Here's the thing: as was stated before, Lillian is rotten with secrets. It just isn't in her nature to be secretive. Will she withhold information and deploy it at the proper time for best results and societal advancement? Naturally, she does have ambition after all.
But no, Lillian is absolutely rotten with secrets. They bubble out of her and threaten to overwhelm her if she holds them in for too long. This secret is one of the biggest that she's ever known. This could destroy her entire family, or make them even richer. Hortense won't shut up about how there's talk of America going to war with Spain and if that's the case then there's even more of an incentive for her father's lascivious self to create a better product.
She leaves her father on the beach nearly two hours later and walks unescorted back up to the house. It's quite scandalous to do so, but Lillian's the sort of girl who doesn't much stand for impropriety, it isn't good and it certainly isn't going to put a person ahead in life, but she can't help herself. She likes the little thrill that comes with reading the book, with looking at those pictures. It feels dangerous, reckless, it's empowering. She feels like she can take on the world or something.
The heat of the day doesn't seem so bad now that she's been down to the shore. She isn't sweating like a pig, at any rate. Lillian leans against the paddock and watches the horses graze. Their tails swish back and forth, swatting at flies as they keep to the shade of the few trees inside their enclosure. Lillian loves horses. Absolutely adores them.
(And their handler, but that's really a story for another day.)
"I know a secret," she says to one of the horses. "I know the deepest, darkest secret there is to know."
The horse's tail swishes and it ambles closer. Lillian wrinkles her nose. It's relieving itself where it eats. Surely even horses are more enlightened than that?
Apparently not.
"Disgusting," she mutters. It's easy then, to turn and head back to the house. Her father is lost in his own world of memories with his scandalous pictures of not-white women and his dirty books. It had felt best, after he'd confessed, to leave him to the memories. He was rather taken with staring down at the full figured woman he'd documented, her face a blur and her legs spread wide. Lillian's never seen another naked woman before, but she's starting to think that she isn't missing much.
Beatrice and Frederick are in the foyer when she slips back inside. No one else is around and the house feels deathly still. They're speaking in low voices, their fingers brushing against each other and their lips a little bit kiss-swollen and slightly rumpled.
Somewhere, probably in her father's study, a clock chimes four o'clock. Lillian lets out a slow breath. The governess would have departed by now. It means that she can be about the house without the dirty looks and guilty feeling that comes from skiving off lessons.
"Where did you go, Lil?" Frederick asks. His bottom lip is jutting out and slightly bloody.
Lillian glances back towards the door. "I was out. With father." She turns back to face the twins. "What on earth happened to your lip?"
His cheeks color and Lillian feels a wave of revulsion swell up within her. She takes a step back. She hates them for making her feel this way. It's just... oh, they should know better! The servants will start to talk and then the secret will creep out into town and then everyone will know.
"Um, Bea elbowed me. Again."
Beatrice blinks, her face shifting from the dazed, half-awake look of a girl working on sleeping while standing up to that of a very aware and annoyed girl in the blink of an eye. "I'll have you know, Freddie, that if it weren't for you stepping on my dress, none of those would have happened." She shifts her skirt around and shows Lillian where there is, indeed, a dusty footprint on her dress. "And now I shan't be able to wear this dress again."
"I'm sure the staff can clean it—" Frederick starts.
Both girls whip around to face him as one. Lillian's face, she knows, is a wash of ire. Beatrice looks like she's about to cry.
"You can't just clean a dress!"
"Freddie, how could you?! It's ruined!"
Dresses cannot be rescued so easily. Surely Frederick knows this. Dresses must be pristine. They must be perfect. Their mother has practically beaten this into them since a very early age. They're the sort of people who care for more for fashion than the plight of others, and Lillian doesn't really see what's wrong with that sort of thing. She's a good person, she tries to make sure that the servants understand how good they have it, working for the Bellacourt family, but it's hard. Sometimes people don't really understand these sorts of things.
This is the burden of the rich, she thinks. We must show others our superiority in the same breath as explaining our excess to our idiot brothers.
And Frederick, really, should also know better. Dresses are a commodity. They are not the sort of mass-produced garments that are starting to come into vogue, but rather handmade garments by the best seamstress in Providence. They cannot simply be replaced or cleaned. That is far too common or such as the Bellacourt women.
