by Joan Smith
Chapter Twenty-three
Mrs. Steyne came to the door for me. We went together to the kitchen to pirouette before the others and receive admiring ahs, before ascending to the saloon.
“You look just like a lady, Jane,” Molly said, her eager brown eyes smiling.
“I hope you know how to act like one,” Bess said impishly.
“You’ll do, dear,” Cook complimented.
Bobby had to kiss me goodnight, causing some fears for my lace as his fingers were daubed with cream, but I escaped unscathed. The other members of the party were already assembled when we entered. The gentlemen arose to make us welcome; Mrs. Palin sat like a queen in a wing chair by the fire, with the flames glinting from her copper curls.
It was clear why she chose the seat close to the warmth. She wore an outfit that defied not only convention and the law of modesty, but the law of gravity as well. Her arms and shoulders were bare. A frothy ruffle of glimmering gold lace dipped over her shoulders, plunging in front to reveal the contour of her bosoms. The gown was of bronze taffeta. Her curls were piled on top of her head in a seemingly careless manner. Though they looked ready to tumble down, they did not actually budge an inch throughout the evening. A necklace of diamond and topaz stones sparkled at her throat, the pendant of it repeated in miniature in buckles at her ears. Any notion I entered the room with that I looked elegant vanished at the first glimpse of her. Here was fashion, elegance and striking beauty.
“Good evening, Mrs. Palin,” I said, making my curtsy first to her.
“So kind of you to come, Miss Bingham,” she answered lazily. No “dear Jane” tonight. “And Mrs. Steyne. What an imposition to drag my servants from their duties; you are really too kind to humor me.”
There was a playful dart of her eyes to Monsieur Arouet at this speech. It was not by chance her first speech drew attention to our status as servants in her household. She meant to make a game of us. “How elegant you both look. I feel a very bird of paradise, as you have both chosen black this evening, like the gentlemen. Let me make you known to our guest, Monsieur Arouet.”
The gentlemen were already on their feet, willing to pretend we were ladies for the evening. I looked toward the Frenchman, to see him staring at me in a most marked way, a little smile curving his lips. I had known him to be handsome from my former glimpses of him. I had not realized his eyes were so dark, nearly black, like coffee. The arrangement of his features was regular, but his expression was pure Gallic charm, casting some magical aura over eyes and nose and mouth.
When the French gods take into their heads to create a charmer, no one does it better. Even his walk, as he advanced toward us, was enchanting. He glided easily, with some suggestion of restrained energy. His bow was a positive work of art in motion. He ought to have been on the stage to delight the generality of womankind.
Or was it the glow of admiration in his eyes that made me find him so fascinating? “Enchanté, madame, mam’selle,” he said, bowing first at Mrs. Steyne, then toward myself. I remembered I was not to recognize French, but judged it feasible for even a nursemaid to understand this much. “Madame is blessed to have such employees; not only obliging, but charming,” he said to Regina.
I noticed from the corner of my eye that Mrs. Steyne was as bowled over as myself at his manners. It was Mr. Palin’s turn to welcome us, and compliment us on our new appearance. “Very nice, ladies. I am happy to see the spectacles were dispensed with for the occasion, Bingie.”
“Speaking of occasion,” Mrs. Palin announced in a meaningful voice, “let us not overlook the occasion for this party. You are to present my portrait now, monsieur. Where have you hidden it? I have not seen it framed yet, and Robert has not seen it at all.”
“Monsieur Palin, prepare your eyes for a treat,” the Frenchman said to him. “It will be difficult to surprise them, when they have every day the privilege of viewing so much pulchritude.” His sweeping glance included all the females present, not omitting even Mrs. Steyne. He made another little bow, then walked from the room, to return within seconds holding a covered painting.
With a dramatic gesture, he pulled away the shawl he had hastily thrown over it, and held aloft the large, ornate gilt frame. He walked to a table that stood beneath a large mirror, propped the painting against the wall, and walked back to view it at his leisure. We all followed, with Mrs. Palin in the lead.
