Shades of Milk and Honey

by Mary Robinette Kowal

  It seemed no different than she had left it, save that Nancy had made the bed. Her bonnets were untouched and her dresses were in the wardrobe. Her paints were in their place. Mr. Vincent’s book lay on the table by her bedside. Nothing seemed out of place, yet something nagged at her. She tried to pay it no heed as she pulled the cherried bonnet down from its place.

  “I am certain you will wear it more fetchingly than ever I have.” Jane handed the bonnet to Melody.

  “Thank you, Jane. That is very kind of you.” Melody turned the bonnet in her hands. “We should go down for dinner, I suppose.”

  “Yes. We had better.”

  Jane let Melody precede her out of the room. As her hand closed on the doorknob, Jane suddenly remembered tucking Mr. Vincent’s book under her mattress with a memory so strong that she had to turn to see it lying on the bedside table to verify that it was out of place. It was possible that Nancy had found it while making the bed, but Jane’s memory offered her yet another picture, this of Melody reading as Jane entered the house. The book in Melody’s hands had been small and leather bound.

  Before Jane could stop herself, she said, “And how did you enjoy Mr. Vincent’s book?”

  Melody halted on the stair, the bonnet still in her hand. “What do you mean?”

  “I left Mr. Vincent’s book under my mattress.”

  “No, it was on the—” Melody broke off, seeming to realize what she had implied with her denial. She did not turn around, but the very line of her back and the way her shoulders drew up around her neck gave every indication of guilt. She started down the stairs again.

  Jane hurried after her. “Melody, that book was private. You had no right to read it.”

  At that Melody turned, using the foyer as her stage. “Oh, to be sure. Though why you should be ashamed to have such a lover as Mr. Vincent, I can scarcely fathom. What maiden would not crave a wild artist of low birth for her groom?”

  “I do not understand you. Be that as it may, it was wrong of you to read something that was in my room, something which you knew that I did not want read.”

  “Oh, lecture me about proprieties, Jane. Do. The hypocrisy is so very clever of you, to pretend to such maidenly reserve and then to carry on with your artist.”

  “What are you on about? That book contains only his thoughts on the nature of art, but those are thoughts he entrusted to my care and are not intended for general consumption.”

  “Have you not read it all, then?” Melody threw her head back and laughed the same laugh that called beaus to her side. “My poor, dear sister. I do look forward to Mama’s reaction when he comes to declare for you.”

  A rap sounded on the front door, and Jane leapt half into the air. Melody cut off her remarks as Mr. Dunkirk was let in.

  Jane’s heart spasmed. Beth must have taken a turn for the worse after she left. Before she had time to compose herself, Mr. Dunkirk bowed to Jane, then Melody. He held her pink shawl over his arm.

  “Forgive my calling so close to the dinner hour. You left your shawl this afternoon, Miss Ellsworth, and Beth was concerned that you might miss it.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Dunkirk. You need not have troubled yourself on my account, but your effort is much appreciated nonetheless. I had planned on calling tomorrow and could have fetched it home then.”

  “Ah, but then you would have had two wraps, and that would have been awkward. Besides, it made my sister happy to think of doing good for someone else, even by my proxy.” His tone indicated to Jane that he would do anything to keep his sister’s spirits high.

  Melody shook her head, smiling and artless. “That is splendid of you, Mr. Dunkirk. This is Jane’s favourite, you know, so you have done more good than you might realize. I gather your day was an eventful one, if it caused Jane to go about leaving her favourite shawl places?” Her tone, the way she tilted her head coquettishly to the side, all indicated that Melody had her opinion on what those events were and thought the shawl was the proof she needed. She could have no idea of the turmoil that teasing must produce in Mr. Dunkirk, or even in Jane. To Melody it must seem that the shades of red and white which Jane and Mr. Dunkirk turned could only mean that he had asked her that intimate question which every woman most wants to hear.

  Jane rose to the occasion first, finding that there was a truth she could say without betraying the trust which both Mr. Dunkirk and Beth had placed in her. “It was eventful indeed, Melody. Beth and I redecorated her room, and it was too hot to wear the shawl during our efforts. I quite forgot it.”

