“After Newberry,” Dashiell finished. “Yes, you’ve already reminded me.”
***
Vivienne couldn’t run the risk of letting Harold, her aunt’s groom, see her exit Teakesbury’s carriage. Surely, he would tell her aunt. She needed to stop a block or so away from the London Ladies’ Flower and Garden Society and sneak around the back of the building.
She leaned forward in her carriage seat and tapped the glass. The solicitor’s driver peered over his hunched shoulder at her.
“I’m not actually going home,” she said. “I’m visiting my former headmistress, Mrs. Highgate. She’s infirm with gout and has a terrible wart condition. I forget the address, but she lives near the London Ladies’ Flower and Garden Society. Please drive in that direction. I’ll recognize her address when I see it.”
He nodded his head and grunted.
When Vivienne could see the columns of the Society in the distance, she knocked on the glass again. The groom pulled the reins, and she stepped down before a filthy brown brick tenement building. All the windows were closed and caked with dirt.
Perhaps this wasn’t the best address for Mrs. Highgate to reside.
“’Ey now, are you sure this is where ya headmistress lives?” The driver studied her, chewing the inside of his cheek. “You don’t seem like the sort.”
“Why, um, she is a widow,” Vivienne lied in a sunny voice. She looked about, pretending to see nothing amiss. “Very much down on her luck these days. So sad. Good day, then.” She opened the door to the building and closed herself in.
The communal hall was narrow and dim and stank with old urine, rodents, and some kind of exotic floral scent—like dried flowers and sugar.
Vivienne kept her ear close to the entrance, listening for the carriage to pull away. A headache that had begun to blossom in the solicitor’s office now filled her whole head, like invisible hands trying to squash her brain.
The door to her left cracked open, and a woman with tight, hooded eyes peered out. “I help you?” A thick oriental accent hung on her words.
“No, thank you. I’m just waiting on a friend.”
“Ah.” The oriental lady nodded and smiled. She opened the door a bit more, letting out a big waft of that warm, sweet scent. “You look so tired,” the lady said. “Come, rest. Opium very good. It make you forget.”
Raw opium! The substance so vilified by the proper, yet extolled by the artists. Curious, Vivienne strained her eyes to see inside. Within, gold and red fabric fell in swags from the ceiling like a Turkish caravan tent. A well-dressed gentleman lay curled up on a low bed that was draped with purple and yellow sheets. In his mouth, he held a long stick that resembled a flute. White smoke curled about his face. His lids were shut, and his face was relaxed with a gentle smile on his lips as if he were in comforting sleep.
The swirl of smoke was hypnotic. Its sweetness filled her nose, rushing to her head, massaging its taut, aching fibers. Oblivion suddenly appeared so lovely and smelled so delicious.
Then the cold realization hit her head like a hard slap. She was supposed to be sneaking into the London Ladies’ Flower and Garden Society and pretending to learn how to irrigate box gardens!
“I must go!” She bolted out the door and back into the bitter, drizzling gray.
She scurried down the walk, then turned and hurried up a narrow pathway that led to the seats in back of the building. She slipped into the last row of the lecture hall and checked the clock hanging on the wall: five minutes to spare. Letting out a quiet sigh, she settled in her chair. At the end of the room, the matronly lecturer held up stems of flowers and other fauna and pronounced their Latin names. “Lonocera pileata, Digitalis ferruginea.”
Vivienne pressed her fingers into her temples, trying to ease the pressure in her head. However, after a moment, she felt her neck heat with the sensation of being watched. At the end of the row sat a lady in a turquoise dress that hung like a loose sack over her round form. Perched atop her tower of auburn hair was an old-fashioned leghorn hat decorated with a big fabric geranium. A brown dog that resembled a furry bat peeked his nervous head out from the paisley carpet bag on her lap. The woman smiled and picked up the dog’s tiny paw and waved it at Vivienne.
Oh Lord! She had managed to sit near a mad person. Vivienne flashed a polite smile and then pretended to concentrate on the lecture.
