Soon my daily routine—what there had been of it—was enhanced by long stays in the library. From time to time Lord Claude or Charles would wander in, but for the most part the library was my domain. For the first time in my life I was able to freely indulge in my favorite pursuit, for as long as I wanted; if I missed lunch, it was brought in to me, and I was never chastised. Indeed, the others seemed impressed with my literary tendencies, and when Lord Claude persuaded me to read to them from my translation of Ovid, they all declared themselves in awe of my talent. It was a heady feeling to be admired for what I had once had to do in secret, as a vice.
There was another factor that kept me from boredom and loneliness in my new life. One brilliantly sunny day, when even an endless array of books could not keep me inside, I ventured down the cliff path again. I had been troubled by my craven reaction to my first sight of the sea, and today, when it felt physically impossible to stay indoors, I decided to make another trial.
As before, the sound met me before the sight itself, and the breeze immediately seized upon me to rumple my hair and skirts, but this time I was not overwhelmed: under the bright blue sky the sea was dazzling, winking with coins of sunlight all over its bobbing surface. Something in me seemed to rise up to meet its energy and buoyancy, and I lifted my face up to the sunlight, delighted by the wild sense of restless, excited activity. Exhilarated, I stood there for a moment, my chin to the breeze, letting the spray settle tingling on my skin. The wavelets flung themselves up as if trying to pat my feet and I darted back, laughing, and picked up my skirts to chase them back as they receded, in a game of tag more ancient than I then knew. It was much later when, disheveled, flushed, and well content, I decided to explore further and set off down the shore.
After perhaps a mile I climbed over a line of rough, enormous rocks to find myself at the edge of a small bay. In contrast with the rough energy of the shore I had left, this place held peace as in the palm of a hand. There was scarcely any beach here, since the massive rocks that bound it came almost to the water’s edge, and the water’s surface was more placid. This great cool cup of green might have been a completely different entity from the boisterous scene I had come from. The stillness of it was entrancing. I found a rock that reached out over the water’s surface and clambered up onto it. If I lay on my stomach and leaned over, I could trail my fingers in my reflection. Even the noise had receded, blocked by the high border of rocks that sealed this place off as with an enchantment.
These places became a refuge and a companion to me. Whenever I felt restless I would make my way down to the beach and let myself be buffeted by its roaring energy; when I wished for calm and quiet, however, I would climb over the rocks to the tiny bay and sit or lie on the lookout rock, letting myself be soothed by the tranquil, gently moving waters of that pocket of ocean.
Chapter Six
One evening, almost a fortnight after I had arrived at Ellsmere, the duchess sent for me to come to her boudoir “for a surprise.” I told Mary, her maid, that I would be along as soon as I finished my page of Homer, and went to her room a few minutes later with a feeling of combined anticipation and dread. I knew enough to expect another manifestation of my hostess’s vast generosity, and while I could not help but be touched by her gifts to me, I was nonetheless a bit overwhelmed by them.
My hand was raised to knock when I heard Lord Claude’s voice. I kept still so that I would not intrude on them in a private moment, but then the subject of their conversation dawned on me and I stayed to listen.
“—scarcely bear my presence, and you’ve seen the way he looks at me: as if he was passing judgment.” His voice sounded far from that of the carefree bridegroom: I could hear weariness, and sadness as well.
I heard a sigh. “He behaves just the same toward me,” said the duchess in tones as tired and defeated as her husband’s. “It’s as though my very existence offends him.”
“And all this business of going off by himself. On my way to breakfast I saw him coming out of the door to the stable. Riding, and before dawn! Walking the cliffs at all hours! What can be the matter with him, Gwen?” His voice grew hushed. “Do you think there’s something—er—wrong with him?”
The slight pause before her answer robbed her words of their certainty. “No, my dear, I’m sure of it. I doubt it’s anything more than grief for his father’s death—and anger at us for marrying before the ‘proper’ interval had passed.”
A maid was coming down the hall toward me, and I knocked quickly, lest she realize I was eavesdropping. Without her presence to shame me into announcing myself, I own that I would gladly have stood listening as long as they spoke of Herron. Now the duchess’s voice, as bright and careless as it had been downcast a moment ago, bade me enter.
