My Lady's Choosing

by Kitty Curran

  You suppress a sigh and search the recesses of your memory for some trace of connection between Henrietta and Kent. Lady Evangeline said the girl was sent away for a time to be fostered, and it was perhaps in Kent that Henrietta learned of love as a pure and true thing, unfettered by society gatherings and the lashing tongue of the ton. An illegitimate daughter may well find happiness with a sweet farmer, but a lady? And heir to Manberley? Out of the question.

  “Tell me, Henrietta,” your voice works quickly. “Your brother, Rafe Caddington. Cad. He presses his evidence with more flash than forethought. It makes the whole affair smell of a rat. Do you wonder if perhaps it is a…mistake on Cad’s part, made in haste? Earnest? Or—”

  “Or revenge?” Henrietta’s voice is dry as a bone. It is the voice of a woman weary of the world, a survivor, not a child of one and twenty. Your eyes widen just long enough for Henrietta to realize her mistake. Her candidness is swept swiftly away, hidden under a curtain of shaking curls. “Forget I said that, miss. My brother Cad is very honorable. Both of my brothers are very…honorable.”

  “Henrietta, I—” You cast a glance around you. You have never been so casting with glances as you have been this evening. You pull the girl close and search her wide eyes for evidence. Of what, you do not know. “Does Cad…has he…,” you whisper.

  “Has he what, sweeting?” a voice like poisoned honey drips down the back of your neck. You startle. Henrietta flees. Cad.

  Egads! Turn to this page.

  “No, Evangeline!” you scream across the desert sands. “Do not throw away your life by ending hers!”

  “Your little plaything thinks she knows that love is living. But living without your love is a living death.” Delphine sneers not at you, but at Evangeline.

  “This isn’t love! This is madness! Pure, jealous madness!” you cry. “She has done all of this just to see you again.”

  “Shut your plaything’s mouth!” Delphine cries, tears carving desperate tracks down her face. “Shut it or I will—forever!”

  “You will do no such thing, Delphine,” Evangeline spits. “She is not my plaything. She is the love of my life. The real oasis. You are now, and have always been, merely a mirage. You took English secrets and sold them to the French. To Napoleon’s people. You made me forsake my husband, forsake my country and king, and now you look at me with your moon-cat eyes and expect what from me? Impunity? Trust? Love?” Evangeline laughs joylessly and spits again in the sand.

  Now it is Delphine’s turn to spit. “Yours was a marriage of convenience. He had no interest in you! He had interest in other men!”

  “So?” Evangeline laughs. “Do you have any idea how hard it was to heal the rift your betrayal created between us? We were friends, Delphine.”

  “So?” Bitter tears glitter in Delphine’s eyes, like jeweled scarabs in the sand. “We were lovers. I loved you. I love you. Love forgives.”

  “Love, to you, is a plaything. And I no longer have interest in your make of toy.” Evangeline raises her golden pistol. “You have to the count of ten to mount your camel, take this man, and leave.”

  “Love is—” Delphine trembles.

  “Something you know nothing about. One. Two. Three. Four.” Evangeline holds her line. Fabien nods a pained farewell to you, mounts his camel, and is gone.

  “Love—”

  “Five. Six. Seven. Eight.”

  Whatever Delphine was about to say is lost on the wind as she beats a hasty retreat to her camel. Soon she is gone, and you can no longer care a fig about her because your mouth is lost in a rush of Evangeline’s silken kisses.

  “My goodness,” Evangeline says when she finally pulls away. “I thought she would never leave!”

  With that, you and your lady love ravish each other senseless as desert winds whip torrents of sand around you like so much confetti. You would be concerned about it getting in places it shouldn’t, but you’re too busy being overcome with a feeling of divine blessedness and ecstasy to care. You are wetter than the Nile for this woman, and she navigates your depths with the skill and magic of a sailor who knows her way to and from worlds beyond the earthly plane.

