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“I’m sorry, Grace, that—”
“Yes, well, you should be,” spat Grace. “It was all your fault, after all, you and your little disappearing act. Honestly, I simply cannot imagine what would possess you to destroy our very carriage just so you could carry on with your little dalliance with that awful Mister Woodruff.”
“Grace, I don’t even care for Mister Woodruff.”
“Really,” Grace continued, looking off into the distance as Alicia’s fingernails sank into her thigh. “A boy likethatis absolutely beneath our station. Granted, I think he may be the son of a Baron or something like that, but utterly without any money to his name, or even any winsome personal characteristics whatever!” She laughed, delighted by whatever she had found amusing about her proclamation.
“Grace,” Alicia said in as calm and even a tone as she could manage. “I’m afraid I’m very,veryfatigued from the journey. Perhaps you could tell me what it is that’s wrong instead of—”
“Yes, I suppose I really am too hard on you sometimes,” Grace murmured, giving Alicia a patronizing smile. “After all, you don’t know what it is to truly give your heart to another, what it is to think on them night and day as Mister Carp surely does for me. One day when you are old enough you will meet some man who will bring that light into your life like that, if you’re very lucky.”
Alicia felt her face harden, teeth grinding in rage.This is what I returned for? I gave up the love of a good, wonderful man like Laurence to be berated like a child?
“Though goodness knows even if you were lucky enough to somehow find a man who was somehow fond enough of you to marry you—after I am married, of course—Lord knows you would not have the sense to stay with him while you had him. No sense for people, that’s what I always tell you, Alicia.”
“Grace—”
“But really, to be left alone at that dinner party with that awful Mister Marten,” she barrelled on. “Why, Mister Carp hardly even looked in my direction, the conversation was so dull and…andunmanagedwithout you at my side to support me.”
“Perhaps if you had a better personality you would not need your little sister to do all your talking for you,” Alicia snapped.
Grace recoiled as if struck. “I beg your pardon?” she asked, her mouth agape.
Alicia rose from her seat slowly, her legs full of a powerfully anxious energy. “Despite everything, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your hearing, sister,” she said in a calm voice. “You cannot find a husband on your own merits, so you rely on mine instead. Without having me around to abuse and do your talking for you, you are as helpless as a turtle on its back.”
She expected this salvo to turn Grace purple with rage. Instead, Grace gave her a chilling smile, full of equal parts satisfaction and venom. “So that’s it,” Grace said scornfully. “You poor thing. You are just jealous of your older sister, as you have always been. You just can’t stand to be left out of the spotlight for an instant, can you? You never could, even when you were a little brat.”
Her own calm dissolved immediately at this reaction, Alicia gave an inhuman growl of frustration. “You are…absolutely delusional!” she spat. “Do you really thinkIam the one who is envious ofyou? You have been trying to drag me down and claim credit for everything for my whole life!”
Grace laughed at this, but instead of humour Alicia heard nothing but malice in her voice. “And just what would I have to envy about a spoiled, shrewish thing like you? You have hardly been achieving smashing success in the world of romance, you know. Or any other world.”
“That’s because you have dedicated your every moment to ruining my every prospect! Everywhere I go, everything I do you either berate me for it or sabotage me with whispers behind my back.”
“And you thinkIam the delusional one?”
By now the two sisters were standing nearly nose to nose, their arms quivering with rage. Alicia had not come to blows with Grace since they were young girls, but from the indignation she felt crawling about under her skin, she sensed today might be a break with precedent.
“Of all the arrogant, petty…cruelpeople in the world, Grace, you might be the very worst,” she said at last, her voice shaking.
“Hah! After all I do to keep you fed and housed and safe from undue harm, this is the thanks I get? If Mother and Father could see the ingratitude in their beloved, doted-on little girl, they would turn over in their graves!”
“If I didn’t have a miserable sister like you ruining my life…”
“What?” Grace interjected. “What would you do, Alicia? Go running about, wasting your time going to balls, meeting a new worthless man every week at your social betters’ parties? Giving away your virtue to the first cretin poor who was desperate enough to pursue you?”
An image of Laurence’s smiling face flashed before Alicia’s eyes, followed by his look of utter dejection on her departure that morning. She felt her heart sink in her chest, devastated at the thought that she had found such happiness the first time she was out of Grace’s clutches—now that she was back home, how could she ever expect to find anything good ever again?
Bitter tears squeezed from the corners of Alicia’s reddening eyes.I did not give up my only happiness to be spoken to like this.“You have no idea what I am capable of without your meddling, Grace.”
“Go on, then!” Grace shouted, flinging her fan across the room in a rage. “Continue as you have been doing. I don’t see why not. Keep playing about, wasting your time going to balls, meeting new men at parties. None of them will have you, you know. A sickly, pathetic little thing like you will never find someone to take you. Not for our dowry, not for all the money in Britain.”
“You’re wrong!”
“You think so?” Grace raised a finger into Alicia’s face and thrust it threateningly back and forth. “Heed my words, sister: I swear to you on my name as a Ramsbury that you will never, ever marry, not even the lowliest ditch digger, before I am happily wed. So unless you wish to be reduced to a poverty-stricken spinster, you had best abandon this attitude and get to helping me tie down my Mister Carp.”
Alicia felt the world close in around her. Knuckles white and trembling at her sides, she answered back with all the force of a cannon blast. “I would rather be a spinster the rest of my life—rather never know the touch of a man, rather spend my days in sorrow and loneliness—than lift a finger to help you.”
With that, she turned and raced from the room before Grace could see her dissolve into a puddle of mournful tears. Her sister called something after her, but Alicia could not hear over the grinding of her teeth and the thought she repeated to herself like a mantra.
