Chapter Eleven
What shocks her most about the home is not the ways in which it looks different, but in the ways it is painfully familiar. The walls are a different color. The furniture has been changed. The wooly, dirty rug she was used to as a child has been replaced.
Yet, there was something awkwardly familiar about the dimensions of the little house. She'd thought it would feel smaller to her, now that she is older - but it doesn't. In the main chair in the seating room, not the one in which a guest might sit, but the one in which Samantha was accustomed to in her youth, she feels small once again. The shadows cast by the flickering candles still seem to tower over her, though this time they hold less feeling of majesty, of promise, of imagination. No, they feel impending.
And so, not knowing how to summarize either experience, Samantha opts to set her tea carefully down onto its saucer, letting the scent of cardamom and sugar waft towards her nose, and remark, "It looks just as I remember it."
Katherine doesn't seem impressed, instead simply making a soft noise and muttering, "I've always been fond of this house."
Silence. The heavy weight between them.
She hates you, deeper than you know.
"Has Cordelia visited recently?" Samantha attempts. Perhaps showing concern for Katherine's daughter will carry some favor.
The scowl upon Katherine's lips disagree. "She stopped by before her trip to Kereland," she says quietly. Quiet, that was always how Katherine's anger showed. A thoughtful sip of her tea. "She mentioned the two of you were living together again."
"Temporarily," Samantha clarifies.
"I'm sure."
Katherine Jones possesses the same fortitude of figure which Samantha grew accustomed to on Cordelia. She'd always been confused that Lord Hastings would want a mistress who seemed very much like a groundskeeper by trade, who was not overly dainty and feminine like a woman of the court. Though, she supposes now, perhaps a dislike for the genteel is what led the Lord to claim a mistress in the first place. As far as she knew, they'd split long ago, yet Katherine seems to retain the very same confidence as a woman who could draw the attention of a Lord.
Samantha had learned it from somewhere.
Katherine frowns. "What are you doing here Samantha? I thought you would never come by again."
A test? To see what Samantha would admit? Or, perhaps it was genuine? It's often impossible to read through the lines of her face, and Samantha elects to trend towards honesty... it was why she was here, after all.
Samantha swallows a large sip of tea, collecting her breath. When she speaks, her voice is quiet and measured. "Has Cordelia told you what has become of me?"
"She has," Katherine says noncommittally. Then, to add to the effect, adds, "Though, I heard it from others first."
Samantha winces. She'd much rather it have come from Cordelia. Despite their history, she suspects Cordelia would be far kinder to her than many of her former landed peers. At least the two of them had found a way to reconcile, if only slightly.
Katherine sips more of her drink. "I never much liked the name 'Deveroux.' You'll always be Miss Holm in my mind."
"I've kept the name," Samantha admits, feeling as though it was a dark secret to relate to her.
"How unfortunate," the powerful woman releases a displeased puff of air from her nose. Her voice creeps forth, almost kind for a moment. "It broke my heart to hear the news."
And Samantha bows her head, releasing a deep breath she'd not realized she was holding. That was something, at least.
Again, Katherine asks, "Why are you here? It has been years since I have seen you."
Time to do it. Own up to mistakes.
Her heart skips in her chest.
Do it.
She sighs. "I... I am not proud of the person I became."
Katherine's face does not soften. "That is not an apology," she warns.
Samantha grimaces, turning her saucer around between her palms and swallowing a deep breath. "You're right," she exhales. Forces her eyes up to meet Katherine's - deep green, imposing and piercing like Cordelia's. "Katherine... I am sorry. I have been for some time."
Samantha tucks into herself a bit more, and no part of her feels the commanding, practiced woman she was used to being. In Katherine's home, in her former home, with a woman who was not family by blood but by something greater, Samantha feels like a young girl again. Adolescent. Just as she had been when she'd turned on the two of them, mother and daughter alike. She cowers back, waiting for Katherine to reject her attempt at goodwill.
But Katherine does not. She considers the words for a long moment, absorbing them and testing their honesty, and seems to conclude something. "I suppose," she sighs, air pushing out of her nostrils, "I would be cruel indeed not to accept that as a beginning." And, for the sake of honoring her, adds, "Your mother would have wanted me to forgive you."
"Thank you," Samantha breathes out, hardly any sound to it. She sits forward with her hands on her knees, teacup placed on the coffee table before her, and closes her eyes to feel the pressure in her chest slowly relent. She nods, deciding she must say something more to continue the apology, to explain why she'd been so horrid to them both, and murmurs, "When I... I never felt pain like when Cordelia turned me away. I never knew myself capable of the things I did to her."
"You didn't feel that pain when we lost Susanna?"
It was not an accusation, but it feels like one to Samantha. "It was a different sort entirely," she complains. "Her passing wrought me open. You recall I did not stop weeping for weeks."
She looks up, expecting Katherine to fight her on the issue, and is relieved when the woman simply bobs her head in acknowledgement instead. She retrieves her teacup to steady herself, comforted by the familiar warmth, and tries to force herself to be less combative. She'd apologized, and Katherine accepted it. That was something.
"I never felt so unlovable as Cordelia's rejection, not when I felt she was all that was holding me together in my grief," she explains. She shuts her eyes once more. Breathes. Opens them. "And to be noticed by Revier after? To know that all I needed to take everything Cordelia ever wanted and have it for myself was to do as she did and cast our love aside?" She feels the usual pit of shame tugging in her stomach. "It was easier than I like to admit."
Katherine uncrosses her legs, setting them open so that she might lean forward and stare down Samantha, her face torn between the faintest whiff of sympathy and a hush of anger. She carries the air of a father lecturing his son, of a woman who knew how to capture the power of men and wield it for herself.
"You cast me aside as well," she furrows her brow, daring Samantha to deny it.
"I did," she whispers.
"I couldn't recognize you anymore," Katherine tilts her head accusingly. "You were once so sweet and sincere, the spitting image of your mother. When I missed her I would take comfort in the knowledge she was there, living in you, too."