“Leucanthemum vulgare, Buxus sempervirens.”
Undeterred, the lady in the leghorn hat leaned across the expanse of empty seats separating them and said in a whisper that could be heard several rows up, “Pardon me, do I know you?”
The other attendees turned their heads, their faces scrunched in disapproval.
“I’m sorry, you must be mistaken,” Vivienne said, scooting to the side of her chair, away from the lady.
“But your eyes…” She waved her fat fingers over her features. “Yes, I’m quite certain that I know you!” she insisted, impervious to the shushes they were receiving.
“I’m afraid not.”
Vivienne rose and hurried outside just as her aunt’s landau lumbered up. Once Harold the groomsman dropped the steps, she ran down the walk and leapt inside the safety of the carriage. She leaned her head against the old cracked leather as the events of the afternoon whirled about her ailing brain. That solicitor had better be as trustworthy as Dashiell claimed. If John found out about—ah! A sharp pain flared in her temples.
***
Vivienne just wanted to slip through the house undetected, curl up under her covers, and try to make this headache go away before her command evening performance as the perfect fiancée.
But she had no such luck.
“Is that you, my little Vivvie?” her aunt called from the parlor. There was a strange, airy lilt to her words. “Come here.”
The moment Vivienne entered the parlor, she felt something was wrong, a foreboding change in the air like the drop in pressure before a storm. Beside her aunt’s Bible, a half-empty bottle of Milner’s Coca Tonic Wine sparkled in the sunlight streaming from the window. What had happened? Had the man in the blue coat returned?
Aunt Gertrude was standing under her husband’s portrait, dressed in her customary stiff black, her eyes large and glassy. She hummed “Jesus, Lover of My Soul” in a high, off-key warble. Garth stared at Vivienne from around his mistress’s skirt. His face was more wrinkled than ever. He emitted a gurgling whimper as if he were trying to say, “You are in so much trouble.”
“W-won’t you sit down?” her aunt said, making a wobbly gesture to her chair. “I think we should have a little d-discussion.”
Vivienne obeyed like a small apprehensive child being called into her father’s library after she had galloped through the house pretending to be a horse, thrusting a broom handle as if it were a jousting stick, and then accidentally tipping over the cupboard, smashing all the family’s dishes.
“Did you have a lovely time at the nude lecture?” her aunt asked in a pleasant voice, soothing an errant curl from her cheek.
“What? I—I didn’t go to that one. I went to the gardening lecture. Remember?”
“Oh, yes. Mr. Vandergrift would approve. All those quivering pistils and stamens.”
“Quivering… Aunt Gertrude, how much coca wine have you imbibed?”
“What my physician recommended, of course. Two spoonfuls. Why do you ask?” Her aunt burped and dabbed her mouth with her finger. “My nerves, you know, are so poorly lately. So poorly. I must ask the apothecary to make something stronger.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary.”
“Only the Lord knows how I suffer,” her aunt snapped and then released a long breath through her nose, recomposing herself. She pressed her hand to her chest. “I was thinking that soon you will be moving into your husband’s bed and—”
“Pardon?”
“I said soon you will be moving into your husband’s home. Do listen.”
“But you said… never mind.” Vivienne reached
for her aunt’s tonic bottle and discretely shoved it up her sleeve.
“And this will be your last time together with your beloved sisters. I think it would be best if you were with your family before the wedding. I’m selfish to keep you.”
Vivienne’s heartbeat sped. She couldn’t leave now or everything would come crashing down. “No! My father wanted me to be with Mr. Vandergrift. He told me not to leave him alone in London.” Don’t let that gentleman even glance at another woman, he had ordered. Of course, he didn’t say anything about early wedding presents. “And I… I just got here.”
“I didn’t want to upset your father. He was so insistent that you come. I just… simply need my rest. It is all too much for me now.”
Vivienne lowered her voice and edged further down her chair. “Is something wrong?” she said slowly. “Something maybe you feel you can’t talk about?”
“I-I don’t know what you mean.”
