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As the room fell silent again Clara felt her lungs burning, and she realized she had not drawn breath in several moments. Rallying her thoughts as quickly as she could, she uttered a helpless laugh, shrugging in confusion.
“I’m afraid there has been some misunderstanding,” Clara heard herself saying in a breezy tone. “I invited you here for no reason other than to…well, to try to put aside our disagreements and begin anew, as a proper family.”
“‘Put aside our disagreements,’” Helena spat. “As though you could simply say a few kind words and we would forget how you connived your way into this house.”
“Now, Helena, I did no such thing,” Clara protested, feeling her blood rush to her cheeks. As soon as the next thought crossed her mind, she added, “If nothing else, surely our father would wish us to get along. He said as much in his letter to—”
“You keep our father’s name out of your mouth,” Helena interrupted with a voice full of venom, her eyes narrowing menacingly. “I don’t care how your slattern of a mother came by you, but our father was a good man, and he will never, ever be a father to you.”
With a wicked grin, Judith said, “Just another mark for you to cash in on.”
“Is that really what it is about?” Clara asked, her heart racing. “You are willing to destroy another person, to lose ties to your house and your family, all over money?”
“Oh, yes, who cares about money?” Judith cackled. “Now that she’s got hers, she doesn’t give a fig for what happens to us or anybody else.”
“Easy not to care when it’s someone else’s money,” Miss Forsythe agreed.
Clara sputtered, “If—if it’s only money that’s come between us, then I’m willing to put that aside so we can—”
“No you’re not,” said Helena. “If you were, you would have done so already. You would have told Mr Finch to go home and you would still be back cleaning houses, where you belong.”
Clara drew in a long, calming breath. Just say it like you practised, she told herself, trying to ignore her heartbeat thundering in her ears.
“In fact,” Clara said, folding her hands in her lap amiably and giving her most serene smile, “in the name of familial harmony, I should let you know that I’ve decided the three of us could share the money Father left to me in the inheritance. Equal parts for each of us.”
Then Clara took a sip of her tea, looking down to appear nonchalant when confronted with the uproar that would inevitably follow this suggestion—a difficult task when her fingers shook so from the agitation. Still, she was relieved to have said it, especially considering what the two women were sure to say. She had seen it all in her rehearsals in her vanity mirror.
“You can’t mean it!” they would certainly say.
Clara would insist that she was quite serious. “Why not?” she would ask. “It’s far more than I need to take care of myself, especially as it’s only until I’m married anyway.”
She would give her most winsome smile, maybe even reach out a handkerchief if Helena and Judith were stricken by a fit of emotion. “After all, no money is worth losing family over. Having a good relationship with my sisters is beyond any price.” That would be a masterstroke, surely. The ice would break, and the three St. George daughters would begin a new chapter, one of harmony and kindness.
But as the seconds ticked longer and longer in the silent room, her heart slowly plummeted into her stomach. Clara started to suspect that fate had something different in store than what she had imagined.
A trickle of sweat rolled down her temple, and she fought desperately not to clear her throat.
“You impudent brat.”
Clara looked up, alarmed. Helena’s words had been quiet, even measured. Yet the look she gave her now was so far beyond anything Clara had seen before that she knew before this day she had never known what hatred truly was.
“You think you can just buy us off?” Helena continued, biting off each word through her clenched teeth. Her hands, resting on the table between them, were wringing a napkin into a tight, wrinkled knot. “You really think you can just offer us back some of your stolen money and we will kiss your boots in gratitude?”
“The…the…” Judith stammered, her pale face turning red with rage.
“The impertinence!” Helena finished for her.
“The impertinence!”
“The sheer idiocy!”
Miss Forsythe clucked her tongue and pronounced as though Clara were not right in front of her, “She’s terribly un-clever, I’m afraid. It’s a product of low birth. Most rude to her poor chaperone as well.”
Clara could not prevent her mouth from hanging open in shock and dismay. From behind her eyes, she could feel a red-hot tinge that surged past embarrassment into some entirely new emotion.
Swallowing it back, she tried one last foray of civility. “Is there…is there nothing I can offer—nothing I can do, nothing at all, to try to foster some peace among us?” Clara spluttered.
“Hah!” Helena laughed, folding her arms. Judith echoed this sound and gesture as Miss Forsythe shook her head in disbelief. “Little girl, you could offer us every penny to your name and it wouldn’t buy you a minute of peace. Not from us. Not ever.”
