Mad Miss Mimic

by Sarah Henstra

  But it was the necklace that really drew all eyes to me. Regal, exotic, imperial—it lent a deeper bronze to my coiled hair and a paler pearl sheen to my skin. Warmed by my pulse it seemed to cast a glow all round my body.

  A butler in a braid-trimmed velvet coat placed a flute of champagne in my hand, and from the corner of my eye I watched how my throat lengthened under the glittering choker as I swallowed the fizzing liquid.

  Mr. Thornfax must have been watching, too, for his gaze grew intent, and he bent toward me. “You are absolutely splendid,” he whispered. His warm breath on my ear sent a shiver across my skin.

  I saw myself reflected not just in the mirrors but in the eyes of the other ladies—envious and admiring—and in the eyes of the men, hungry and restless. And Mimic, although she did not speak, began to play the role. Which role? I hardly knew—I would not have been able to describe it. I was not a flirt or a seductress, certainly not a world-weary courtesan. But neither was I an innocent, tongue-tied maid.

  I blushed and smiled and pressed Mr. Thornfax’s arm as I’d been doing since our entrance twenty minutes before. But Mimic now made small adjustments: my tongue darted out to moisten my lips, and my lips remained parted ever so slightly. My bosom swelled above my bodice when I breathed. Mr. Thornfax murmured a joke to me, and I gave a husky laugh that drew keen glances from several gentlemen nearby.

  Mr. Thornfax led me over to an elderly man with a trim white beard and pince-nez glasses. “May I introduce my father,” he said. “Mr. Charles Thornfax, the Lord Rosbury.”

  I gave my hand, and the old man took it stiffly but kept his eyes on his son. “Another bright ornament for your arm, I see,” he said.

  Mr. Thornfax cleared his throat. “This is Miss Leonora Somerville,” he said. “I believe you are acquainted with her aunt, the Countess of Hastings.”

  A cold bark of laughter. “Emmaline doesn’t know you, obviously, or this child wouldn’t be anywhere near your reach.”

  After my cousin Archie’s badgering of Mr. Thornfax at our party, I had listened at Hastings for snippets about the troubled relationship between father and son. Lord Rosbury’s hard-won fortune in the cotton mills of the North. His late marriage, his heartbreak at his wife’s death, his retreat into London politics while his young son grew up under the care of paid staff. His bitter outrage at Mr. Thornfax’s refusal to take over management of the mills. As Daniel had explained it to Christa, “Six years as a seaman and Thornfax has quadrupled what his father made in a lifetime. But to the old man he’ll only ever be a disappointment.”

  Now Lord Rosbury clucked his tongue and reached out to pat my hand where it rested in the crook of Mr. Thornfax’s arm. “Enjoy him while you may, my dear. He’ll run right off to sea again, soon enough.”

  Mr. Thornfax stiffened. A tremor of fury racked his muscles under my fingers.

  Fearing violence, I angled my body between the two men. Mimic did not break her silence. But she did step forward, stand on tiptoe, and kiss the old man on the cheek, leaning into him and lingering to leave a soft sigh in his whiskers.

  Caught off guard, Lord Rosbury had to steady himself against my shoulder, and a bright point of colour appeared in the centre of each sunken cheek. “Well, well,” he muttered, looking at the floor. “The Lady Hastings’s niece, indeed.”

  Mr. Thornfax wheeled me away without further comment, but his snort of suppressed mirth rang like applause in my ears.

  We found Christa and climbed the stairs to the second balcony. Mr. Thornfax steered us across the gallery and through the curtained doorway into his private box. More champagne waited for us in a silver bucket, and lavish bouquets of tulips and narcissi fragranced the air. As soon as we were seated Christabel opened the strings of her reticule, fished out a tiny bottle, and added a splash of laudanum to her champagne glass.

  “Are you ill?” I whispered to her.

  “I shan’t be, now,” she replied, and lifted the glass to her lips.

  We hardly had time to take out our little opera glasses before the curtain rose and the music began. Fortunately for my sister the auditorium lights were not lowered for performances in London as, my aunt Emma had once informed me, was the modern practice in New York, and so Christa could continue to scan the crowd below us and in the galleries opposite once the show began.