Vivienne swallowed and continued tiptoeing into dangerous terrain. “Just that you can trust me with anything you need to say.” She darkened her voice. “Anything.” Such as your husband was a lascivious profligate.
The older woman’s eyes creased in the corners.
“But perhaps you feel you can’t say something, because admitting it might be…” Vivienne paused, trying to choose the correct word: mortifying, horrifying, revolting, disgusting, “…painful like when one is spanked or… or lied to about being, you know, spanked.”
“What are you talking about? You make no sense. Spanking and lying? You’re not thinking p-p-properly.” Her aunt attempted to wag her finger but only swiped the air. “I shouldn’t allow you to attend nude gardening lectures in the future.”
Vivienne came to her feet. “I just want you to know that you shouldn’t feel you need to keep silent. Because you can trust me with… with whatever you feel you can’t trust me with.”
Her aunt pressed her palms to her temples. “How you do babble on, hurting my head.” She ambled across the carpet and picked up a tiny booklet atop her Bible. She handed it to Vivienne. “Harold gave me this train schedule. He will accompany you home. You may leave on Tuesday after Bible lessons.” She lifted the edge of her hem and started to leave the room.
“No!” Vivienne cried, jumping in front of her aunt. “I’m not going home! Not until you tell me what is the matter!”
“I have prayed and prayed to the Lord and this is His decision. I am merely his faithful, suffering servant.” She walked from the room, whispering “my poor nerves” as her guardian dog trotted beside her.
Vivienne’s lips twitched. She couldn’t very well argue with God.
She trudged up the stairs. Her head throbbed and she had to somehow manage to contort her hair into perfect ringlets in the next hour. She just wanted to put on her robe, climb into bed with a book, nibble on biscuits, and pretend that the entire fate of her family didn’t rest on her shoulders.
The door to her chamber was cracked, and she could hear the soft hiccupping sounds of someone crying. In the corner, sitting in the rocking chair, was Miss Banks. Tears poured down her face. Vivienne clutched her belly. She couldn’t handle any more drama today.
“Oh, miss. ’Tis been a dreadful day.” She rubbed her dribbling nose on her arm. “But don’t you worry about a th-thing.”
“What has happened?” Vivienne asked, though she didn’t want to hear.
“We got our wages today.”
Vivienne shook her head. “I don’t understand. Isn’t that a good thing?”
“The missus tells me to take the s-silver sugar spoon to the pawn shop while you were at your lecture. I only got a pound for it. ’Twas your great-great-grandmother’s.” She wiped her eyes. “But you needn’t be a’frettin’ about that. You just enjoy yourself at the opera.”
Eight
“What’s wrong with you tonight, Vivienne?” John asked. He gripped her hand, pulling her through the crowd milling about the lobby of the opera house. “You seem distracted.”
How was Vivienne supposed to answer that question? My father is inches from ruin, my uncle was a crooked lecher, my aunt is being blackmailed by a detestable madam, Dashiell—that scoundrel whom I kissed behind your back—spilled my problems to a solicitor, and there’s the issue of your wedding present at Seven Heavens. And to top it all, I’m supposed to make an endearing impression on the Montags this evening. So yes, I’m distracted.
Beyond the great closed doors to the theater, the production had already started. The sound of a powerful yet muffled mezzo soprano rang in the air. Vivienne winced. Her head throbbed so fiercely that she was afraid the memory of her first opera would be of her retching all over the shiny polished floor. They were late because John hadn’t approved of the gown she had chosen. So he made her change into the silver one she had worn the first night they’d met. She and Miss Banks worked fast, but still the switch of gowns took thirty minutes. A white lace ruffle ran across her satin silver bodice, exposing the tops of her breasts and hanging off her shoulders. Her white gloves came just shy of her elbows, leaving her upper arms cold beneath the lace. All Vivienne had brought to London was the green cloak. The poor thing was beginning to wear and the earthy fern color would not do against the pale silver gown, so she went without an outer garment. Now her skin was covered with bumps brought out by the cold, damp night.
