Jalousie

I suppose there’s no-one at home right now. Cariadoc came into town for the Governors’ meeting, I’m here with Gemma, and I took Mercy to Pantaleon’s to see about Marcus Pendry’s boy, and to see if I might have a word with Priscilla Chattox, but she wouldn’t receive me, and the miscreant himself is not at work. I told Gloriana, along with the rest of them, that they ought to go right ahead and strike his name from the family register. He’s no better than my brother, and if he wants to call my brother his mother, perhaps they should simply just let him. But Gloriana says that it would please him much too well to be disowned—to have another accusation he can make of her. She says he’s always had bad friends. First there was the Jewish boy who took apart the pipes in one of the watchtowers (I don’t think she ever tires of telling that story) and that was just the start of it, at least, she says, he won’t breed, not like this. And he surely won’t marry Arianwen. But Arianwen doesn’t care if she ever gets married, and maybe I don’t care either.

I was a great beauty once, and courted and courted…but never for marriage. Not once, before Cariadoc, and even that was a trick. Let Arianwen live that way if she wants. Let her have a dozen bastards and take care of them herself. Maybe I’ll stop lying for Cariadoc and Mercy and admit she’s not my child, and then I won’t have to care what she does.

When the war is over, things will be very different. Of course I worry about Lew, because he isn’t making the least bit of effort to hide how he feels about Bobby Macmillan, and that sort of thing won’t be half so well tolerated. But he’s never listened to me. And why should he? I’m a cripple, I’m useless. They’ll learn better, some day.

I should have stayed in Londinium with Gemma. Arianwen hasn’t been home since she left and Cariadoc says he doesn’t think she needs to come home since she has all her school things down there and she can get the train from King’s Cross. Lew came home under duress, but he’s got the Macmillan boy with him, and they’ve been here for nearly five days. Cariadoc doesn’t seem to care that his only son is turning out to be an invert. I know he would like me to get pregnant again so that he can do likewise for Mercy, but I’m practically sterile, and even Steren Argante says there’s just no help for it. Smug bitch. Somehow she managed two. Maybe he thinks that if Lew turns out queer I’ll simply give up and let Mercy have more.

I have tried to impress upon Lew that he’ll need to get married even if he is in love with Bobby Macmillan for the rest of his life, because he’s going to be the Lord here, and he just looks at me blankly and asks me if I plan to arrange him a marriage as good as the one I did for his sister. I am really very tired of this. It would serve him right if I did betroth him to Diotima Starn, but her blood must be just like red sludge and she stinks. Septimus needs to marry Gloriana and sire more children as soon as is humanly possible.

Mercy Pendry is not at all pleased that I have come home, since she has to stop playing at being the lady of the house. Cariadoc said I’d better stop writing to the papers about Ned Kyteler, because I’m lucky he doesn’t take a leaf from Ned Kyteler’s book. As if he could manage without my dowry! I know exactly what I’m worth to him, but it goes both ways.

Arianwen and Llewellyn have both been invited to some ball in Londinium on Saturday night. I told Lew that his sister had better not go because she’s supposed to be in mourning! Lew asked what on earth there was to mourn, now that Dracaena’s back from Germany, and I told him he isn’t too big to belt right across that smart mouth of his, just like my mother used to do in Trevena. He thinks I won’t do it. He’s wrong.

Unless Cariadoc's had a letter he hasn't told me about, there's been no word from the Macmillans. If Llewellyn thinks I'm going to let him run off to Scotland with some boy from school without a word from the family, he and his little friend had best think again. I know what sorts of things young men get up to without supervision.

There was a meeting of the Hell-Fire Club last night. I avoided Cariadoc and his whore, which was easy to do, since they only go for the conversations. Septimus took Gloriana, which was good to see, as she has always loved him. Henry Dashwood and Evander Warrington were plotting betrothals, which means that Dashwood's run out of money again, no doubt.

I really do need to write to Carmela and tell her what the little Greek girl was doing, even if I can't admit that I saw it myself. Breaking them up was the best move she ever made. I think she should leave well enough alone with Isabella's contract, though. I've tried to persuade her that if she could just make common cause with Gabrielle and me, she could turn that marriage to Florian to her advantage, particularly if she wants Ercole's property back. But she is so stubborn. And she probably thinks there's something up with Dracaena as well. It is odd how tamely that lot is accepting her death. Even Nicodemo Malaspina has decided to hole up with some boy-whore, grow facial hair and drink himself to death in relative silence.

If I had my way I would simply tell Priscilla Kyteler about her husband's indiscretions, but we're not friends, and it would seem suspicious coming from me. I think the only thing I can really do is tell Gemma and tell her to be very careful who she tells, because Melantha would spread it about, but Melantha doesn't like me much, even if she doesn't approve of Mercy as a substitute. But if Germaine and Melantha hear it from Gemma and I also tell Servilia... And Gabrielle. I can always rely on Gabrielle to throw stones, despite her glass house.

I am now more certain than ever that Dracaena is still alive somewhere, and it's driving me mad. Like fingernails across a slate, or that tuneless whistling of Keresek's that can only really be heard by cats, dogs...and me.

Keresek wouldn't still be at the estate if she were dead, would he? Or would he stay there for Florian's sake? I wish I knew.

There's so much that I don't know and Septimus blames me for closing my eyes to it all but the truth was, it never did me much good. I can't ride the kelpie; it'll drown me just like it would if I were a 'dane. I can't make the piskies behave. I can hear the things they hear, and smell the things they smell. But it just drives me insane. And yet I see it in Llewellyn all the time. It's awful, to be jealous of my own son.

Arianwen hasn't written, and I know she's carrying on with Yvon. I saw the way he looked at her when he was here. I should care about that but I don't. Who else would I marry her to? Despite the poverty of Mercy's blood, she's still a Rosier. I can't betroth her to Julian Baddock or Warren Greenwood. (Though she and the Greenwood boy would have interesting children.)

I will find a way to ruin that cowan and his foreign whore if it is the last thing that I do. How dare she use that toy on me? How dare she hurt me?