was still there, as was her anger for all that had befallen her with his death. All winter she had done her best to cope with the blows as they fell. It had been staggering to find that her trust in her son-in-law had been misplaced. Kyle’s greed had driven away Althea and his need for ruthless control had all but paralysed Keffria. The discovery that his daughter Malta seemed set on growing up to be just like him had been unnerving. A few months back, Keffria had promised to take a hand with Malta and change her. Ronica snorted softly to herself. So far, the only changes were that Malta was becoming more deceptive daily.
At the entrance to the sitting room she paused, and put such thoughts out of her head. By an act of will she smoothed her brow and put a pleasant expression on her face. She straightened her back and shoulders,
