by P. B. Ryan
“He’s incredibly distraught. He speaks of her as if she were just this sweet young girl, but the newspapers paint her as a monster.”
“I know.” Emily handed Nell her glass of sherry; Nell took a sip and gave it back. “All I can say is I...took to her. She wasn’t afraid to let her personality show, which set her apart from most domestic servants—especially my parents’—and she had ambition. Did you know she wanted to open a notions shop?”
“Brady mentioned that.”
“We got along,” Emily said as she swirled the sherry in its glass. “We confided in each other. I was just so grateful to have someone in this house I could talk to.”
“You’ll forgive me if it seems a little strange that a lady of your station would befriend a chambermaid.”
“‘A lady of my station,’” Emily chuckled. “Ah, yes, I’m such an exalted creature.” She fell silent for a minute. “One thing I learned from my travels is that we’re all very much alike under the skin—and that those systems that divide us and keep us separate are entirely artificial. I’ve learned to trust my instincts above all. And my instincts told me that Fiona Gannon was worthy of my friendship.” More gravely, she added, “Perhaps my instincts misled me, but I still don’t regret having followed them. The one thing I liked about H.P.B., the only thing, really, was her egalitarianism. She told us about having made friends with a servant’s child when she was young. So had I—the daughter of our cook.”
“How did your parents react to that?” Nell asked.
“They fired the cook.” Emily sipped her sherry and handed it back to Nell. “Do you wonder why I couldn’t wait to get away from here? The moment the war was over, it was all I could think about.”
“If you thought so little of Madame Blavatsky,” Nell asked, “why did you travel with her?”
“It all came back to Aunt Vera. My parents had insisted on an older companion, of course, although I would have much preferred to be on my own. But they were paying for the trip—a yearlong tour of Europe isn’t cheap—so I had no choice but to play by their rules. And I’d always gotten along better with Vera than anyone else in the family. But she was the worst traveling companion imaginable. She hated foreign cities, she hated foreign food, she hated foreigners. She got sick on ships, she got sick on trains... She wanted to come home. She whined, she begged, she wept. She was on the verge of cabling my parents and asking to cut the trip short when we went to Italy and met H.P.B.”
“Ah.”
“Vera fell under her spell within minutes of meeting her—swallowed all that Theosophy humbug without question. But that’s how Vera is, you know—meek, impressionable...utterly in the thrall of stronger personalities. She arranged for us to travel with H.P.B. and her various hangers-on, and she talked Father into paying for it. It’s hard to believe those two are brother and sister, they’re so different, but somehow, she always seems to know what to say to him.”
“She must have been very persuasive, to have convinced him to let you travel so far, for such a long time.”
“She was highly motivated,” Emily said. “Aunt Vera revered H.P.B., even after she told us about the boy she killed.”
Nell stared at Emily, not sure she’d heard right.
Emily leaned toward Nell, eyes glinting as if she were about to impart a succulent bit of gossip. “It happened when H.P.B. was a child in Russia. She was rich and spoiled, and apparently quite the handful. Her parents had her exorcised regularly.”
“Exorcised?”
“The family servants swore that she wielded a special power over the russalki. Those are Russian river nymphs—the spirits of young women who’ve drowned. H.P.B. told us over dinner one evening that when she was four years old, she took a dislike to a serf boy who’d been pestering her. She ordered the russalki to tickle him to death.”
“And you believed that?”
“Oh, heavens no, I thought it was just another of her tall tales—until we went to her hometown in Russia. I asked around and discovered that a boy was found drowned in the river on her family’s estate when she was four, and that everyone knew she was responsible. But her father was a man of influence, and Helena was already widely feared, so she got away with it. What she told us was that she felt invincible after killing that boy. She said others could learn to harness the powers of the spirits and demons, but that it took a great deal of faith and discipline—and that the word ‘disciple’ came from the word ‘discipline.’ I gave her a wide berth after that, but Vera didn’t seem at all put off. Of course, she worshipped H.P.B. She probably convinced herself it wasn’t true, that her idol could never have done something like that.”
