“No one ever does, darling,” replied the Contessa.
They rode on in silence, until the Contessa smiled as kindly as before and said, “But you were going to ask a question?”
“I was,” replied Miss Temple. “I was going to ask about Oskar Veilandt and his paintings of the Annunciation, for you had another in your rooms. The Comte and I discussed the artist over tea.”
“Did you really?”
“In fact, I pointed out to the Comte that, as far as I am concerned, he seems to be suspiciously in this fellow’s debt.”
“Did you indeed?”
“I should say so.” Miss Temple did not fool herself that she was capable of angering or flattering either of these two to a point of distraction that might allow her to throw herself from the coach—a gesture more likely than anything to result in her death under the wheels of the coach behind them—and yet, the paintings were a topic that might well produce useful information about the Process that she might use to prevent her ultimate subversion. She would never understand the science or the alchemy—were science and alchemy the same thing?—for she had always been indifferent to theoretical learning, though she knew the Comte at least was not. What was more, Miss Temple knew he was sensitive about the question of the missing painter, and as a rule she was not above being a persistent nuisance.
“And how exactly is that?” asked the Contessa.
“Because,” Miss Temple responded, “the Annunciation paintings themselves are clearly an allegorical presentation of your Process, indeed of your intrigue as a whole—that the imagery itself is a brazen blasphemy is beside the immediate point, save to convey a scale of arrogance—as you see it, of advancement provoked by the effects of your precious blue glass. Of course,” she went on with a side glance at the unmoving Comte, “it seems that all of this—for on the back of the paintings are imprudently scrawled the man’s alchemical secrets—has been taken by the Comte for his own—taken by all of you—at the expense of the missing Mr. Veilandt’s life.”
“You said this to the Comte?”
“Of course I did.”
“And how did he respond?”
“He left the table.”
“It is a serious charge.”
“On the contrary, it is an obvious one—and what is more, after all the destruction and violence you have put into motion, such an accusation can hardly strike any of you as either unlikely or unprovoked. As the work itself is monstrous, and the murder of its maker even more so, I would not have thought the murderer himself so … tender.”
For an answer that perhaps too fully fulfilled Miss Temple’s hopes of agitation, the Comte d’Orkancz leaned deliberately forward and extended his open right hand until he could place it around Miss Temple’s throat. She uselessly pressed her body back into her seat and tried to convince herself that if he was going to hurt her out of anger he would have seized her more quickly. As the strong fingers tightened against her skin she began to have her doubts, and looked with dismay into the man’s cold blue eyes. His grip held her fast but did not choke her. At once she was assailed by hideous memories of Mr. Spragg. She did not move.
“You looked at the paintings—two of them, yes?” His voice was low and unmistakably dangerous. “Tell us … what was your impression?”
“Of what?” she squeaked.
“Of anything. What thoughts were provoked?”
“Well, as I have said, an allegorical—”
He squeezed her throat so hard and so suddenly she thought her neck would snap. The Contessa leaned forward as well, speaking mildly.
“Celeste, the Comte is attempting to get you to think.”
Miss Temple nodded. The Comte relaxed his grip. She swallowed.
“I suppose I thought the paintings were unnatural. As the woman in them has been given over to the angel—she is given over to—to sensation and pleasure—as if nothing else might exist. Such a thing is impossible. It is dangerous.”
“Why is that?” asked the Comte.
“Because nothing would get done! Because—because—there is no border between the world and one’s body, one’s mind—it would be unbearable!”
“I should have thought it delicious,” whispered the Contessa.
“Not for me!” cried Miss Temple.
With a swift rush of fabric the Contessa shifted across the coach next to Miss Temple, her lips pressed close to the young woman’s ear.
“Are you sure? For I have seen you, Celeste … I have seen you through the mirror, and I have seen you bent over the book … and do you know?”
“Do I know what?”
“That when you were in my room … kneeling over so sweetly … I could smell you …”
Miss Temple whimpered but did not know what she could do.