  “I should have recalled it,” Mr. Dunkirk said, “but their improvements were so charming that I was distracted.”

  “I would find many things easy to forget in your presence, Mr. Dunkirk; I am surprized that Jane only left her shawl.”

  Mr. Dunkirk cleared his throat. “I—I should return to my sister and leave you—I mean not overstay my welcome here.”

  “Nonsense, you must stay for dinner.” Melody took his arm. “Mama will be devastated if you do not.”

  “I should not like Beth to worry about me.”

  “That is understandable,” Jane said. “Perhaps you both could join us tomorrow?”

  “Oh, but Jane, Mama and I will be gone then. You would not want to deprive us of Mr. Dunkirk’s company, would you?” She turned back to Mr. Dunkirk and looked at him through her long lashes. “Do say you will stay for dinner.”

  “I—” He glanced at Jane, as if pleading with her for aid. “I really must not stay.”

  Jane said, “We shall have you over when Mama and Melody return from Bath. At the moment, though, I am certain that your thoughts are with your sister, who is not well.”

  “Yes. Yes. That is exactly it. My sister, who is not well. I need to return to Beth, my sister, who is not well. Yes.” He had begun backing slowly to the door.

  Melody let go of his arm, seeming to realize that she was fighting a losing battle. “I am so sorry to hear that Miss Dunkirk is ill. Do give her my regards.”

  “Thank you, I shall.” He bowed, said his good-byes, and exited.

  “Jane, you surprize me. Two suitors, when I thought you had none!” Melody tossed the cherried bonnet to Jane. “You had best keep this. It will go so well with your favourite pink shawl.”

  Jane reached to catch the bonnet, but it tumbled to the floor. The delicate Venetian glass cherries cracked against the hard marble floor. Trembling with outrage, she stooped to pick it up, turning it so that the fractured glass caught the light. “What have I done to inspire such ill feelings? Tell me now so that I may apologize or make amends, but do not keep punishing me for an offense which, if given, was unconscious on my part. You have said that Mr. Dunkirk and Mr. Vincent hold no interest for you, and yet it seems that you resent their attentions to me.”

  Melody’s face, unexpectedly, softened and saddened. “Jane; oh, Jane. You understand nothing. I resent the fates that gave you all the tools to interest them and left me with nothing.”

  “What? Gave me the tools?” Jane laughed, half sobbing. “Have you not seen how I stand against the wall at a dance, wanting to dance but having no suitors? Or the way the gentlemen come to your side when you hint at wanting them to appear? Should I thank the fates for giving me an overlong nose? Or shall I thank them for my sharp chin? My sallow complexion, rather?”

  “Thank them for your arts and talents.” Melody lifted her perfect chin. “I have nothing to offer them but my pretty face, and once they have seen that, what reason can I give them to remain by my side?”

  There were Melody’s jealously claims again! Jane understood them no more than she did at any point. She had been given the same advantages and opportunities as Jane, with the added gift of beauty. If she had not learned music or painting, it was because she had taken no interest in either, not because the opportunity had not presented itself. “They must surely see your merits when they talk with you.”

  “I have found only one man who is able to see past my face, past my def
icit of talent, and see me within. I should not be jealous of you, but it is hard to break a long habit.”

  “How long a habit?”

  “Since I first realized that you were talented and I was not.” She sighed. “Indeed, though you will not believe it, I am sorry that I read Mr. Vincent’s book. I should not have done it. I am sorry.” Melody’s eyes were round and glistening with tears. “Forgive me, Jane, but even if you do not, read the rest of the book, or at least look at the pictures. That’s all I really did.”

  Before Jane could respond to Melody’s claims, the dining room door opened. “Jane? Melody? Are you coming to dinner?” Mr. Ellsworth peered down the hall to them.

  “Yes, Papa. La! You would not believe who stopped in, but Mr. Dunkirk! Jane left her shawl and he returned it.”

