Revenant Eve (16 page)

June was a rainy month, keeping everyone inside. On the first of July, Cassandra set off in the carriage, accompanied by the governess on her unpaid leave. Miss Oliver had to do double duty as guardian on her way, but at least she got to ride post until they reached the Bouldeston estate in Kent.

The long stretch of bad weather confined everyone inside. That, and the fact that Cassandra and her tattling tongue were safely out of reach, inspired James to reappear. He invited Aurélie to take up fencing again.

The rest of the time, she and Diana had the schoolroom to themselves. Diana read ferociously, either seated at the small table bowed over her books, her nose nearly touching the pages, or next to Aurélie, sometimes leaning against her in a way that made me reflect on how affection-starved they both were. Aurélie had come from a loving family. Diana’s parents cared for her, but her father was kindly from a proper distance, and Cassandra, like her mother, did not seem inclined toward the warmth of a caress or kiss.

So the two girls sat side by side, Aurélie reading aloud to Diana when the latter’s eyes hurt from bending over the page. They read literature, history, theology—everything in the library, talking it over.

Aurélie spent the rest of her free time practicing with James and playing music. She read sheet music downstairs, but upstairs, on the spinet, where no one but Diana could hear, she improvised entrancing melodies. Each time she introduced a new one, it was usually after she’d been sitting in the window seat, making me wonder if the fae were still trying to lure her back to the woods.

August arrived, and with it Cassandra, accompanied by Miss Oliver. Cassandra was full of “Lucretia says.” This cousin was held to be an authority on everything fashionable, her expertise based on the Bouldestons going up to London each spring.

Cassandra also had plenty to brag about on her own account. She and Lucretia had delighted and astonished the company by their duets, and Lucretia had taught her the steps to the Passepied and the Cotillion, which “everyone” in Kent of any importance knew how to dance.

Cassandra kept up the
Lucretia says
until the head-on collision with her mother over the necessity for all new gowns, based on the fact that Lucasta, the younger cousin, had overheard Lucretia telling one of their friends that Cassandra’s wardrobe was fit only for a dowd.

“If our generosity in sending you to your cousins is going to return a pert, ungrateful fine lady to her home in place of a dutiful daughter, then we shall know not to repeat the experiment,” Aunt Kittredge said, touching off a storm of tears, after which Cassandra backed off on the
Lucretia says
, to everyone’s relief.

Aurélie continued to chat to me for a minute or two each morning, but it was inevitably about her reading, her letters home, and speculation on what might be going on in Jamaica. When would she hear back? When could she go home?

There was no Dobrenica anywhere in sight and no way to get her there, but at least time whizzed by with the speed of a montage. I reminded myself that I could do this. I had been given a task. I would not believe what I’d seen in the fae’s glass, because they’d distorted the truth about everything else. Time was frozen at Alec’s end: I held onto that.

As for Aurélie and her future, I decided to wait for her to ask me questions. But so far, she expressed no interest in me or my life, since I couldn’t communicate with Jamaica.

September arrived, and James took off with his father for the hunting season. Aurélie’s spirits waned with the sun, especially as there still was no letter from her mother. Aurélie still wrote faithfully every week.

After the hunting season was over, James turned up one sleety day, invited Aurélie to take up fencing again, and that became the pattern for the next year. There was even a soundtrack, what with the fae songs Aurélie secretly practiced, shaping them into melodies of her own.

Time blurred.

When they turned fifteen, Aurélie and Cassandra were granted boundaries almost as wide as those given James.

Aurélie and James transferred their practice to one of the old barns when the weather warmed. The boy clothes were kept in the loft, where Aurélie could change in decent privacy, and the fencing and pistol shooting became musket practice. Nor did it end with the warming of spring. She came to the mirror less and less often. James and Diana occupied the most of her time—the one in fighting practice and the other in reading and in talking about magic.

Some nights she had vivid dreams, and those she always told me. Like the time she was a high-born lady with black hair as smooth as silk and skin as pale as paper. The way she described her hair and robe sounded Chinese to me, especially when she got to the detail of her tiny, aching feet. She wore an elaborate headdress and lived in a palace filled with gold. In another dream, she was a great lady as dark as Mimba, living in a house surrounded by flowers, with singing day and night.

I knew the fae were tormenting Aurélie from afar when she stood with her face pressed to the window, tears on her cheeks as she gripped the necklace with her fingers. She’d go downstairs and work fiercely at the fortepiano, trying to capture whatever it was she heard trying to lure her.

She was never satisfied, but the rest of the family praised her according to their personalities: Uncle Kittredge told her she was a good girl and a dab hand at the keyboard; Aunt Kittredge told her that she was a diligent pupil and that perhaps it was time to bring a real music master to train her and Cassandra; James said, “That’s a capital tune! Are there any words to it?” And Diana stood listening, her face rapt. Only she knew the truth about the inspiration behind those entrancing melodies.

Aunt Kittredge kept her word, and hired an earnest, vague young man as a music master, who taught both fortepiano and singing. He was a pro, unlike Miss Oliver, who was a jack-of-all-trades, as governesses had to be. Both girls’ performances soon showed the benefit.

Then came Cassandra’s crowning glory. At last,
at last
, her mother hired a dancing master, who also taught the girls the etiquette of the
ballroom. Aunt Kittredge and Miss Oliver sat in the room like a pair of twin dragons on guard as the master solemnly put the girls through their paces. He was probably older than Uncle Kittredge.

The night of the first lesson, Aurélie came to me again, her expression wistful. “This dancing,” she said. “It’s like wearing stays. It’s not the dancing of my home, so free, like water, air, and sky, and when you dance you can be the dragonfly, the doctor bird. Everyone was one, under
le bon Dieu
, at home. Here? You dance in a line, your foot must be so, your hand here, your chin at this angle.”

