Sea of Secrets: A Novel of Victorian Romantic Suspense (27 page)

I shook my head, more to clear it than to reply. “I’ve just learned something disturbing.” Then I realized, with a jolt, that he must know the whole story; the entire family must know. “The duchess has been telling me about the family’s opinion of my mother’s death,” I said.

“I see.” The deep voice was very quiet.

I was glad that he did not rush to fill the awkward moment with meaningless condolences or explanations. “Will you walk a bit?” I asked. “It’s cold, and I don’t want to go in.” He offered me his arm, and we walked for a time in silence. “What I most regret is that I still have no knowledge of her,” I said at last. “It may seem strange to you, but for me the real tragedy has not changed. My father had already robbed me of my mother, whether or not he killed her in fact.”

There was another long silence, and I did not know whether Charles had even been paying attention. Then he said, “She was one of the loveliest women I’ve ever seen.”

“What?”

He was gazing into the distance, his bright eyes pensive. “Your mother. I was madly in love with her. Even though I was only six years old at the time, I still remember how I worshipped her.”

“You knew her!” Of course he would have; I chided myself for not having realized. But how could I have known that he would remember? When I found the breath to speak, I begged, “What was she like?”

His eyes dwelt consideringly on my face. “Very like you, in fact, although I think she was taller—but I was still so young everyone towered over me. I used to pretend she was a dryad,” he admitted, half abashed. “She looked like the spirit of a willow tree, slender, with long white hands and big, sad eyes; I realize now she can’t have been very strong. I remember her in shadow, mostly, lying on a sofa with the shades drawn because the light hurt her eyes.”

I did not dare to speak, for fear he would stop.

“She used to sing to you and Lionel, and I envied you that; she had a beautiful voice, very low and sweet, and she would sing you to sleep with old ballads. I’d hide outside the door to listen. When she realized I was spying she didn’t scold me, but let me sit on the hearth rug and listen.”

We stopped walking. He gave me his handkerchief, and I held it to my eyes for a few minutes. “Thank you,” I said at last. “You’ve given me something I never had before.”

“You truly knew nothing of her?”

“Only that she had chosen my name.” I managed a quavery laugh. “And that was such a strange legacy. Lionel used to hector me by saying I was named after the window.”

His laugh was a comfortable sound, something reassuringly normal after all the strangeness of the morning. “Don’t tell me you believed him? I thought you a better scholar.” When I stared at him, he shook his head at me, gently teasing. “Remember your Latin, Oriel? Your mother had a pet name for you, although you wouldn’t remember it. That is why she chose the name she did. She used to call you her golden one.”

“Of course,” I said softly, and found myself smiling back at him. “From
aureolus.
” I felt like a simpleton for having failed to recognize it before, but that did not matter now. Now, after all these years of wondering, I knew something of her, something I could claim and hold to. And I knew that I had been loved.

Suddenly a shout broke upon us. From across the lawn, in the direction where the stables lay, Herron was approaching us. He moved haltingly, and he cradled one arm as if it was injured. His face was white with what seemed equal parts pain and anger. It was he who had hailed us.

Charles gave an exclamation. “Whatever have you done to yourself, Herron?” he said, and we hurried down the terrace steps toward him.

“The beast threw me,” Herron said shortly. “That blasted Caesar. Tell your father he’s a miserable judge of horseflesh, Charles; that animal should be destroyed.”

Charles was too busy testing Herron’s injury to heed him. “It looks like no more than a sprain. It should be fine once you have it bound up. Destroyed? Aren’t you overreacting, Herron? We all take a toss now and then, but there’s no reason to feel it so personally.”

“I’ll send a servant for the doctor,” I volunteered, picking up my skirts to start for the house, but Herron stopped me.

“No, don’t trouble; I’ll have my man bandage it for me. And then I’ll send him to shoot that horse.”

Pushing past us, he strode up the steps into the house, and we stood looking after him in silence. We could hear him shouting for his valet.

“Will he be all right?” I asked.

“Oh, without a doubt,” said Charles encouragingly. “His wrist should heal completely in a few days.”

But that was not what I had meant.

“There you are at last, child! Come in, do; there’s so much to be done. Jane, help her off with her things.”