Nell said, “I’m surprised you were willing to travel with this lady after that.”
“It was the only way I could remain overseas.” Emily expelled a plume of fragrant smoke, which drifted off into the night. “So that’s how I got to spend four years traveling the world. It was...indescribable. I felt so free, so...challenged.”
“But then your father stopped sending money last February,” Nell said.
“They’d hoped I’d find a husband overseas, someone with a pedigree who’d be willing to put up with the likes of me so long as he could get his hands on a chunk of the Pratt fortune. After four years, they finally figured out that wasn’t going to happen, and that’s when they cut off the purse strings. Coming home was like entering a prison. Vera, bless her biddable little heart, is the only person in this entire house I can talk to. An odd stick she may be, but she’s a good listener.” Emily glanced at the house and lowered her voice. “The joke’s on my parents, though, because I’m taking ship at the end of the month.”
“You are?”
“I’ve booked passage with Cunard to Liverpool. I sail on the twenty-sixth.”
“Your parents don’t know?”
Emily shook her head as she stubbed her cigarette out on the empty candy dish in her lap. “I’ll tell them at the last minute. That way, they can’t scheme to keep me home.”
“Will your Aunt Vera be coming with you?”
“No, and believe me...” Emily frowned, looked away pensively. “No. She won’t be coming. I’ve had enough of H.P.B. to last a lifetime—several lifetimes.”
Nell was trying to figure out how to ask the indelicate question of where the money for this voyage was coming from, when Emily said, “How old do you suppose Dr. Foster is?”
It took Nell took a moment to react to the conversational detour. “No more than forty, I should think. Perhaps as young as thirty-five. Why do you ask?”
Emily shrugged as she slid another cigarette from the case.
“Your mother seemed pleased by his interest in you,” Nell said. “His and Martin’s.”
Emily snorted with amusement as she lit her cigarette. “I grew up with Martin. We’re the same age, and we always had lots to talk about. But can you honestly picture me as the wife of a minister?”
“No, I suppose not.” Nell smiled. “But what about Isaac Foster?”
“If I were willing to marry and give away all my rights and freedom and money, I suppose he’d be as likely a candidate as anyone. But I’m not like Cecilia. All I can think about is traveling and writing about traveling—and perhaps even getting some of my pieces published. All Cecilia can think about is pretty baubles. She’d barter away her very soul for a rock if it glittered brightly enough. She’s got diamonds and rubies from Harry, baroque pearls from Jack Thorpe—he was her first fiancé, the one who died—and sapphires from the second one, Felix Brudermann.”
“The Austrian?”
Emily nodded. “A lady is supposed to give the jewels back when the engagement ends, but Cecilia held on to all of it—even those sapphires, which had been in Felix’s family for generations. He’d spent every penny he had putting them into new settings for her.”
“Every penny? I’d heard he was a nobleman.”
Emily reached over to take the glass of sherry back from Nell. “There’s nobility
and then there’s nobility. We Americans tend to assume that anyone with a title is rich and powerful and refined, but if you spend a little time in Europe, you realize that’s just not so. Take Felix. His full name is Felix Jaeger Ritter von Brudermann. Sounds impressive, but the truth is, he’s just the penniless youngest son of a...well, it’s the Austrian equivalent of a knight or a baronet. He has nothing—no land, no education, no trade, and not the remotest hint of a personality. He’s handsome as sin—that’s about all he’s got going for him.”
“It didn’t bother Cecilia that he was poor?” Nell asked.
“Why should it? When she marries, whomever she marries, she’s to receive a ridiculously huge dowry, a lavish trousseau, a five-thousand-dollar wedding gown from Worth, a chateau in the Back Bay, complete with furnishings and staff, a Landau with horses, a six-month European honeymoon... All of which, including Cecilia herself, will be under the legal control of her husband upon her marriage. Felix was nothing more than a gold digger. My father knew it—he’s no fool. It took over a year for him to agree to the marriage.”
“It sounds as if Felix would have come out way ahead on the deal,” Nell said.