  Suddenly, the earthly plane beneath you shudders and bucks. At first, you think it is Evangeline trying something new, and a little rough, until you realize that what can only be the lost Temple of Hathor is breaking through the desert floor like a giant hand reaching out to steal the sun.

  As the temple rises impossibly high, nearly blocking out the sun with its enormous beauty and size, Evangeline leans over to you.

  “Do you think it is for us?” she asks.

  “Who else would it be for?” You laugh, then she laughs, and the more you laugh and kiss, the higher the tower seems to rise. It shimmers for a moment and then solidifies, a mirage no longer. The temple is risen. The temple is as real as your love.

  You both marvel at it, then at each other, awed.

  “Well,” Evangeline asks after a moment, “what do you think?”

  “I think”—you flash her a roguish grin, before rising to your feet and flashing her a good look up your skirt—“we should continue this, inside.”

  You two have many adventures ahead of you, don’t you think?

  The End

  The eldritch garden definitely does not have vegetables in it. This garden is like your soul right now: overgrown, ripe, rotten. You are unsure how to right the wrongs you’ve done, if you even want to. You came to Hopesend Manor a silly little chit, and now what are you? Your blood burns with desires you have no shame for, and your heart beats with love and fear so strong, you worry that your mind will be completely drowned out by this minor-key symphony.

  You are about to plant yourself on an overturned gravestone to have a good cry when none other than Lord Garraway Craven emerges from a tragically tangled curtain of wisteria.

  “This is for you, my love.” He hands you a small, smooth, polished-ash box.

  You take it. “What is it?”

  “A new beginning.” A diamond dewdrop of a tear slides down his plush lashes and explodes onto the box lid.

  You remove the lid to find a letter of recommendation on his finest stationery commending your governessing skills, along with full first-class passage to America. Your mind scrambles to work out what this all means when he speaks again.

  “Of course, I will give you any money you need, any amount at all, for whatever it is you choose to do. A woman of your skills and drive will most likely wish to work, even if she doesn’t need to. Hence the recommendation. But if you do not wish to work, and perhaps want only to travel, that is just as well. I can pay to—”

  “Pay me to leave you?” you interrupt, your broken heart lodged in your throat.

  “No, love, I—” he stammers like a child. “This is not payment. It is the best way I can think of for you to be free.”

  “What if I do not wish to be free?” You allow your tears to fall like daggers. “Do you not love me?”

  “Of course I love you, woman! I love you more than life and breath and reason! I love you more than wind and air and—”

  “Then why send me away?”

  “Because I am terrible for you. I am a monster, and you are an angel—” This time you interrupt him by snorting and rolling your eyes. “A fallen angel, fine. But still, you are more angel than I.”

  “Then confess.” You silence him with a kiss, and the box falls from your hands to the half-lush, half-stony ground. “Confess your sins to me, the sins you have committed, the sins that make you loathe yourself and loathe this love. Confess what would have you send me away, rather than gather me close, closer, closest. Speak now.”

  You throw yourself at his mercy, fast and filthy and gorgeous. He pulls your undergarments aside just enough to allow his staff entry to your hallowed hall, and you free your breasts from your dress and into his hungry mouth with the ease and desire of a champion
lover.

  How could you ever leave a man who is so eager to please all the damn time? Turn to this page. Hot tramp.

  However…this is a more plum offer than you’re likely to ever get. If you’d rather pick up that box, forget his confession, and get thee to America, turn to this page.

  “You will have to work that out for yourself,” you sniff at Cad. Taking Benedict’s arm, you stalk out of the room with your head held high.

  “This is not over! Not as long as I live!” cries Cad, lunging wildly at the two of you. You nod at Benedict, your eyes meeting in an almost psychic connection. Benedict grabs an erotically shaped lamp and strikes the blackguard squarely across the jaw. As Cad staggers away, you stick out your foot.

  Cad, blinded by rage and the remnants of the smashed lamp, fails to notice. He trips and goes flying into an elegant glass-fronted cabinet. There is an almighty crash, and he slumps unconscious to the floor.