  “Did he, now?” Mr. Ellsworth beamed. “You must tell us all about it, only do come. Your mother is fretting because the soup is getting cold.”

  Though Jane’s body rebelled at the thought of sitting through dinner, she recognized that her mother, at least, would be hurt beyond measure if Jane did not attend dinner the night before they left. And as they were to leave at dawn, it would not be too much longer before there was peace in the household for reflection. “Coming, Papa.”

  She set the bonnet aside on a table in the hall. There would be time enough to repair it after Melody left.

  Twenty-one

  Wolves and Muses

  Exhausted, Jane went to bed as soon as she could slip away after dinner and settled in a chair by the small grate in her room with Mr. Vincent’s book. A slight apprehension kept her from at once opening the book to look for that at which Melody had hinted, though she could not have said whether she was more afraid that the pages held something other than ruminations on art or it was simply one of Melody’s inventions. Jane ran her finger over the embossed V. H. on the cover with no notion of what name the H might represent, nor why the initials were different from his name. It occurred to her that she had no notion what Mr. Vincent’s given name might be.

  Jane opened the book to the page she had last been reading.

  I have been experimenting of late with the effect of combining a wilder underlayment of paint with a very precise, thread-specific, top coat of glamour. On the whole . . .

  Jane left the page marked and skipped forward, looking for the pictures. She paused at a series of pages detailing a glamural he had done at a home in London, then skipped ahead to a sketch of a single fern frond. Though the writing below it tempted Jane, with its discussion of how energy could be saved by duplicating the threads for the larger frond on smaller and smaller levels, she turned the page, skipping through the text beyond to a series of pages shewing the plans for Lady FitzCameron’s dining room. Jane scanned the delicate lines of his sketches for hints of the nymph, but did not see any, nor anything else to excite remark beyond Mr. Vincent’s skill.

  Past this she found a hasty sketch of the view from the top of the hill overlooking her father’s strawberry patch. She almost turned the page before she saw the words, “the Ellsworth woman.”

  . . . damned if the Ellsworth woman did not see my Sphère Obscurci and re-create what took me weeks of trial and error with as little thought as climbing the hill. I am angry, but also filled with excitement, as this is the first opportunity I have had to see someone else create an Obscurcie, and it gave me an idea to try for my lointaine vision. When the Ellsworth woman worked the folds, she did it with a slight variation. I believe I can use the same aspect of the light folds’ properties to lift an image from one place to another. My concern at this point is that the folds must be constantly managed, as one would with a recording of music, so it cannot be worked for much more than ten minutes without fatigue. Still, this is more success than I have had on my own.

  She is clever, I’ll grant her that. I’ve not seen anyone use a slipknot to change a figure, as she changed her Daphne to a laurel tree. I should thank her, if my pride were not so affronted.

  Jane let the book drop for a moment, remembering their confrontation on the hill; his conduct became more accountable in the light cast by his words. She turned the page looking for the next image, and saw one of Melody, with the single word “Nymph” penned under it. No other text marred the page, only her face, tilted slightly back with laughter; and yet, Jane saw the downturned lines in the form, so that though her sister laughed, she seemed unbearably sad.

  Compressing her lips, Jane turned the pages, skimming past the tempting instructional text and pausing on sketches of the doves which appeared in Lady FitzCameron’s dining hall, again on an achingly beautiful sketch of the apple tree, and then on herself.

  The image of herself lay in the corner of a margin, scribbled as a doodle. He had caught her exactly in a moment of intense concentration. The text around her image dealt with the similarities between the textures of cloth and of blossoms, but she could see no link from them to her image save that she had stood near that apple tree on the day he had drawn it. She lingered there for minutes longer than such a tiny drawing warranted, but her attention was all aroused by curiosity—what had possessed him to draw her?

  Had he been drawing her during their conversation on the nature of perfection in art? When had he left off the apple tree and turned to her, even for the brief span it took to draw the tiny image?

  Jane turned the page, and her breath left her body.