He was a good, possibly a great, artist. The creature regarding us from the canvas was madame to the life. She wore a bold, challenging smile. The dramatic black gown had been well chosen to accentuate her fair skin and bright curls. My eyes flew to her fingers, to see the mourning ring depicted. She held a red carnation in one hand, its leaves so arranged as to take up the antique whirls of the ring’s setting.
“It is good, non?” Mr. Arouet asked us, looking pleased with his work.
“It is lovely, Henri,” madame declared, the first to voice her enthusiasm. “You were right; black is my color. I would not have thought it.”
She cast a jealous look at me as she spoke, or to be more precise, at my borrowed gown. “I should set the portrait at the table, and be in style with the rest of the crows.”
‘There are only we two masculine crows present, madame,” Arouet informed her playfully, “and two delightful female black swans. And of course one very predatory tiger,” he added, in honor of her bronze gown.
“You will notice, Mr. Palin,” he went on quickly, “that your wife has included a tiger as her little bibelot. It is the tradition in the family to depict one, I know.”
“It is a beautiful painting, Monsieur Arouet, even at your exorbitant price,” Mr. Palin replied lightly.
“As to that, monsieur, you get what you pay for. Who else but I could have done justice to this lionne you are married to? English painting, unfortunately, is in a great decline. It must be a Frenchman you choose at this time. Millet is not your man. He does the peasants well enough, but not ladies. All his swans become geese. Courbet the same. Corot, despite his Légion d’honneur, refuses to become great. He does those dreadful landscapes and fuzzy trees, when his forte is quite clearly the human figure. C’est dommage. But I do not complain. It means I get to paint all the beautiful ladies. Shall I do you as well, monsieur?” he hinted. “I also do husbands.”
“We shall see.”
“That means no,” Monsieur Arouet said sadly to himself.
“Not at all. I say what I mean.”
“I would not boast of it. The unvarnished truth is greatly overrated. I always varnish everything, even my paintings. It blurs the rough edges a little.”
I enjoyed his good-natured and quite foolish bantering. When he saw me smiling at him, he stepped closer to me. “Shall I paint Mam’selle 1’Abbesse? You bear a striking resemblance to an abbess, in your simple black gown with white trim. Only the wimple is lacking. That is a dramatic choice for you, simple, yet chic. The eyes too are in tune—innocent of guile, of flirtation.” His black eyes flitted from head to hands to cheekbones to hair as he spoke, but in a curiously impersonal way.
“I could not afford your fee, monsieur,” I parried.
“What a pity! It is usually only the ugly ladies of a certain age who can afford me. With, occasionally, as in the present case, a young beauty whose husband is eager to capture her charms for posterity. You I would be happy to paint without a fee. Ah, you are shy. What a delightful change. I haven’t seen anyone blush in a decade. I had thought it a lost art. How would it be possible to capture that maidenly blush in pigments, I wonder. En effet, it is impossible! Mam’selle is a fitter subject for watercolors, a medium in which I do not indulge.”
“Your portrait is magnificent,” I said, to divert his interest and compliments from this personal vein.
“Merci. I am very good. I do madame a greater homage than she knows by coming to the moors to paint her portrait. I do not usually work anywhere but in the city. Only money could induce me to come here—a great deal of money. The weathe
r is most uncivilized. I dread to go back out in it. Even the trees are huddled and shrunken from the cold. I dread to go back out the door. I am thinking quite seriously of taking up residence at the local inn till winter is over to save myself the trip to London in this weather. There is a Mr. Rupert who wishes me to paint him, but he is a dull, ordinary little man. He has circled the globe, and brought back not a single interesting ancedote, but only a handful of pebbles that might possibly be rough diamonds, but are more likely unpolished quartz, I think.”
“Oh, you have met Mr. Rupert! He is a friend of mine.”
“That is the most interesting thing I have heard about him thus far. I expect he passes for a galant, here in the wilderness. Deprivation does strange things to folks’ perceptions. The English, for example, think sheep are to be eaten, as well as shorn. If madame has mutton on the menu, you will please to consider that remark unsaid.”
