by Brooke, Meg
“Only on one condition, Annabeth,” Cynthia said. The girl stared up at her, rapt. “You must never try to follow that man or find out who he is. Forget him. Take care of yourself.”
“I will, Miss,” the girl said.
Cynthia went through the house and called for Cook, who grudgingly made up a parcel of cakes and tarts and dried meat. But when Annabeth smiled at her and thanked her kindly for the food, even Cook cracked a grin and said, “It’s nothing.”
Annabeth turned to go. But as she reached the last step, she turned. “Miss? Would you thank your friend for me, too?”
“Of course,” Cynthia said.
When Annabeth had gone, Cynthia turned her thoughts back to the strange man with the missing earlobe.
She had first noticed him the day after her father left for Oxford. Since learning about the experiment, Cynthia had sometimes wondered if her father was having her followed. Once before—a year ago now—she had noticed a man following her while her father was away in Berlin for a month. He had been very discreet, and she had only noticed him because she had broken her expected routine and stayed home from a dinner she had planned to attend. But she was almost certain it had been this same man.
If so, it was almost certain her father was behind it. Cynthia did not give it much thought. The man would report what he chose, and her father would do as he pleased with the information. Annabeth might have been worried about him, but he had done Cynthia no harm, and she doubted he ever would. With all the other invasions she had endured on her privacy over the years, this one seemed relatively minor. She brushed off her worry and thought instead about that evening’s ball.
She wore the brand-new gown her father had ordered for her. He had chosen every detail down to the color, a rich, deep red that highlighted her coloring. When Ellen had finished with her hair and had tightened the last laces, she looked every inch the society belle. The Cynthia Charles loved was nowhere to be seen in her reflection. Perhaps that was for the best.
It was not long before Mallory announced that the duke was waiting in the hall for her. She went down to him, not failing to notice the way his jaw dropped a little when he saw her. She knew she was a formidable sight.
“I must say, you look quite ravishing,” he said when she reached him. He took her hand and kissed it. She was suddenly very conscious of Mallory’s eyes upon them.
Imogen was waiting in the carriage and greeted her warmly as Charles handed her in. “Cynthia!” she cried, kissing her cheek. “We were so sorry to miss you this afternoon. Gillian is quite determined that you must stay for tea tomorrow.”
“Of course,” Cynthia said.
She listened to Imogen and Charles discussing the preparations for Gillian’s come-out as they rode through the dark streets to the Bathurst mansion. The lavish ball that was being planned sounded so monstrously expensive it made Cynthia’s eyes pop. But she supposed poor Gillian had earned it, having her debut postponed a year after her father’s death.
Lady Bathurst seemed quite overcome by the honor of Charles’s attendance at her ball. “She’s like that with everyone,” Imogen said quietly as she and Cynthia made their way into the ballroom. “I can’t decide whether it’s a shrewd plot to flatter everyone or the product of her childhood as a shopkeeper’s daughter. But it is good of her to have this ball every year.”
Cynthia nodded, not really paying attention. They had arrived fashionably late, and the ballroom was already full of people who had turned their attention in her direction. Probably hoping for a repeat performance of last week’s ball, Cynthia decided.
“The vultures are circling,” Charles said in her ear. “Save the waltzes for me and let’s really set them reeling.”
Cynthia couldn’t help it. She grinned. He had that effect on her—no matter how terrible things seemed, she could count on him to react in exactly the way that made it all seem better.
Clarissa and her husband appeared then. Taking Cynthia’s hands, Clarissa said, “Take a turn around the room with me.”
“Of course,” Cynthia agreed, looping her arm through Clarissa’s.
“He chose that dress, didn’t he?” Clarissa asked before they were even out of earshot of their party.
Cynthia nodded. “Would you think I picked this color?”
“No, though it is quite becoming on you. But I don’t want to talk about your dress.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“Have you decided whether you will accept him or not?” Clarissa asked.
Cynthia shook her head. “But I am going to tell him the truth tonight,” she said. “I cannot delay it any longer. This afternoon he told me that he loves me.”
Clarissa practically squealed with excitement. “I’m thrilled to hear it! And do you love him?”
Cynthia frowned.
“It’s not an academic question, Cynthia. You cannot prove it with definitive evidence or test it in a laboratory. This is something you have to feel in your heart.”
“I don’t think I was ever taught to fall in love,” Cynthia said.
“Neither was I. And yet here I am,” she said, flushing a little as she looked across the room at her husband. Cynthia did not miss the secret smile that passed between them. “I don’t think it’s something you can be taught. It just…well, it just happens.”
“After tonight I have a strong suspicion that it won’t be happening to me,” Cynthia said as they neared the windows on the far side of the ballroom. Glancing back, she saw Charles watching her intently.
Clarissa saw him, too. “I wouldn’t be so certain. Perhaps he is worthy of you, after all, Cynthia. But listen: what will you do at the end of the week if you don’t decide to marry him?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far ahead.”
“You will come to stay with us. Anders and I talked about it this morning.”
“Oh, no, Clarissa, I wouldn’t wish to impose.”