  I had never seen La Sonnambula, and of course I could not understand the Italian. The story, so far as I could glean from gesture and music alone, concerned a betrothed couple, their jealous ex-lovers, a long-lost son, and a phantom come to haunt the village. The young soprano playing the lead role was new to London, and her slim figure belied the warm, robust timbre of her voice. The soaring notes of her aria made my heart swell and my throat ache. I pressed my fingers over my lips, half-afraid Mimic would decide to sing along.

  Mr. Thornfax’s low voice at my ear broke into my absorption. “A man might have worried that a mutemouth wife would appear simple or dull,” he teased. “Have you any idea how perfect you are? I saw how you managed my father back there. The poor old man couldn’t decide whether you were an empress or a glad-girl. I do believe you could play either role just as well, if I asked you.”

  It was a shocking thing to say. But Mr. Thornfax was only speaking the truth, as usual—and it was a truth Mimic had already guessed. I was playing neither an innocent nor a whore but someone exotic, someone unguessable. I was a mystery. Borne along by the voluptuous chords onstage, with half of London watching me and Mr. Thornfax’s impetuous words still echoing in my head, I found myself stirring, growing ever warmer and more languid in my body. Was this Mimic’s pleasure or mine? I couldn’t tell.

  At the interval there was more smiling and hand-pressing. We never made it out of our box; a parade of guests pressed in behind and beside and all round us. Christabel and I were introduced to scores of ladies and gentlemen, so many that I would never remember who was whom. It didn’t matter. I was giddy with champagne, and Mimic was aglow in her role, and Mr. Thornfax was utterly enchanted by her, by me. He sat back in his seat, shaking his head and smiling in mock exasperation at the attention showered upon me. He touched my necklace’s little clasp as if to check whether it was secure, and then he let his fingertip stroke the downy skin at my nape, laughing aloud when I gasped and shivered.

  I have him now, I found myself thinking. ’Tis a triumph. A conquest. Right now he would give me anything I wanted.

  Despite his attentions to me, Mr. Thornfax never for a moment overlooked my sister. “I daresay, Christabel, Dewhurst was a fool to let you come alone,” he said. “The eyes of every bachelor and every unhappily married man are fixed on you.”

  Christa fluttered her fan at him. “Isn’t he awful?” She giggled to the ladies next to her. “Isn’t he cruel?” Her medicine had evidently warded off her headache. My sister was beside herself with delight.

  Finally we settled into our seats once more, and a group of villagers took the stage to profess the tragic innocence of the soprano. Then their cries of alarm conveyed her sudden peril: the sleepwalking heroine was crossing a high bridge, her eyes closed and her voice dreamy and detached.

  Up in Mr. Thornfax’s box, thirst began to dry my tongue. Weariness crept over me despite the suspense onstage. Perhaps Mr. Thornfax would give me anything I wanted, I considered. But I hadn’t the faintest idea what that might be. I glanced at his broad hand resting on his knee and caught myself comparing it to Tom Rampling’s pale, quick-fingered hand. It made me feel disloyal, but then I could not decide whether the guilt was for Tom or for Mr. Thornfax. Self-consciousness knifed a gulf between Mimic, winning and pliant, and the shrinking, uncomfortable girl who hid within. I wondered, suddenly glum, whether the second half of the opera would go on as long as the first.

  A shout drew our attention to the gallery opposite us. I thought I saw young Will darting behind an empty seat. It made no sense—a street boy at the opera!—but here came an usher hurrying after him. The man waved for help from another usher
and, half-crouching in the aisle, gestured apologies as he scanned the rows for the boy. I spied Will again, a white face and a woollen cap ducking along the railings.

  My first thought was that he must be searching for us, that there must be some emergency at home. Next I thought of Tom. Did he know that Will was here? My surprise and befuddlement at seeing the little boy so far from home, looking so small and so out of place in his frayed breeches and bare feet, drew me fully to standing.

  Suddenly there was a great flash of blinding white light and a roar that shook the seats beneath us.