  In unskimping detail, the lines of Mr. Vincent’s pen rendered Jane, faithfully following the path of her overlong nose, not shying from the sharpness of her features, and yet—and yet, through the grace of his lines, the drawing attained a level of beauty, not by altering Jane’s features, but through the caress of the pen itself. Jane trembled in her chair as if his pen traced across her skin.

  And then she saw the single word he had written below the portrait: Muse.

  With a cry, Jane threw the book from her and jumped to her feet. Muse? He could not mean that except in irony. She paced the confines of her room, agitated beyond expression. Beth’s words came back to Jane unbidden: “ . . . he had no room in his life for anyone other than his muse.”

  No. Impossible. He must not mean that Jane was his muse. In those pages, there must be an explanation of his meaning. Jane dropped to her knees where she had flung the book and turned it over, flipping the pages forward to the drawing of her. Beyond it must lie the key to his thoughts, and so Jane turned the page.

  Only words met her gaze. She sighed with relief to see that the text dealt with the nature of light and shadow. Surely the caption had meant nothing, or he would have expounded on it. Jane turned the page again.

  Her portrait lay in the margin again, small, without connection to the surrounding text. And again, on the next page. Jane flipped through the pages faster now, finding small illustrations of herself in the margins in more frequent intervals, as though his thoughts had turned to her whenever idle.

  Then came the illustration for the nymph in the dining room.

  On the verso page, the illustration was of Jane, not of Melody, as the final figure appeared. On the recto, the illustration had Melody’s face. Between them, Mr. Vincent had written, “I shall employ a slipknot, such as I saw Miss Ellsworth use, so the figure can blend from one to the next as I wish. Others can only see the one nymph, but I know my muse is trapped in the tree. Would that I could release her so easily! The wishing almost makes me chuse to drop my masquerade.”

  This, then, was what drove Melody’s anger tonight: that her worth was compared in illustration, and Jane deemed higher. But, oh! That Mr. Vincent saw her as a muse! And how then to account for his words to her at Lady FitzCameron’s when he said that her art was without life? How could he find someone a muse whose work he found less than inspiring, whose work he found lifeless?

  Thoughts and emotions fought within the confines of Jane’s skull. She wanted at once to run to Lady FitzCameron’s to confront Mr. Vincent before his departure at dawn, and also to go to Melody and conf
ide in her. Though much trust was lost between them, there was no one else to whom Jane could turn without betraying the trust Mr. Vincent had placed in her by giving her his book.

  She must also consider the fact that he had given the book to her knowing what lay at the end, knowing—yes, knowing—that his affections were laid bare in its pages. She could not think. The room pressed in on her. She should go to him and confront him. But that was not possible, and so she must wait in this tiny room, confined and pinched, until morning.

  If Jane could only sleep, then her senses might be more ordered and she would know how to respond; but slumber seemed as impossible as the idea that Mr. Vincent thought of her as his muse. Jane stifled a cry and snagged a fold of glamour out of the ether.

  Perhaps if she exhausted herself, she might find sleep. She pushed her agitation into the lines of a birch tree, finding structure in its straight trunk and letting her trembling nerves express themselves in the delicate vibrations of the leaves. Her breath quickened, and Jane turned to giving the birch tree a sister. Reaching for the edges of exhaustion, Jane sketched a grove of trees in the corner. Her blood pounded in her veins, shaking her knees with its pulsing. She wanted to fly from the room, so a flock of doves soared above her birch trees, making her head spin with their flight.

  Jane heard a door open in the hall, coming from what could only be Melody’s room.

  Footfalls passed her room. What could her sister be doing up when dawn and her departure were yet hours away? Jane thought for a moment of following her sister and confessing her unease, but the fatigue she had so longed for tugged at her bones. Sleep was not far away. Jane reached for another fold of glamour and heard the front door open and shut.

  That sound in the dead of night disquieted her and tore the veil from her grasp. She looked out the window and beheld Melody, with a shielded lantern, creeping into the maze; the thin beam of light from the lantern cut through the dark in front of her sister. Of course, with her departure to Bath she must take her leave from her secret lover. Jane stood irresolute for only a moment before she, too, crept out the door, intent on following her sister.