Velma was bent over the trunk, elbow deep in a layer of tissue. She straightened and twisted the tie of her apron. “Don’t like boats,” she said.
“Are you afraid we’ll sink?” Annis asked. “Is that why you don’t like boats?”
Velma shook her head. “I’ll be sick.”
“Sick? Oh, you mean seasick? But how do you know?”
“Ferry.” Velma shook out a chemise, smoothed it against her chest, then began to fold it. “From Brooklyn.”
“You get sick on the ferry?” Velma nodded. “Then, Velma, why not use the bridge?”
“Don’t like bridges.”
Trying to talk to her was like walking into a wall, and Annis had to quell a flash of fresh irritation. She forced herself to speak in a mild tone. “I didn’t know that.”
Velma shrugged. “Never asked.”
Annis gazed at her maid for a moment, thinking for the second time that perhaps Frances was right and she was too selfish. She promised herself she would try harder, at least where Velma was concerned.
At the very bottom of her jewel case, buried under other unworn pieces, she found a short string of pearls. The light in the room had begun to fade, so she carried the necklace to the window to see it better. She held it up to catch the sunset glow, letting the pearls dangle over her hand.
“Pretty,” Velma said from behind her.
“They are, aren’t they?” Annis let the smooth white gems slide between her fingers. There was a different stone in the middle, not a pearl. It was larger, shimmering white, with subtle layers of silver beneath its surface. Annis cupped the stone in her palm, then caught a sudden breath.
“You all right, miss?” Velma asked.
“Y-yes,” Annis said. She stared at the stone, then closed her fingers around it. She had the odd sensation that she was holding something alive in her palm, something that vibrated against her skin, tingled through her hand, up her arm. It was as if she had picked up a live coal, but one that burned cold instead of hot. Her fingers tightened on it.
“Velma,” she said, her voice suddenly hoarse. “Could you finish that later? I need a few minutes to—to rest.”
It was a lame reason. She never rested in the daytime, but it was all she could think of. The maid was gone in seconds, and Annis, rapt, sank into the window seat. She opened her hand and gazed down at the creamy white stone. It lay quiescent, shining innocently up at her.
What had just happened? Annis struggled to understand the sensations that had stolen her breath. She hadn’t imagined them. Her heart was pounding at the base of her throat, and her head swam as if she had turned a somersault. Her arms prickled with gooseflesh, and she closed her hand around the stone once again.
It spoke to her. She couldn’t imagine how, or why, but there was no denying its message. The pieces of a puzzle fell into place in her mind, a puzzle she hadn’t known existed. It was like finally grasping a mathematics problem or learning a difficult word in French. It flashed into being, an understanding that had not existed moments before.
She knew why Frances was taking her to London. It had nothing to do with tea parties or the British Museum or Buckingham Palace.
She tried to use her common sense, of which she possessed an abundance, to banish the idea, but she failed. She tried to rationalize it as the result of anxiety, or fear, but those emotions had never troubled her in her life.
She couldn’t make the conviction fade. She knew. She understood exactly what Frances meant to do and why she was so determined to carry her off to England.
Frances meant to tear her away from Bits and all her plans. She meant to take her to England and leave her there. She intended to find Annis a husband, and not just any husband.
Frances wanted to acquire a title in the family, so the Four Hundred would no longer look down their old-money noses at the nouveau riche Allingtons.
Annis let the pearls drop into her lap, freeing her hands to rub her temples with trembling fingers. “I won’t do it,” she whispered to the gathering dusk beyond her window. “I don’t care what she says. I don’t care what she does. I’m not going.” She leaned closer to the glass, straining for a glimpse of the stables, where her beloved horse rested in his stall. “Don’t you worry, Bits,” she muttered. “I’m staying right here with you.”
7
Annis
So? You have to get married someday. Why not now?”
Annis stared at her father, rigid with hurt. He was seated at his desk in his private study, a room that had been one of her favorites when she still felt welcome there. Its two large windows looked out on the gardens and the river beyond. Bookshelves lined the walls, although there were no longer any books in them. Everything now was business, business, business, nothing but ledgers and piles of drawings, even two miniature replicas of the Allington Iron Stove. Annis had been allowed to play with those when she was small.
Things had been different then. Waking, she couldn’t remember her mother, but sometimes in dreams a hazy scene came to her that felt like a memory. She seemed to be tiny, bundled in soft fur, snuggled between her mother and her father in the carriage. Snow was falling over the city, and a bell on the carriage horse’s bridle jingled with each of his steps. She felt deliciously drowsy, lulled into sleep by the rhythm of the bell and the laughter of her parents above her head.
When her mother died, George Allington stopped laughing and retreated into his business. Occasionally he thought of his little daughter, bringing home interesting scraps of iron from the factory for her to examine, or pulling a bag of roasted chestnuts, still warm from the vendor’s brazier, out of his pocket. On birthdays he brought her saltwater taffy and arranged with Mrs. King to buy gifts.
On her sixth birthday, Papa took her hand to lead her out to the stables. Robbie was waiting there, and he had an enchanting fat brown pony on a lead. Papa said, “Happy birthday,” but it was Robbie who lifted Annis into the saddle.
