A Lady Unrivaled

by Roseanna M. White

  Kira lowered the magazine, flipped back to the front to see its date—a year ago. Her gaze went unfocused. Who was this woman she served? A celebrity, to pose for adverts? A widow, mourning the loss of her husband? A mother, lost without her child.

  Footsteps.

  Sucking in a breath, Kira replaced the magazine, the letter, the lid onto the box, and slid it back into the drawer even as the doorknob turned. She reached for the clothing still waiting to be put away and was slipping it into its place when the door opened.

  Lady Pratt didn’t let go the handle or come inside. She just lifted her brows and said, “Come on, then. Felicity needs to take a walk and said you ought to join us.”

  Surely the most charming invitation Kira had ever received. She forced a smile and straightened. “Thank you, my lady. I would love a walk.” And some time to ponder where, amidst lost fame and too much grief, Catherine stored her information on the diamonds.

  Felicity was waiting for them at the base of the stairs and led them out into the sun-kissed garden. “The weather has warmed.” She turned her swollen face up toward the sunshine. “Perhaps it will stay so. That would be nice. I like to think that perhaps this little one will be born into sunshine. I always heard stories of how it was raining terribly the day I was born.”

  Lady Pratt smiled—it was the first time Kira had seen her do it, and she nearly tripped over her own feet. How pretty the lady was when she wiped the distemper from her face. Even lovelier than that artist had made her out to be in the magazine. “I was born in the dead of winter. It was snowing, I was told.”

  They both looked to Kira. She let her lips tug up too. “I was born on Easter. The best time of year in Russia, the most joyous. My mamochka always said that I was the perfect celebration of life eternal.”

  “But that’s this weekend!” Felicity linked her arm through Kira’s, smile rivaling the spring day in brightness. “We shall have to celebrate. Isn’t that right, Lady Pratt?”

  Lady Pratt didn’t look quite so enthusiastic about the idea as Felicity.

  Kira shook her head. “It is not quite that soon. Orthodox Easter is a different date than yours, not until April. And of course it varies by year so is not always on my birthday. We have two weeks yet.”

  “Then in two weeks we shall celebrate!”

  Kira grinned at Felicity, happy enough to give her a reason to smile again, something to get excited about, to push the other from her mind. “What do you do here for Easter? I found Paris to be very different from Russia.”

  “Oh.” Lady Pratt waved a hand. “Just church, of course. Simnel cakes, and some people decorate eggs. And a nice dinner, usually, with one’s family.” Her eyes faded. Just like that. “I suppose we will be here for Easter this year. That will be odd.”

  “I saw an Easter parade once.” Felicity pressed a hand to her ribs, on her right side. She didn’t seem to think anything of the action, but Kira frowned. “It was delightful. There was a band, and everyone in their finery. Utterly charming.”

  She would ask her about her ribs, and whether they were paining her, later. Perhaps it was just discomfort from not having gotten enough exercise the past few days. “You have seen nothing until you have seen Easter in Russia. In every village, there is a procession of the icons.”

  “Well, that sounds a bit like a parade.” Felicity’s hand was still at her rib, rubbing in circles.

  “Then . . .” Kira turned her gaze straight ahead now, so that she could see Lady Pratt from the side of her eye. “Then we go to the cemetery. We bring bread and scatter it on the graves of our loved ones who left us behind.”

  The lady’s step slowed. “Bread. Why?”

  “Because it draws the birds. And the birds are symbols to us, reminders of how the souls of those we love are not trapped in the ground with their bones. They have flown to heaven. We leave bread out in the kitchen after someone has died too. Our way of remembering their souls are on that journey—everyone needs bread for a journey.”

  Lady Pratt wrapped her arms around her middle and headed for a little bench tucked under a lattice arch beside a small stone pool. Lord Cayton did have a lovely home—though Kira’s mistress didn’t seem to see much of it as she sat with that unfocused haze over her eyes again. “Why can they not carry us with them?” Her shoulders hunched. “Not, I suppose, that I deserve heaven.”

