She gave a quavering smile, then nodded and smoothed her hands over her vest, settling them on her hips. “You are forgiven. Will you come up and read, after all?”
“I don’t think so. It really is a tiring story. I think I’ll take a walk.”
“Of course.” She dipped her head and moved to the hall, fingers trailing the lip of the wainscoting. Mr. Quimby sauntered down the stairs, his bell tinkling and his stomach rubbing the risers. I had given him too many treats in an effort to win his affection. He flattened his ears when he kenned my presence and only perked them upon greeting Eugenie.
“There you are, my little love,” she said. “There you are.” She stopped to synchronize her watch with the grandfather clock. Directly across was a stilted image of Eugenie in a dark blue bonnet. Paint on wood. Her left ear was a good half inch lower than the right. The painter should have given up on detailing—indeed should have forsaken painting altogether and gone into an honest trade.
“Let’s go to town tomorrow,” I said.
“Is that what you wish?”
“You can treat me to lunch.”
“I’ll tell Mr. Burton we’ll join him on the morning ride.”
“Thank you.”
But her attention was drawn away. “Delphine?”
And there the girl was, pressed in the inset to Mr. Burton’s study. “Ma’am?”
“Perhaps you, like the cat, should wear a bell.” Her lips curved in a smile. “It will warn Lucy you’re lurking about.”
I changed my mind and did not take a walk. The day had grown too dreary. It was the end of September, and the flat gray skies spared no warmth. Instead, I meandered the hall to the piano room and dropped onto a settee. I lifted my arm to my forehead and stretched out. The windows were latched shut, the air stale. The room was too yellow. Like dried mustard. I reached behind to the table, my fingers finding a porcelain figurine of a cat. A coating of dust dulled the surface. I wondered what Delphine had been so industriously doing in there.
A thought slid by. I pondered looking for Eugenie’s laudanum and passing the time as she did when she thought I wasn’t paying attention.
“What a life of leisure you’ve made yourself.” Rebecca rounded the settee and hovered over me. She gave a quick signal for me to move my feet, then settled, her skirts crowding against mine. “I don’t know how you’ve made the time. I never seemed to have it. There was so much to attend to.” She frowned. “Hm.”
“She doesn’t need caretaking.”
“Oh, but she does.”
“What do you want?”
She shrugged, then shimmied further into the seat, crossing her hands on her lap. “I’m just sharing the free time. I’m at a loss myself as to what to do. Now that time is all I have.”
“Do you have any friends, Rebecca?”
“I wonder the same about you. I wonder a lot about you. I’ve never quite grasped your story. It disquiets me.”
“My father is a tutor; my mother and brother are dead. Our means were modest and I was required to work. There is no story but that.”
“Are you estranged? From your father?”
I moved to rise, but my skirts caught under hers. I tugged them clear. “There is no story but what I told.”
She sighed and her curls swayed as she shook her head. “I think there is more.” Her smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “It’s terrible to lose everything you love. Isn’t it?”
I am to have my picture taken. A daguerreotype for posterity. A sketch of it for the broadsheets. I can see the peddler’s eyes now, as he hands round this latest sordid tale. I knew this girl, he’d say. Look how far the road can run.
Matron’s brought my dress full finished from Gert. She’s done my hair in neat braids and a smattering of white wildflowers to match the pattern of the dress.
I asked that the portrait be taken under the box elder by the laundry, but Matron worries we won’t be able to hide the manacles I’ll have to wear on my wrists. I think she’s more concerned that they will take attention away from the seashell brooch she has loaned me. It is thin as paper, opaque and pearled.
“It belonged to my mother,” she said, though I don’t quite fathom the need to tell me so. Still, it sits well on the ribbon of crossed lace, and when I touch it, it holds the warmth.
I sit in the ladderback chair Matron’s brought to my cell. She circles around me, straightening my skirt here, shifting a flower bud there, with little hums and mmms.
“Am I pretty?” I ask.
She stops in front of me, her hands clasped and nods. “Would you like to see?”
“Do you find me pretty?”
