However, I made note to assure Lady Rutledge of his cooperation in the matter. Surely a little fond regard from agents of the Crown would not go amiss.
Events moved rapidly. With the help of a mysterious employee I colloquially termed as Ashmore’s man—for my tutor had many such sources, of either sex, and each ensconced in the damnedest of places—my readiness was ensured. The activity that overtook Fanny’s home reminded me of those years when such things were a matter of rote. How often Betsy, my maid and friend, had fussed over me, fixing the accursed lilies into my hair or some form of floaty feather.
I was left with little enough to do but remain out of the way.
I did not see Hawke again. It pleased me to imagine him sulking in Baker company, for no doubt he fumed greatly at my fit of pique.
Of course, I was not entirely blameless in the matter. A lady did not punctuate her values with violence.
I did, but I oughtn’t.
Not even Ashmore had spent overly long speaking with me, and while I believed his concerns mildly softened by the fact that he would be my escort, he did not much care for any situation that placed me in danger.
I no longer assumed it was his vow that forced this. His affections, like mine, were enough.
That Society would no doubt paint him as my lover, thereby consigning me to the reviled role of inappropriate widow, was a thing we would expect. Such were the inner workings of the gossip mill, and all those who breathed such matters as though starving for oxygen.
As for our unwitting guest, it was decided—with much relish on Zylphia’s part—that Zhànzhàn would remain under watch. She was not to go out, nor receive visitors, and if that seemed rather more like a prison than comfortable, at least she was fed well and given decent company in the form of those I called family.
Soon enough, after a fitful evening’s rest and the flutters of nervousness had been quelled by strong black tea, I was dressed most carefully in such apparel as befitted a widow still required to be in deep mourning. The corset Zylphia wrestled into place was much more rigid than I was accustomed to, and the fit of the jacket and blouse structured to within an inch of my life. The material chosen was crape, of course, for such a cloth was heavy and utterly lacking in luster.
It also smelled musty by nature. No powder would ever take away such stale odors.
My petticoats were all threaded through with black ribbon at the hem, so that were I to step in such a way as to show the ruffles beneath the heavy crape skirt, the gleam of white would be softened by the dreariness of mourning. My hair was tamed and pinned into place, contained by a black net without accessory. Over it, a widow’s cap—the bane of this entire farce. A heavy weeping veil was pinned in place, designed in such a way as to hang over the face and mask the tears every widow would be expected to shed.
I had shed my tears long and hard already, and hunted down the man responsible for my husband’s untimely demise. The tears I had left were for the living.
In the end, while I felt terribly weighted down by the heavy black fabric and the expectations thereof, I did not give in to the need to hide my face. The veil was pulled back, pinned in such a way as to frame my head in a halo of jet black.
It was a style reserved for second mourning, but I’d be bolloxed if I intended to muddle about half-blind from the residue crape shed through wear.
To compliment my appearance would be the very height of impropriety, so Ashmore deferred to our roles and said nothing—though I was certain a wink in his eye belied the seriousness of his features.
We traveled first by coach, and then by hired gondola, each arranged by one of Ashmore’s mysterious and efficient underlings. Once ensconced within the latter, Ashmore’s silence broke. “As inappropriate as it is, all that black makes your hair glow like an Indian ruby.”
I looked down at my unadorned apparel. One hand, gloved as it must be for such matters, patted at the swept-back rolls of my hair. Zylphia had made of the heavy curls a lovely frame for the cap, and the net that confined the rest.
The whole was heavy. I could already feel the tension creeping into my neck.
“It smells awful,” I said flatly. Ashmore’s chuckle muffled behind his own gloved hand. “To think that a woman be confined in this dreadful stuff for three years.”
“Two,” he corrected. He always had kept a keener eye on such things. “And a few months.”
“Close enough as to make no difference.”
He tipped his head, his hair now mostly tamed back with a pomade that gave it an unusual luster. I was so accustomed to seeing him in his ordinary brown togs that I could not quite grasp how I felt about the fit of his gentlemanly attire. To be certain, his trousers fit his long legs very well, and the nature of his gray sack coat—gaining prominence among the wellheeled for its stylishly tailored fit and narrow lapels—lent more than an assumption of elegance. His slender blue necktie, tied into a bow, added to his general appearance of wealth and charm.
He looked a proper gentleman. And handsome.
“Be cautious in how you present yourself,” he warned, adjusting the set of his top hat. This too had seen some alterations in the scarce year since I’d attended functions. It was gray, and not nearly so tall as the prescribed top hat of days past. That it occupied quite a rakish angle was no doubt deliberate.
When the meaning of his warning set in, I offered little more than a harrumph.
His mouth twitched. “You are entirely too young to be mimicking your elders, minx.”
I wrinkled my nose at him. “Regardless of what I do, I shall be marked as a reckless, illmannered widow.”
“Likely.” Ashmore tugged aside the curtain masking the window framed in the space between us. A seam of brighter light than usual peered through. “However, there is a difference between the appearance you wish to give and grave insult to the memory of the late Lord Compton. Be cautious.”
Of course I would.
