The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue Page A

family plotting to marry him off."
    Fido shakes her head. "My informants were quite specific. This cousin, if you can believe it, has been linked formerly with the colonel's brother."
    She's enjoying this, thinks Helen with a vast irritation, but she laughs. "That coda seems to explode the story entirely. So this girl makes eyes at his brother one summer, and Anderson the next, and means equally little on both occasions."
    Fido sits back, sucking her lips. "Very well, if you don't tremble at having placed yourself in the shopsoiled hands of the kind of man who dallies with prospective brides—"
    "I have no need to look as far as Scotland for imaginary bogeys," snaps Helen. "What makes me tremble is his imminent return to Malta, abandoning me to several more decades of misery with a corpse of a husband."
    Water erupts in Fido's cocoa-brown eyes. "I didn't mean—" She puts a hand on Helen's magenta overskirt.
    A distant doorbell: thank God.
    Colonel Anderson is announced. He's only a little awkward. Fido, very much on her dignity, gives him a cup of coffee.
    Helen considers various possible tones and plumps for light satire. "Well, Colonel, you're very good to spare us an afternoon before you take an express train north again. The Scotch climate must have special charms."
    The gold moustache wobbles; a half-smile. "Not sure I catch your drift, Mrs. C."
    "Oh, was I misinformed? Haven't the dowagers of the Anderson line taken to matchmaking?"
    He relaxes into a laugh. (It's this face she loves, Helen realizes: a lad's loose grin.) "What can I say? It would be cruel to stop up their mouths."
    Something in her unwinds. "But spare a thought for the poor coz who may be getting her hopes up."
    "She's a very sensible sort, I wouldn't worry," says Anderson, leaving his chair and sitting down beside Helen, so close that his knee touches hers, through the layers of silk and linen and steel-framed crinoline.
    Fido has moved to the round table and is looking through the Times. Her broad shoulders speak volumes.
    "Look here, in all earnest," says Anderson under his breath, "I want to speak to you alone."
    "You always want that," Helen murmurs silkily.
    "Couldn't you persuade your faithful hound to allow us a momentary tête-à-tête?"
    Helen raises her eyes to heaven. "I've had to swear to her that I'm cutting you off by degrees, like an opium habit."
    Anderson tugs at his moustache. "How's Harry, these days?"
    She makes a face. "An inert, brooding spider. He implies I'm a gadabout; complains I'm spending too much on modernizing the house."
    "What a dashed bore." He slips his hand over hers. "But I suppose a husband must hold the reins."
    Helen prickles. "You speak like my late mother. Must he hold the reins even when he's knuckleheadedly wrong?"
    "That's neither here nor there, I'm afraid. A lieutenant may be wiser than his major, but the chain of command still applies," says Anderson.
    She pulls her fingertips out of his grasp. She glances at the round table, and meets their hostess's reproachful eyes. Fido has pulled out her watch and taps it solemnly. Helen puts on a tragedy face, looks into her lap.
    "This is absurd, we can't do anything here," says Anderson in a very low growl.
    "We can talk."
    "Not at ease. I'll tell you what: why don't I head off, and wait around the corner on Gordon Street, then in ten minutes you have a cab called and pick me up?"
    "Because—" She hesitates. And changes her mind as quick as a blink, because why does the woman always have to be the careful one? And given the risks Helen's already run, is running now, for this man's sake, why hold back?
    Anderson doesn't wait for her yes. "Miss Faithfull—" He rises to his feet.
    "Look crushed," she breathes.
    His face falls obediently. "I'm going to take my leave now," he says in hollow tones.
    "Very well, Colonel," says Fido, rising like some stern but not ungentle schoolmistress.
    "You've been immensely kind. I can't..." Anderson breaks off there, to Helen's