Her lips clamp tight, then soften. “Would that make you happy if I did?”
“It wouldn’t make me any way. It was just a question to pass the time. Although with what’s left I should be more particular.” I swallowed. “Yes, it matters.”
“Well.” It is not an answer. “Just let me . . .” She pinches my cheeks to pink them, then lifts a mirror from a weave basket. It is a plain wood, the handle smooth from use. Not ivory and silver filigree like Eugenie’s or the tortoiseshell set she surprised me with on my birthday. I take it from Matron with both hands, palms slick with sweat. My thumb leaves a sticky print mark on the glass as I turn it toward me.
“Oh.”
This is not me. I am not pretty. This is a stranger who frowns when I do, and cants her head to see tight braids, a nose sat just off center, cheekbones sharp enough to push against the skin, sunken sockets. The stranger stretches her lips into a simulacrum of a smile.
“This is not me.”
I fling the mirror to the ground, tumbling the chair as I rise, and crush the heel of my shoe into the looking glass. It cracks and splinters into shards. But I cannot escape the burn of the stranger’s gaze and the dark charred edges already run to ash.
Matron uses the side of her boot to shift the glass bits to the corner.
“Leave me a piece.”
Her mouth pinches, and she twists her boot against the last bits of glass, setting her basket atop the chips and flakes of silver. “That was my mother’s too.”
I would like to answer, but I think it might be harsh, and Matron is patient enough with me. There’s a turn of the lock on the door. Matron glances at it, then picks up the chair. “Sit.”
A guard swings the door wide. He gives a nod to Matron, his eyes lingering on her before dropping to me and giving a chortle.
“You make Matron blush,” I say to him.
He smiles, lifting an eyebrow. His eyes are laughing warm. “It wouldn’t be the first—”
But the photographer trots his way in, forcing the guard to suck in his belly to make space at the door.
“I’m Jonas Bowdin, and we’ve got about seventeen minutes of good light.” His hair is greased tight to his scalp, and his beard runs a circle round his jaw, neat trimmed. He combs it with his thumb, then sets his hands on his hips, flipping his jacket tails up and down as he peers at me and then at the high window. His shoulders are narrow, his waist wide with the buttons on his vest straining. One has popped loose and threatens to slip the brown thread. He twists his neck as if to stretch out a crick, and then he pulls a measuring tape from his jacket pocket, unfurling it and handing me the end. I’ve not seen eyes so pale.
“Hold this to your nose.”
He takes a step backward, then another, then walks his index finger a few inches more on the cloth rule.
“Stand, please. Don’t move the tape.” He stares up at the window, quick blinks with long lashes. Then he steps around Matron and maneuvers the chair four inches to the left. “You can sit again.”
I hold the tape to my nose, tethered to his hand holding the other end, and sink to the seat.
He plucks the tape from me and rolls it back in a neat circle before pocketing it.
LeRocque has slipped in and stands shoulder to shoulder with Matron. She patently ignores him, even though he’s lifted his bowler to
her. “You’re looking fine, Lucy.”
“Don’t lie.”
Jonas Bowdin raises an eyebrow and stares at LeRocque. Then another man lugs in a wooden box and an assortment of cases slung every which way on his shoulders. His pocked cheeks blow out like balloons, and he stares everywhere but at me, his cheeks deflating and skin sheening with sweat.
“We’ll set up here,” Bowdin says. He takes the box and waits for the younger man to organize the cases and set up a tripod and stand. He squeezes his fists tight, then scrubs his palms on his trousers and his hands shake as he returns to his task.
“What’s your name?”
He jerks back when I speak.
“Tom. Tom Nash.”
“Well, Tom Nash. Have you never seen a murderess before?”
“No.”
“LeRocque will hound you for an interview. What will you title it, Mr. LeRocque? ‘My Encounter with a Woman of Evil and All Her Temptations’? Yes. I like that.”
“Who are you talk—”
“Sixteen minutes, let’s move along.” Bowdin unlatches a small box, sliding out a black plate and placing it into the side of the camera.
“How does it work, Mr. Bowdin?”