  “Who does?” Felicity sat too, right there beside the lady. Never stopping to think, apparently, that Lady Pratt might disapprove of sharing a bench with a maid. Though Lady Pratt made no objection, so perhaps Kira was too quick to judge. “I rather thought that was the point of Jesus’s sacrifice.”

  “Nothing in life is so simple as that.” Lady Pratt unwound one arm from about herself and reached up to touch a finger to an unfurling leaf on the vine growing up the lattice. “Perhaps He lived, He died, He rose again—but He still has expectations of us, does He not? That is what all those preachers drone ever on about. What we must do.”

  “My father always said it was like marriage.” There was no room for Kira to sit, and she didn’t want to anyway. She wandered to the half wall of stone and stretched against it. “It takes only a moment to marry someone, but an entire lifetime to have a marriage with them, da? Faith, he says, is like that. It takes but one moment to confess it, and a lifetime to live it out and understand it.”

  The words, her father’s words, came so easily to her lips. Strange, since she hadn’t paused to think of them . . . ever. Certainly not since leaving for the Imperial School, and then for Paris. Faith, she had thought, was just a thread in the tapestry that was life. Woven in, about, throughout, but indistinguishable from all the rest, really. One thing among many. Unimportant on its own.

  Papka would no doubt disagree.

  “It never seemed worth it.” Lady Pratt’s hand fell back to her lap. “So much work, being righteous, and for what? The empty thought of a reward waiting when we die? I should rather have a life worth living now.”

  “In Russia . . .” She paused, not sure they really wanted to hear any more about Russia. But Felicity looked at her with eager eyes, and Lady Pratt . . . Well, Lady Pratt looked at her, anyway. “In Russia, many believe that heaven exists somewhere on earth. That it is . . . trapped, perhaps, beneath this world we know. There is a legend of a city—Kitezh, it’s called.”

  “Kitezh,” Felicity echoed, though her lips formed only awkwardly around the name.

  Kira smiled. “When the Mongols invaded, the city—the holiest city in all the land—was swallowed magically by a lake at the height of the siege, drowning all the Tatars.”

  Lady Pratt snorted. “And its inhabitants too.”

  “Nyet. That is the point of the legend. That the city still lives, under the waters—but only the truest of the faith can see it. On the summer solstice, we still go there. Gather around the lake and listen for the church bells. Hoping, praying that it will resurface.”

  She had believed, once, that it would. Back before her mother died, before she realized how much it cost to dream. Back when she thought anything could happen by sheer will and faith.

  Felicity’s smile was unfettered, even if her eyes still bore the lines of yesterday’s perpetual tears. “Did you ever hear them? The church bells?”

  “Once. When I was seven.” Evgeny had scoffed, had told her it was only the bells of a horse driving by. But Babushka had shushed him, had clasped Kira’s shoulder. Had said, “Of course you heard them, doushenka. Never doubt it.”

  When had she begun to think her brother was right?

  “What are you doing, Lareau?”

  “Hmm?” She froze, straightened, and realized that she’d been stretching out her leg, using the low wall as a barre. Heat rushed her cheeks. “Forgive me, my lady. I . . . I have a knee injury that still bothers me when it is damp. I was stretching it.”

  Felicity finally stopped rubbing her rib. “That was the loveliest stretching I’ve ever seen. As lovely as your walk—you’re so g
raceful, Sophie. I bet you’re a perfect dancer.”

  Lady Pratt’s face didn’t ease—it was a thundercloud obscuring Felicity’s moment of cheer. “A grace wasted on a maid, don’t you think?”

  Kira straightened, blood heating. As if a person could be labeled so quickly—and worse, it applied to Felicity as well.

  But Felicity chuckled. “Oh, milady, you obviously have no idea the fun we have belowstairs. I met my Stew at a dance in the village. Before Lord Cayton hired him on here. Everyone was there, crowded in. Adelaide—she’d just become Lady Cayton then—lent me a dress. It was . . . magical.”

  Her face looked touched by that magic still. As if she were in that moment again, looking out across the crowded ballroom into the eyes of the man she would love. Untouched by the loss that would find her.