She sighed. “
Maman
said I must come here to learn, so I will learn.”

She retired, diligently said her prayers according to Aunt Kittredge’s wishes, but then added her own fervent words in French.

Time zipped by at freeway speed.

James was into his late teens, and Aurélie approaching sixteen.

She paid little attention to her looks, except to try to stay neat, but Aunt Kittredge fussed enough for them both.
Stay out of the sun—her brown skin would ruin her chances—could she never keep her hair neat?—her gown was awry—must she gallop about like she was a runaway horse?
At night she had to put glop on her face that was supposed to lighten her skin, and Aunt Kittredge, despairing of the contrast of white fabric (debutantes in those days wore white) even invested in powder, though she despised women who “painted.” Most of all, she criticized Aurélie and Diana for not moving like Cassandra, whose prissy, affected airs, modeled partly on her mother’s behavior, were extolled as the graceful walk and posture of a true lady.

I felt a little sorry for Cassandra, who, what with the heavy, starchy meals and no exercise other than twirling around the parlor in dance practice or sedately walking fifty yards in the garden, was in her turn criticized by her mother for her increasingly podgy shape. She made up for it by tripping about with her wrists arched, flinging her long honey-colored curls artfully, and talking about her delicate constitution. In contrast,
Aurélie, who worked out constantly, moved with the unconscious grace of a wild swan.

Most of my pity was reserved for Diana, whose mother scolded her daily for poking along so head-bent she was bound to grow round-shouldered, and perhaps Diana ought to use the backboard. As for being short-sighted, well, nothing in the house had ever changed position an inch, so there was no need to peer like a mole. Grandmother Kittredge was shortsighted, but
her
spine was as straight as a ramrod: nag, nag, nag.

When Aurélie was not in the schoolroom, Diana lurked in the library as much as she could. Aurélie poured all her free time into music, books, talk with Diana, and practice with James.

James’s eighteenth birthday had come and gone, nothing being said about buying him a cornetcy and shipping him off to the army, except vague words about maybe when he turned twenty. He and Aurélie continued their practice. She had gradually grown into James’s old clothes, which were shabby from frequent secret washings in the cows’ rain barrel.

Then came the day in early January when James showed up at the barn, plainly upset.

Aurélie had been warming up by lunging at the target they’d painted on a post. She turned, smiling a welcome, but her smile vanished when she saw him in the doorway. “James? What is amiss?”

His face flooded with color, which then ebbed as he perched on a barrel. “I—I hardly know what to say. I hate to tell you this. Peaching on my own mother. But I think you should know.”

Aurélie set aside her weapon and pressed her hands to her chin. “Oh, is it bad news from Jamaica?”

“That’s just it. I—you know, the letter you wrote, and put on the tray for the post? Well, I went back into the book room, for I forgot my—oh, Aurélie, I’d give the world not to be the one to tell you, for it’ll overset you. It did me. But my mother didn’t see me enter, and, well, the truth of it is, I saw her put your letter into the fire.”

“
My
letter?”

A nod.

“Into the fire? Was it misspelt? Was the direction writ incorrectly?” Aurélie asked, her voice higher on each question.

He sighed. “She didn’t even open it. She picked it up off the tray, and cast it into the flames without so much as a by-your-leave.” He bent his head, struggled, then said, “It was…it had the manner of habit. As though she’s done it before.”

“
All
my letters? Into the fire?” Tears welled and slowly dripped down her cheeks. “So that’s why I’ve had no answer. How can I write to my mother?” she whispered, and made a visible effort to get control. “I
must
write to her. I
will
write. How can I get to the postmaster?”

“I’ll ride a letter over,” James said immediately, then he looked perplexed. “But I’m puzzled what to do when your mother writes back, for I must give our direction, and you know that Mother sorts the post each morning. I think she reads it all, too, for the seals are always broken.”

“Can we have
Maman
direct a letter to one of your friends?”

“I could rely upon my friend Tom Badgerton, say, or George Kidwell, but Aurélie, if post arrives at their houses but directed to you, it’d cause talk all over the neighborhood before you could wink an eye.”

Aurélie clasped her thin hands, then flung them apart. “Could I have them addressed to a false name? I could use René!”

“That would cause even more talk,” James said. “The letters would still have to be fetched.”

Aurélie took a deep, unsteady breath. “Do you think Aunt Kittredge also burned any letters to me?”

James looked away, obviously acutely uncomfortable. “My mother once said that the sooner you understood your home to be here, the happier you would be. And then, you know, a letter might have had bad news and overset you.”

“I would have been equal to it,” she responded tearfully. “I don’t know how they
are
. We girls are not permitted to look at the newspaper, for Aunt Kittredge says it’s full of things unfit to be seen, except if you’re a man.”

“There isn’t much about Jamaica in the newspapers, at least so I understand. You know I’m not much one for reading. My father talked
about a peace a year or two back. Something about rebellious slaves, and the governor, and the military commander, I forget his name.” James now looked resolute. “But I’ll begin looking out news, how’s that?”

One step, two, and his arms came around her, gently. Awkwardly. The gesture melted the last of her self-control, and she began to weep into his bony shoulder. He tightened his grip. She clung to him.

And though I’d swear he had no designs, and she hadn’t shown the least sign of boy-interest, that hug seemed to give him courage and wake her up to some new ideas.

She gave a hiccough. Stepped back a little. Looked up. He leaned down, kissed her eyelids…and before either of them took another breath, they were lip-locked like—well, like teenagers.