  “Well, I think we best be going,” mutters Benedict. “But first…” He throws the suggestive lamp to one side, turns to you with fire in his eyes, and kisses you deeply. You cling to him like a drowning man to a raft. But you cannot spend all evening kissing in a brothel when you may have accidentally killed a man.

  A low groan rises from the shattered remains of the cabinet. Cad is clearly still alive, if not entirely happy.

  You and Benedict reluctantly pull away from each other and gaze at the broken man, broken furniture, and crushed watercress sandwiches strewn before you.

  “We did it, my darling!” you say. “We won!” Benedict turns to you, his expression that of a lost soul in the inferno.

  “Have we?” he says, his voice hollow. “I am glad that you tried to intervene peaceably with Cad, and that your clever words put us at an advantage. But don’t you see, my darling? It doesn’t change a thing.”

  “What do you mean?” you cry.

  “I mean that Henrietta will still be ruined if the truth comes out. I mean that I have opportunities as a man that she will not have. Don’t you see? I have a better chance in this world as a penniless bastard than she does.”

  “And so you will allow yourself to be ruined in order to save her? Even if she doesn’t want it?”

  “I’ll do it because she needs me to. A fortune and legitimacy will give her a chance at making a match with any number of men—it is her best shot at escaping the clutches of Cad. As much as it pains me to see him as owner of Manberley.”

  “But it isn’t fair!” you sob.

  Benedict only shrugs.

  “Life generally isn’t. But still. Whatever am I to do with you?” he murmurs into your hair as you cling to him.

  “Well, whatever it is, you best do it far away from here,” Lady Evangeline says gently. “Go, take my carriage. I’ll follow you shortly after I’ve cleared up this mess.” Benedict smiles at her gratefully.

  “You’re a lifesaver, Vange.”

  “Believe me, Benny, I know,” she says. She winks at you as you beat a hasty retreat from the room.

  Turn to this page.

  You and Mrs. Butts take tea. It is a balm for your soul. “You see and hear strange things at all hours in a house like this. I know, for truly I am a strange thing myself!” She laughs warmly, and you find that the sound softens the sharp edges of your fears.

  “Ghosts, aye,” she continues. “What be they but memories having a look around? I wouldn’t worry about ghosts. I did wonder, though, if such things could be, when her ghost would come and say a piece about how she met her end. He were with her when she died, as were the child, but of course you can’t get him to breathe a word of the ordeal. Too pained about it, I’d wager.”

  You choke on your tea. “Master Craven witnessed the death of his wife?” you ask gravely as you refill her cup.

  “Of course he did, love.” Mrs. Butts regards you with twinkling eyes. “Haven’t you heard talk of how he might have caused it himself?” Upon hearing this you spill the tea all over your lap. You leap up and yelp, in part due to the tea and in part due to this revelation. She dabs at your lap with a napkin. “Not for sport, mind you, or for jealousy, though it were oft said she had a wandering eye. Pretty woman like her could have her pick of men, and she liked to, I suppose. No, the real problem were that she weren’t much for mothering. She did not want to be tied down in the family way, and she certainly did not want to be at Master Alexander’s beck and call.”

  “Did you…,” you begin to say, but then swallow hard. “Did you observe her mothering? Often?” Your words feel thick on a clumsy tongue.

  “I would say…,” Mrs. Butts thinks a moment. “I observed her being upset about her lot in life. Some of the other servants might say harsher things, like she hit the child, or broke his spirit with words lashed like a whip, or turned him away like a beggar in a storm. And that by doing so, she broke Lord Craven’s heart.”

  You visibly start when she mentions Lord Craven’s name. She smooths your hair with her hand. “Oh, love, you mustn’t worry,” she says. “If he did kill her, I’m sure it were an accident. Even if it were on purpose, whatever happened that night surely has not let the man rest since. So take that as a cold comfort, whatever you do. Biscuit?”

