Altered America

by Cat Rambo

  I stammered apologies, backed away as quickly as I could, bowing.

  I searched through the crowds for Desiree and failed to find her. I looked around the punchbowl, through a salon of young misses waiting to be asked to dance, their mamas hovering nearby. Desiree had never been among their ranks. Her father had been indulgent, allowed her to skip so many social niceties. I sought her among the dancers and along the wall benches, where groups of men gossiped and women nattered among themselves.

  Slipping outside into the starlit gardens, I found her there, scandalously alone with a man.

  Pea gravel crunched under my boot heels as I approached, just in time to see him lean forward and take her hand. The night was cool on my outraged cheeks as I ran forward, pushing him away from her.

  He staggered back, looking surprised. I had not seen him before: a dark Irishman with a narrow face and a nose like a knife blade. His black eyes were altogether too Byronic.

  Sometimes you dislike a man at first sight; it was so for me. An expression that flashed over his face made me think he reciprocated the sentiment. He was, annoyingly enough, dressed impeccably, better than my own efforts, despite the Honiton lace at my throat.

  Something wild in the cast of his features, the white flash of his throat, the enormous emerald on his hand, the way the moonlight glinted on his fingernails, made me think him something other than human, some besotted seraphim or an exotic nightmare born of hallucinogen or poison. A shiver worked its way down my back and spread its fingers to measure my ribs.

  “Claude!” Desiree exclaimed, looking far from pleased at her rescue.

  I ignored her, addressing the man. “You will not touch my fiancée again, sir. I am surprised at you, taking advantage of her in this fashion.” I did not say it, but my reproach was aimed at Desiree as well, even though I knew she had not known better in her foolish, naïve youth.

  “Lord Tyndall brought me out here to discuss my designs,” Desiree retorted. “He had read the paper I published on the difficulties of imprinting tungsten.”

  I scoffed. “Indeed, he did his homework well in order to lure you out to compromise you.”

  Unnervingly, the man smiled at me. “I had no idea such an erudite work’s author would turn out to be charming, sir, but the pleasure was unexpected. Having finished with that conversation, I was merely offering to demonstrate the art of palm reading to your lady. I picked up some small expertise in it in my homeland.”

  People were stirring in the nearest doorway, looking out to see what the loud conversation was.

  Tyndall spoke to Desiree. “I did not get the chance to tell you, lady, your palm shows that you will take a long journey, soon.”

  His accent was thick. It was ridiculous for an educated man to speak with such a heavy brogue or to pretend to superstitious beliefs such as palmistry in order to lure women to him. But I stood down, not wishing to alienate the gathering crowd.

  Lady Allsop peered from near the back, the frown on her face threatening future invitations. I bowed and took Desiree’s arm, drawing it through my own. She resisted, then let me pull her into the house.

  But she would not speak to me the rest of the evening despite the attendance I danced on her. In the carriage home, she relented, but only to upbraid me.

  “I did as you asked,” she hissed at me. “And it was as painful as I imagined, but you were not satisfied with that, but must take away the one interesting conversation I was able to find.”

  “Everyone loved you, how can you say such things?” I protested.

  “Perhaps you were at a different ball than I,” she said. “Did you not see Lady Worth turn away lest she contaminate herself speaking to a Negro? Or perhaps you did not overhear the sporting gentleman laying bets on what I would be like between the sheets?”

  “Desiree!” I gasped, almost breathless at the shock of hearing such words from her innocent lips.

  She turned away and did not speak to me again that night.

  The next day I came to call, bringing chocolates and flowers and a pretty opal ring. Opals were her favorite gem. But she sent Mary to tell me she was feeling unwell.

  I started to leave in high dudgeon, but Lord Southland called to me. He was in his library, or so he called it, a small room that smelled of pipe tobacco and old leather, so close that one could barely breathe. On the wall hung a portrait of Desiree’s mother by Robert Tait.

  I studied it as he gathered his thoughts. I knew her mother had perished in childbirth along with Desiree’s younger brother, only a few years after Lord Southland had returned with her from a trip to America. No one knew exactly where she had come from, but common gossip maintained that she had been a slave escaped from the southern portion of that barbarous place, that she had lived with the Cherokee for several years before the young Southland, on tour, encountered her in New Orleans. She was beautiful, although in an exotic, unsettling wise. Her dark hair hung to her waist, and the artist had chosen to paint it untamed, almost hiding her face behind it. Her dress’s satin was the color of a yellow rose just opening.

  She had never been accepted by society, but had 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 bush-baby 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 a heiress?” He waved off my protestations. “I know, I know, such thoughts are unworthy. 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 choice, 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. Her look at me was initially cold, 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. “Where they would take me to be a slave? Do you not read the papers, do you truly not know what danger I would be 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. The writer says he met you at Lady Allsop’s. An Irish estate.” He spared me a glance. “Claude is invited as well. If he comes too, will you accompany me? I would not have you wed without seei
ng other possibilities. And 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 her father’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. 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 tautened.

  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 was past, I regretted the assent I had given. But Southland would have written with his consent already, 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 been nothing more than a trick of the moonlight, coupled with my anger. It surprised me, how deep that 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 the flaws in the countryside as we travelled up along the road: dull-appearing peasants and ill-tended cottages. I said I supposed it was most difficult 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 other guests or so: a few Irish peers, and relatives of his Lordship, along with 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. I had never experienced such success at it before, in fact. 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 blanc-mange 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 a mechanical talent. She had brought the case containing the 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, and despite the notion’s impracticality, Tyndall supported it.

  I asked what she was working on next.

  “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. They were stiff and unbending as corkscrews.

  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 that had a nook suitable for reading. Always conscious of the necessity of keeping up, I had brought edifying and current works with me. One was The Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill, a package of inflammatory claptrap.

  Sitting in my refuge, I was about to put it down when a sentence made me realize 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 how it was true without being 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. It might have been designed for such a thing; I have encountered whispering galleries that bring a word from far away as close to one’s ear as though the speaker stood 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. “Oh, and dragons 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 would 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 indrawn breath betrayed me.

  “Who’s there?” he exclaimed, and came up the stairs swiftly enough that you would have thought he feared some intruder. At the sight of me, he scowled.

  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 he meant to compromise her to the point where she would be forced to marry him. Or perhaps the scoundrel meant to seduce her. I would have said these things, but Desiree’s face 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. Let him realize I had overheard his plotted seduction.

  “Leave?” Desiree exclaimed. 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 claimed 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 half-hearted and, worse, she seemed to believe 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 intelligent,” 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 the 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, patiently and carefully, as befits a man 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 wild and fierce and free, 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, but said, “Desiree, do you think we are well matched in mind?”

  She hesitated, her indrawn breath a delicate whisper.

  I did not mind. I knew I outstripped her, but I would reach down, lift her to new heights of thought, of philosophy. Some hold that the Negro race is a simpler structure, 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.