(Well, maybe not Hortense, but no one wants a killjoy in their midst.)
Frederick puts up his hands and waves them in protest. "I'm sorry, Bea, please forgive me."
"Lillian you should care about the horrible things he does to me."
If Lillian isn't utterly horrified at the idea she would say that Beatrice actually likes the "horrible things" Frederick does to her. Such things are awful and improper, however, and Lillian does not want to add fuel to the fire by openly acknowledging their existence. She instead turns up her nose and glares down it at her brother. "Frederick, apologize to Bea."
He gets on his knees. The imbecile gets on his knees and grabs her skirts. "Bea," he says. His tone is utterly earnest. "Bea please forgive me. I'm so sorry. So utterly sorry that I stepped on your dress and ruined it." It's such a show of chivalry that Lillian is reminded of Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, not that she read it mind you, but rather got Hortense to summarize it for her before their second year of finishing school. The year she's currently set to trying to avoid repeating, naturally. Maybe she should read it.
Beatrice looks imperiously down at Frederick and holds out her hand. He clasps it and kisses it earnestly. It's all very eighteenth-century and Lillian is forced to shake her head at their antics. They're such children. They don't know the romanticism that they hit with every passing moment. They have no idea how many societal taboos they break on a daily basis. They're fools and Lillian isn't the one to shatter their petty worldview with the harsh realities of what comes from being older than just-thirteen and just realizing their identities.
"Freddie you're too much. I'm flattered."
Also, Lillian's a bit surprised that Beatrice knows that word. She's not the brightest star in the night sky by a long run. Not that Frederick is either, but it's nice to see them pretending to be little lords and ladies like their birthright commands them both to be. They are set to be Newport royalty, they just have to hang on to their dignity long enough so that they are married to two different people and aren't besmirching the family name by being far too involved with each other.
"I'm going upstairs," Lillian announces. She sweeps her hands up in a placating gesture. Once, maybe, she would have thought about running to her younger siblings with this deep family secret, but Lillian knows better. They're fools, the both of them. They wouldn't understand the nature of such a secret and the trust it implies.
Lillian still isn't sure that she understands it. She's torn between the desperate urge to blurt it out to everyone she sees and keep it to herself. She is lousy with secrets, but this is the sort of thing that makes Lillian want to hold them close inside. Her siblings are fully of disaster with every turn. It would not do them well to share such a secret. They could go blurting it to just anyone.
"Okay Lil," Frederick is still on his knees before his sister and Lillian swallows down a bit of revulsion at their antics. The servants are probably going to think that they're enacting some grand play, perhaps an incestuous Romeo and Juliet. Lillian secretly wishes that it would end the way the play did, with everyone dead and the whole thing being some sort of cosmic joke. Much like the burgeoning romance between the two of them.
Ugh.
And Frederick gets his lecherousness from their father. It's hereditary.
To be completely honest, Lillian is glad to get away from them.
There's only so much of that she can take.
It's hotter upstairs than down, but downstairs contains her disgusting siblings and her mother. And quite possibly the governess who is never good at leaving when bidden. Lillian wants nothing to do with any of them. She retreats to her bedroom and sits on the end of her bed. The books she'd taken from her father's sea chest still sit in the center of the bed. She reaches for one at random and flips through it again. It just seems so off-putting to look at these words and know her father penned them.
She tilts her head back and stares at the ceiling. There's something to be said for the ingenuity, however. Bellacourts are intelligent people. They know how to maximize their dollar and how to be resilient. This is a fine example of that, really. This is proof-positive that the family will never die. Lillian will rise to prominence, the family will live on forever the minds of the unwashed masses.
There is a knock at the door.
Lillian looks up from Lady Feathertitt's deflowering and sees Hortense at the door.
"I never thought that I would see you reading." Hortense's spectacles are askew and she looks wild. Perhaps a bit unhinged. She has been reading The Inferno all day, Lillian reasons. "Especially after you skived off lessons for a walk on the beach with father."
"Well, someone as to keep him from filling the library up with cigar smoke," Lillian replies. She closes the boot and tucks it under her thigh. She doesn't particularly want to have this conversation with Hortense. Hortense always ruins these things. She'll get upset over the mistreatment of women or the objectification of the lesser sex.