I was sufficiently diverted by his remarks that it took a moment for his former comment to sink into my consciousness. Those pebbles that might be diamonds—how very strange that Mr. Rupert should have some, like madame. I glanced toward her. When I returned my attention to my partner, he was gazing at me, with still that little smile hovering at the corners of his lips.
“She is extraordinary,” he said, looking from portrait to live subject. “In Paris such women are called lionnes—lionesses. Rich, young wives, you know, pretty, flirtatious, daring, hard riders, good shots, some even indulge in tobacco, and unfeminine language. I adore them, nearly as much as the innocent, guileless ones,” he assured me, with a teasing smile.
“I come to think you show an undue appreciation for any sort of female, Monsieur Arouet.”
“I am always distracted by women and wine, provided they are beautiful and well aged respectively. A typical Frenchman in that respect, or so the anglais tell me. Actually I have drunk more bad wine in France than anywhere, and the women...” He hunched his shoulders in a dismissing gesture.
I believe madame was unhappy to see me in conversation with her favorite flirt. She paced toward us, reminding me very much of the lioness, with her predatory, flashing eyes, as she came. “What wickedness are you inflicting on this innocent little lamb, Henri?” she asked.
“Oh, but I like little black sheep! I have been whetting my compliments to slay her.”
He was easily diverted by the lioness for all that. Within seconds, madame had marched him off to discuss some detail of the portrait. I looked into the mirror above the painting, to see Mr. Palin staring at me, in a puzzled way. His was not the admiring face of the French artist; he was not even seeing me, I think, but was staring in a bemused way at my reflection, with a faraway look on his face. For several seconds he was not even aware I was looking at his image as well. When he noticed it, he gave a jerk as of coming to attention, and walked toward me.
“Enjoying the party?” he asked. The question could hardly have been more banal, the expression less so. He was excited, and trying to conceal it.
“Very much.”
“You certainly appear very much at home in a polite saloon.”
“My family were not savages, Mr. Palin. I have attended parties before.”
“Forgive me. That was a condescending thing to say. Where exactly was your home, Miss Bingham? Northumberland, I believe you mentioned.”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“What part of Northumberland? Border country, coastal?”
“Newcastle-on-Tyne,” I said. It was the only city I could think of, and after I said it, I was fairly sure I had mentioned a small village as my old home. “Just outside of Newcastle, that is,” I added vaguely.
“What is the name of the place?”
“Mr. Palin!” I exclaimed, making a joke of it. “Have you decided to doubt my bona fides at this late date?”
“Why no. I am just a little curious. What was the place?”
“Lindsay,” I answered, pulling a name quite at random out of the air. It happened to be my mother’s maiden name, but of course he could not know that.
“That was our last nursemaid’s second given name,” he said, with a deliberately searching look at me. “Rosalie Lindsay Thompson. It was her mother’s maiden name. I complimented her once on her pretty name—Rosalie is a lovely name, don’t you think? She replied that she found it too cloying, and had once tried to convince her friends to call her Lindsay, but for some reason, the name did not take. She had a sister, about your age.”
I do not think Monsieur Arouet would have had much difficulty painting my blush at that moment; crimson would do nicely. I felt the blood rush to stain my cheeks. He knew. As surely as I stood in his saloon, he knew I was Rosalie’s sister. How had he found out?
The answer was not far to seek. Regina had told him. Before I reached the listening post in the attic, she had told him. And if she had, she could only have discovered it from Aunt Harriet’s letter. She would have discovered other facts as well, that I was busily working to find out what had happened to my sister. The two of them were working together, Regina and her husband. Whatever it was that had happened here at Palin Park, they were both in to it, and despite their mutual hatred, conspired together to hide it.
“I had not realized there was a Lindsay in Northumberland. I must scrutinize my map more closely,” he added.
“It is a small place—only a hamlet. I doubt you’ll find it on a map,” I said, fighting down my agitation.