“Think of the book, Celeste,” hissed the Contessa. “You remember what you saw! What you did, what was done to you—what you became!—through what exquisite realms you traveled!”
At these words Miss Temple felt a burning in her blood—what was happening to her? She sensed her memories of the book like a stranger’s footprints in her mind. They were everywhere! She did not want them! But why could she not thrust them aside?
“You are wrong!” Miss Temple shouted. “It is not the same!”
“Neither are you,” snarled the Comte d’Orkancz. “You’ve already taken the first step in your process of transformation!”
The coach had become too warm. The Contessa’s hand found Miss Temple’s leg and then quickly vanished beneath her dress, the knowing fingers climbing up her inner thigh. Miss Temple gasped. These were not the blunt, stabbing, rude fingers of Spragg but—if still invasive—playful, teasing, and insistent. No one had ever touched her this way, in that place. She could not think.
“No—no—” she began.
“What did you see in the book?” The Comte pressed at her with his insistent, terrifying rasp. “Do you know the taste of death and power? Do you know what lovers feel in their blood? You do! You know all of it and more! It has taken root in your being! You feel it as I speak! Will you ever be able to turn away from what you’ve seen? Will you ever be able to reject these pleasures, having tasted their full intoxicating potency?”
The Contessa’s fingers pushed through the slit of her silken pants and slid across her liquid flesh with a practiced skill. Miss Temple shrank from her touch, but the coach seat was so small and the sensation so delicious.
“I don’t think you will, Celeste,” whispered the Contessa. She softly nuzzled the tips of two fingers, then wetly slipped them deeper while rubbing gently above them with her thumb. Miss Temple did not know what she was supposed to do, what she was fighting against save the imposition of their will upon her—but she did not want to fight, the pleasure building in her body was heavenly, and yet she also longed to hurl herself away from their openly predatory usage. What did her pleasure matter to them? It was but a goad, a tool, an endless source of thralldom and control. The Contessa’s fingers worked slickly back and forth. Miss Temple groaned.
“Your mind is set on fire!” hissed the Comte. “You cannot evade your mind—we hold you, you must give in—your body will betray you, your heart will betray you—you are already abandoned, utterly given over—your new memories are rising—surrounding you completely—your life—your self—has changed—your once-pure soul has been stained by my glass book’s usage!”
As he spoke she felt them, doors opening across her spinning mind directly into her fevered body—the masked ball in Venice, the two men through the spy hole, the artist’s model on the divan, the heavenly seraglio, and then so many, many more—Miss Temple was panting, the Contessa’s fingers deftly plying her most intimate parts, the woman’s lips against her ear, encouraging her pleasure with little mocking moans that nevertheless—the very provocative sound of that woman even counterfeiting ecstasy—served as a concrete spur to further delight … Miss Temple felt the sweetness gathering in her body, a warm cloud ready to burst … bu
t then she shut her eyes and saw herself, in the coach between her enemies, beset, and then Chang dead, his pale face streaked with blood, the Doctor running and in tears, and finally, as if it were the answer she’d been seeking, the hot, clear, open view of barren white sand bordering a blue indifferent sea … she pulled herself from the brink—their brink she decided, not her own—
And in that exact moment, in such a way that Miss Temple knew they had not perceived her interior victory, the Contessa snatched away her hand and returned in smirking triumph to the other seat. The Comte released her neck and leaned back. She felt the sudden ebb of the pleasure in her body and its instinctive protest against the loss of stimulation—and met their eyes, seeing that they had brought her to the edge only to demonstrate her submission. They looked at her with a condescending disdain that seconds earlier might have been shattering—and before she could say a word, the Contessa’s hand—the same hand that had been under her dress—slapped her hard across the face. Miss Temple’s head spun to the side, burning. The Contessa slapped her again just as hard, knocking her bodily into the corner of the coach.
“You killed two of my people,” she said viciously. “Do not ever believe it is forgotten.”
