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Harriet looked across the table at her for a moment, then went back to her newspaper. “I wonder what will happen to them now? I can’t see Mrs. Sylvester tending to the farm when she has that many young children. Besides, she didn’t strike me as being interested in growing the best apples.”
Edilean couldn’t contain how boring she thought this conversation was. “What’s the difference? An apple is an apple.”
“You wouldn’t think that if you went to the market with me.”
“I think I can find something better to do.”
“What? Stay in this house all day and feel sorry for yourself? Draw more pictures of roses? You think I’m bad with my problems, but you’re worse. You are—Oh!” Harriet cut off her tirade because there was a shout in the street, then what sounded like carriages hitting each other.
“Will you please stop jumping?!” Edilean shouted as she stood up from the table. “I’ll go to the market with you. I’ll look at all the apples. I’ll do whatever you want if you’ll just stop jumping!”
Harriet threw her napkin on the table and stood up. “I’ll stop being startled when you stop retreating from the world every time that renegade of a man does something awful to you! When are you going to stop letting some man who has proven that he does not want you rule your every thought and action? When are you going to grow up and think about something other than your own pleasure in life? You didn’t get what you want out of life. Neither did any of us! But we don’t have your money and your exalted education so we can’t sit around and paint butterflies while other people wait on us.”
With that she left the room, her heels echoing on the wooden floors as she went upstairs to her bedroom and slammed the door.
Edilean sat back down in stunned silence, looking at the space where Harriet had been.
When Edilean turned around, she saw three maids standing in the doorway, looking at her. They scurried away when she saw them, but she’d seen their eyes. They’d heard every word Harriet had shouted at her, and their expressions said they agreed with her.
Did they hate her? Edilean wondered. She left the running of the household to Harriet, so she took little notice of the maids. The truth was that she didn’t even know the names of two of them.
Edilean well knew that every word Harriet had said was true. Since the day she’d met Angus McTern, he’d dominated her every thought and deed. On the ship, it had been the worst. If it was good between her and Angus, she was happy. If it was bad, she was miserable. Happiness, sadness, all her emotions were controlled by a man who, as Harriet said, did not want her. She’d have to remember those words. But the truth was that she was sure she’d go to her grave remembering them. What would be on her gravestone? she wondered. HERE LIES EDILEAN TALBOT, WHO SPENT HER LIFE IN MISERY BECAUSE ANGUS MCTERN DIDN’T WANT HER.
All in all, Edilean thought, True Love was better to read about than to experience. In real life, love hurt more than it made a person feel good.
The problem was what to do about it all. How did one change one’s self? In England, no one had questioned her validity. She was a wealthy young woman, nice to look at, and that was everything she needed to be. No one expected her to do anything except to marry well. But her father’s will had changed that. He’d given her rights over her own money and her own life.
The problem was that in this new country people seemed to expect everyone to pull his or her own weight. Through the church in Boston, she’d met American women from wealthy families who worked harder than the maids. They made their own jam, dug their own potatoes, and an hour later delivered a nine-pound child. It was what she’d feared ending up with in Scotland.
Just the thought of all that made Edilean want to get on a ship and go back to England. She could buy herself a nice house and... She didn’t know what was to happen after that. Sit there and wait for suitors to come to her?
When she heard Harriet in the hallway, Edilean got up and went to her. Harriet was angrily tying the ribbons on her bonnet.
“Would you mind if I went with you?” Edilean asked meekly.
“You do what you want to, you always do,” Harriet said as she picked up a big market basket, and opened the front door.
Edilean grabbed her bonnet, but she didn’t need to hurry because Harriet paused on the doorstep and looked around, as though she expected someone to leap out of the bushes. Edilean didn’t ask who or what she was looking for because she knew Harriet wouldn’t tell her.
Harriet hurried down the streets so fast that Edilean had to run to keep up with her. She held her bonnet on with her hand, the ribbons trailing out behind her. Four gentlemen doffed their hats at her, but she didn’t have time for them.
Edilean had never been to a street market, but she’d been to many of Boston’s better shops when she was buying what they needed for the house. To her mind, the decoration of a house was something that a “lady” did, but except for overseeing the kitchen garden, food wasn’t her concern. She might go over the menu with the cook, but “ladies” didn’t go to the fish market and haggle. All her life, she’d left that task to other people.
Harriet turned a corner, and Edilean stopped, her eyes open in wonder at the loud chaos before her. There seemed to be a hundred wagons, all of them laden with produce, meat, and homemade goods that had been brought to town to sell on market day.
“It’s wonderful,” she said under her breath.
Harriet turned to look at her, anger still on h
er face, but when she saw Edilean’s expression, she softened. “Stay close to me and don’t buy anything. These merchants will bargain you into the poorhouse.”
Edilean nodded as she looked at the people and carts lining the street. She started to take a step forward, but Harriet pulled her back. She’d almost stepped into a pile of horse manure.
“What can I sell a pretty lady like you?” asked a man with most of his teeth black.
“Nothing!” Harriet said as she pulled Edilean forward. “He’s a dreadful man who’d sell his own mother if he thought he could get a good price.”
“Do you know all of these vendors?”