He said, “This is Sally, Miss Annis. She’s going to teach you to ride.”
Robbie held Annis in the saddle at first, but in moments she pushed his hands away. It never occurred to her to be afraid. She felt grand, sitting up high on her own pony. She kicked her short legs against Sally’s ribs, urging her around the paddock as if she had been doing it all her life. Her father, satisfied he had fulfilled his paternal responsibilities, walked away, leaving Robbie to deal with Annis and her new passion. She remembered calling out to him, “Papa! Papa! Look at me riding!” but he was already gone.
In the ensuing months, she hardly saw her father. When he was in his study, the door was closed and locked. On nights he was home for dinner, he dined alone, and Annis ate in the kitchen with Mrs. King. She and her father had never spent a great deal of time together. Now they spent none.
Annis didn’t know what she had done to lose her father’s love. She wanted to ask Mrs. King, who watched over her with such affection, but she didn’t know how. The change wounded and bewildered her. She fell into the habit of avoiding her father, trying to escape her confused feelings. She turned instead to Sally, letting the pony fill the empty spaces of her child’s heart.
Annis poured herself into learning everything she could about riding and horses. She and Sally, with Robbie and Tater beside them, explored the meadows and paths of Central Park until they knew each tree and every shrub, where the ducks swam and where the rabbits hid. Annis spent every moment she could in the stables. She tagged after Robbie as he worked in the tack room or the hayloft. She pestered him with questions, demanding to know everything he did about how to care for horses.
She was thirteen when Bits arrived, a leggy Thoroughbred foal accepted as payment for a debt owed to her father. Annis claimed him immediately for herself. He was the most beautiful creature she had ever seen, and she loved him even more than she loved Sally, though she was careful not to let Sally see that.
There was only one person who could separate her from Black Satin, and at this moment he was glari
ng at her without putting down his pen.
She folded her arms tightly around herself, struggling for the right argument. “Why, Papa? Why do I have to get married?”
“Don’t be foolish, Annis. What else are you going to do with your life?”
“What else? I’m going to breed horses!” she said. “I’ve told you!”
“Haven’t you outgrown that notion yet? Women can’t breed horses.”
“Why not?”
“No one would buy horses from a woman!”
“They will when they see how marvelous mine are, Papa!”
“Foolishness. The whole idea is a waste of time and money.”
“That’s not true! The horse markets are doing a thriving business.”
He snorted a laugh. “Horse markets! What do you know about horse markets, Annis?”
She thrust out her chin. “I know there were a hundred thousand horses sold in New York last year. Heavy horses, light horses, mules. I know the revenues were more than fifteen million. I know the market on Third, nearest Twenty-Fourth Street, specializes in horses bred for riding.”
George lifted his eyebrows with something like respect. “You’ve done some research.”
“Of course I have,” Annis said. Encouraged by this slight advantage, she burbled on, “I expect I would need someone to make transactions for me at the Bull’s Head, because some men won’t care to negotiate with a female. Most of my sales would be private in any case, but I mean to make this a business. I will breed the finest riding horses and be famous for it.”
The eyebrows fell, and the look of impatience returned to her father’s face. “No. Much too indelicate a business for a girl. A well-brought-up young lady shouldn’t have anything to do with—with such activities.” He leaned back a little and tried a half-hearted smile of persuasion. “You should be thrilled by Frances’s plan, Annis! You could be a titled lady. You won’t have to do a jot of work your whole life!”
“Not a jot of work?” She bit the words out, her temper frayed to a thread. “You mean, except breed?”
George’s temper broke completely. He slammed down his pen, spraying drops of ink across his desk blotter, and his face purpled. “How dare you speak to me in that disgusting manner!”
She was her father’s daughter. She didn’t flinch. “Disgusting? Why? Do you think I don’t know how babies are created? Don’t you think I should know?”
“You’re too young to understand that sort of thing!” he roared.
“Don’t be absurd, Papa. Everyone knows that sort of thing.”
She thought it made a good argument, though it wasn’t exactly true. The girls at Brearley tried to guess sometimes, wondering how it was between men and women, but they mostly got it wrong. More than one of her school friends had been convinced kissing caused pregnancy.
Annis, however, understood the biology perfectly well. She knew because she insisted on being present in the stable when Bits serviced a mare.
Her father’s voice rose further. “I’m appalled, Annis! That’s—
it’s—unladylike!”
With a curl of her lip, she quoted her morning’s acquaintance. “Being ladylike is tedious.”
“Tedious!” Her father gripped the edge of his desk with unnecessary force, and his jaw muscles quivered as he struggled to regain his temper. He turned his face to the window, where the gas streetlights ranged like tiny moons along Riverside Drive. “This is a phase, Annis. You’ll grow out of it.”
“A phase? I’m too old for phases. Do you know how old I am?”
He hesitated, drawing a noisy breath through his nose. “Of course I do.”
He ran his ink-stained fingers through the thatch of his hair. It was nearly as thick and dark as her own, but a wedge of gray had developed at each temple. Annis remembered he had turned forty-eight at his last birthday.