“Bromine, mercury, and mystery.” He opens the camera front, releasing the bellows and cupping the black-capped lens.
“I’ve never had my image taken.”
“Once I pull off the cap, you’ll stay very still.” He shakes out a black cloth, draping it over the camera, then flapping it over his head. He sticks his hand out and reaches for the lens cap.
“Wait.” Matron pushes away from the wall and straightens the collar.
“Don’t fuss.”
“Yes,” she says in a low breath. “I think you are. Pretty.”
I grab her arms and shove her away. “Take the picture.” White petals fall from my hair, and I can’t stop the shake of my head, my teeth clenched hard enough I think they might crack.
“Breathe, Lucy.” LeRocque mimics a great inhalation, his chest expanding and deflating.
“Eyes forward,” Bowdin says. “One large breath. Hold it. Ready?”
“I’m ready.”
He removes the cap, holding it out to his side. The lens is a cold round eye of ground glass, reflecting my image back as if in a warped mirror.
I will never know if he made me pretty or left me plain. Never know if it will be a stranger or myself fixed forever in quicksilver to a copper plate.
I keep my breath. Hold still. Play my part. No doubt LeRocque will sell the image to the highest bidder. Lucy Blunt. Murderess.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Delphine has quite the propensity for cards.” Rebecca dabbed a narrow paintbrush tipped in yellow to the vase set on the table. She glanced at me, then returned to her task. “But not so much for her chores. I’m sure you’ve discussed it with her.”
My mouth filled with bitterness, as if I’d taken a swallow of vinegar. I closed the book on my lap, marking my page with my thumb, though it didn’t matter. I’d not read a word. Even now, as I passed wearisome time in the sitting room with Rebecca, Delphine was ensconced in a chair in Eugenie’s room, dealing a few quick hands. “Isn’t that for Mr. Beede to sort out? Or Cook?”
She shrugged and gave a little tsk. “If you wish some authority, then no.”
My lids fluttered. I could not look at her directly, just watched the bristles separate and unite as she swirled the colors across the stoneware. “If Mrs. Burton wishes to—”
“Be careful what Mrs. Burton wishes.” She lifted an eyebrow and then held out the brush. “What do you think?”
I stood, dropping the book to the divan. “Another vase with posies.”
Rebecca scowled and tipped the vase to the light. “But I’ve added dahlias.”
“Hands out of the boysenberries.” Cook gave me a swat, though not hard enough to dislodge the fruit from my fingers.
I held it out. “Just the one?”
The windows beaded with steam. Jars floated and clicked in great pots of boiling water. There was sugar at hand, and wax at the ready for the canning. She eyed me, then pointed at the bowls of berries on the table. “There’s not enough here as it is. You’ll be glad for it in November.”
I dropped it back in the bowl with a sting of regret.
“If you’d get out of your finery and put on an apron, we’d make quick work of it.”
“It’s not finery. And I’m happy to help. Mrs. Burton has decided Delphine makes a better partner for whist.”
Cook snorted and tossed me an apron and a masher. We took to the chore without conversation, and I was content for the scrape of the mashers against the bowls and the hiss of water on the iron stove.
The door to the garden was open, allowing in the cooling air. A maple leaf in burnished copper slid across the slate floor, its motion stopped as the stem caught on a cabinet leg.
I’d brought one to Eugenie early that morning, placing it in her open palms. She sat forward in bed, head bowed over the leaf to breathe in its smell. Her thumbs skimmed the curled brown edges, then tracked the stalk and splay of brittle veins. Then she grazed it over her lips.
“Have they all turned?”
“It’s just beginning.”
Her mouth softened and her eyes flicked. “This I remember best. So much color. The hills draped in fire.” She closed the leaf in her palms. “I remember.”
My thoughts returned to the kitchen, and I wondered if I should bring her the leaf of copper. Or perhaps a walk with the leaves crunching underfoot and snapping in the air. I glanced out the garden door. “It feels like frost.”
