A Great And Terrible Beauty (22 page)

My hands slide up against the slick skin of his chest and push him back. He falls away. His weight gone feels like a limb missing and the need to pull him back is nearly overpowering. There’s a fine glisten of sweat on his brow as he blinks in his sleep-state, confused and groggy. He’s asleep again, just as I found him. A dark angel just out of reach.

It’s a dream, only a dream. That’s what I tell myself when I wake up, gasping, in my own bed in my own room with Ann snoring contentedly a few feet away.

It’s only a dream.

But it felt so real. I put my fingers to my lips. They’re not swollen with kissing. I’m still whole. Pure. A useful commodity. Kartik is miles away, lost in sleep that does not involve me. That part of me I haven’t explored aches, though, and I have to lie on my side with my knees clamped together to stop it.

It’s only a dream.

But most frightening of all is how much I wish it weren’t.

DR.
THOMAS
HAS
PRONOUNCED
PIPPA
FULLY
RECOVERED
, and as it’s Sunday and church has been dispensed with, we have the afternoon to luxuriate as we wish. We’re down by the water, casting the last petals of late-summer flowers onto the calm surface. Ann has stayed behind to practice her aria for Assembly Day—the day when our families will descend upon Spence and see what marvels of womanhood we’re becoming.

I toss a handful of crumbling wildflowers. They sit on the lake like a blight before the breeze whips them out toward the deep middle. They settle, take on more and more water till they finally go under in silence. Across the lake, a few of the younger girls sit on a blanket, talking and eating plums, happy to ignore us as we ignore them.

Pippa is lying in the rowboat. She can’t remember anything before her seizure, for which I’m grateful. She’s horribly embarrassed by her loss of control, by what she might have said or done.

“Did I make any vulgar noises?” she asks.

“No,” I assure her.

“Not at all,” Felicity adds.

Pippa’s shoulders relax against the bow. Seconds later, a new worry has them knotted up again. “I didn’t . . . soil myself, did I?” She can barely say this.

“No, no!” Felicity and I say in a tumble.

“It’s shameful, isn’t it? My affliction.”

Felicity laces tiny flowers together into a crown. “It’s no more shameful than having a mother who’s a paid consort.”

“I’m sorry, Felicity. I shouldn’t have said that. Will you forgive me?”

“There’s nothing to forgive. It’s only truth.”

“Truth,” Pippa scoffs. “Mother says I can’t ever let anyone know about my seizures. She says if I feel one coming on, I should say I have a headache and excuse myself.” Her laugh is bitter. “She thinks I should be able to control it.”

Her words pull me down like an anchor. I want so desperately to tell her I understand. To tell my secret. I clear my throat. The wind changes. It blows the petals back against my hair. I can feel the moment slipping away. It sinks under the surface of things, hidden from the light.

Pippa changes the subject. “On a cheerier note, Mother said that she and Father have a wonderful surprise for me. I do hope it’s a new corset. The boning in this one practically impales me with each breath. Ye gods!”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t eat so many toffees,” Felicity says.

Pippa is too tired to be truly outraged. She offers a show of hurt. “I’m not fat! I’m not! My waist is a tidy sixteen and a half inches.”

Pippa’s waist is wasp-thin, as men are rumored to prefer waists. Our corsets bind and bend us to this fashionable taste, even though it makes us short of breath and sometimes ill from the pressure. I haven’t a clue how large or small my waist is. I’m not delicate in the slightest, and I have shoulders like a boy’s. I find the whole conversation tedious.

“Is your mother coming this year, Fee?” Pippa asks.

“She’s visiting friends. In Italy,” Felicity says, finishing her crown. She places it on her head like a fairy queen’s.

“What about your father?”

“I don’t know. I hope so. I’d love for the three of you to meet him, and for him to see that I have actual flesh-and-blood friends.” She gives a sad smile. “I think he was afraid I’d become one of those sullen girls who never get invited to anything. I was a bit that way after Mother . . .”

Left.

That’s the word that hangs in the air, unspoken. It joins shame, secrets, fear, visions, and epilepsy. So many things unsaid weight the distance between us. The more we try to close the gap, the more its heaviness pushes us apart.

“How long has it been since you’ve seen him?” I ask.

“Three years.”