Lord Claude rose from her side on the pink-sprigged divan as I joined them. He, too, was making an effort to appear carefree, but his face was less schooled than the duchess’s, and there were signs of strain around his eyes. I felt a pang of sympathy for him: he seemed to want his stepson’s friendship so sincerely and to be so dismayed at the denial of it. As I made my curtsey I wondered if Herron realized how good a stepfather he was rejecting. He had his reasons, of course, but I wondered if there was a way I could help to reconcile the two.
Of course, considering that I was not even on speaking terms with the duke, it was probably unlikely.
“Ah, good evening, my dear,” he said with one of his kind, comfortable smiles. “My wife tells me that she is going to set about enlarging your wardrobe. I trust you will soon be needing to move to more capacious rooms.”
“Claude, really!” she laughed, shaking her head at him so that her ringlets bounced. Even at this hour, when she retired to her room to rest before dinner, she was still as exquisitely groomed as if she were expecting callers: not one of her curls was awry, and her dressing gown (a peignoir, she called it) was trimmed with lace and rosettes of pink satin ribbon. “You’re heartless. And now you’ve given away my surprise. I wanted to dazzle her with a brilliant display of treasures, like a storybook djinn, and now you reduce my role to that of a haberdasher!”
“From djinn to duchess—such a falling off!” he teased, giving a tug to one of the bobbing curls. They smiled at each other with an expression that made me all at once feel excluded. As far as they were concerned, I might not have been in the room. I should have been tactful and turned the other way, assuming a sudden interest in the fire screen or mantel ornaments, but I could not take my eyes away. I felt a stab of sheer envy at the adoration that blazed so nakedly in their faces. How fortunate they were—and how forlorn I suddenly felt, barred from the joy they knew.
As if my thoughts had spoken, the duchess’s first words after her husband left us were, “we must get you a husband, child.”
I laughed, instantly disgusted with my own foolishness. “Oh, never. I am one of nature’s old maids. When I am fifty you will come visit me with your seventeen grandchildren and I shall teach them all to conjugate Latin verbs. That is my true place in life.”
“Conjugation, rather than the conjugal?” She looked so pleased at her own witticism that I laughed again. “My dear, there is no reason you cannot have both.”
“I doubt very much than any man of sense will have me—and I will not have any man who isn’t sensible.”
“Well, you certainly have fixed on a persuasive rationalization for rejecting suitors. Your determination is quite formidable.”
“So far there have been none to test it.”
“You exaggerate, my dear. In any case, we shall soon change all that.” She was sweeping me toward the door to her dressing room, and when I started to reply she slapped me lightly on the wrist. “None of that! You are to enter the djinn’s treasure house in appropriately awed silence. Jane, Mary, if you please.”
As the door swung open, the maids each ran up with overflowing burdens of dress stuff: damasks, silks, muslin, mull, fabrics whose names I only learned later. More brilliant lengths
spilled over chairs and from the shelves of the clothes press: pools of liquid topaz, dusky claret, shimmering silver. And on the bed, heaped like jewels in a casket, were finished gowns: one of a rose-colored wool, with belled sleeves and trim of grey velveteen; another of hyacinth blue, whose wide collar and cuffs were edged with snowy lace scalloping; and the third, unmistakably an evening dress, and the one that drew an involuntary “oh” of adoration from me: a heavy, gleaming satin that iridesced from blue to green like the sea, with the briefest of bodices but yards of billowing skirt. A wide, fringed hanging sash was its only trimming.
“I thought you’d like them,” said the duchess complacently, holding the sea-green gown up to me to assess the effect. “I had ordered them for myself, but I knew as soon as we met that they would look much better on you. Mrs. Prescott will fit them to you today and we shall have them altered at once.”
“But—” I stopped fondling the gleaming satin and looked anxiously up. “I can’t take your gowns. You’ll miss them.”