Cook shifted the bowl and set to work on another. “Mr. Friday will harvest the pigs soon.” She pressed her lips and made a small sound in her throat. “The Almanack says a mild October, but when has a sane man ever gone by its divinations? It’s felt in the bones, isn’t it? And I feel winter early.”
I jumped at the screech of the cat and a heavy crash on the floor above. Cook and I stared at each other, mashers frozen in our hands. There was a clatter of feet down the stairs. Delphine pushed through the door, hand to her chest and breath ragged.
“The mistress . . .”
I dropped the masher to the bowl. “What happened?”
Delphine pulled in a breath and shook her head, pointing behind her to the stairs and landing.
I grabbed my skirts and pushed her aside, following the sounds of commotion to the second-floor landing.
Eugenie lay on her side. Jacob kneeled over her half-prone form, dabbing a cloth that came back red. He turned his rag and folded it in fourths. “I think her nose is broken.”
The blood flowed freely from her nose and beaded in a wide cut on her forehead. Rebecca put her arms under Eugenie’s shoulders and strained to get her upright. She moved her knees at an angle and took the weight of Eugenie’s body. “There, there, it’s all right.”
My heart hammered in my chest. I touched the back of my hand to her cheek and throat.
“This is your fault,” Rebecca said through thinned lips. “Your fault.”
“I wasn’t here.”
“You should have been.”
“I’m not her jailer.”
“We need more rags,” Jacob said.
“Gene.”
She moaned.
“Go get gauze and a bowl of water, Jacob.” Rebecca wrapped an arm around Eugenie’s waist, her nails digging and pulling at the fabric. “Where were you, Lucy? It’s your job, you stupid girl.”
I caught a glimpse of movement under the hall cabinet. Mr. Quimby crept low, then dug his claws into the carpet and burst from underneath, careening to Eugenie’s open door.
“Where’s his bell?” I asked.
Eugenie jerked away from Rebecca, her hands flailing the air, then stopping her fall forward as she wrestled to all fours. She tried to speak but instead coughed and sputtered blood that had run from her nose. “Delphine?”
“It’s Lucy.” I s
moothed her hair. “You’ve had a fall.”
“Lucy.”
“Don’t talk.” My fingers stopped on her cheek, thumb touching the tacky blood at the edge of her lip. I settled behind her and tipped her chin to slow the bleeding.
There was a grumble from the stairs. Cook took the banister with one hand and held the medicine bag with the other. Delphine and Jacob followed two paces behind. “What’s the fuss and muss up here?” She blew out a breath as she took in the three of us. “Looks like you fell on your head, Mrs. Burton.” She waved a hand. “Lord, you’re all useless. Jacob, Lucy, take her by the arms and get her to bed.”
Cook daubed the last of a poultice on Eugenie’s nose and wiped her hands on her apron. “You might have a crook to your nose when all is said and done, Mrs. Burton, but I think it will be serviceable for breathing.”
Eugenie pulled in a cracked breath. She patted the pillow next to her. “Where’s Mr. Quimby?”
“You tripped over him.” Rebecca sat at the foot of the bed. “He lost his bell.”
“Did I hurt him?”
“I’ve warned you about that cat.”
I gave Rebecca a sharp glance, then tapped Eugenie’s hand. “He’s hiding. I’ll look for him when you’re resting.”
Cook lifted her psalm book and leaned the pages to the window for light. “I think a small reading . . .”
I glanced at the bedside table and the drawer half ajar. The laudanum bottle was tilted against it, the cork resting on the table by the oil lamp.
I bit the inside of my cheek to quell the wave of anger. If she hadn’t been under its influence, she would have heard the cat, bell or not. I set the bottle upright, corked it, and slid it into my skirt pocket.
Rebecca saw the bottle, too, and her eyes caught mine with a hard glance. “I told you.”
Delphine wasted no time in spreading the word, catching Mr. Burton the minute he set his hat on the rack, jabbering at him half in French while shushing me to be quiet. She relayed a story so exaggerated one would have thought Cook had to sew Eugenie’s head back on and whittle her new legs.
“It’s not at all like that, Mr. Burton.”
He stared down at me. “She is your sole responsibility.”
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