“So do I doubt it. Ah, there is the butler calling us to dinner. I wonder what protocol Mrs. Palin means to follow. There, she is going with Monsieur Arouet. I shall accompany you and Mrs. Steyne.” He turned away then to attach his housekeeper to one arm, offering me the other. I put my fingers on his black arm with the utmost reluctance. How was I to endure an hour’s meal in company with the people who had killed Rosalie? The food would not go down my throat. It would be a disaster.
Chapter Twenty-four
The meal was not so disastrous as I had foreseen. It was the Frenchman who saved it from nightmare. It was beyond even Regina’s skills of imagination to properly seat so bizarre a crew as graced her table. Mr. Palin occupied the head, Mrs. Steyne on his right. I was put on his left, with Monsieur Arouet beside me, and Regina, strangely, beside him, with no one on her other side. But then she was not really interested in anyone other than him, I think. Politeness urged him to dispense half his conversation to me. It was the bright spot in the hour. He drank rather freely of the table’s fine wine, without showing indication of anything but happy spirits.
Beyond the windows, the wind was keening, soughing through the naked branches, rustling the draperies where it invaded vulnerable crevices. “You are very brave people to live here,” he congratulated us. “It strikes me as quite extraordinary the spots mankind has chosen to inhabit. Nothing is too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry for us. From the frozen tundra of the north Arctic to the wild jungles of the Amazon, you will find people living with apparent satisfaction. For myself, I feel there is only about one-tenth of the landmass of the world that is habitable. In France, the northwestern quarter of the country is possible. The much-proclaimed Côte d’Azur is an oven in summer. In England, one can live comfortably enough in London from April to September, but beyond that, there is only the provinces, and no civilized man can endure provinces.”
“We have a few urban centers outside of London,” Mr. Palin mentioned, smiling wryly at his guest.
“I have had the misfortune to visit many of them, sir. Dreadful Manchester—they call it a city, but it is no more than a cluster of factories. Birmingham is possibly even worse. London, Paris, Rome, Vienna—one is safe enough in any of those. There is bound to be a handful of conversable people if the city is large enough.”
“You are too hard on us, Henri,” Mrs. Palin replied. “I have traveled a good deal, and found interesting, conversable people all over the world.”
“Even in Africa?” he asked, raising his mobile brows in astonishment.
> “Most especially in Africa.”
“Ah, but you are one of those delightful catalysts who can turn the most boring group into scintillating talkers. I occasionally find even myself being amusing when I am in your company, madame.”
“You are always amusing,” she told him.
“It is one’s duty to try, each in his own way. The French do it by flirting with the opposite sex; the English by serving tea; the Germans by arguing. A fellow I met at the inn in Widecombe tells me in South America there is a group of natives in the jungle who entertain by killing and eating their guests. Well, food has long been a means of entertaining company, of course. Your dinner is quite excellent, by the by,” he added, turning to compliment the hostess. “Whom are we having for dinner?”
“Don’t be gross, Henri,” she chided. “Who was this man in Widecombe you spoke of?”
“A Mr. Rupert. I spoke to you of him earlier, Miss Bingham. He tries very hard to be entertaining. One must grant him the intention. He described in exquisite detail how the killing of the meal is done, but failed to inform me of the more important part—how the dish was prepared.”
“Appetizing!” Mrs. Palin said, in a repressive spirit. “Shall we discuss something else?”‘
“I am curious to hear how the natives do the killing,” Mr. Palin said.
I was surprised at his speech, as the subject seemed a singularly inappropriate one for the dinner table.
“Ah, good, because I am very eager to tell someone,” Monsieur Arouet said, “and get a sensible man’s opinion on the story. Curare is the agent. It is some particularly virulent poison, which is got from a vine in South America. Brazil, I believe, he spoke of. It is unusual in that it kills on contact with an opening in the skin, rather than by being ingested. Arrows the Indians use to administer it.”
“What is the effect?” Mr. Palin asked quietly, but his voice was taut with interest.