Sea of Secrets: A Novel of Victorian Romantic Suspense (12 page)

She and Mary exchanged amused glances at the consternation in my voice. “But of course you must! We should get you into stays as soon as we can.”

“But why?” I gasped for breath as the whalebone stays tightened under Mary’s lacing. “I thought you said I was slender already.”

“And so you are, dear; but the stays will give you a waist that will be the envy of every girl, and a tidier silhouette as well.” With an approving nod at the maid’s handiwork, she reached for a measuring tape. “I believe that dress is made with an eighteen-inch waist.” Seeing the look on my face, she relented. “The day dresses are somewhat more generous.”

Thank heaven for that. “Perhaps I will get used to it,” I said, without much hope.

“Of course you will,” she said comfortably. “I have not gone without stays since I was fifteen, and I would feel undressed without them. Soon you will feel the same.” Correctly reading my silence as skepticism, she added, “And, you know, whenever you retire to your room you may change into a dressing gown. I find it very refreshing to spend a few hours out of my corset in the afternoon. Would you like to choose fabric for a few peignoirs?”

“I would feel very extravagant,” I said, but it was only a halfhearted protest at most; it would be lovely to have a few loose things to wear in my own room. Despite her assurances, the idea of spending all day corseted was a daunting one. To my relief, she waved away my feeble objection.

“Nonsense, my dear. I assure you, you will be glad of them. What would you like? This pretty lavender crepe?”

Tantalized, I wandered over to the heaps of fabrics, touching the different textures. While the duchess’s dressing gowns were all of light, delicate stuff, like the crepe she had suggested, I found myself drawn to the richest, deepest colors, the most luxurious weaves: a velour of cobalt blue as deep as a moonless midnight, and a cut velvet of wine-red shot with silver. When I held them up, shyly, the duchess’s eyebrows rose. I knew they were more suited to ball gowns, and for a lady of her age, not an unmarried girl, but all she said was, “How beautiful. You’ll look like a medieval princess. Mrs. Prescott, have those two made up in Mademoiselle’s measurements.”

“Very good, Your Grace,” said the thin-lipped seamstress, whose plainness was a strange contrast to the gorgeous materials she worked with. She began fitting the hyacinth dress to me, and I had to stand very still to avoid being stuck with pins. When Mrs. Prescott had the dress fitted to her satisfaction, the duchess came to inspect me.

At once her face broke into dimples. “It’s perfect for you—as I knew it would be. Here, child, have a look at yourself.”

Walking carefully, my arms held out stiffly from my body lest I stab myself, I approached the duchess’s cheval glass.

It was astonishing, the difference a dress could make. In the new dress, even with excess fabric pinned in pleats around me, I looked prettier than I could ever recall. My cheeks were flushed, perhaps with excitement, and I gave the duchess a dazzling smile in the mirror. I felt as though I had acquired, not a djinn perhaps, but a fairy godmother. Such beautiful new dresses, in such colors—

I dropped my eyes suddenly and turned away from the mirror, fumbling for the dress fastenings. Jane saw my struggles and hurried to unhook me, handling the dress carefully so as not to dislodge the pins. The duchess, sensing a change in my mood, rustled over.

“My dear child, what is the matter? Does it not please you?”

“It does,” I said in a rush. “And it’s so kind of you, ma’am. But I can’t help feeling that I shouldn’t put off my mourning yet. It’s been such a short time—” I stopped, with a gulp.

“Oh. I see.” Her face had instantly assumed the gravity of mine, and she said nothing more while I put my own dress on again. Then she gestured for the others to leave us. When the door had shut behind the stiffly disapproving back of Mrs. Prescott, who was evidently offended at my reception of her handiwork, she led me to the divan.

Taking my hands, she sat me down to face her. She still wore the pink ball gown, its frilled skirts spreading wide over the hooped crinoline, so that she seemed to sit in a mass of pink flowers.

“I realize it has not been long since your brother’s death,” she said gently. “Perhaps I should not influence you to leave off your mourning so soon. If you would rather not wear colors for a time—”

“But I would rather wear them,” I blurted miserably. “That is what distresses me. I hate wearing everlasting black and grey and purple. I have always longed to wear lovely things. But I feel ashamed to wear them now, when it would wrong Lionel’s memory.”