And they are lesser. Surely everyone knows that the meek are not going to inherit the earth, right? Lillian knows you must be fierce and strong and all the things women certainly are not in order to get anywhere in life.
"True," Hortense steps inside and closes the door. "I saw that Bea and Freddie were up in the attic again."
"With me, tragically, before I left them."
"They really have to stop it," Hortense doesn't come to sit. She's polite like that. She folds her arms over her fat chest. "It's unbecoming of a Bellacourt."
"Indeed." Lillian answers distractedly.
Maybe she should tell Hortense. Maybe Hortense would find this whole thing as funny as Lillian does.
Oh bugger it. She might as well spill the beans. She doesn't feel right lying or avoiding the truth with Hortense. She's too ugly to have anyone to tell, after all.
"Father told me something today." She bits her lip and then reaches under her skirts and holds out the book to Hortense. "About the family legacy."
Hortense nods like she's the worldliest ugly fat girl in all of Rhode Island. "You found the sea chest." She flips through the pages with a sort of reverence that makes Lillian feel just a little bit uncomfortable. "You found out about father's... hobby."
"If you call it that," she replies. Lillian falters then. Hortense is looking down at the book. "I could have sworn that you would not approve."
"I will never oppose the honest earning of a living. You must understand that such literature, even though father wrote it for his army friends during the war, is really more for women than men, right?"
"Um..."
"Think about it, Lil. Women like the written word, they like feelings, they adore the images of a man who will love and care for her. Men are far more interested in pictures than the written word. I hate that father took those photographs, and that they continue to circulate. The women did consent to have their picture taken, though, so I suppose it's alright."
Lillian purses her lips. She takes a deep breath. "I really thought that you would hate this."
"Why would I, Lil? This is a wonderfully pro-woman thing father is doing in this society mired with oppression and improper values. Women are every bit as worthwhile as men and father has found something that he can sell to women with the same frequency as men."}
"But women should not want to read this sort of thing, Hor! It doesn't make any sense for you to support him!"
Frankly, Lillian's worldview is slowly crumbling right now. Hortense, Hortense who believes in the advancement of women at the expense of men if necessary, is not the sort of person who she thought would embrace her father's foolish business venture. She's used to arguing with Hortense, but it's usually Hortense who is arguing against Lillian, not Hortense poking holes in Lillian's brilliant arguments.
Hortense does fully come into the room then. She sits her fat frame down next to Lillian and reaches out to take Lillian's hands. "You would love to make a foolish decision with the stable boy, but you understand that you have to save yourself for marriage, am I correct?"
She swallows, and nods.
The stable boy is very pretty.
Hortense's lips quirk up into a knowing smile. "Many girls are like you. Father saw that. Maybe, I don't know. He saw something and he saw that there was a dearth of such literature that wasn't banned to the common man. He wanted to write stories that made people feel good. He writes a fantasy." Hortense glances down at the stack of books. "If there was a book about a very well-off girl making a foolish decision with a stable hand, would you read it?
As if Hortense even has to ask.
Still Lillian has to put on a good show. She shakes her head and tries to affect revulsion. It sort of ends up with her looking constipated. "Of course I would not. A girl of breeding needs to save herself for marriage."
This whole conversation feels like a dream.
"Well, I'm sure that there are women out there that fantasize about being taken as Lady Feathertitt in this particular story does." Hortense's cheeks are colored a hot ugly red flush that has nothing to do with the heat of day. "By a stable boy and all."
Hortense's flush is enough to make Lillian want to reach, but she keeps her expression deliberately neutral. Perhaps this is the one secret that she must keep, because if Hortense is alright with it then there most definitely is something very, very wrong with sharing such a thing. "Are you not afraid that it will ruin the family, should someone find out?"
"I don't care much for convention, Lillian, I think it would do this town some good for the truth to get out." Her tone is so light and absolutely devoid of worry that Lillian feels as though she's swallowed a fly. Or something bigger than a fly. There's this buzzing feeling in her throat that makes her want to pull away and curl into a ball to think about this. Hortense isn't supposed to know!
