or grey with a black stripe. If you choose to wear black after that time, you may relieve it with touches of white. Although,” she added with a conspiratorial look, “I think a year is quite enough, and you must do what you like after that.”
I glanced at my sister Portia, who was busy feeding her ancient pug some rather costly crab fritters laced with caviar. She looked up and wrinkled her nose at me over Puggy’s head.
“Don’t fret, dearest. You have always looked striking in black.”
I grimaced at her and turned back to Aunt Hermia, who was deliberately ignoring Portia’s flippancy. As children, we had been quite certain that Aunt Hermia was partially deaf. It was only much later when we realized that there was absolutely nothing wrong with her hearing. The trick of hearing only what she wanted had enabled her to raise her widowed brother’s ten children with some measure of sanity.
“Black stockings of course,” she was saying, “and we shall have to order some new handkerchiefs edged in black.”
“I am working on them now,” said my sister Bee from the corner. Industrious as her namesake, she kept her head bowed over her work, her needle whipping through the fine lawn with its load of thin black silk.
“Very good, Beatrice. That will save time having them made up, and I simply could not bear to purchase ready-made for Julia.” Aunt Hermia paused, her pencil poised. “You know, the queen has hers embroidered with black tears for Prince Albert. What do you think of that?”
Bee lifted her head and smiled. “I think perhaps plain is best. I mean to get through all of her handkerchiefs before I have to return to Cornwall, and I shall be lucky just to finish the borders.”
“Of course, dear,” Aunt Hermia said. She returned to her list, but I kept my eyes on Bee. She had not looked at me, and I fancied that her preoccupation with my handkerchiefs was a means of keeping herself too busy to do so. I wondered then how much she knew, how much any of them knew. Marriage is a private thing between a man and his wife, but blood calls to blood, or so my father always said. Was it possible for them to know? I had said nothing, and yet still, I wondered ….
“And we should tell Aquinas to prepare the China Room for Aunt Ursula.”
I swung round to face Aunt Hermia. The room had gone quite productively silent. Bee was busy with her needlework, Portia and Nerissa were writing out the funeral cards. Olivia immediately picked up a book of hymns to peruse.
“Aunt Ursula? The Ghoul is coming?”
“Really, darling, I wish you children would not call her that,” Aunt Hermia said, frowning. “She is a good and decent soul. She only wishes to offer comfort in your bereavement.”
Portia smothered a snort. We all knew better than that. The Ghoul’s purpose in life was not to give comfort, it was to haunt the bereaved. She appeared at every deathbed, every funeral, with her trunks of mourning clothes and memorial jewelry, reading dreary poems and tippling the sherry when no one was looking. She kept a sort of scrapbook of the funerals she had attended, rating them by number of mourners, desirability of the gravesite and quality of the food. The worst part of it was that she never left. Instead, she stayed on, offering her own wretched brand of comfort until the next family tragedy. We had been quite fortunate in London, though. A spate of ill luck had carried off three of our elderly uncles in Scotland in as many years. We had not seen her for ages.
“Julia?” Aunt Hermia’s voice was edged only slightly with impatience, and I realized she must have been trying to get my attention for some time.
“I am sorry, Aunt. I was woolgathering.”
She patted my hand. “Never mind, dear. I hear Uncle Leonato’s wife is suffering again from her old lung complaint. Perhaps she won’t last much longer.”
That was a small consolation. Uncle Leonato’s wife usually hovered on the brink of death until he presented her with whatever piece of jewelry or lavish trinket she had been pining for, then she made a full recovery quickly enough. Still, there was a pack of hunting-mad cousins in Yorkshire who were always highly unlucky. Perhaps this season one of them might be mistaken for a stag ….
Aunt Hermia coughed gently and I looked up. “Olivia was asking about the gravesite. She said there is a very nice spot just beyond the Circle of Lebanon.”
The Circle of Lebanon in Highgate Cemetery, perhaps the most fashionable address for the dead in all of London. That would have appealed to Edward.
“That sounds fine. Whatever you think best.”
She ticked off another item in her notebook. “Now, what about music?”
What followed was a spirited debate in which I took no part. I tried to appear too grief-stricken to decide, but the truth was, I could not bring myself to care. Edward was gone, there seemed little point in arguing over what the choirboys sang. In the end, my eldest sister, Olivia, prevailed by sheer strength of personality. It did not matter. I never heard the boys sing at all. In the same fashion, I saw the lilies, but I did not smell them. I knew it was cold the day of Edward’s funeral because they bundled me into a black astrakhan coat, but I felt nothing. I was entirely numb, as though every nerve, every sense, every cell had simply stopped functioning.
Perhaps it was best that way. I had begun to get snappish and fretful. I had slept poorly since Edward’s death, and having no peace, no privacy in my own home was beginning to tell. All I wanted was to bury Edward and send my family home. I loved them, but from a distance. Their quirks and eccentricities, for which we Marches were justly famous, were magnified within the walls of Grey House.
Mercifully, most of them stayed with Father, but a few elected to comfort me in my grief and had moved in, lock, stock and barrel. The least offensive of these was my brother Valerius. A quiet, somewhat sulky youth, he was six years my junior, and I think he found my company marginally less repressive than Father’s. Edward’s first cousin and heir also gave me little trouble. Simon was sickly and bedridden, afflicted with the same heart complaint that had taken all of his kinsmen. Like Edward he would not make old bones, but it was my lot to care for him until he passed.
The last of my new houseguests was the Ghoul, who had arrived with the expected trunks and a lady’s maid half as old as God. Aquinas had installed them in the China Room, which elicited a flurry of complaints. The room was too cold, the exposure too bright—the litany went on and on. I waved my hand, leaving Aquinas to manage, which he did with his customary efficiency. A small heater was installed, the heavy draperies were drawn, and a fresh bottle of gin was placed on the dressing table, sherry having apparently been given up in favor of something more potent. Since then, I had heard nothing from her whatsoever, and I made a note to instruct Aquinas to add a weekly bottle to the household expenses.
But as much as I complained about them, I was glad to have my family around me as I moved through that awful day. I felt like a sleepwalker, being shifted and guided and turned this way and that, but feeling nothing. They told me later that the sermon was lovely. I was glad of that. I had not listened, and I much suspected that the vicar could not possibly have anything comforting to say. He probably quoted Job, that absurd passage about flowers being cut down. They always quote that. And he probably made some innocuous observations about Edward, observations from a man who had not known him. Edward had not been a great believer, nor was I for that matter. We had been brought up to attend when absolutely necessary, and to observe the conventions, but my family was populated with free-thinking Radicals and Edward’s was simply lazy.
The end result was, I was certain, a eulogy that could have been spoken over the body of any rich, youngish dead man. I did not like to think of that. I did not like to know that Edward, the boy I had loved and married, was already being lost. He was anonymous to the vicar, to the grave digger, to anyone who passed his grave. No one would remember his charm, his beautiful gilt hair, his sweetly serious smile, his ability to tell jokes, his utter incompetence with wine. I would be the only one to remember him as he truly was, and I did not want to remember him at all.
I tried to imagine, as I stood over his open grave, what I would have carved onto