The strangest expression was tugging at her face. If she had not been so grave, I would have thought she was trying to keep from smiling.

“I see,” she said, one fine crease appearing on her brow. “That is a difficulty. If you intend to be guided by convention, then of course you are quite right to remain in mourning—however primitive a custom it is. The deities of propriety and decorum would have it that there is no other course.”

Somehow the way she described the matter, the phrases she used, stirred a kind of dissatisfaction in me. Convention and propriety were such smug, stingy entities. I knew what my father would have said: that even to consider wearing colors within a year would destroy his reputation, that he would be pointed at as the man who had raised a cold, selfish, vain little brat. He would have had me cast my eyes on the ground every waking hour in ostentatious respect for the dead rather than risk a glimpse of something that would make me appreciate that I still lived. If Lionel could not enjoy it, nor should I. All that my brother had not lived to see should be forbidden me, the unworthy, living child.

I realized that I was hunched tensely on the edge of the divan, clenching my fists, and the duchess was watching me in concern. Embarrassed, I uncurled my fingers, feeling now the pain from embedding my fingernails so deeply into my palms. I clasped my hands to hide the angry red crescents and straightened.

She must have observed my resentment, but she took no direct notice of it. “Tradition is a helpful guide, but it fails to take circumstances into account,” she said mildly. “Perhaps it is better to decide what is best for you, in your particular situation. What do you think Lionel would do, were he in your position?”

“Get intoxicated.”

This time I was certain she smiled. “After that.”

“He would probably have worn black for a week or two,” I said, thinking it over; “but then I’m sure he would have been unable to resist his saffron tailcoat. Lionel loved nice clothes; he could not have borne covering himself in black for long.” The idea was curiously heartening.

“And would you think any the less of him for ceasing to wear black for you?”

“No,” I said, truthfully, although I knew where she was leading with her questions, and I could not help but be aware that it suited her purposes to get me out of mourning. While I was certain that her own generosity prompted her, I could not ignore the wry inner voice that told me it would be far pleasanter for her not to have so visible a reminder of her own abbreviated mourning period. I wondered if she had admitted to herself the reason for her eagerness to furnish me with a new wardrobe.

She sat back, beaming at me as if I had said something exceedingly clever. “Well then!” she exclaimed. “Why should you force yourself into clothes he would have detested as much as you? Will you not be acting more in accordance with his wishes to wear pretty dresses such as he would have liked to see you in? I do not mean to sound callous, my dear, but after all, you did not die with him. In any case, wearing colors does not mean you loved your brother any the less. It is what is in your heart, not on your back, that shows sincerest feeling.”

This speech sounded more than a little glib, and I wondered if she had recited it frequently as a defense for dispensing with her own mourning. Nevertheless, I was willing to be persuaded; however uncomfortably her reasoning sat with me, I agreed with it in its general import, and soon we returned to the happy task of debating the relative merits of cherry-red satin and peacock-green taffeta.

At her insistence, I chose fabric for two more day dresses, a riding habit (I had never been on horseback), and three dinner gowns. Although she encouraged me to choose what I wished, the duchess gently led me toward more appropriate choices for my remaining costumes than I had made for my dressing gowns. This suited me; I did not wish to appear eccentric, and would gladly dress demurely in public as long as I could wear the rich things I loved for myself. She summoned back Mrs. Prescott, who softened sufficiently to agree to have the hyacinth dress ready for me to wear the next day, and after having deluged me with delicate new stockings, lingerie, and nightgowns of the softest silk, she let me go.

As I wandered back to my room to dress for dinner, my head spinning with visions of dazzling colors, I realized suddenly that my predilection for rich fabrics and colors was something I had in common with Lionel. I had never before had the opportunity to discover such a preference, and I found it comforting to feel this kinship with a brother who, although much loved, never seemed much like me. It made him seem nearer to me, as if some tiny flicker of his character lived still.

I hoped, however, that this newfound sympathy did not mean I would also discover a penchant for Madeira and cards.