They hurried up two flights, and the attendant guided them down a dim corridor. As the man opened a door, John leaned in, his musky cologne filling her nose. He whispered, “Make me proud.” He gave her a hurried peck on her temple.
The door opened onto an overwhelming panorama of stacks and stacks of theater boxes, each a little scene of finely dressed people in conversation. On the stage, the set of a rustic village nestled among a painted backdrop of craggy hills with a vista of the sea painted behind it. The chorus, dressed as ragged peasants, surrounded an expansive woman in a shimmering rose gown who stood downstage, her arms extended, fingers curled, as if she were baring some soul secret to the enormous theater with her powerful voice.
Then a man clad in formal black and a woman in a midnight blue gown stepped into Vivienne’s vision.
“Oh, darling, here she is,” said the woman. Despite the age lines on her face, she retained a fragile beauty. Her dark hair, curled in puffs, was streaked with pure white strands. She wore a permanent smile and had a quivering frenetic energy, like a tiny excitable dog.
Meanwhile, the gentleman moved in a slow, unrushed motion. He was tall with wide, imposing shoulders. The skin on his face had begun to sag, softening his features, but his gray eyes were sharp and gazed out from under a heavy mantle of gray brows.
Without an introduction, the lady grasped Vivienne’s hands. “Isn’t she the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”
Mr. Montag slapped John’s shoulder. “Well done, son.”
John made the introductions. Vivienne’s muscles eased, and her headache lessened. The Montags weren’t the demi-gods she had feared. The evening might not be as bad as she’d originally thought—perhaps even enjoyable.
Her gaze met John’s. He smiled, and at that moment she saw something new in his eyes—a tender glow. He loved her. He was proud of her. Her heart felt light and airy, like gossamer. This marriage could work after all. Then she realized he wasn’t looking at her, but over her shoulder.
Vivienne whirled around, coming face to face with a young lady wearing a pale silvery blue dress, similar to Vivienne’s yet significantly finer in fabric and detail. The girl’s green eyes were darker and smaller than Vivienne’s, her face thinner, her features more delicate. Dark curls fell from a knot on the top of her head and framed her pale cheeks.
“Oh God,” Vivienne whispered, staring at a version of herself. Or was she the version of the other?
The young lady blushed and shyly gazed away.
“Miss Taylor, this is our daughter Elise,” Mrs. Montag said, pride warming her voice.
Both ladies curtsied and Elis
e murmured a greeting too soft to be heard. “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Vivienne replied, managing a reasonably pleasant tone, though her nails dug into her palms.
John stood transfixed, lips parted, staring at Elise, his adoration for her evident to all the opera glasses now turned to the Montags’ box. No doubt Vivienne’s humiliation was far more entertaining than the production on the stage.
Mrs. Montag squeezed Vivienne’s arm, pity in her eyes. Having the Montags feel sorry for her was not the endearing impression she had intended to make.
“Why, I think every gentleman in the opera house must be looking at you,” Mrs. Montag said, trying hard. “John, you should be jealous.”
“I-I am,” he managed.
Several long, embarrassing beats passed in the music before someone spoke again. “Now, why don’t you and Elise take the first row and get to know each other,” Mrs. Montag suggested. “We love John like a son, so you two will be practically sisters.”
“Wonderful,” Vivienne said through gritted teeth. Just what she needed, another perfect sister she couldn’t live up to.
She and Elise sat next to each other like odd twins: the rich one and the desperate one. Mrs. Montag took the seat on the end, beside her daughter, but Vivienne could still smell her perfume, pungent in her nostrils. John and Mr. Montag hid in the shadows at the back of the box and adopted the deep tones of business conversation.
Vivienne was the first to venture into the dangerous conversational waters. “What a lovely gown,” she told Elise.
“Thank you,” the other replied, but didn’t follow up with a similar comment about Vivienne’s dress, which looked almost the same.
So the conversation lapsed back into silence as the chorus started to sing. When they were done, the soprano, now draped in white and clutching a rose, launched into a mournful aria.
Vivienne tried again. “This is my first opera. It’s very exciting.”
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