“I might be,” she shrugged her shoulders. “The weather is just as fine a topic as any other. I should think.”
“Yes, but as I am coming to understand you,” Nicholas leaned towards her direction ever so slightly, “I have come to believe that you are good at evading topics of importance. Which is not a bad thing by any means. But given that you are my little sister, I would urge you to speak freely with me.”
She nodded. His words had given her some confidence, which was much needed in her situation.
“Well, what would you say if I asked you something about the past?” she ventured.
“I would say that it is not a wise thing to remain in the past too much,” he replied. “But if it is something that you are curious about, then I shall indulge you this time.”
“I wished…” she began, then faltered at once, “I wished to ask you something about our father.”
It came out rather abruptly.
His gaze lowered to the fire and returned to her.
“Very well,” he said. “What would you know?”
“I never knew him,” she said. “And since he is no longer living, I don’t have any way to know more about him either. I thought…” She clasped her hands and unclasped them just as quickly. “I thought I might ask you instead.”
“You may ask me anything you please,” he said.
She breathed more evenly. She had many questions and did not know where to even start.
“I suppose I should begin with what he was like to you.”
It was another way to ask,if I hadn’t been in the nunnery, what would he have been like to me?But surely, that would be too embarrassing to say out loud. So she would settle for this instead.
Nicholas considered.
He was not,” he said at last, “a man who tolerated accident in his vicinity. People were arranged. Days were arranged. He believed that what did not present itself to him as an ornament or an instrument had mistaken its purpose.”
“And you?”
“I was a son,” he said. “Sons are both ornament and instrument; we are trained to be agreeable to the eye and useful to the hand. I do not offer that as a complaint. It is merely a description. There are houses where it is a form of love.”
“And this house?” she asked.
“In this house,” Nicholas said, with care, “the form was attended to with great skill.”
She understood him, or thought she did. One need not be harsh to be cold; one need not shout to be heard everywhere.
“Was he…” She stopped.Kindwas a word one may apply to a gentleman and mean a great many small courtesies. “Was he ever tender?” she asked instead, and felt the question in her face like heat.
Nicholas looked at the fire.
“He admired the idea of tenderness,” he said. “Its representation, on occasions that required such shading. I cannot say I knew it as his habit.”
Maria had no memory to lay against this. She had learned tenderness from women, and often in the negative.
“Did you fear him?”
“Yes,” Nicholas said. He did not make a drama of it and only said it like a statement. “As one fears the weather when it is known to change, and to change without warning.”
“And did you love him?” The moment she had said it, she would have called it back. She had never thought herself entitled to questions such as this, but it was difficult not to ask. At least once.
He reflected, his brow easing rather than creasing.
“I believe that is a difficult question.”