Death and the Sisters by Heather Redmond EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
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- Author: Heather Redmond
- Language: English
- Genre: Biographical Fiction
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London, Thursday, May 5, 1814
Jane
“I’m calling my tale Isabella, the Penitent; or, The Bandit Novice of
Dundee,” my stepsister Mary explained, tucking the notebook she’d
brought back from Scotland under her pillow.
“I wish I had your talent for writing.” Fanny, my elder stepsister, seated
on the edge of the mattress, bit off the end of the thread from the hem she’d
just repaired. Mary’s shift fixed, a trade for the story she’d just read us.
“You’re going to be as famous as Mother and Papa someday.”
“It’s just one scene, really,” I pointed out from the end of the bed,
irritated by the excessive praise always attached to Mary and her parentage.
How could my mamma, mere translator Mary Jane Godwin, compare with
their late mother, the famed philosopher and writer Mary Wollstonecraft?
“Where is the rest of the story?”
“I don’t know yet.” Mary tapped her pencil stub ostentatiously against
her cheek. “I have to decide if Fernando is the villain, or Diego. One has to
be the hero.”
“They could both be villains,” Fanny said, her pockmarked cheeks
flushing. Her skin was pale like Mary’s, but not in the same ethereal way,
though she was only nineteen, three years older than us. She neatened her
sewing box and closed the lid.
Fanny rarely left Skinner Street. Not a healthful environment, it showed
on all of us. Fanny, pale; Mamma, fat; Papa, old before his time; and Mary,
suffering with bad skin and pains. Of my half brothers, Charles stayed away
as much as possible, not wanting to run the business he’d been educated for
at great expense, and Willy was a petulant child. The doctor had been so
worried about Mary that she’d been more away than at home these past
years. Even I’d been sent to boarding school when we had the money.
“They could both be the heroes. She can love them both, and they can
fight over her.” I winked at Fanny. “Isabella can explore love with both of
them. She isn’t tied to outdated morality and the demands of a dead faith.”
“She’s literally a nun in training,” Mary said, frowning at me. “Hundreds
of years ago.”
I ran my hands over the soft blanket on her bed. “Your mother and Papa
had to have come up with the ideas they presented in their books from
somewhere. Maybe atheism and free love were the style in Scotland
hundreds of years ago.”
Fanny shushed me, spittle landing on the edge of her lip. “Mary
Wollstonecraft? William Godwin? Geniuses don’t need some style from
hundreds of years ago to find their ideas. They read and think and, well,
write.” She threw up her hands.
“I wasn’t being disrespectful,” I insisted. “That Percy Bysshe Shelley
insists community is the way to move forward.”
Mary’s lips, not full, but charming in their shape and blooming color
nonetheless, curved. “This Mr. Shelley does not know Papa as well as he
thinks, despite being his devoted disciple. Papa is not a social being at all.
He believes in philosophizing alone.”
“He went to see the Shelleys, though,” I said. “In Wales.”
“And didn’t find them,” Fanny said with a giggle. “Oh, you’ll see, Mary.
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