It was the evening of the ball, and at her request I had come to the duchess’s room to dress. The scene that greeted me halted me on the threshold. Clad only in her underclothes, the duchess commanded a flurry of activity, issuing orders as briskly as a general in battle even as Mary laced her up. Jane immediately bustled over to urge me inside the room and unfasten my dress. One of the tweenies was touching up the ruffles on the duchess’s ball gown with a hot iron, and another was sorting through a gossamer tangle of stockings.

All the women wore the same expression of concentration mixed with excitement. While Mary and Jane tried to affect a more worldly air, as befitted their station and experience, the tweenies giggled and whispered openly over their work, and the atmosphere was festive. The air was scented with perfume, fresh flowers, and the warm smell of the iron and curling tongs.

I surrendered myself to the ministrations of the handmaidens, for once not unwilling to let others fuss over me. After the strain of the last few days, the excitement was a welcome diversion. Herron’s coolness, my disappointment in Lord Claude, the horrifying revelation of my father’s probable involvement in my mother’s death, even the misery of being under his scrutiny once again—all were swept away now on a rising tide of anticipation, and I gladly succumbed to it.

“It’s a shame Felicity won’t be able to join us this evening,” I said, as Jane spirited my day dress away. “She’s talked of nothing else for the past fortnight.”

“And well I know it! Poor child, it is hard for her.”

“Could she not come to the ball, even just for an hour? Surely it would not do any harm.” As my own spirits revived, I wanted everyone else to be happy too.

The duchess sighed, but without disturbing her contented expression. “I could have indulged her, true, but she’s so young to be out in society, and she’ll be marrying all too soon, I fear. I can’t bear the thought of it just yet; I’d like to keep my new daughter by me a little longer.”

I had wondered before why the duchess had not, with her cavalier disregard for inconvenient proprieties, allowed Felicity to anticipate her debut into society. I could sympathize, though, with the duchess’s wish to keep Felicity out of the marriage market as long as she could. It was all too likely that once out she would be quick to find a husband, and she did seem very young to marry. It was difficult to remember that the duchess had been no older than Felicity when she herself had first married.

“I told her she could come and see us in all our finery, though,” she continued. “And if I know her, she will find a hiding place behind a curtain and observe the dancing as long as she can stay awake. But what of you? Are you not excited to be attending your first ball?”

I assured her truthfully that I was, and watched with fascinated eyes as she was helped into her ball gown. It took Jane and Mary both to lift the dress over the duchess’s head and fluff the abundant skirts out over the supporting crinoline. Her gown was the delicate pink flush of the inside of a seashell, and the skirts were fashioned in layers like the petals of a flower, with frothy frilled edges at her bosom and arms, so that, with the fairness of her hair and complexion, she looked like nothing so much as a great pink rose. Indeed, her gown would have been more befitting to a girl at her first ball than for a matron of more than twenty years. But it suited her fair coloring and softly rounded figure, while I would have felt ridiculous in so girlish a dress.

I was to wear the sea-green gown I had coveted so when I had first seen it, and I sighed with pure pleasure as the maids produced it. It was, perhaps, too mature for one my age, with its spare, simple lines, unrelieved by flounces or lace, and its bold and unusual color, but the duchess dismissed these considerations with her usual unconcern. She kept interrupting her own toilette to look after my preparations.

“Is she laced properly, Jane? Remember that gown has only an eighteen-inch waist. Here, Becky”—to one of the tweenies—“these ferns are for her hair; can you pin them? Yes, that’s perfect. Now, you need jewels. Mary, have you seen my emerald parure? And my diamond combs? Here, my dear, you’ll need just the merest touch of powder…”

The preparations were a long and painstaking process, but even the process of being laced by Mary could not dampen my spirits. True, the deep décolletage of my gown showed a great deal of my shoulders and bosom, and I was alarmed at first when I observed this, trying to pull the gown higher on my shoulders. When the duchess noticed my unease she laughed.

“You have nothing to fret about,” she said comfortably. “You look perfectly lovely, child; did I not tell you that the dress becomes you?”

