The Sea Chest

Chapter 2

"Look at this." Frederick turns the page eagerly. Lillian wrinkles her nose. There are pictures. Oh so many pictures. Lillian didn't even know that photographs could be taken with such detail. Pictures of women laying on beds with their faces tilted to the camera, held perfectly still and their eyes the only things that seem to be moving. Their faces are a blur, but their bodies are there for God and everyone else to see. "She has a mole."

"Hor has a mole too." Beatrice cackles. "It's got hairs on it."

Poor Hortense and her truly unfortunate mole. At least she would have appreciated the ridiculousness of this discovery. Or perhaps she would have taken one look at it and turned her nose up at it. She was always going on about the essays she was reading by Margaret Elliot and George Fuller. Wait. That didn't sound right. Oh well. Lillian had no idea who those people were, but they were putting ideas into Hortense's head. Ideas about women and their place. Ideas that had her father hopping mad and Hortense arguing with him every chance she got. She barely had time for Lillian now, what with her devouring of food and books and her ideas about college.

Hortense was certainly more fun before she'd discovered books.

Still, Beatrice should know better than to throw stones in her glass house of stupidity. She can't even read these stories. If she could, she would be utterly beside herself with rage at Frederick reading them. Or looking at them. Frederick's no better than her with the reading.

"It's a beauty mark," Lillian replies testily. She reaches out for a bundle of paper, but Frederick beats her to it. "Oooooh this one has a ne—" Her foot shoots out and Lillian smiles triumphantly as Frederick howls in pain, gripping his shin. The papers fly from his hands and land on the floor, settling like the dust in the sunlight streaming the windows. "We don't talk like that in this household, Freddie. You know that." "That's not what father says. Men can talk how they like. He says things like that all the time!"

"Well, you are not father, Freddie."

He sticks his tongue out at her and mutters the word under his breath.

She rolls her eyes skywards and bends to pick up the papers he's dropped. The photograph of the black woman is beautiful in an eerie way, if women like that could ever be beautiful. Lillian is taken with it, even if it is lewd, even if there is a distasteful sheen to the woman's breasts. She's sweating all over the curling photograph. She tucks it away.

"We should go downstairs," she says. "It'll be cooler."

Frederick glances at Beatrice for a moment before sliding half a step towards her. There's a wicked gleam in his eyes that makes Lillian's stomach turn. They have got to stop. They're so young still, but it's so horribly stupid. Father is sure to lose his mind and it'll probably do her poor mother in if they ever find out.

"You go," he says. "I want to talk to Bea for a moment."

This time, when Lillian rolls her eyes it's so hard it actually hurts. "You're both disgusting." It isn't worth trying to deny that she knows what they're up to. Someone needs to remind them that the Bellacourt family could fall to social ruin if anyone were to discover the truth. "I hope the maid catches you and they send Beatrice off to a convent."

If such a scandal were to ever happen, Lillian knows that she can kiss away her spot on the Newport 400. Which is utterly unacceptable.