“Nonsense. You are the only sister I will ever have. You would be welcome. All the same, I will hold out hope that you will be forming your own establishment soon.”
Cynthia smiled. “You may hope all you like, Clarissa,” she said.
They had circled back around the room, and she saw that Lord Sidney and his party had arrived. Something must have happened between him and Charles, for the two of them were talking amiably. Lord Sidney asked Cynthia for the first dance, which was just beginning. Cynthia agreed, grateful that at least she would not sit out the first dance. But after it was over, Lord Stowe asked her for the next, and then the other gentlemen seemed to take their cue. Mr. Goring and Mr. Altington each asked her to dance, and then it was time for her waltz with Charles.
Cynthia could hear the hush that fell over the ballroom as they took their places. Everyone watched expectantly, surely dreaming that there might be another entertaining scandal.
“We will be quite proper,” Charles said, grinning like a schoolboy. “See, we are the requisite distance apart and everything. Will you promise not to flee the ballroom this time?”
“I think I can safely make such a promise,” she said as the music began. She gave herself over to it, spinning and gliding in his arms. He smiled charmingly and commented on the ball and the other dancers. She was certain they looked like a perfectly ordinary pair, dancing across the floor with the rest of them.
When the music finally ended, she let him lead her in to dinner. Lord Sidney and his sister sat with them, and Miss Chesney chatted brightly, asking Cynthia about her gown and if she had read Tennyson’s latest work.
It felt like a normal evening. Cynthia could imagine spending a thousand more just like it with Charles. She could fit with these people, she knew. They could become her friends. And the rest of polite society appeared to have forgiven her whatever sins she had committed. The matrons smiled and spoke sweetly to her. Other young women greeted her as if they had not been gossiping about her the last five days without stop.
When the evening was over,
and Charles was escorting her to her door again, she asked, “Will I see you tonight?”
“Count upon it,” he replied, his eyes saying what his words did not. She forced herself to meet them confidently.
Then he was gone, and she went upstairs to change and wait for him to come back again.
This time, as he walked down the alley, Charles was certain the Rat followed him. He was nothing more than a shadowy presence, a figure that might have been ambling down the road, but there was a slight hesitation in his casual saunter. He was waiting to see what Charles would do.
Well, he had seen the night before, too. Charles didn’t bother trying to hide his destination, but leaped over the wall and went up the path with deliberate assurance, as though he had every right in the world to be doing such a thing. It had occurred to him that perhaps the Rat was not following him but Cynthia, but he had dismissed the idea. If the Rat was a spy for Roger Endersby, surely the man himself would have appeared today after hearing about last night’s events.
Cynthia was waiting for him in the darkened hall, wearing only her filmy nightdress. He could see her silhouette in the moonlight. “Hello again,” he said, pressing her up against the wall and kissing her soundly. Then he scooped her up in his arms and carried her to her room. Once there, he dropped her onto the bed and began removing his cravat. She rose up on her knees to help him undress, her lips meeting his with a tenderness that surprised him.
He made love to her slowly, gently, without the wild and reckless abandon he had felt before. It was still there, that desperate need for her, but now that he knew he wanted to make love to her for the rest of their lives, the crazed urgency gave way to sweet, leisurely pleasure. When she came, she sighed beneath him, closing her eyes and giving way to the bliss that took them both. In that moment he allowed himself to imagine what it would be like to be together like this for all the years to come, to have children and a real, shared life. And he wanted it, craved it in a way he had never desired anything before. He brushed her hair from her face and kissed her tenderly when he came, and the sensation of love flooded through him.
Later, as he cradled her in his arms, both of them half asleep, he whispered, “You were magnificent tonight.”
“Why, thank you,” she said, giggling.
“I meant at the ball. You were masterful. You faced all those gossips and prudes down as though you had ice in your veins. Why does it seem, sometimes, as though you were raised to be a duchess?”
She stiffened in his arms. He felt her pull away from him a little. She turned onto her back and looked up at him, her face grave and solemn.
“Because,” Cynthia said, her voice suddenly very soft, “I was raised to be a duchess.”
He stared down at her. He might have thought she was joking, but her tone was so serious that he asked, “What does that mean?”
She sighed and looked away, out the window at the cold winter moon. “I have to tell you some time, I suppose,” she said. “It might as well be now, before things go any further.”
This was it, then. Suddenly, he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear whatever it was she had to say. But he had been pushing her to tell him for days, and he could hardly refuse to listen now.
She sat up a little, leaning back against the pillows and pulling the sheet up over herself. She looked down at her hands and then back up at him. “Thirty years ago,” she said, “my father’s sister married a man named Jonah Martin. He and my father became fast friends, and remained so when my aunt Lydia died four years later. They shared many interests: philosophy, politics, science. They were both, in their own ways, dreamers. But there was a key difference between them. Where Martin was able to keep his dreams in his head, to allow them to remain only dreams, my father had—has—difficulty understanding why his imaginings can’t become reality. He doesn’t see the world as other men do. He looks on other people as toys, as wooden soldiers moving across the floor of his own private playroom. But he is also fiercely intelligent, and so he dreams on a much larger scale than other men.