  TEN

  Iremember how I kept looking over at the stage. I cannot recall how long it took the orchestra to stop playing— the music could not have been heard over the din in any case. The actors all tumbled forward like marionettes with cut strings, trying see out into the gallery. Maybe I was still feeling the after-effects of Mimic’s wordless performance, or maybe it was the shock, but I remember how wrong it seemed to me that the show stopped and yet the curtain didn’t come down. Play on, I remember thinking, or else retire to the wings! It was awful to see the players no longer controlling the show.

  The show had shifted from stage to audience, only now the action was all too real. I was thrown sideways, and Mr. Thornfax caught me in his arms. Through the haze past his shoulder I saw a crack open in the opposite balcony’s gilt façade. Screams chorused across the theatre as patrons felt the tremors and fled their seats. The crack gaped wider and vanished behind a cascade of plaster. I watched, mesmerized with terror, as the entire second-tier balcony lurched and tilted. People on that side began to shove each other and climb over the backs of seats. A lady’s feathered hat somehow flew free of the melee and sailed, with a perverse sense of cheer, over the railing into the dust-choked space below.

  Then a dreadful tearing sound filled my ears, and a section of seats broke entirely away. Mr. Thornfax disentangled himself from me and leaned forward for a clearer view. Beside me Christabel shrieked, “The Lord Rosbury!” and I, too, spied the frail form of Mr. Thornfax’s father amid the scrambling throng on the balcony. I watched him reach up his arms, twiglike wrists extending from the sleeves, and grab on to a young man standing beside him. Lord Rosbury was half-lifted out of his seat as the man attempted to pull away. As the balcony tipped farther the two men tumbled sideways. They slid across the floor, slammed into the railing, and disappeared into the chaos below.

  Something struck my leg. I turned to see Christa collapsed on the floor beside her seat. Mr. Thornfax rushed to the hall to catch an usher, and the two men half-carried my sister from the box. I snatched up our things and followed, keeping as close as I could through the panicked hive of the gallery.

  All this time I searched and searched for a sight of young Will. I knew with horrified certainty that the blast had occurred directly where he’d been hidden. And yet my stubborn mind refused to grasp the fact of the boy’s death. I kept telling myself, in all the fevered crush of movement and noise, that if I could only glimpse Will, if I could only find him here somewhere, then he would be safe. I craned to see over the swarm of dusty hats and dishevelled hair. My knees struck a marble bench and I stood atop it to scan the crowd. In my distraction I nearly lost Mr. Thornfax as he shouldered on ahead. I had to force myself to get down and push my way closer to him. In those first stunned moments I think I really believed I could conjure the little boy back to life.

  Mr. Thornfax veered away from the crush of fleeing patrons and led us to a service door. Curtis, waiting outside with the carriage, jumped down to help him put Christabel across the seat.

  “Care for your sister,” Mr. Thornfax said, pressing my hand. “I must help here where I can.” The orders he gave Curtis were drowned out by the sobs Christa unleashed as soon as she and I were alone.

  It took everything I had to calm my sister’s hysterics on the way home. She seemed not to mind Mimic’s use of our old nurse Mrs. Dawson saying, “There, now. There, now,” as I held her and stroked her hair. I could barely support her up the stairs of Hastings House, and the servants who rushed to take her from my embrace were so occupied with her care that they left me quite alone.

  I stood for several minutes there in our dark foyer, light-headed and sick, struggling to breathe. Mr. Thornfax’s necklace bit at my throat like a garrote. I wrestled with its clasps, and when I finally had the thing in my hand it seemed to weigh fifty pounds. I avoided my reflection in the hall mirror.

  Daniel intercepted me on the stairs. “Are you all right?”

  The world cracked open, I thought. People fell to their deaths. “Yes,” I managed.

  “Less rattled than poor Mrs. Dewhurst, I’ll wager.” He held my hands and turned me this way and that, checking for damage. His gaze lingered upon the jewelled chain wrapped round my fingers. He made no remark except to mumble, “He might at least have brought you home himself.”

  “The L-Lord Rosbury was there,” I told him. “He ... h-his s-seat …” It was impossible to put words to what I’d seen.

  “Ah.” My brother-in-law shook his head. “Of course, then, Mr. Thornfax would have needed to stay behind. A great loss for him.”

  “Young Will, t-too.” My voice wobbled. “F-from your surgery.”

  Daniel frowned. “You’ve had a shock, Leonora. You were mistaken.”

