by Cat Rambo
Lady Southland had never been accepted by society, and had therefore been an exile, trapped in this house. That was part of the contract between Desiree and I: through me she would escape such a fate.
“Do you love my daughter, Claude?” Lord Southland asked. Rumor held that before his wife, he’d had other exotic pets: a tiger cub, a great hyacinth macaw that sang sea shanties, a galago from Senegal. He was impious and had rejected the church, refusing to have Desiree baptized.
The question pained me, and I took care to show that in my tone. “Ever since I first met her, my lord.”
“Ever since you met her, or ever since you learned she was an heiress?” He waved off my protestations. “I know, I know, such thoughts are unworthy of you. Still, I cannot help but wonder, Claude, if you did not think her an easy catch, given her circumstances.
You are hardly the first suitor to make that mistake.”
Desiree had other suitors? I was shocked but intrigued. I had never heard word of such.
“Still, the chit claims to love you.” His look was contemptuous, and I stiffened my back under it. “It must be your looks alone, for you seem slow of mind to me.”
I squared my chin. “You may disagree with your daughter’s opinion, but you raised her to speak her mind and choose for herself.”
“I did.” He tugged at a pearl-set waistcoat button. “And will you allow her the same luxury, once she is married?”
“Of course I will!” I said. “Within reason.”
“As I feared. Very well. I will warn you, Claude: I will continue to attempt to dissuade her from this choice.”
“What choice?” Desiree demanded as she entered. She started out with a glare, but I smiled at her and she softened, as I knew she would. “Papa, are you beating this dead horse again?”
“Let me send you travelling,” Lord Southland urged. “I will fund a trip to Italy, so you might see Leonardo’s designs for yourself. Or America, where you can speak with other inventors.”
“America?” she said. “Do you not read the papers? Do you truly not know what disdain they would hold me in there?”
“Desiree,” he said. “For your mother’s sake, and your own, all I want is your happiness.”
“I will be an English dean’s wife and live at Oxford,” she said. “Claude has promised me a workshop the equal of mine here.”
Now was not, perhaps, the best time to correct that misapprehension, so I kept my mouth closed. Not that it mattered. Father and daughter had squared off like pugilists in the ring, and Desiree’s fists were clenched as though to keep herself from aiming a blow at him.
He took an envelope from his vest pocket, ivory paper with an intricate seal. “I have had a letter inviting us to come shooting next week. An Irish estate. The writer says he met you at Lady Allsop’s.” He spared me a glance. “Claude is invited as well. If he comes, too, will you accompany me? Rumor holds the pheasant excellent in that region.”
She gave me a questioning look and I nodded. Better to see Lord Southland assuaged, lest he put his foot down even more firmly. His difficulties were his own fault, I thought, for allowing his daughter too free a rein. Although it advantaged me more than a little, for I suspected Lord Southland’s resistance only increased Desiree’s interest in me.
I touched her elbow and saw her shoulders loosen. Southland kept glowering, but now at me instead of Desiree. I smiled at him and laced my fingers through hers before drawing them up to press my lips to her knuckles, my eyes fixed on his. His jaw tightened.
* * *
When I returned home, I found a similar envelope awaiting me. His Lordship regretted the unfortunate occurrences at Lady Allsop’s and hoped to extend an olive branch to myself and my “lovely fiancée.”
Now that the moment had passed, I regretted the assent I had given. But Southland would have written with his answer already, always punctilious and prompt when he thought it might inconvenience me.
I decided to make the most of it. As Southland had noted, the shooting in Tyndall’s district was rumored to be extraordinary. While the Lord—was he one of the men that Southland reckoned a suitor?—would have the advantage in his home, the day I could not show up a country Irishman, no matter his title, would be the day I’d give up my position at Oxford. As for his inhuman aspect, it had surely been nothing more than a trick of the moonlight, coupled with my anger. It surprised me how much my rage stirred at the memory, even now, days later.
I turned the envelope over and examined the ostentatious seal. A pair of cats boxing with each other, paws upraised, circling a crown tipped with what looked like pointed spindles. A sweet smell came from the green wax.
I directed my valet to pack for the countryside. I would see this interloper driven away before Desiree even realized he was interested in her. Her naïveté gave me the edge—not that I needed it.
* * *
As we approached Lord Tyndall’s castle, the countryside was verdant, the fall leaves just beginning to turn. The castle—for it was indeed a castle, albeit a small and shabby one—sat on a cliff’s edge overlooking the Irish Sea, a romantic, wild vista that I feared might enthrall my impressionable fiancée.
I took care to point out flaws in the countryside as we travelled up the road, including dull-looking peasants and ill-tended cottages. I mentioned how difficult it must be to obtain supplies from London, given the distance and the road’s rigors.
Desiree seemed to listen. Her father slouched in the opposite seat of the carriage and regarded me with heavy-lidded, inscrutable eyes.
There were a dozen or so other guests: a few Irish peers, relatives of his Lordship, and Lady Allsop and her husband. Everyone exclaimed over Desiree’s exotic beauty and made enough fuss over her to render her speechless with discomfort. I hung back and did not rescue her. She would have to learn to cope with such attentions.