  Lady Pratt reached over and touched Felicity’s hand, as softly as she had the newborn leaf. “Perhaps, if we are still here, you and your aunt can arrange some dancing for Lareau’s birthday. Surely someone has an instrument—or . . . or I play a bit. The piano. I am not very good, but . . .”

  Felicity came gently back to the present. “That would be lovely.”

  Kira drew her lip between her teeth. Lord Rushworth had it all wrong—it wasn’t a Russian peasant his sister needed to draw her out of her grief. It was an English one.

  Kira could learn a few things from her too.

  Ella’s mind was awhirl with scents she’d never smelled and stories she’d never heard and colors she was fairly certain she’d never seen. All those books painted an image, with their words, of a world that seemed so far from hers. A strange thing to contemplate as she stood dressed for tea, ready to walk to the village that may be the epitome of English villages.

  Or she would have been ready if there weren’t a duchess standing in her way. Focused on imagining a jungle path before her, Ella had nearly plowed into Brook.

  “You really needn’t take tea in the village again, Ella.” Brook steadied her with a smile, her eyes quick as always to note that Ella wore walking shoes and had her handbag in hand. “I promise I will do my utmost to keep from running out on you if you want to join me here instead.”

  Ella chuckled, since Brook had yet to make it through a meal since the disaster at Anlic Manor. “Forgive me if I doubt your success, just now. But it’s not that. I got in the habit of going to a tea room in Brighton over the winter, to give Brice and Rowena some time to themselves, and Mama usually took it with a friend in town while I was there. I got rather fond of the solitary time to attend my correspondence. Unless you mind?”

  By way of answer, Brook stepped out of her way. “I begrudge no one their independence, as you well know. But do take the car. Or the little carriage. I don’t like you walking alone given the undesirables in the neighborhood.”

  “On a day like today?” Ella waved a hand and stepped toward the door. “It’s far too lovely. I need the walk as much as the tea.”

  “I don’t like it. Do you at least have a weapon?”

  Ella sighed. “Brook, it is a well-traveled road. And I shan’t leave it—I promise you. I will be in no more danger than I would be with a loaded weapon that I am not comfortable wielding.”

  Brook didn’t so much sigh as grumble. “Stubborn girl. Let my father walk you, then—he offered.”

  Ella sighed. She had no objection to a promenade with Whitby, but . . . “Where is he?”

  “Outside, waiting to intercept you if you tried to slip away.” With a grin, Brook stepped out of the way. “Have a good afternoon, Ella—and don’t walk back without Papa, either.”

  There was no point in arguing. Ella hurried through the grand front doors of Ralin Castle, down the stone steps, and all but skipped her way along the gravel drive. This was a day that made one forget it had been raining so recently—and that the rain had washed away the soil and revealed horrors. This was a day that made one think happy thoughts like Cayton will take a walk with me again tomorrow and I can pretend, for now, that it’s real.

  “You don’t fool me for an instant, you know. And frankly, I’m shocked you’ve fooled Brook.”

  Ella grinned and looked over to find Whitby emerging from the lawn. He fell into step beside her with a lifted brow.

  Ella attempted to match his expression, though she suspected she didn’t wear it so well. “How have I fooled Brook?”

  The brow lifted a little more. “You are not simply walking to the village for tea.”

  A warm, painfully tender pressure squeezed her chest. It had been too long since she’d had a father give her that look. Mama tried to keep her in line, it was true, but Ella had always been Papa’s little girl. Which meant he had always known when she was out in search of mischief.

  Much, apparently, like Whitby did. Though to be sure, her mischief was far subtler than what Brook had done. “As a matter of fact, Whit, I am simply going for tea.” She gestured toward the road and the village. And was even quite sure that she’d head the right way, there being only two choices. “And please don’t launch into a lecture about carrying a weapon with me, like your daughter just did.”

  Whitby shook his head and kept pace beside her. “Not I. And you may in fact be going to tea, but I sincerely doubt you’re taking it alone. And since tea rooms are generally heralded as acceptable meeting places for young ladies and any acquaintance with whom they desire to meet, I don’t understand why you feel the necessity to be sneaky about it.”

