In the Land of the Long White Cloud

them up for sale. The girl also didn’t have much of a knack for planning large dinners or having detailed discussions with the cook on questions like “salmon or pike perch?” Gwyneira ate whatever was on her plate; though she knew which fork and which spoon to use for each dish, she thought it was utter nonsense. Why spend hours decorating the table when everything would be eaten in a few minutes? And then there was the matter of flower arranging. For the past few months, decorating the salon and dining room with flowers had been among Gwyneira’s duties. Unfortunately, however, her taste rarely passed muster. When she had picked wildflowers and distributed them among the vases to her liking, she had thought the effect quite charming, but her mother had almost swooned at the sight. And then all over again when she discovered a spider that had been carried in unintentionally. Ever since, Gwyneira cut the flowers from the rose garden under the gardener’s supervision and arranged them with Madame Fabian’s help. At least she had managed to avoid the annoying task that day. The Silkhams were having not only Gerald Warden but Gwyneira’s oldest sister, Diana, and her husband to dinner as well. Diana loved flowers and had busied herself almost exclusively with the cultivation of the most eccentric and best-tendedgarden in all England since her wedding. Earlier that day, she had brought over a selection of her garden’s most beautiful flowers for her mother and had immediately distributed them skillfully in vases and baskets. Gwyneira sighed. She would never be able to do that so well. Should men really be looking for those skills when choosing a wife, she would surely die an old spinster. Gwyneira sensed, however, that both her father and Diana’s husband, Jeffrey, were completely indifferent toward the floral decorations. No man—aside from the less than enthusiastic pastor—had ever even bothered to look at her stitching. So why couldn’t she impress the young men with her real talents? She could inspire no end of astonishment on a hunt, for example, since Gwyneira could usually chase the fox faster and more successfully than the rest of the hunting party. That, however, seemed to do as little to win the men over as her skillful handling of the sheepdogs. Sure, the young chaps expressed their admiration, but their gaze was often a little deprecatory, and on ball nights she usually found herself dancing with other girls. But that might also have had to do with Gwyneira’s paltry dowry. She had no illusions about that—as the last of three daughters, she knew that she couldn’t expect much. In addition, her brother was still leeching off her father. John Henry “studied” in London. Gwyneira wondered what subject. For as long as he lived at Silkham Manor, he didn’t get any more out of the sciences than his little sister, and the bills he sent back from London were far too high to have only been for the purchase of books. Her father always paid without question, only occasionally mumbling something about “sowing wild oats,” but Gwyneira was well aware that the money was coming out of her dowry.
    Despite all this, she did not worry much about her future. For the present, things were going well, and at some point, her imperturbable mother would scare up a husband for her too. Already her parents’ invitations to dine consisted almost solely of married friends who just happened to have marriageable sons. Sometimes they brought the young men with them, but more often the parents would come alone, and even more often the mothers would come to tea alone. Gwyneira hated that ritual in particular, because then all of the talents that girlssupposedly needed to maintain a noble household’s preeminence came under scrutiny. It was expected that Gwyneira would serve the tea artfully, though she had once unfortunately scalded Lady Bronsworth. And she had been shocked during this difficult transaction to hear her mother announce that Gwyneira had made the tea biscuits herself—a big fat lie.
    After tea, they reached for their embroidery tambours. Lady Silkham often snuck Gwyneira her own, on which a work of art in petit point was almost finished, while they discussed the latest book by Mr. Bulwer-Lytton. Those books were like a sedative to Gwyneira; she had yet to make it through even one of those tomes. She nevertheless knew a few terms like “edifying” and “sublime power of expression,” which one