“Not by Cecilia’s standards. When she was preparing to announce her engagement, she informed everyone that, after her marriage, she was to be referred to as Lady Brudermann, in the British tradition.”
“But she was marrying an Austrian.”
“A niggling detail. She insisted she was going to be a baronetess—which is actually a lady who holds a baronetcy in her own right, but she had no interest in hearing that. Oh, and Felix was to be called Sir Felix.”
“Good Lord.”
“She had the Brudermann coat of arms put on rings, brooches, writing paper, wax seals, sheets, towels, handkerchiefs...let’s see...tablecloths, napkins, sterling flatware...oh, and four dozen place settings of custom Meissen china. The day she broke it off with Felix, she came out here with the china and a sledgehammer and smashed it all to bits.”
“Why?” Nell asked. “I mean, why did she break it off, not why did she smash the china.”
“Because even a grasping, shallow creature like Cecilia has her pride. Once it came out about Felix and Mrs. Kimball, she was fit to be—”
“Felix and Mrs. Kimball?” Nell sat upright. “When did this happen?”
“The affair?” Emily shrugged. “I gather it had been ongoing for some time. The rather dramatic—or shall I say melodramatic—disclosure of it to all of Boston society occurred the evening of my parents’ annual ball, not half an hour after the official announcement of Cecilia and Felix’s engagement.”
“That’s when Mrs. Kimball showed up, I take it.”
“Oh, you should have been there. How deliciously scandalous. She strutted in wearing the most ostentatious gown you’ve ever seen and swept through the ballroom like the belle of the plantation. I had no idea who she was at first. Half the men were trying to squirm out her line of vision lest she greet them a bit too familiarly, especially the married men. Thurston was with her. I understand they were hardly ever seen apart.”
“Were they lovers?” Nell asked.
Emily looked at her for a moment, then burst out laughing. “Oh, my dear, no. He’s a Molly-boy—a real flamer.”
It took Nell a moment. “Oh, you mean...a sheelah.” It was what Duncan had called them.
“I never heard that one.”
“I think it might be Irish.”
“Sheelah...hm...” Emily puffed contemplatively on her cigarette. “I really did admire her panache. And her nerve. And the fact that she didn’t care one little tiny bit what any of those stuffy goldfinches thought of her. She’d set out to create an uproar, and that’s just what she did. Cecilia was upset because she’d gotten lavished with congratulations and so forth after the engagement announcement, and then suddenly no one was paying attention to her anymore—it was all about Virginia Kimball. That was bad enough, but then Mrs. Kimball walked right up to Felix, never mind that Cecilia and I and a number of other people were all standing ‘round, and said something like...” Emily cleared her throat and, in a rather poor attempt at a southern accent, said, “‘Felix, dear boy. You left your pocket watch on my dressing table the other day. I would have brought it if I’d known I was going to see you.’”
“She didn’t.”
“She most assuredly did. The whispers began immediately. It was like this...hiss of insects floating in a wave from one end of the ballroom to the other. Cecilia was apoplectic, of course. Felix denied and denied and denied, but his face was purple, and you just knew he was lying. I never laughed so hard in my life.”
Emily handed the glass back to Nell, but it was empty. Nell took it and set it on a little iron table between the two chairs.
“Cecilia broke it off with Felix right after that. I don’t think she would have really minded so much about him and Mrs. Kimball if he’d only kept it under wraps, but being humiliated like that in front the whole world—well, her whole world... It was more than she could bear. She was screaming, weeping... Harry comforted her. He must have done a workmanlike job of it, because from that moment on, they were an item.”
“How did Felix take it?” Nell asked.
“He was inconsolable for a couple of weeks. He’d wasted fifteen months, and the family sapphires, wooing an heiress—and her father—only to have it all blow up in his face, thanks to the bit of goods he’d been riding on the side. He came ‘round to the house quite a bit at first, still denying and denying, but Cecilia held firm, and finally he seemed to get the picture. But the past two nights, he’s shown up here raving about how Cecilia should take him back now that Mrs. Kimball is dead.”