Miss Temple touched her numbed face, shocked and dizzied, and felt the wetness from the Contessa’s hand—which was to say from herself. The spike of rage at being struck was dampened by her mortified realization that the close air in the coach was heavy with the smell of her own arousal. She yanked her dress down over her legs and looked up to see the Contessa wiping her fingers methodically on a handkerchief. Their attempt to demonstrate her helplessness had only solidified Miss Temple’s defiance. She sniffed again, blinking back tears of pain and further emboldened by the glimpse of her green clutch bag poking out of the side pocket of the Comte d’Orkancz’s voluminous fur.
Their coach ride ended at Stropping Station, where once more Miss Temple was made to walk in her bare feet, down the stairs and across the station hall to their train. She was quite certain that her soles would be blackened by the filth of so many travelers and she was not wrong, pausing to scoff at the dirty result with open disgust before she was again pushed forward. Again she was placed between the Comte and the Contessa, the Prince and his fiancée behind them, and the other three men bringing up the rear. Various people they passed gave a polite nod—to the Prince and Miss Vandaariff, she assumed, for they were often recognized—but were nonplussed by the sight of the barefoot young lady who could apparently afford a maid to dress her hair but not even the simplest footwear. Miss Temple gave them no thought at all, even when their questioning looks slipped into open disapproval. Instead, she gazed persistently around her for possible methods of escape but located nothing, dismissing even a pair of uniformed constables—in the company of such elegant nobility, there was no way anyone would credit her account of capture, much less the larger intrigue. She would have to escape from the train itself.
She had just so resolved on this plan when Miss Temple noted with sharp dismay two figures waiting with the conductor on the platform, at the open door of the rearmost car. One, based on the description of Doctor Svenson, she took to be Francis Xonck, sporting a tailcoat worn only on his left arm and buttoned across—the other sleeve hanging free—for his right arm was thickly bandaged. The other, standing tall in a crisp black topcoat, was a man she would no doubt recognize from across the entire station floor until the end of her days. Miss Temple actually stopped walking, only to have her shoulder gently seized by the Comte d’Orkancz and her body carried along for several awkward steps until she had resumed her pace. He released her—never once deigning to look down—and she glanced at the Contessa in time to see her smiling with cruel amusement.
“Ah, look—it is Bascombe and Francis Xonck! Perhaps there will be time on the journey for a lovers’ reunion!”
Miss Temple paused again and again the Comte’s hand shot out to shove her forward.
Roger’s gaze passed over her quite quickly, but she saw, no matter how he hid it behind the fixed face of a government functionary, her presence was no more welcome to him than his to her. When had they spoken last? Nine days ago? Ten? It had still been as engaged lovers. The very word caused Miss Temple to wince—what word could possibly be more changed by the events of her last hours? She knew that they were now separated by a distance she could never have previously imagined, discrepancies of belief and experience that were every bit as vast as the ocean she had crossed to first enter Roger Bascombe’s world. She must assume that Roger had given himself over to the Cabal and its Process, to amoral sensation—to one only imagined, if the book were any indicator, what depravities. He must have conspired in the murder of his uncle—how else would he have the title? Had he even stood by—or, who knew, participated?—while murders and worse were enacted, perhaps even that of Cardinal Chang? She did not want to believe it, yet here he was. And what of her own changes? Miss Temple thought back to her night of distress, weeping in her bed over Roger’s letter—what was this compared to Spragg’s attack, or the Contessa’s menace, or the fiendish brutality of the Process? What was this compared to her own discovered reserves of determination and cunning, of authority and choice—or standing as an equal third with the Doctor and the Cardinal, an adventuress of worth? Roger’s gaze fell to her dirty feet. She had never allowed herself to be less than immaculate in his presence, and she watched him measure her in that very moment and find her wanting—as he must by necessity find her, something he had cast off. For a moment her heart sank, but then Miss Temple inhaled sharply, flaring her nostrils. It did not matter what Roger Bascombe might think—it would never matter again.
Francis Xonck occupied her interest for a brief glance of estimation and no more. She knew his general tale—the wastrel rakish brother of the mighty Henry Xonck—and saw all she needed of his preening peacock wit and manner in his overly posed, wry expression, noting with satisfaction the apparently grievous and painful injury he had suffered to his arm. She wondered how it had happened, and idly wished she might have witnessed it.