She said, “I’m seventeen, Papa. I’m well beyond having phases. You were seventeen, as I recall, when you started your first business. You sold tools, and you made a success of it.”
“That was different,” he said. “I’m a man. You’re a girl. You need a husband, and it might as well be one with a title.”
“You knew all along!” she accused him. “You knew what she was planning, and you never said a word!”
“Frances knows what’s best for you.”
“Frances knows what’s best for Frances!” Annis cried.
Her father turned in his chair and faced her directly. His eyes were her eyes, the same clear pale blue with a near-purple limbal ring encircling the irises. She felt oddly disoriented sometimes, looking into his eyes, as if she were looking into a slightly distorted mirror.
“Listen to me, Daughter,” he said. With a qualm she recognized the flat voice. It meant he was no longer angry, but his mind had not changed. There would be no more arguing. She was going to lose this battle.
He said, in that toneless voice, “You’re going with your stepmother to England. There will be parties and teas, the things girls like. You will meet a number of eligible young men, and you will choose one to marry, someone who will manage your money wisely.”
“Why can’t I manage my own money?” she asked, but weakly, defeated now.
“That’s a silly question. Women can’t manage money. I will not hand over your inheritance just to see you fritter it away.”
“Fritter! Have you ever known me to fritter anything?” Angry tears began to burn in her throat. “Papa, I know how to handle money! I—”
“No more,” he said coldly. “I’m not going to argue with a hysterical girl.”
“I am not hysterical!” She knew even as she said it that it was a pointless protest.
He said, “You’ll marry like every other well-bred young lady does. That’s an end to it.”
“I won’t do it.” She didn’t look at him but out into the darkness, past the gardens to the distant gleam of the river. She let her chin thrust out in the same way his did. “I don’t ever want to marry.”
His temper erupted again, and this time it was as if a volcano had blown its top. “You will, Annis!” he shouted. The window glass shook under the volume of his voice, and it was then that he made his threat. “I’m tired of arguing. You’ll do as you’re told, as Frances bids you to do. Don’t cross me further, or Black Satin and Sally will be gone. I’ll have them sold in a day, I promise you that, and I will see Frances knows it!”
She turned back to him, horrified. “Papa, no!” But it was no use. He turned away, seizing up his papers and rattling them angrily in his hands.
She spun, her skirts swirling as she stamped out of the study and slammed the door behind her. She ran up the stairs, one hand over her mouth, managing to hold back her sobs of fury until she was in her bedroom with the door closed.
Velma was in the midst of laying out her nightgown and slippers, and she straightened, mouth gaping, Annis’s dressing gown clutched to her chest.
Annis collapsed onto the dressing-table stool and turned her back to the mirror. Through a haze of tears she took in the expensive furnishings of her room, the wardrobe full of clothes, the elegant drapes, the satin and velvet pillows on her bed. “What good is all this?” she cried. “None of it is real! None of it matters! I’m for sale, like a filly at the horse market, and I hate it!”
Poor, slow Velma shed two tears of sympathy for her mistress, but she didn’t say a word.
Annis spent a bad night. When she slept, she had nightmares of Bits being led away from her, sold off like a piece of furniture. When she lay awake, her thoughts skittered every which way, searching for a solution to her troubles.
By the time she rose in the morning, eyes burning from sleeplessness, she knew what she had to do. She would sail to England. She would go where Frances wanted her to go, meet the people she was supposed to meet. She would act the part of a young lady in search of a husband. She would do it for Bits, and she would do it for Robbie.
It would all be false.
He
r father could force her to make the journey, but he couldn’t force her to marry.
It was 1890, after all, not 1790. It was a new age for women. Women were becoming doctors and lawyers. Women were running businesses. They were fighting for full citizenship. Some even said women would one day be able to vote. A woman sat on the throne of England! She would have to make her father understand all of that, but she would start by pretending to be a dutiful daughter.
When Frances announced at the breakfast table that she had errands to run downtown, Annis seized the opportunity to begin her pretense. “I have an errand, too, Frances,” she said. “May I come along?”
With her husband listening, Frances could hardly refuse. Indeed, the atmosphere in the breakfast room was thick with tension, and Frances seemed eager to ease it. She said, with a convincing attempt at gaiety, “Of course, Annis! What fun, just we two girls. We’ll have luncheon in town! Do you have a shopping list?”
George looked skeptical at Frances’s display of good humor, but Annis joined the subterfuge, resisting the urge to point out that “just we two girls” would mean Robbie to drive the carriage, and Velma and Antoinette in attendance. Frances was firm on the principle that ladies did not venture out without their maids. What she meant, Annis knew, was that she didn’t want to be seen without her maid. Her Paris-trained French maid.
“Oh, thank you, Frances,” Annis said, in her most innocent tone. “There’s an herb shop on Elizabeth Street. I need something for Bits’s poultice.”
The carriage pulled to a stop in front of St. Patrick’s on Mulberry Street. “Sorry, ma’am,” Robbie said to Frances. “Like the last time. Elizabeth Street is too narrow. Afraid you’ll need to walk around the corner.”
As they climbed down, Annis gave Frances a questioning glance. “You’ve been to the shop before?”
The Age of Witches Page 6