“He and Martin spent a great deal of time talking about natural law, about the rules that govern society and make us who we are. They read Hobbes and Locke and Rousseau, and I think my father was quite taken with the idea of the noble savage. He had this idea, you see, that if a person were removed from the conditions of their birth, they could rise above them. But there was only one way to prove it. So he designed an experiment.”
Charles stared intently at her, not quite sure where this was going. But he could feel her tension increasing, and it made him nervous.
She took a deep breath before continuing. “The conditions of the experiment were deceptively simple: take a child from its birth mother, from the conditions in which it was born, and see if it could be liberated and enlightened beyond the expectations of its birth. So my father went to a brothel in York to find a child—he wanted a girl, because he thought the achievement would be all the greater if he could create a liberated woman, rather than a man. But when he got there, he found not one but two infant girls. Then my father had one of the few truly human impulses I think he has ever felt. He paid the madam for both girls and took them home, and then he enlisted Jonah Martin, still weak and dispirited from the death of his wife, to take one of the babies while he kept the other. Two subjects for the experiment would make the results even more valid, he felt.”
“And you were one of those infants?”
Cynthia nodded. “I was. I was about four months old when he bought me from that brothel. A few months later, both he and Jonah Martin moved to Oxford and began teaching. They passed me and the other baby off as their daughters, and the experiment began.”
“Oh, Cynthia,” Charles said, reaching for her hand. She pulled away, shaking her head.
“In many ways,” she said casually, “it was an ideal childhood. I was allowed to read anything I wanted, learn anything I wanted, pursue every interest I had. I was not required to wear corsets or sit meekly. I was Roger Endersby’s pupil. But it was a false freedom. None of the choices I made were actually mine. I read Mary Wollstonecraft when I was eight and thought how lucky I was to be a liberated woman, but it was all a sham. And as I grew older, the experiment began to change.”
She paused for a moment, and Charles said, “You don’t have to tell me any more if you don’t wish to, Cynthia.”
“No,” she said. “I’ve begun now, and I can’t be stopped.” She gathered her thoughts and then said, “When I was ten, my father realized that I was developing into a beauty, and the germ of another idea took hold in his mind. Having as much power as he did over Martin and his students had made him hungry for more. And when he looked about for a tool that would bring him more power, he saw me. He devised a second phase to the experiment. Now that Martin’s daughter and I had grown into intelligent, knowledgeable girls, he thought, why not also make us accomplished, attractive young ladies who would snare rich, powerful men? Surely if we could be taught engineering and math and science, we could be taught the waltz and how to arrange a dinner party. But Martin didn’t like the plan. Unlike my father, he had come to love his daughter. He didn’t want to force her to do anything she didn’t want to, and he refused to be party to the second phase. There was a terrific argument, and it ended with Jonah Martin breaking with my father. They never spoke again, though his daughter and I remained friends. But without Martin’s restraint, my father lost sight of the object of the experiment. He saw only the power he might gain through me, and every time I failed he became angrier. He never beat me, but he terrified me. He made me feel that I was worthless unless I did exactly as he expected. I lived in fear of failure. So I became perfect. I never understood why he changed until a few months after he came into his inheritance and we moved to London. Then he sat me down and told me the whole story of my birth, and what was now expected of me. That day, I vowed I would never marry, would never give him what he wanted.”
Charles felt ill. He had sat in Roger Endersby
’s tutorial, had listened to the man speak. He had never known he was in the presence of a monster. How could any man do such a thing to a child? It was inhuman. He fought the urge to pick Cynthia up and carry her out of the house and never let her return there again. Instead, he swallowed his rage and said, “And he wants you to be a duchess.”
“I think if it were possible he would want me to be queen,” Cynthia said. “He knows that he cannot gain power on his own, but through me...” She paused, worrying her lower lip between her teeth. “You don’t understand what he’s like, Charles. He watches my every movement, knows every person I see, keeps track of how many of them are titled or not.”
“He does all this in the name of liberation?” Charles asked, feeling the hot rage boiling inside him despite his efforts to quell it. The man should be jailed, or banished, or better yet killed, preferably very painfully.
“I don’t think he cares about liberation any longer,” Cynthia replied. “He doesn’t care about anything but power.”
“And he did this to you,” Charles asked, running a finger along the bruises on her arm, “because you disappointed him?”
She nodded. “But you needn’t worry about me, Charles. I have the money saved to leave, to get away from him. He won’t control me for long. Now that I’ve told you I know you’ll want to withdraw your offer, and I understand, but I want you to know that I can take care of myself.”
He clenched his fists. “Who said anything about taking care of you? I don’t want to take care of you, Cynthia, or be your master. I would never accept anything less than an equal partnership with you,” he insisted.
She brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “You say that now,” she said, “but you don’t understand how persistent I can be, how domineering I might get when there’s something I think is wrong. You would find me unbearable after a while, I think. And you would have to live forever with the embarrassment of a wife whose mother was a whore.” She spat the word as though it left a foul taste in her mouth.