“Are you sure—it is not too much—”

For answer she placed her hands on my shoulders and propelled me firmly to the mirror. “None of that, now. Have a look at yourself. I declare, Herron will not be able to resist you! I will not be at all surprised if he proposes tonight.” The reflection framed us side by side like mother and daughter, as if her prediction had called up a vision of a future in which she had become my mother-in-law.

I did present a striking contrast to the dainty, pearly-hued duchess, as I’d feared. But it was not a displeasing contrast. The duchess was right: the gown was suited to me. The blue-green satin was luminous, its color shifting like the sea under a storm-laden sky, and the tint was reflected in my eyes, which shone in a way they never had before. The huge skirts billowed out gracefully, rendering my waist almost nonexistent, and I enjoyed the sensation of the hoops as my dress bobbed and swayed around me like a great bell; I felt as though I moved in the center of an orbit of shimmering color, like a soap bubble.

Even the low neckline was becoming. Aided by my stays, my bosom rounded out above the corsage in an undeniably feminine way; and fortunately the bruise on my shoulder had faded until it could be completely hidden by the judicious application of powder. Jane had worked her magic on my stubborn hair, coaxing it into an elaborate arrangement set about with ferns and long, springy curls that brushed my bare shoulders. From my ears dripped emeralds that quivered at the slightest motion of my head.

The duchess watched with amusement as I turned and preened. At last I said wonderingly, when I could discover no angle from which the reflection was flawed, “I think you are a djinn after all, ma’am.”

“Oh, come. There is nothing magic about a pretty dress, with a pretty girl in it.” She glanced at my face as I stood staring at my reflection and said more gently, “Someone has taught you that you are plain. Am I not right?”

I nodded. That was a mild way of describing the lesson I had learned, but I did not correct it.

“But you see now that they were wrong, don’t you?”

“I… I suppose so.”

She gave me a gentle shake at the doubt in my voice. “Look at yourself again—a real look! You are no plainer than you believe yourself to be. That is the real secret of beauty.”

I turned to her, flushed with gratitude and happiness. I could almost even believe her words.

“Thank you.” Shyly I embraced her, and she responded with an affectionate squeeze—carefully, so as not to crush our dresses.

“My dear child, such solemnity! One would think the girl had never had a new gown.” We smiled at each other, and then she returned to her former briskness. “Now, let us see to gloves. Becky, have you found my ivory fan?”

She was off again to sort through more finery. I turned back to the mirror, still in wonder. The duchess could treat this lightly, but it was the first time anyone had spoken so to me, and the first time I had felt that I might not be the homely creature I had always been treated as. I beamed at my reflection with genuine good feeling. Tonight, for once, I did not feel that I would disgrace my patroness’s efforts.

And the thought of what Herron would say when he saw me gave me a surge of secret exultation. Surely his icy, distant manner toward me could not help but melt under the influence of this mermaid gown. The breach that had grown between us would vanish, and he would come back to me; we would be as we had been, happy, as one. It might even be that the duchess’s prediction would come true, and by the end of the evening Herron would be asking the company to toast our happiness. I could see the scene as if it were unfolding before me now: Herron, gazing down at me with love rekindled in his eyes; the duchess and Lord Claude, smiling their delight; my father, confounded for once, looking as if he had swallowed a bad oyster…

“Come, dear, we aren’t finished with you yet.” The duchess was rushing back to me to proffer gloves, fan, and bracelets, and I turned away from the mirror and my fantasies to be bedizened even further.

A knock on the door announced Aminta and Miss Yates. Aminta was dressed in her usual quiet elegance in an amber watered silk that complemented her burnished hair. At her ears and throat she wore topazes that glowed like sunlight through honey. Both she and the duchess had nosegays of camellias—white for Aminta, pink for her aunt—while I was to carry orchids from the hothouse.

Miss Yates, though, was the most striking of us all. Her ensemble was an eye-popping shade of cerise, with (I counted quickly) twelve flounces edged in black lace and a plunging décolletage more revealing than my own. Her figure was splendid for a woman of her age and she wore the gown with assurance, but it seemed strangely at odds with her matronly greying hair. I wondered if, at her age, the pleasure she took in wearing what she loved mattered more than obeying the dictates of decorum. I thought of the jewel-colored velvet dressing gowns I wore only in my room, and felt as if Miss Yates and I had something in common.