And yet, my hands balled in my lap. I could think of nothing to say that would moderate his concerns, or my own. Instead, I followed his lead and watched the fog break around us.
After so long away from the raised tiers of London’s gilded heights, the sight that greeted me was almost too blinding.
Our gondolier, skilled but hardly at the level expected of a master, guided the boat to the surface of the drift that tossed and roiled within the canals formed by each raised district. The pinging sound of the engines affixed to the front and rear eased, as though the climb had been a source of strain.
How ironic that a rise to the fresher air above also forced a painful knot of anxiety in my belly.
And with it, that old, familiar demand for something to ease it.
Even acknowledging such a thing within the privacy of my own thoughts was enough to cause my salivary response to increase. I swallowed hard, but my throat began to ache.
I flattened one hand against the structure of my thick corset.
“Cherry.” Ashmore leaned across the narrow divide, his knees bumping my skirts, and covered my hand with his. It was such an intimate gesture that anyone else might have seen more than what it meant.
I was altogether too familiar with my tutor’s antics to think the same.
He worried, and he reminded.
The warmth of his hand seeped into mine, and with it, my resolve to behave as though naught was amiss faded. My mouth turned up into a rueful smile. “I have,” I said softly, a mite uncertainly, “performed in front of jeering crowds. I have hunted quarry in the blackest of night, and traversed the Underground without fear.”
My tutor listened in silence, his eyes lacking the judgment I expected to see in all else above the drift.
His hand, firm against mine, trapping my fingers against the plats of my corset, remained steady.
“And for all I have danced with the very Devil in the darkest places,” I said on a shaking laugh, “I still thirst for a draught to soften my approach.”
“Is it a fit of nerve
s,” Ashmore asked, “or does it revolve around your re-introduction to the Northampton family?”
I closed my eyes. “Is it any difference?”
“Perhaps.” He released my hand to lean forward, cupped my cheek. “You need no draught, minx, only resolution. This, I promise, you will receive.”
Could he promise that it would not hurt to do so?
Because I knew that he could not, that it likely would, I did not ask. Taking a deep breath, I nodded to indicate my effort and forced my attentions to the sights beyond the paned glass.
May sunshine had turned London above to glass and glitter, tracing the manicured foliage allowed to flourish in careful plots and causing the narrow walking bridges spanning each canal to gleam. It was almost one in the afternoon, a decent time for calling.
I could only hope that Lord Piers had arranged matters appropriately.
Chapter Seventeen
Like many young lords of a certain age and temperament, Lord Piers Everard Compton claimed for himself a home away from the estate he would one day inherit. Located in the well-heeled but less grand Eaton Square, it provided a measure of privacy for the young earl that he would not find in the much more exquisitely landed Belgravia.
That the upraised Eat on Square was remarkably close to Fanny’s Little Chelsea home, were one to discount the nature of the climb, was an irony I had not seen fit to think too hard about.
As our gondolier navigated us down the narrow lane that led to the earl’s private town home, I watched as we passed similar structures faced with white stucco. They were remarkably clean, pure as glass with the sun shining down. Only the passing clouds mottled the finery of the display.
When the gondola eased to a halt, and the bump that gently jarred us signified that it had come to a full stop, I flattened both hands against my bosom and took a slow, deliberate breath. “For all intentions, the show must start here.”
Ashmore peered outside the curtain. His humor, framed in the slant of his mouth, echoed in his voice as he noted, “It seems Compton has made sure of his part.”
I did not know exactly what this meant until the door to the coach atop the ferry opened, and Ashmore stepped out to offer a hand to me. As I ducked under the low frame, blinking rapidly to combat the suddenness of the daylight, two rows of servants—three each—sank into bow or curtsy.
In the center, his handsome features wreathed with wretchedly obvious enjoyment, Piers spread wide his arms and said, “My dearest sister, what a delight you are!”
To find myself engulfed in a hug by a man who looked overly much like his late brother was jarring enough. To have his voice low in my ear was the last straw. “I expect a full explanation once inside.”
Under the guise of returning his embrace, I seized the flesh of his side and pinched hard.
Stifling a laughing curse, he abruptly let me go.
“You must be quite exhausted,” Piers said, pitching his voice so that it could be heard. “Come, dear sister. Ah!” He caught himself ere he turned away, offering a hand to Ashmore, who watched in silence. “Ashmore, is it? I was beginning to doubt your existence.”
An outright falsehood, given they had already met—if passingly.
My tutor, once my guardian and much longer accustomed to the mores of this world than I, clasped Piers’s hand in his, offering a short bend as he did. “My Lord Compton.”
“Tosh, none of that,” Piers said lightly. “I get enough of it when I’m among the rest. While here, I implore you both to make yourself comfortable.”
“My dear brother, you are too kind,” I said, smearing the compliment with an overabundance of gratitude.
His eyes, so very much like his brother’s in color, narrowed. Like fog and jade, I always thought. Yet unlike his brother, Lord Piers betrayed a wealth of emotion within his. Severity was never his suit nor his calling, for all he was forced to take the mantle now.
“Come, come,” he said briskly. “There is refreshment waiting.” He led us between the servants, each who uttered a variation of welcome to the countess I did not feel like.