* * *
We settled into a daily routine, and Lord Southland and I both found the shooting excellent. In fact, I had never had such success before. It was as though the birds flew into my gun’s path to sacrifice themselves. I had never experienced such a feeling of prowess before. The other men congratulated me, sometimes sullenly, sometimes with genuine comradeship. The women were invariably flattering—even Desiree, although it was evident that my skill surprised her.
It was heady, and though Tyndall came shooting with us less and less, I found myself able to overlook it. We dined well on the yield from our expeditions each day. Tyndall had an excellent cook, one who rivaled the best establishments. Her blancmange was airy as a cloud; her teacakes scented with cardamom and honey. A good cook, like a good woman, is a pearl beyond price. I resolved to woo her away before going.
Desiree was uninterested in shooting, which made me uneasy, but I was unable to resist the pull of the field. Like Desiree, Tyndall fancied himself a scientist, and like her, he had mechanical talent. She had brought the case containing her clockwork fairies, and the two were working on refinements to the wings. Desiree suggested that the fairies could be used in place of courier pigeons. Despite the notion’s impracticality, Tyndall supported it.
I asked what else she was working on.
“Something to delight you!” she said, her face glowing with anticipation. “Tyndall’s workshop is so fine, I have been able to construct something that will amaze you when you see it.” She laughed. “I think I will gift him with it when we leave. He has said so many times how clever he thinks my machines.”
“And they are clever,” I said. I touched the tips of the curls surrounding her face, stiff and unbending with pomade.
She pulled away. “My maid spends too much time dressing my hair for you to set it in disarray!” she said, but laughed to take the sting from the words.
* * *
I had found a staircase leading up from the main hall which had a landing well designed for reading. Always conscious of the necessity of keeping up, I had brought edifying and current works with me. One was The Subjecti
on of Women by John Stuart Mill, a package of inflammatory claptrap.
Sitting in my refuge, I was about to put it down when I came to a sentence that made me realize that even the falsest text might hold some grain of truth. The sentence read, “To understand one woman is not necessarily to understand any other woman.”
I put the book aside but took that sentence with me, considering whether or not it was true. Certainly, every woman’s personality was different, but there were commonalities at the heart of them all: a love of gossip, for instance. Concern with trivialities. An attraction to beauty.
Voices from below caught my attention. The stairway’s acoustics were such that sounds carried clearly up to this level. It might have been designed for such a thing; I have encountered whispering galleries that bring words across the room as if the speaker stood right there.
It was Desiree and Tyndall.
“I think a more durable metal, laid along the edge, will prevent warpage,” she was saying.
“Your little fairies intrigue me,” he said. “Where did you find the model?”
“In my head,” she admitted. “I was reading a newspaper account and it made me wonder what such a creature would look like.”
“You have never glimpsed a fairy in the wild?”
She laughed. “Or a dragon in the coal cellar? No, I have never been prone to flights of fancy.”
“You think fairies only a romantic notion.”
“I think people would like to believe in them, would like to believe in magic,” she said. “Even I feel that temptation. But it is at heart a foolish idea.”
“What if I told you I could take you to a place where you could really see them, Desiree?” he purred. “Told you that true magic is wild beyond your imagining, that it will seize you, take you as though by storm?”
I was shocked that he would address her so familiarly. My gasp was loud enough to betray me.
“Who’s there?” Tyndall exclaimed, and came up the stairs swiftly enough that it was as if he feared some intruder. He scowled at the sight of me.
I, on the other hand, was stiff with indignation. He meant to lure my fiancée to some deserted spot under the pretext of seeing fairies. Perhaps the scoundrel meant to compromise her to the point where she would be forced to marry him. Or perhaps he just meant to seduce her. I would have said these things, but Desiree’s presence behind him made me keep my tongue.
“Come to lunch, Stone,” he said. “There is the usual cold pheasant. You have not lost your taste for it yet, I trust?”
“I find myself thinking that we should return to London soon,” I said to Desiree. Let him realize I had overheard his plotted seduction.
“Leave?” Desiree exclaimed. "But we are in the middle of a project!"
How could she be so foolish? Could she not see what Tyndall was up to? Was it possible she harbored romantic feelings for him? But the expression on her face was not thwarted lust. She liked speaking with him, I realized. It was nothing more than that.
Surely it was nothing more than that.
* * *
A day later, I overheard another conversation, this time between Desiree and her father. I will not trouble myself to reproduce it here, for much of what Lord Southland said was misguided and wrong. He restated his claim that I was too dull for Desiree and said, absurdly, that she should find a man capable of providing her with intelligent conversation.
I would have interjected, but I had learned my lesson the previous day. Instead, I kept quiet and listened, knowing that Desiree would defend me as she had before.
But her protestations seemed halfhearted. Worse, she seemed to be starting to believe that her father’s words held some truth.
“You valued looks yourself,” she said. “Was it not my mother’s beauty that drew you to her?”