“He actually said that?”
“Did I mention he’s something of a mutton-head? He seems to think her death has wiped the slate clean. Cecilia, needless to say, begs to differ. The footmen throw him out, but it takes three or four of them.” Emily crushed out her cigarette.
“Brady told me that Fiona went to work for Mrs. Kimball around the beginning of May,” Nell said. “He said you got her that job.”
Emily closed her eyes, seeming to sink into the chair. “Did you ever do something with such devastating repercussions that you would have given anything—a year of your life, ten years—if only you could take it back?”
“Yes,” Nell said, thinking of her marriage to Duncan.
“I did suggest to Fiona that she go to work for Mrs. Kimball, and I wrote a letter of reference for her. I’m as responsible for that lady’s death as if it had been I who’d pulled the trigger and not Fiona.”
Leaving aside for the moment the question of Fiona’s guilt, Nell asked, “How did it come about, your recommending her?”
“Virginia Kimball’s maid had quit suddenly, so...” Emily shrugged, her expression distracted.
“Did she place an advertisement?”
“Hm?”
“Mrs. Kimball—did she advertise for a new maid? I’m just curious as to how you happened to find out that she needed one.”
“Oh.” Emily lifted the glass of sherry and, finding it empty, set it back down. “I’m not sure,” she said as she withdrew her cigarette case from her pocket again. “I can’t recall.”
Nell let the silence grow heavy as Emily lit the cigarette and flicked out the match. It was Detective Cook’s old trick: Ask a leading question and keep your mouth shut.
Finally Emily said, “Someone must have mentioned it to me,” through a blossom of smoke.
Nell nodded, waited.
“Or I overheard something. You know...idle chatter.” Emily looked away as she drew on the cigarette.
“I suppose you thought Fiona would be happier working for Mrs. Kimball?” Nell asked.
“God, yes.” Emily met Nell’s eyes at last. “She hated it here. My parents can be so stuffy and demanding. Virginia Kimball was many things, but she wasn’t stuffy. I knew Fiona would have to work hard, given that she’d be the only maid, but she’d al
so be able to be herself. And she’d make more money and have her own room.”
“Weren’t you worried about your parents’ reaction when they found out you’d deprived them of one of their staff?”
“I anticipated it,” Emily said. “With relish—my father’s reaction, especially. To him, the notion of losing a maid to the likes of Virginia Kimball...well, I knew it would rankle him terribly, and it did. I was pretty amused by it all, pretty smug—until I read about the murder. I’d sent Fiona to Mrs. Kimball. What happened there is ultimately my...” She trailed off, her gaze on the house.
Nell turned to see the figure of a man silhouetted in the open French doors—obviously Will, from his height and that characteristic hip-shot stance.
“Ah, there you are, Nell. Miss Pratt,” he said, with a slight bow in Emily’s direction. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“I was just going back in.” Emily rose from her chair and slipped into her shoes with a smile that suggested she knew Will had come seeking a few precious minutes alone with the object of his affections. From the doorway, she said, “I enjoyed chatting with you, Miss Sweeney. I hope we can do it again soon.”
Will closed the door after Emily had passed through it, and crossed to Nell. Still reclining with her legs stretched out on the cushioned ottoman, she drew her knees up and rearranged her skirts so as not make a display of her stockinged feet.
Will sat not on the other chair, but on the ottoman, reached beneath her skirts, seized her feet by the ankles, and laid them on his lap. “I never realized what substantial feet you have.”
“Substantial!” She tried to yank them out of his grasp, but he held on tight.
“Doesn’t bother me,” he said, his hands sliding downward, warm and a little rough through her white silk stockings. “I’ve never been a fan of tiny feet. Large ones look ever so much more capable.”
He kneaded her feet through the lubricious silk, his fingers so strong and deft that Nell melted into the chair, head back, arms limp. A sigh escaped her, so deep it came out sounding more like a long, breathy moan.
“A secret voluptuary, are you?” Will murmured, his voice humming all along her nerve endings. “What an intriguing revelation.”