  “But I s-saw—”

  “No.” He composed his face into a smile and put a hand on my back. “No one from Hastings House was there except you and Christabel.”

  Will was caught! A wild flare of hope. My brother-in-law must mean that Will was caught thieving and carted off before the blast, and Daniel punished him and sent him to bed, and he only wishes now to keep the matter quiet. But even as I thought it, the impossibility of it pressed against my skull. A thudding pain struck up behind my eyes and across the back of my head.

  Daniel puffed a little as we climbed the stairs together. “And Leonora, I would caution you about being too soft with the street urchins I employ. ’Tis different here than in the country. Servants are not family, and these foundlings are not even proper servants.” He patted my shoulder. “I shall have a nostrum sent up to your room, in case your sleep is troubled tonight.”

  Alone in my bed I lay for a long while in a kind of shivering shock. I must have dozed off, because I started awake again at the sound of voices in the doorway.

  “Miss Somerville,” Tom said. The fine bones of his face seemed to shift and shrink in the flickering light of the oil lamp he held.

  “I tried to stop him, miss!” Bess clutched her coat together over her nightdress, her mussed hair spilling from her cap. “He broke the lock on my door!”

  “I didn’t break it, Bess. You’ll find it in perfect working order. What was I to do? You wouldn’t want everyone roused by knocking.”

  A first-rate lockpick and thief. I sat up and struggled to free my legs from the coverlet. “B-bring my dressing gown,” I told Bess.

  “Miss, you mustn’t receive him here!”

  “Milady, only if you’re well enough. Are you? They said—they told me you appeared unhurt—” Tom choked the words off.

  Bess held the gown like a screen while I threaded my arms into the sleeves. Not knowing how else to proceed I pulled Tom into the hall and closed the bedroom door behind me, leaving Bess inside. “What is it?”

  His hand hovered at my waist and then dropped, the knuckles clenched white against his thigh. “Miss Somerville, I must know. Did you see him? Young Will, the boy from Seven Dials.”

  Young Will. The evening’s events rushed back upon me all in a blow.

  Tom swallowed hard. “Did he … did you see if he got away?”

  How did Tom know the boy had been at the opera house tonight? It took me a moment to find my voice. “He was s-standing right there, d-directly in the b-b—” I could not say blast, but no other words were possible, either, to describe the terrible roar of light and dust that had filled the gallery.

  Tom sagged against the doo
r. He gave a small, strangled moan. His face bore such a look of sorrowful regret that a sudden thought struck me cold with horror. Will had been wandering that crowd of opulence and finery on an errand of thievery. He’d been pocket-picking again for Tom Rampling.

  “You were painted in quite the gallant colours.”

  Mr. Thornfax’s smooth baritone jerked Tom to attention, straight as a poker against the wall. His head swivelled wildly. When he discovered we were still alone in the hallway, he gaped at me. “What?”

  “You are cleverer than is strictly necessary, I think.” I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to think, trying to banish Mimic.

  “You’ve had a shock tonight, milady. I am glad you were not hurt, at least.”

  “You would do all our jobs for us, if we let you,” said Mimic-as-Thornfax.

  “It’s all right. I’ll fetch Bess for you.” Tom reached for the door handle.

  “You s-sent him,” I choked out, in my own voice at last.

  Tom’s eyes widened.

  “Will. He stole for you. P-pocket watches. You sent him!”

  He reeled back as though I’d struck him. “No!”

  “Then w-why do you look so g-guilty?” Tears blinded me and I scrubbed them angrily from my eyes.

  “Because I failed him.” He shook his head again, as if trying to dislodge something painful. “I failed him, and that amounts to the same thing.” Before I could reply he wrenched away from me and tore down the stairs.

  This time sleep would not arrive. The facts seemed dreadful to me. I could separate nothing clearly, save this: a little boy was dead. My brother-in-law was quite right, of course. Little boys died all the time in London—little girls, too—and were neither mourned nor remembered. The workhouses and paupers’ asylums overflowed with children like Will, orphaned or abandoned by destitute parents. They survived only by begging and tramping. Or they gathered into gangs, living in makeshift criminal “families” with the likes of Mr. Sears and Mrs. Clampitt. Wherever they went, their little lives hung on a hair.