“At first, perhaps, but then I was taken by her manners, her bravery,” Lord Southland said.
“Claude may not be brilliant,” she said. “But he is respectable and well-rounded, in the manner of English education. And he has thought a great deal about spiritual matters.”
“Spiritual matters!” her father exclaimed. “I thought I had brought you up better than to believe in a crutch that supports feeble minds in their mediocrity!”
Had he raised her as an atheist? I was appalled, but I knew I would be able to teach her otherwise, patiently and carefully, as a man must do with his wife.
“I want to believe in something other than science,” she said, and I thrilled at the earnestness in her voice. “I want to believe in something free and fierce, something that stands outside society.”
Her theology was muddled, but she could learn. Her father’s sound of disgust and frustration made me smile.
That evening we stood on the terrace overlooking the sea. I could not resist pressing the issue. “Desiree, do you think we are well matched in mind?”
She hesitated, taking a breath.
I did not mind. I knew I outstripped her, but I could reach down, lift her to new heights of thought, of philosophy. Some hold that the Negro brain is structurally inferior to ours, but Desiree had already proved that she could get her mind around such things as mathematics and mechanics. I would show her theology’s wonders, the careful construction of a passage explicating God’s glory. We would read Milton together, and other poetry that would elevate her soul.
* * *
I decided to search for proof of Tyndall’s intentions, for evidence that he was not a man of science, only pretending to be one in order to seduce my gullible bride-to-be. Desiree always thought the best of people. It was up to my more rigorous mind to make sure she was not being too trusting.
A massive book lay on the table in Tyndall’s study, its pages well-thumbed. I turned it to study the spine.
A chill ran through me and I pulled my hand away, as though from a coiled serpent. It was King James’s Dæmonologie.
Using a handkerchief, I turned it to me and opened it. The words burned up at me:
This word of Sorcerie is a Latine worde, which is taken from casting of the lot, & therefore he that vseth it, is called Sortiarius à sorte.
Was Tyndall a sorcerer, then? What unholy designs did he have on Desiree? This was far, far worse than I had imagined.
A cough sounded behind me. I dropped the book and spun.
Tyndall.
He had the gall to stand there, polite inquiry on his face. “Some light reading, Stone?” he said.
I pointed at the book. My hand shook with emotion. “No honest man has such a book in his library! What foul magics do you practice?”
“I have never claimed to be an honest man,” he said dryly.
“Demon!” I hissed.
He shook his head. His tone was still polite, as though we spoke about the proper slicing of a breast of pheasant or the correct garnish for a trout. “I have been called that before, on my visits to this land,” he said. “But elf is more accurate.”
“I know a demon when I see one! You admit you are not human? You want not just Desiree’s body, but her soul!”
He snorted. “Her soul is her own. I want only her clever mind and machines, to entertain my Queen’s court.”
I gestured about the room. “Then all this is just illusion!”
He shook his head. A smile lingered at the corners of his mouth, as though it pleased him to speak so straightly to me. “No, the real Lord Tyndall is…elsewhere. He will return when I am done, none the worse for the wear. Indeed, his fortunes will prosper as a result. As yours could.”
“You mean to threaten me.”
“I mean to say that the financial chains binding you to your fiancée could be replaced with other gold, of my own forging, as recompense.”
“Desiree is more than gold to me,” I said. “A good wife is a treasure. Fairy gold is said to melt away, or become dry leaves in the light of day.”
“So you refuse to give her up?” he said.
“She may not be much,” I said. “Prid
eful, and a little wanton, and overly obsessed with this world’s trumperies. But she is mine, and I will have her, and the rich dowry that comes with her, and the inheritance that will befall her when her father dies.”
“Do you love her?”
I hesitated too long. In the silence I heard a little gasp of betrayal behind me. I turned just in time to see the tears in Desiree’s eyes before she fled.
* * *
She was nowhere to be found. No matter where I searched, even with the help of Tyndall’s servants, who were looking for their absent lord, mysteriously vanished as well. But when I let myself into my chamber that night, I knew she had been there. A tang of oil and steel hung in the air like dragon’s breath.
I first saw the note on my writing desk. Desiree’s handwriting was clear as copperplate.
It read:
Claude,
I do not think we will suit after all. But I have left you something that will, I think, let you have the kind of woman you desire. She comes with my dowry—I will not need it where Tyndall is taking me. I wish you only the best, Claude. I hope you wish me that in turn. The key is on the mantle. Remember to wind her up every seventh day.
-Desiree
I looked around and finally saw the shrouded figure by the fireplace. I pulled away the cloth covering it. At first it looked like Desiree standing there, stiff and rigid, dressed in a gown of pale blue moiré that I recognized as the one she had worn to Lady Allsop’s ball. But closer examination showed that the skin was dyed cloth laid over a harder surface, the hair sewn onto the scalp. A hole nestled in her décolletage, just big enough to accommodate the brass key I retrieved from the fireplace.
I inserted the key and twisted it, hearing the ratcheting of the cogs and gears inside my clockwork bride, until her eyelids unshuttered and I stepped forward to take her in my arms.