The two men then stepped forward to pay their respects to the Contessa. Xonck first bowed and extended his hand for hers, taking it and raising it to his lips. As if Miss Temple had not been enough abased, she was aghast at the discreet wrinkling of Francis Xonck’s nose as he held the Contessa’s hand—the same that had been between her legs. With a wicked smile, looking into the Contessa’s eyes—the Contessa who exchanged with him a fully wicked smile of her own—Xonck, instead of kissing the fingers, ran his tongue deliberately along them. He released the hand with a click of his heels and turned to Miss Temple with a knowing leer. She did not extend her hand and he did not reach out to take it, moving on to nod at the Comte with an even wider smile. But Miss Temple paid him no more attention, her gaze fixed despite herself on Roger Bascombe’s own kiss of the Contessa’s hand. Once more she saw her scent register—though Roger’s notice was marked by momentary confusion rather than wicked glee. He avoided looking into the Contessa’s laughing eyes, administered a deft brush of his lips, and released her hand.
“I believe you two have met,” said the Contessa.
“Indeed,” said Roger Bascombe. He nodded curtly. “Miss Temple.”
“Mr. Bascombe.”
“I see you’ve lost your shoes,” he said, not entirely unkindly, by way of conversation.
“Better my shoes than my soul, Mr. Bascombe,” she replied, her words harsh and childish in her ears, “or must I say Lord Tarr?”
Roger met her gaze once, briefly, as if there were something he did want to say but could not, or could not in such company. He then turned, directing his voice to the Comte and Contessa.
“If you will, we ought to be aboard—the train will leave directly.”
Miss Temple was installed alone in a compartment in a car the party seemed to claim all for itself. She had expected—or feared—that the Comte or Contessa would use the journey to resume the abuses of her co
ach ride, but when the Comte had slid open the compartment door and thrust her into it she had turned to find him still in the passageway shutting it again and walking impassively from sight. She had tried to open the door herself. It was not locked, and she had poked her head out to see Francis Xonck standing in conversation some yards away with the Macklenburg officer. They turned at the sound of the door with expressions of such unmitigated and dangerous annoyance that Miss Temple had retreated back into the compartment, half-afraid they were going to follow. They did not, and after some minutes of fretful standing, Miss Temple took a seat and tried to think about what she might do. She was being taken to Harschmort, alone and unarmed and distressingly unshod. What was the first stop on the way to Orange Canal—Crampton Place? Gorsemont? Packington? Could she discreetly open the compartment window and lower herself from the train in the time they might be paused in the station? Could she drop from such a height—it was easily fifteen feet—onto the rail bed of jagged stones without hurting her feet? If she could not run after climbing out she would be taken immediately, she was sure. Miss Temple exhaled and shut her eyes. Did she truly have any choice?
She wondered what time it was. Her trials with the book and in the coach had been extremely taxing and she would have dearly loved a drink of water and even more a chance to shut her eyes in safety. She pulled her legs onto her seat and gathered her dress around them, curling up as best she could, feeling like a transported beast huddling in a corner of its cage. Despite her best intentions Miss Temple’s thoughts wandered to Roger, and she marveled again at the distance they had traveled from their former lives. Before, in accounting for his rejection of her, she had merely been one element among many—his family, his moral rectitude—thrown to the side in favor of ambition. But now they were on the same train, only yards away from one another. Nothing stopped him from coming to her compartment (the Contessa was sure to allow it out of pure amusement) and yet he did not. For all that he too must have undergone the Process and was subject to its effects, she found his avoidance demonstrably cruel—had he not held her in his arms? Had he not an ounce remaining of that sympathy or care, even so much as to offer comfort, to ease his own heart at the fate that must befall her? It was clear that he did not, and despite all previous resolve and despite her hidden victories over both the book and her captors—for did these change a thing?—Miss Temple found herself once more alone within her barren landscape of loss.
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