“Miss them! Hardly. I ordered more than a dozen, and three out of all those will scarcely be an insupportable loss. Besides, they truly do not suit me. Look.” She held the ball gown I coveted up to herself, and I saw that the bold hue eclipsed her fairness and made her look faded. “I do better in my ‘flower frocks’ as Claude calls them.”
It was true. The delicate shades of pink, blue, and yellow she favored suited her, while I would have felt foolish and juvenile in them. The gowns she had set aside for me were also markedly plainer in cut than those she wore, which were always flounced, ruffled, beribboned, and generally fashioned a great deal like many-petaled flowers. I was relieved that she had offered me only the simplest gowns: the furbelows that looked dainty on her would only heighten my plainness by contrast, I was certain. Better by far not to appear as if I wished to hide my shortcomings by dressing like a belle; at least I could look neat and trim, if not pretty.
Once again she seemed to sense my thoughts. “If these are too plain, we can have them trimmed,” she said, beckoning for Jane to unhook my dress. “But I had a feeling you wouldn’t wish to go about in such heavily weighted things. These uncluttered styles are so much more elegant, really.”
But this was tact; I saw the caressing glance she bestowed on her own new ball dress as she was hooked into it. Countless layers of frothy pink tulle, lavished with frills, it made no attempt to be “uncluttered.”
“These are perfect,” I sighed; then, my heart sinking as Mary approached with a corset, “must I be laced to wear them?”
She and Mary exchanged amused glances at the consternation in my voice. “But of course you must! We should get you into stays as soon as we can.”
“But why?” I gasped for breath as the whalebone stays tightened under Mary’s lacing. “I thought you said I was slender already.”
“And so you are, dear; but the stays will give you a waist that will be the envy of every girl, and a tidier silhouette as well.” With an approving nod at the maid’s handiwork, she reached for a measuring tape. “I believe that dress is made with an eighteen-inch waist.” Seeing the look on my face, she relented. “The day dresses are somewhat more generous.”
Thank heaven for that. “Perhaps I will get used to it,” I said, without much hope.
“Of course you will,” she said comfortably. “I have not gone without stays since I was fifteen, and I would feel undressed without them. Soon you will feel the same.” Correctly reading my silence as skepticism, she added, “And, you know, whenever you retire to your room you may change into a dressing gown. I find it very refreshing to spend a few hours out of my corset in the afternoon. Would you like to choose fabric for a few peignoirs?”
“I would feel very extravagant,” I said, but it was only a halfhearted protest at most; it would be lovely to have a few loose things to wear in my own room. Despite her assurances, the idea of spending all day corseted was a daunting one. To my relief, she waved away my feeble objection.
“Nonsense, my dear. I assure you, you will be glad of them. What would you like? This pretty lavender crepe?”
Tantalized, I wandered over to the heaps of fabrics, touching the different textures. While the duchess’s dressing gowns were all of light, delicate stuff, like the crepe she had suggested, I found myself drawn to the richest, deepest colors, the most luxurious weaves: a velour of cobalt blue as deep as a moonless midnight, and a cut velvet of wine-red shot with silver. When I held them up, shyly, the duchess’s eyebrows rose. I knew they were more suited to ball gowns, and for a lady of her age, not an unmarried girl, but all she said was, “How beautiful. You’ll look like a medieval princess. Mrs. Prescott, have those two made up in Mademoiselle’s measurements.”
“Very good, Your Grace,” said the thin-lipped seamstress, whose plainness was a strange contrast to the gorgeous materials she worked with. She began fitting the hyacinth dress to me, and I had to stand very still to avoid being stuck with pins. When Mrs. Prescott had the dress fitted to her satisfaction, the duchess came to inspect me.
At once her face broke into dimples. “It’s perfect for you—as I knew it would be. Here, child, have a look at yourself.”
Walking carefully, my arms held out stiffly from my body lest I stab myself, I approached the duchess’s cheval glass.