"How do you know?" Lillian demands. Her tone is petulant.
"I found the chest, same as you." Hortense laughs and pulls her spectacles from her eyes. "Only I didn't go marching straight to father about it."
"What did you do?"
"I made... inquires. Nearly every maid in the house has a copy of Lady Feathertitt. Most of the girls at our school have read some for the others. They're really widely circulated, for the sort of book that they are." Hortense sighs and slumps. Her stomach pokes out in front of her. Lillian wants to elbow her. "There was this dirty feeling to them though, when I asked around. People were unwilling to speak of them."
"Do you think that it would ruin the family?"
"No, but I think it would make it very hard for us. At least for the foreseeable future." Hortense's hand closes over Lillian's. "You'll never make the Newport Four Hundred if it's discovered. I know you're bad with secrets, Lil, but this is one you must keep."
Not making the Newport 400 was utterly unacceptable to Lillian. She has murders planned, a whole wedding orchestrated. She's going to be the most important woman in all of Newport, if not Rhode Island before she's twenty-five.
Lillian squeezes Hortense's hand and nods. "I think you're right," she says.
In her mind's eye, Lillian can see the future Hortense imagines. It is ruin: the house smoldering around them in a day so hot that today would seem cool. It is the girls at finishing school jeering and mocking her and her dirty family. It is the pastor at church preaching against them. It is the whole of Newport mocking them with derision.
She cannot have it. She must be better, she must be the greatest woman that has ever graced the streets of this stupid awful town. She'll go to Boston, and then New York. She'll take it all and she'll hold it tight.
"We'd have nothing if anyone knew."
***
After dinner that night, Lillian finds her mother and father in the billiard room, shooting a round between the two of them. Lillian finds billiards to be dreadfully common, but her father fancies himself a halfway decent shot, so she allows him to partake in such a peasant activity. She supposes that he could take up something even more god-awful, like sailing. No one has any business being out on the Bay. Far too many people drown every year.
Her mother's hair is graying and her father's whiskers are frizzing in the heat. They're both smoking. Lillian waves awake the smoke.
The old Commodore eyes her warily. "Do you understand now?" he asks. "I know Hortense spoke to you. You should listen to her, for once."
"How did you know I was thinking about telling?" Lillian asks, her face open: a picture of assumed innocence. It's a bald-faced lie, but they don't need to know that.
They exchange a look, the look that mothers and fathers often exchange when their child thinks themselves terribly clever but is about a subtle as an anvil through the ceiling. Lillian gets this look a lot.
Anyway.
"Lil, you're not exactly... good with secrets."
"I am so!" Lillian protests.
"Not really, darling. There isn't anything wrong with it, but you must know that this isn't the sort of secret that you can just tell. Not if you don't want your life to come crumbling down around you." Her mother knew then. Lillian sucks her lower lip into her mouth. It figures.
She sighs. "Hortense told me that she asked about it at school."
"She did, and it didn't end well for her."
"But she's fat and lazy and doesn't care about her appearance."
"But she's smart enough to know when to keep her mouth shut, Lillian," Her mother's tone brooks no argument. "You would do well to realize the same."
"I understand, really, why you told me never to tell." Lillian hangs her head. She gets it. She really gets it. She has no business sharing this secret. It isn't hers to tell.
Her father chews on his pipe. "Indeed." He says. "Besides, the business is mostly magnets these days. You're not telling fibs if you say that."
"Papa," Lillian leans in. "Hortense has talked of the war against Spain, right? Perhaps it is time to dust off the old writing desk and give our boys something to enjoy while they're away?" She smiles so sweetly at her father that her teeth hurt. Freddie would never pick up on the implications of a statement like that, they'd go straight over his head and he'd grin oafishly and move on to whatever tickled his fancy yet. There are times when Lillian thinks she should be the one to inherit the family fortune, but everyone knows girls inheriting anything is preposterous.
Her father's smile is wide and appreciative. "You are a girl after my own heart," he replies. "You'll do the Bellacourt name proud, Lillian."
Provided she gets on the Newport 400 list sometime before she's in her thirties, Lillian is inclined to agree. She will make this family relevant and she will grow this empire. Hortense is right, there's a market for everyone. She just has to tap into it.