  “Because it’s so much more fun to pretend I’m mysterious.” And, really, she had no idea if Catherine would join her for tea. She’d sent an invitation home with Cayton that morning, but she hadn’t heard anything back. “And I most likely will be alone, unless I run into someone there.”

  Whitby snorted. “‘Run into someone,’ she says. We both know who that someone is.”

  “We do?” Well, that was baffling. How in the world would Whitby have figured out that she was meeting with Catherine?

  He sighed and released his hands from their habitual holding place, clasped behind his back. Apparently so he could reach over and nab hers, then draw it through the crook of his elbow and set it upon his forearm.

  She used to walk with Papa like this, too, around Midwynd’s gardens. It had always made her feel so grown up.

  She was grown up now. But with no father to look at her like this, with concern and affection all jumbled together.

  How blessed she was, though, to have a friend who would lend her a father for such occasions.

  “Ella,” he said. Softly, slowly. “I know Brook has her issues with him, and perhaps that’s why you feel you must act this way. I like Cayton quite well these days, but—if he’s going to court you, it needs to be in the open. You shouldn’t be sneaking off to meet him.”

  “Cayton!” She didn’t know whether to blush or to laugh. “I’m not meeting Cayton.” Though to be sure, she wasn’t eager to confess to Brook the faux suit that she wished was real.

  Whitby’s expression didn’t change. “Did you know that my niece snuck off to meet him when she was in Yorkshire? At my house, under my very nose? And I didn’t realize. I’m shamed to admit it.”

  And he certainly knew how to make her happy heart stumble. “Brook mentioned it. But I’m not meeting Cayton.”

  “She would take the governess’s cart, say she was going into Eden Dale for tea. Her mother thought nothing of it, so why should I have?” Whitby shook his head. “Cayton and I had a bit of a chat about that once I figured it out, I can assure you. I never imagined I’d have to have the same chat, again, over you.”

  Though really, it was rather amusing that he just assumed she and Cayton were . . . she and Cayton. If only they were, for more than pretend. Ella pressed her lips against a smile. “You needn’t have that chat, I assure you. The only place I sneak about with Cayton is in the garden at Ralin, and that is hardly sneaking, given that anyone who cares to look can see us.” Including, hopefully, whomever Rushworth was paying to watch them.
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br />   Whitby’s glare shifted, turned questioning. “I did see you, as a matter of fact. Yesterday, and again this morning. Hence my deduction as to this.” He waved at the road.

  Ella gave his arm a squeeze. Perhaps she ought to begin calling him Uncle Whit, since he gave her the same treatment as he did his nieces. That was a lovely thought. “What you saw was playacting. Rushworth is watching us and seems to think Cayton can get the Fire Eyes from me.”

  “From you?”

  What did the men talk about all day? “I apparently, quite by accident, borrowed them from Brice and Rowena. They’re in Stafford’s safe now.” She cast a glance over her shoulder, back to the castle. “Don’t tell Brook quite yet, will you? She is so overwrought just now. . . .”

  He grunted again. “Don’t tell her you have the diamonds, or don’t tell her Cayton’s courting you?”

  “Pretending to.”

  “Hmm.” He led her around a pothole. “Does he have people watching you in the tea room too?”

  Laughter slipped out. “I am not meeting Cayton! I’m meeting Catherine.”

  His stride hitched, nearly stopped, stumbled on. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Catherine. I’m meeting Catherine, Whit.”

  He said nothing. Just led her on. Around a bend, up a knoll, back down it. And still said nothing. Until Anlic Manor came into view and he finally looked at her again and asked, “Why?”

  He had taken so long to frame a one-word question that it seemed only fitting she give her many-worded answer some thought too. Though not quite that long of a thought. “Because she needs to see that the world is more than she thought it. And I can’t shake the feeling that I’m to help her.”

  “Oh, Ella.” He patted her hand. “That is a big task. The Rushworths . . . they have always been what they are, the whole family. Brook thought she could be a friend to her once too. But look how that turned out.”

  And Rowena had thought the same. But Ella wasn’t blind to the truth like Brook had been, or searching for common ground like Rowena. “I don’t mean to accomplish anything on my own. I just mean to follow the Lord’s guidance.”