“I’m certain he’ll come this time, Fee,” Pippa says. “And he’ll be very proud to see what a lady you’ve become.”

Felicity smiles and it’s as if she’s turned the sun on us both. “Yes. Yes, I have, haven’t I? I think he’ll be pleased. If he comes.”

“I’d loan you my new kid gloves but my mother expects to see them on my fingers as proof that we’re somebody,” Pippa sighs.

“What of your family?” Felicity turns her sharp eyes on me. “Are they coming? The mysterious Doyles?”

My father hasn’t written in two weeks. I think of my grandmother’s last letter:

Dearest Gemma,

I hope this letter finds you well. I’ve had a touch of neuralgia but you shouldn’t worry as the doctor says it’s merely the strain of caring for your father and will abate when you are home again and able to help shoulder the burden as a good daughter should. Your father seems to be comforted by the garden. He sits for long stretches on the old bench there. He’s given to fits of staring and nodding off but otherwise is at peace.

Do not fret about us. I’m sure my shortness of breath is nothing at all. We shall see you in two weeks’ time along with Tom, who sends his love and wishes to know if you’ve found him a suitable wife yet, though I feel certain he said this in jest.

Fondly,

Grandmama

I close my eyes and try to erase it all. “Yes, they’re coming.”

“You don’t sound terribly excited about it.”

I shrug. “I haven’t given it much thought.”

“Our mysterious Gemma,” Felicity says, appraising me a bit too closely for comfort. “We’ll find out what you’re hiding from us yet.”

Pippa joins in. “A crazy aunt in the attic, perhaps.”

“Or a sexually depraved fiend who preys on young girls.” Felicity waggles her eyebrows. Pippa screeches in mock horror but she’s titillated by the very idea.

“You forgot the hunchback,” I add with a false laugh. I’m widening the distance between us, sending them off to another shore.

“A sexually depraved hunchback!” Pippa squeals. She is most definitely recovered. We all laugh. The woods swallow our sounds in echoing gulps, but we’ve startled the younger girls across the lake. In their crisp white pinafores, they seem like misplaced loons dotting the landscape. They blink at us, then turn their heads and resume their chatter.

The September sky is uncertain. Gray and threatening one moment. A patchy, promising blue the next. Felicity lays her head back against the grassy bank. Her hair splays out and around the center of her pale face like a mandala. “Do you suppose we’ll have any fun at Lady Wellstone’s Spiritualist meeting tonight?”

“My father says Spiritualism is nothing but quackery,” Pippa says. She’s rocking the rowboat slightly with her bare foot. “What is it exactly again?”

“It’s the belief that the spirits can speak to us from beyond through the use of a medium like Madame Romanoff,” Felicity says.

We both sit straight up, thinking the same thing.

“Do you think . . . ,” she starts.

“. . . that she could contact Sarah or Mary for us?” I finish. Why hasn’t this thought occurred to me before?

“Brilliant!” Pippa’s face clouds over. “But how will you get to her?”

She’s right, of course. Madame Romanoff would never call on a pack of schoolgirls. We’ve got about as much chance of communing with the dead as we do of sitting in Parliament.

“I’ll do the asking, if you’ll help me get to Madame Romanoff,” I say.

“Leave it all to me,” Felicity says, grinning.

“If we leave it to you, we’ll end up in the soup, I fear,” Pippa giggles.

Felicity is up, quick as a hare. With nimble fingers she unties Pippa’s rowboat and sends it out onto the lake with a shove. Pippa scrambles to grab the rope but it’s too late. She’s moving out, ripping open the surface of the water.

“Pull me back!”

“That wasn’t a very nice thing to do,” I say.

“She needs to remember her place,” Felicity says by way of an answer. But she tosses an oar after her anyway. It falls short, bobs on the surface.

“Help me pull her back,” I say. The loon girls are standing now, watching us in amusement. They enjoy seeing us behaving badly.

Felicity plops down onto the grass and laces a boot.

With a sigh, I call out to Pippa. “Can you reach it?”

She stretches her arm around the side of the boat for the oar just out of reach. She’s not going to make it, but she stretches further to try. The boat tips precariously. Pippa falls in with a yelp and a splash. Felicity and the younger girls erupt in laughter. But I’m remembering the brief vision I had just before Pippa’s seizure, remembering the chilling sounds of splashing and Pippa’s strangled cry from somewhere under murky water.