  Mrs. Butts extends a small silver tray. You take a biscuit and eat it dumbly while considering your next move.

  Your next move turns out to be eating another biscuit. Then another. And another. Finally, Mrs. Butts snatches the plate, not unkindly, from your hands.

  “Perhaps it’s time to gather your thoughts, love?” she offers. You nod. It’s time for you to gather something, all right.

  Do you decide to gather information and confront Craven directly to find out what the devil is going on? If so, turn to this page.

  Or do you decide to gather resolve, be the Best Governess Ever, and teach Master Alexander some swordplay? If so, turn to this page.

  “Run, Kamal!” You pull his arm and flee in the opposite direction.

  Though your escape is hindered by the teeming crowds, you push on, pulse racing, as Fabien and his henchmen close in.

  “Miss! This way!” Kamal points to a narrow alley. You force yourself through the small gap between a market stall holder and a haggling customer, and have almost made it to freedom when a small child nods, as if on cue, and upends a barrel of apples. The bright red fruits roll underfoot, causing several bystanders to lose their balance. One older man lands upon Kamal as he falls, breaking your grasp on him.

  “Run ahead, please! I will try to distract them!” Kamal pushes off the old man and staggers to his feet.

  “No, Kamal!”

  “You must go! It is you they want!” Kamal runs back toward your pursuers, the crowd closing around him. “Save yourself, I beg you!”

  Alone, with no choices left, you continue your escape, leaping over a stall filled with dates through to a narrow entryway in a crumbling wall.

  The crowds thin out and you race past the curious eyes of Cairo’s citizens. After a left turn toward what you think is the museum, you spy one of the henchmen careening toward you. He viciously pushes a little girl out of the way as her parents cry out.

  You turn and flee in the opposite direction but find yourself caught suddenly in a vicelike grasp. Before you can scream, a heavy hand presses over your mouth while your arms are pinned down by an arm so solid it feels like it must be made of granite.

  “Where do you think you are going, chérie?” Fabien whispers into your ear. You attempt in vain to wrench yourself free. “You have an appointment with Madame Delphine St. Croix, and I would hate to disappoint her.”

  And with that he hauls you unceremoniously onto a camel, wraps his powerful hand around your mouth, and steers you both away. You continue to fight desperately to free yourself…to no avail.

  Turn to this page.

  You run your hands down Mac’s strong arms and search his clear eyes with your own. Thi
s is a man you trust, by look and feel and heart. He is also, not coincidentally, a man you want to spend many naked, adventurous hours with. Your trust is not informed by your desire, but your desire is heightened by your trust.

  “Mac, impossible things have happened this night. A lost love of mine returned and tried to steal me away. He thinks you sold out his fellow spies by revealing their location to Bonapartists, and that you were directly responsible for the death of his love, Constantina.” You take a steadying breath. “Were you ever a spy? Were you ever a mole?”

  “Nae, I wasn’t, lass.” Mac’s eyes are wide. You believe him.

  “Mac,” you whisper, “I trust you.”

  “Aye, lass. And I you.” Mac kisses you full on the mouth. Oh, how you are tempted to lose yourself in this moment forever. But many other moments, and likely your safety and the safety of Mac, the children, Dodger the dog, and a great many others, depend on you quashing your desire like an errant bedbug. At least for now.

  “Oooooooh!”

  You jump back. There is nothing like a chorus of prying orphans to interrupt the burgeoning bagpipe serenade of two lusty bodies.

  “You have ta get married now!” Sallie yells. “Also, someone left you a letter on the doorstep, miss! Prob’ly a lover out to ruin it all. I will have him in a fight if I need to, miss! I will kick his bits to smithereens!”

  “A letter?” Mac says, his manly brow furrowing. “Let’s see it then.” Together, you read the hastily scrawled note.

  You must meet me tonight, by the loch. Alone. I have new information we have to discuss. —O

  You and Mac share a look. This impossible letter will no doubt lead to impossible things.