It was astonishing, the difference a dress could make. In the new dress, even with excess fabric pinned in pleats around me, I looked prettier than I could ever recall. My cheeks were flushed, perhaps with excitement, and I gave the duchess a dazzling smile in the mirror. I felt as though I had acquired, not a djinn perhaps, but a fairy godmother. Such beautiful new dresses, in such colors—
I dropped my eyes suddenly and turned away from the mirror, fumbling for the dress fastenings. Jane saw my struggles and hurried to unhook me, handling the dress carefully so as not to dislodge the pins. The duchess, sensing a change in my mood, rustled over.
“My dear child, what is the matter? Does it not please you?”
“It does,” I said in a rush. “And it’s so kind of you, ma’am. But I can’t help feeling that I shouldn’t put off my mourning yet. It’s been such a short time—” I stopped, with a gulp.
“Oh. I see.” Her face had instantly assumed the gravity of mine, and she said nothing more while I put my own dress on again. Then she gestured for the others to leave us. When the door had shut behind the stiffly disapproving back of Mrs. Prescott, who was evidently offended at my reception of her handiwork, she led me to the divan.
Taking my hands, she sat me down to face her. She still wore the pink ball gown, its frilled skirts spreading wide over the hooped crinoline, so that she seemed to sit in a mass of pink flowers.
“I realize it has not been long since your brother’s death,” she said gently. “Perhaps I should not influence you to leave off your mourning so soon. If you would rather not wear colors for a time—”
“But I would rather wear them,” I blurted miserably. “That is what distresses me. I hate wearing everlasting black and grey and purple. I have always longed to wear lovely things. But I feel ashamed to wear them now, when it would wrong Lionel’s memory.”
The strangest expression was tugging at her face. If she had not been so grave, I would have thought she was trying to keep from smiling.
“I see,” she said, one fine crease appearing on her brow. “That is a difficulty. If you intend to be guided by convention, then of course you are quite right to remain in mourning—however primitive a custom it is. The deities of propriety and decorum would have it that there is no other course.”
Somehow the way she described the matter, the phrases she used, stirred a kind of dissatisfaction in me. Convention and propriety were such smug, stingy entities. I knew what my father would have said: that even to consider wearing colors within a year would destroy his reputation, that he would be pointed at as the man who had raised a cold, selfish, vain little brat. He would have had me cast my eyes on the ground every waking hour in
ostentatious respect for the dead rather than risk a glimpse of something that would make me appreciate that I still lived. If Lionel could not enjoy it, nor should I. All that my brother had not lived to see should be forbidden me, the unworthy, living child.
I realized that I was hunched tensely on the edge of the divan, clenching my fists, and the duchess was watching me in concern. Embarrassed, I uncurled my fingers, feeling now the pain from embedding my fingernails so deeply into my palms. I clasped my hands to hide the angry red crescents and straightened.
She must have observed my resentment, but she took no direct notice of it. “Tradition is a helpful guide, but it fails to take circumstances into account,” she said mildly. “Perhaps it is better to decide what is best for you, in your particular situation. What do you think Lionel would do, were he in your position?”
“Get intoxicated.”
This time I was certain she smiled. “After that.”
“He would probably have worn black for a week or two,” I said, thinking it over; “but then I’m sure he would have been unable to resist his saffron tailcoat. Lionel loved nice clothes; he could not have borne covering himself in black for long.” The idea was curiously heartening.
“And would you think any the less of him for ceasing to wear black for you?”
“No,” I said, truthfully, although I knew where she was leading with her questions, and I could not help but be aware that it suited her purposes to get me out of mourning. While I was certain that her own generosity prompted her, I could not ignore the wry inner voice that told me it would be far pleasanter for her not to have so visible a reminder of her own abbreviated mourning period. I wondered if she had admitted to herself the reason for her eagerness to furnish me with a new wardrobe.
She sat back, beaming at me as if I had said something exceedingly clever. “Well then!” she exclaimed. “Why should you force yourself into clothes he would have detested as much as you? Will you not be acting more in accordance with his wishes to wear pretty dresses such as he would have liked to see you in? I do not mean to sound callous, my dear, but after all, you did not die with him. In any case, wearing colors does not mean you loved your brother any the less. It is what is in your heart, not on your back, that shows sincerest feeling.”
Sea of Secrets: A Novel of Victorian Romantic Suspense Page 9