“Pippa!” I scream, rushing into the heart-stopping cold of the lake. My hand finds a leg. I’ve got her, and I pull up with all my strength.

“Grab hold!” I sputter, kicking for shore with my arm around her waist.

She fights me. “Gemma, what are you doing? Let me go!” She breaks free. The water rises only to her shoulders. “I can walk from here, thank you,” she says, with indignation, trying to ignore the giggles and finger-pointing on the other side of the lake.

I feel ridiculous. I distinctly remember an impression of Pippa struggling under the water during my vision. I suppose I could have been so panicked, I don’t remember things clearly. At any rate, here we are, both safe and sound except for the dripping. And that’s all that matters.

“I’m going to strangle you, Felicity,” Pippa mutters as she balances unsteadily in the water. I throw my arms around her, relieved that she’s all right, and nearly pull her under again.

“What are you doing?” she shrieks, slapping at me as if I were a spider.

“Sorry,” I say. “Sorry.”

“I’m surrounded by lunatics,” she growls, crawling onto the grass. “Now, where’s Felicity got to?”

The bank is empty. It’s as if she’s vanished. But then I see her disappearing into the woods, daisy crown perched on her head. She walks casually and easily away without so much as a backward glance to see if we’re all right.

THE
HAND-LETTERED
MARQUEE
OUTSIDE
THE
ELEGANT
town house in Grosvenor Square reads:

AN
EVENING
OF
THEOSOPHY
AND
SPIRITUALISM
WITH

MADAME
ROMANOFF
,
GRAND
SEER
OF ST.
PETERSBURG
.

TO
HER
,
ALL
THINGS
ARE
KNOWN
.

TO
HER
,
ALL
THINGS
ARE
REVEALED
.

ONE
NIGHT
ONLY
.

The London streets are an Impressionist painting of slick cobblestones, orangey streetlamps, well-manicured hedges, and clusters of black umbrellas. Puddles splatter the hem of my dress, weighing it down. We rush for the safety of the open doors, our delicate dress shoes tapping out careful steps on the slick cobblestones.

The audience shows its breeding. There are men in tuxedos and top hats. Women with their gems and opera gloves. We’re all in our very best dresses. It feels strange and wonderful to be in silks and petticoats instead of our usual school uniforms. Cecily has taken the occasion to show off a new hat. It’s far too old for her and makes her stand out in a glaring way, but as it’s the height of fashion, she’s determined to wear it. Mademoiselle LeFarge is in her Sunday best, a green silk dress with a high, ruffled collar, a green silk bonnet, and a pair of garnet drop earrings, and we make a fuss over her.

“You look simply perfect,” Pippa says as we enter the imposing marble foyer, brushing past attentive butlers.

“Thank you, my dear. It’s always important to look your best.”

Cecily preens, certain she’s been given a compliment.

We’re ushered through heavy curtains to a conservatory that could easily hold two hundred people. Pippa is craning her neck, inspecting the audience.

“Do you see any attractive men here? Anyone under the age of forty?”

“Honestly,” Felicity chides, “you’d only be interested in the afterlife if there were a chance to find a husband there.”

Pippa pouts. “Mademoiselle LeFarge takes this seriously, and I haven’t noticed you mocking her!”

Felicity rolls her eyes. “Mademoiselle LeFarge has taken us away from Spence and to one of London’s most fashionable addresses. She could look for Henry the Eighth as far as I’m concerned. Let’s not forget our mission?”

Mademoiselle LeFarge slides her bulk into a red-cushioned chair and we file in behind her. People are beginning to get settled. Down in front is a stage with a table and two chairs. On top of the table sits a crystal ball.

“That crystal ball allows her to make contact with the spirits of the dead,” Mademoiselle LeFarge whispers to us as she reads her program. A gentleman behind us overhears our whisperings and bows his head to Mademoiselle LeFarge.

“I am compelled to tell you, my good lady, that this is all sleight of hand. Magician’s trickery.”

“Oh, no, sir, you are mistaken.” Martha jumps in. “Mademoiselle LeFarge has seen Madame Romanoff speak in a trance state.”