At dinner I was able, for once, to converse on a subject dear to Felicity’s heart, as she clamored to hear about my new gowns and told me in return all the details of the dresses she would be ordering once she was allowed to wear long skirts. Felicity was in a sort of no-man’s-land at seventeen: although she still had a governess and wore short skirts she was allowed to take part in conversation with guests and even to flirt mildly with the bachelors, unusual liberties for a girl who had not yet come out. I wondered if this was due to the duchess’s indulgence and blithe disregard for conventions—at least, for those that inconvenienced her. I was certain that Felicity and I both benefited from the duchess’s protection; anyone of less stature than she would not be able to flout society’s strictures so blatantly without enduring widespread censure, even rejection.

I wondered, though, if even her rank exempted the duchess completely; had she had to face down strong opposition when she discarded her mourning crepe and made her scandalous remarriage? Had she had to endure the humiliation of being cut by former friends? I remembered her compressed lips yesterday when she opened her mail, and the voice in which she had told Jenkins that the Willow Room and Clock Room would not be needed. Clearly some of her invitations were being rejected. No wonder she had made so wry an appraisal of convention that evening.

Now I recalled also Miss Yates’s estimation of the duchess as a woman of strength, a quality I had not formerly associated with her. Perhaps the duchess was not the ingenuous creatures she appeared to be, but something like the gowns she wore: to all appearances insubstantial and frivolous, but with a foundation of steel and whalebone under all the ruffles. This new and intriguing line of thought occupied me through the end of the meal.

It was a miserable night, with rain pounding down and a rising wind whipping it against the windows with a sound like flung pebbles, and the drawing room after dinner was all the cozier by contrast. Charles and his father played at chess in front of the fire while Felicity tried out a new piece on the pianoforte.

“Come, Aunt Gwendolyn, sing for us,” she urged, and with very little persuasion the duchess did so. Her sweetly clear soprano lured her husband’s attention from the game, and at his suggestion I took his place at the board so that he could join the group at the piano. Charles caught my eye over the chess pieces and smiled as Lord Claude’s pleasant baritone joined in the song.

“They complement each other very well, don’t they?” he said in an undertone, and I had to agree. Lord Claude never returned to the chess board.

Herron had not appeared, and I wondered if he was keeping his rooftop vigil. Surely, though, on such a night even he would remain indoors.

By the time we retired, the wind had risen: it whined shrilly around the casements of my room, and sheets of rain battered the windows as I climbed into bed. It was so loud I could not have heard Herron’s footsteps overhead if he had been there. I wriggled down under the covers and drew the eiderdown up around my shoulders, devoutly glad to be sheltered and warm.

The storm made me restless, though, and I did not feel like sleep. After an hour of wakefulness I sighed and left my bed long enough to fetch
Varney the Vampyre,
the book Lionel had urged on me before leaving for battle. It was not what I would have chosen, but a belated feeling of guilt at discarding my mourning suggested that reading it would be a sisterly gesture. And if any night was an appropriate setting for vampire attacks and disappearing corpses, it was this one. I burrowed under the bedclothes again and started to read, not without another sigh at the length of the book. Nine hundred pages seemed rather a large atonement for a new gown. Composing myself to patience, I lit a candle and embarked on the sanguine adventures of Sir Francis Varney.

Clear and distinct through the gusting of the storm came another sound. I looked up. The handle of my door was moving. Without taking my eyes from the door or stopping to think I reached a hand out and snuffed my candle, perhaps out of some obscure notion of hiding myself. The fire still cast its autumnal glow on the hearthrug, but I now sat in dimness.

Silent now, the door opened, and a figure moved into the room. I sat upright in amazement as Herron closed the door behind him with a faint click and stood there, his eyes searching the darkened room.

In the first moment I felt only shock, and never considered that I might be in a perilous position. Certainly nothing in his appearance or manner suggested that he had come here out of amorous motives, or even conscious choice. He streamed with rainwater; he wore no coat or cloak, and his shirt was sticking transparently to his body, so that he shivered, dripping, where he stood. Probably he had been driven from the roof to the first warm room by the elements. Surely he must realize by now that it was tenanted? Embarrassed, I cleared my throat to speak.