All wore a black band upon the arm, to match that sewn around Piers’s sleeve. The servants would do so until Piers ended his observance. While the constraints for men who mourned were much less stringent, he was as yet unmarried, and so likely mirrored whatever length of mourning as his mother engaged in.
If the marchioness held true to custom, she would be in second mourning now. Unlike myself, who was expected to observe deep mourning for a full year, she would keep to such observance for half of a year. Three months of second mourning was allowed her, wherein she would be expected to entertain callers and make the rounds to those who offered condolences whilst in isolation.
That meant a sharper obstacle, for while she could now visit—and, if she observed proper etiquette, attend social functions—she would see my antics as further affront to the memory of her firstborn.
A butler of thick black hair and a full mustache greeted us at the door. He took Ashmore’s outerwear and hat, and summarily dismissed himself when Piers seemed content to show us the way.
The home he had claimed for himself was not nearly so large as his father’s estate, but much larger than the Cheyne Walk home I had occupied. It was richly appointed, though with a strong masculine hand.
When he finally chose to marry, he would either make of this a place to install a mistress—and I thought of his current girl, Miss Adelaide Turner, who would no doubt earn a great deal of gossip were she to live here—or dispense of it entirely.
Piers commented on this facing or that fixture, speaking easily and with charming accord. Once installed in a parlor whose wealth and color put to shame my current abode, each of us furnished with tea, the façade the earl wore eased.
“There is no doubt there will be gossip on the morrow,” he said, sprawling into his chosen chair with none of the finesse expected of a marquess’s heir. “The question will be how much gossip you wish to accrue.”
Ashmore sipped from his cup, rolled the flavor on his tongue a moment, and then nodded as though satisfied. “You have taken to Oriental teas.”
The earl studied him. “I have.”
“I enjoy them, myself.” Ashmore did not sit, but stood nearest a wide window, framed with heavy drapes of deepest heliotrope. “Have you been gifted the opportunity to appraise the quality of tea made of Kashmiri saffron?”
The earl’s gaze turned to me, one sandy eyebrow arching in deliberate query. “Is he boasting,” Piers asked outright, “or merely curious?”
I spread my hands. “I am not so gifted in such matters to assume either,” I replied, just as forthright as the question demanded. “But I will say that Ashmore is a miraculous creature, fraught with surprises.”
Ashmore allowed this exchange without comment, taking his tea with all apparent interest.
Piers’s mouth hutched at one corner; a faint sign of deep amusement that was so like his brother’s. He braced his elbows upon his knees, cradling his saucer between his hands, and said to my tutor, “I have not, but I do enjoy the saffron tea that I have tasted.”
Ashmore nodded, as though Piers had said something remarkably profound, and said, “I shall ensure you get the opportunity, then. It is a dark shade, similar to these drapes, but with a reddish undercarriage that speaks of deeply rooted flavor.”
Rather much like both men in my company; deeply rooted something or other, anyhow. I leaned slightly towards our host. “He means to make of it a gift. Let him, he enjoys such things.”
“Then I will thank you for the offer,” Piers said graciously. “Yet why am I seized with the feeling that by doing so, I have committed to some great blunder?”
I chuckled, earning a half-smile from the earl. “Because you are wise in the ways of matters beyond Society,” I said ruefully, “and no doubt gifted with a bit of fog-sense of your own.”
“Ah! To business.” Piers set aside his saucer, returning it to the silver tray left for s
uch a thing. The curl plaguing the front of his sand colored hair was the same as his brother’s, inherited from his father by all appearance. Like Ashmore, and most fashionable men, he tamed it with pomade. It seemed slightly longer than when I’d seen him last.
He was due for a trim.
Ashmore, for his part, continued to enjoy his tea, although he focused much of his attentions on us. We had agreed that I would do much of the talking. Lord Piers might not wholly forgive me for my role in his brother’s murder, but he had in turn betrayed my trust to the Veil.
I hoped that we maintained this cautious level of balance from now on.
To that end, I spun for him the tale of the last hours of the Midnight Menagerie, of the vanishing Ferrymen, and of the siblings who maintained one face—until now.
While I had assured Ashmore that I would be careful, I was very much aware of his focus upon me as I glibly avoided such topics as beastmen, alchemy and sorcery.
All Piers needed to know was that the Karakash Veil, in a final bid for power, had made his way above the drift.
A furrow formed between his eyebrows. “What does the Veil intend?”
“I am not sure,” I said, only partially a fib. While we could not be certain what the Veil’s end goal was, we knew ours: capture. I felt it best to leave Piers entirely out of everything else.
It was not that I didn’t trust him. Not so much, anyhow. More that I wished to save him from the burdens such knowledge forced upon one. He had already played witness to a battle of alchemy and sorcery, though I suspected he had been more than a little gone on drink or smoke at the time.
He had not gone out of his way to ask me of such things, and I had carefully avoided the threshold.
“However,” I added, because a strength of purpose was required, “we know that the Veil has allies among the peerage, and that he may be using them for protection and a source of wealth.”
“Wealth,” Ashmore interjected mildly, “that can be utilized in any number of ways.”
“A thin enough motive,” Piers noted.
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