“You’re determined then, Thomas? You want this show horse for the Line so badly that you’re willing to bind your own daughter to him for life when the very sight of him is repulsive to her? That’s your idea of fair return on the value she represents to your treasuries? What’s the problem, dear? Is somebody else after him?”
Thomas turned away in one swift movement, and Rachel knew she had him — he wouldn’t have done that if he hadn’t been afraid she’d see that in his face. But body-parl betrays, always; his abrupt move, graceless and entirely unlike him, was as revealing as any statement could have been. And it was her turn to laugh.
“Ah,” she cried, “that is it, isn’t it? You’re about to lose him, a prize stallion with a spectacularly curly tail, to one of the other Lines! And that can’t be allowed to happen!”
“It certainly cannot,” he said, his back still turned to her.
“Well… if that’s all it is, why not one of the other girls? You’ve got a houseful of brood mares, Thomas… why not Philippa? God knows your brother would be delighted to get rid of her, he can’t stand any of his daughters, and she’s a strapping seventeen. Marry her off to Adiness!”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I wish to see what the genetic combination of Nazareth’s and Aaron’s abilities will produce,” he said coldly. “Philippa is entirely run of the mill.” His brief moment without mastery of himself had passed, and he turned to face her easily, his voice heavy now only with the message that she turned his stomach.
“Get on with you,” he told her roughly. “You’ve wasted enough of my time. Tell Nazareth she’s to be ready for the wedding on her fifteenth birthday, and let me hear no more about it. No — not one word, woman! Get! And he left their room, not waiting to see her obey.
Alone, Rachel laid her fingers loosely across her mouth, and closed her eyes, and she rocked silently. She did not cry now, either, though she could safely have done so… she turned her stomach, too. She had gone about it all wrong. She had let him catch her off guard, and she had done everything about as badly as she could have done it. She should have manipulated Thomas. Should have pretended only casual interest, even approval, when he told her his intentions. Then this evening, over a bourbon, she could have begun a discussion of the subject. She should never have challenged him directly, never opposed him openly… her decision to play the helpless belle had come too late, had been too rapid a transition, and had collapsed the moment he taunted her with it.
She knew she was too old and too worn with the bearing of seven children to have any erotic weapons left to use against her husband. But he was still vulnerable to other techniques, and she knew him better than anyone alive; she had only to set her self-respect aside and toady to him convincingly. She had made the sort of stupid errors a bride makes… a bride such as Nazareth would be, poor little girl… but a bride is saved from the consequences of her ignorance by the novelty of her body. Rachel no longer had that advantage. She had sacrificed her daughter to her own ego, traded her off for a few minutes of triumph over Thomas, triumph for which Nazareth would be the one who had to pay. The only shred of comfort she had was that the girl would never have to know how badly her mother had failed her, or how cheaply she had sold her out.
At Barren House the women listened to her, of course; it was courteous to do so. They made her a pot of strong tea, and they sat her down to drink it while they heard her out. But they had no sympathy to offer her.
“What did you expect?” they asked her. “You had slim chances when you started that interaction, and what little you had you threw away immediately. What did you expect the man to do when you defied him like that?”
“Oh, I know,” said Rachel wearily. “I know.”
“Well, then.”
“Thomas is completely wrong,” she said. “Wrong.”
“He is a man. Being wrong has nothing to do with anything.”
“If you behave like this often, Rachel,” Caroline observed, “I’m surprised he hasn’t signed the papers to put you away long before now.”
“I wouldn’t care if he did.”
“Rachel! Think of Belle-Anne, what they’ve done to her, what she’s become… you’ve been to see her! That’s a death sentence, worse than death… rotting away in a state mental hospital!”
“Thomas would never put me in a state hospital,” said Rachel. “The wife of the Head of all the Heads of all the Lines, in a snakepit ward? Tssk… that would never do. No, he’d send me to one of those places with a name like a dog kennel. Cedar Hills. Willow Lake. Maple Acres. You know the sort of place. Where I can sit all day in my rocker in a row of little old ladies in rockers, all of us doped into catatonia, waiting to be led off to bed and knocked cold for the night. Just as a change from the catatonia.”
“And why hasn’t he done that?”
“Because he’s used to me, and he’s very busy. He likes the way I keep his files in order. He counts on me to keep him from forgetting things. I make a great deal of money for the Household, and if he’s right there he can be sure I don’t slack off. I was a prime piece of brood stock, and he’s used to thinking of me that way. He hasn’t got time to break in a new woman and teach her to do all the things I do for him — it’s less trouble to put up with me. After all, he doesn’t have to see me for days on end. I am a convenience, with certain annoying qualities that he is able to avoid most of the time.”
“A perfectly ordinary marriage,” said Susannah, and the others agreed. A clever woman saw to it that as she grew older she did become useful in the ways Rachel had listed; it was the only security she had, and all that stood between her and the rows of little old ladies on Thorazine.
“Poor little Nazareth,” breathed Rachel.
“A lot of good that does her now.”
“It does her no good at all,” Rachel agreed. “I say it all the same.”
“Well, say it here, and then keep it to yourself,” said Caroline. “The worst thing you could possibly do for her is sympathize with her. The quicker she toughens to what’s ahead of her, the less power it will have to hurt her. Don’t you dare go ‘poor littling’ her!”
“No. I’m not entirely a fool, though you couldn’t tell it by what I’ve done this day. I know better than that.”
“Go tell her, then, and do it properly. Before he does it.”
“Duty,” said Rachel. “Opportunity. Loyalty to the Lines. A woman’s place. The healing power of time. Fun and games. Fables and baubles.”
“Exactly. Get it over with, so that she can get used to the idea before she has to spread her legs for the Adiness stud.”
Rachel shuddered, and they poured her a last cup of tea. She took a long swallow, finished it, and then stood to go face her daughter… She wasn’t quite sure where Nazareth was, but her wrist computer would tell her.