Her nose screwed up the way a dog does just before it snarls. "Your mother never wanted sympathy so I never offered it. As her daughter, you should know that."
I hated admitting it but she was right. Mama had been a proud, independent woman. She would want neither pity nor charity from anyone.
I might agree with Aunt Catherine on that score but I didn't think we'd find common ground on much else, particularly in the area of sisterly compassion. Nevertheless I bit back my opinions and pressed on. "Do you think it possible she fell in love with someone so soon after her husband's death? Perhaps she was lonely or-."
"Love! Bah! You girls talk about it as if it is the answer to all your woes." She clasped her hands in front of her, looking very much like a severe governess, nightgown not withstanding. "Since you are the daughter of my sister, I'll give you some advice as she seems to have failed to do so before she died. There is no such thing as love, not the kind written by poets that is supposed to last forever. There is lust in the beginning naturally, and perhaps companionship for a few years if one is lucky, but not love. Not the all-consuming sort that silly girls spend so much time thinking about.
"Don't throw yourself away to any man who spouts pretty words in your ear. Even if he believes what he says, he'll soon forget that he ever did. The words will stop, as will his high regard, and he'll spend more and more time at his club. Marry for other things, Emily-money or breeding or comfort-but not because you think he loves you or you love him." She finished her lecture with a glance at Jacob. He simply watched her, his elbow on the mantelpiece, the back of his finger rubbing slowly over his lips. He said nothing.
I too said nothing. What could anyone possibly say after a tirade like that? Perhaps if she'd been alive I might have challenged her theory but there was no point now that she was dead. She was unlikely to change her opinion. Besides, I couldn't think of any long-married couples who were still in love as an example. If the evidence from our séances was any indication, then Aunt Catherine was right. Marriage was an endurance and if any of them had begun with love, it had expired years ago.
"So you know nothing of Mama's feelings towards my father then? My real father?"
"Nothing at all. Your mother may have thought she was in love with him but I do not know. She never told me. She never mentioned a thing about him in her letters." She shrugged and her hair rippled. "It was as if he never even existed." Her gaze roamed over my hair, my face, and her lips pinched tighter and tighter together. "If you want my opinion, I'd say he wasn't an Englishman." She waved a thin finger at me. "You certainly didn't get that dirty skin or that ratty hair from your mother. She had been a beauty as a young girl. Pale as a bowl of cream and hair like honey."