The Lily Brand (7 page)

Throughout all of winter she had been trained for her entrance into London society. Teachers of all kind had come to her grandfather’s country estate, had passed through her life in a seemingly endless procession: one to teach her English etiquette, one for singing, one for dancing, one to reacquaint her with the piano, one with whom to practice polite conversation, one to prepare her for presentation at court. And then an unknown aunt had appeared to chaperone her through the bustle of the London season.

Yes, she had been trained well, and for the sake of her aunt and grandfather she intended to perform well. Thus she smiled and smiled and smiled until her cheeks hurt and her face felt as if, like glass, it might shatter any moment. So far, she had never once misstepped during a dance, her complexion had been deemed perfect and her dresses the height of fashion. And yet…

She, who had perfected silence at a very early age, did not know how to converse with people. Discussions of fashion or
beaux
or the latest scandal seemed strange to her, and the delicate dance of courtship, in which she saw others engaged, appeared as alien as a foreign language. She did not understand why on the cheeks of her dance partner, a pale young man with stylish blond curls, flaming blotches of excitement bloomed, and why he needed continual reassurance that she liked the music, the dance, and the ball in general. She did not understand why her aunt had ordered the best food to be served when he came to her grandfather’s town house for dinner, why it had been necessary for her to wear one of her best dresses, to have her hair done in such an uncomfortable style that her scalp hurt. And then he could not even look at her without blushing a fierce red. Throughout the whole meal she had sat in silence, listening as the conversation around her moved from topic to topic, lightly, as if these people’s tongues had wings to carry them through dinner talks.

She did not understand why he would want to come back after that. She did not understand why all these men with whom she scarcely talked came back to ask for a dance or offered to guide her to the refreshment room. As if she could not find the way by herself.

But then, perhaps, she wouldn’t be able to find the way by herself. Back at Château du Marais she had known where to walk, where to go to. Now, life had turned into a puzzle whose bits and pieces no longer fit together. And so, she came to yearn for the overgrown garden, for Pan hiding in the greenery and for the stone lovers bound together by creepers forevermore. In the garden, where no one had tread but her, it had not mattered that the world outside had whirled through the months and years without her. Yet here, even as she followed the motions of the dance, she was still not engaged in the greater dance of the world, and here she did not have the solitude of a green haven.

She had… nothing.

The dance ended. She was offered an arm so they could walk around the room in a long procession with the other couples. Another thing she did not understand.

However, she understood how to smile even when the matrons at the sides of the room flipped their fans and whispered to each other, none too quietly.

“What does that young Perrin want with her?”

“…the Marquis of Larkmoor’s granddaughter…”

“…appeared out of nowhere…”

“…I wouldn’t have thought him to be so bird-witted as that…”

Perhaps Alexander Markham, Viscount Perrin, did not hear these comments as he walked around the room with Lillian’s hand on his arm. Once again, he leaned his head toward her and inquired whether she had liked that dance.

“Yes, my lord.” Lillian glanced at him from the corner of her eyes, glanced into his kind, round face, which had not yet lost the chubbiness of adolescence. She wondered how his naïveté could have survived for so long.

Not that it mattered.

A giggle from the sidelines diverted her attention. Her gaze flitted over a woman whose breasts seemed ready to spill over the low neckline of her dress, and was caught by the man at her side, well into his prime. With his ginger hair and whiskers, the Marquis of Hertford looked like a sly fox. Right now, he appeared to regard Lillian as his prey, for he eyed her with a leering grin on his lips, even as he playfully pinched the arm of the woman beside him.

“Ice Maiden,” the woman repeated, and this time her giggle was even louder than before. She looked at Lillian, triumph clearly etched on her face just like the wrinkles that bracketed her mouth. The wife of some baron or duke, she might hope to become the marquis’s next mistress. And if a younger woman, silent and unapproachable, had been given such a name,
Ice Maiden
, it was well worth a gloat or two.

Lillian understood
that
.

She looked through the woman and the man, her face a careful blank. This, too, she had been taught and taught well—back in France. She knew all about games of power and how to gather the chill that hovered in the corners of the large room and let it numb her skin, soak into her body.

And she knew how not to smirk when from the chandeliers above wax dropped onto the bosom of the woman, scorching white skin just like hot chocolate would. With a shriek, the woman jumped back. Yet the eyes of the man at her side remained fixed on Lillian.

Still, Lillian looked through him, refusing to acknowledge the incident, refusing to acknowledge him and how his face twisted, sharpened.

“Lady Medlycott,” the Viscount Perrin mumbled, irritated. When Lillian turned her eyes to him, the hectic red blotches appeared on his cheeks, and he made an impatient movement with his free hand. “She is a jade… a… a vulgar, that woman. Always creating scenes.”

“I believe a drop of wax fell on her,” Lillian replied quietly.

He stared at her with eyes like round blue marbles, as if he had never heard of such a thing as dripping candles before. Then they both turned and watched as the Marquis of Hertford flicked the offending drop of wax away and let his finger linger on the expanse of heaving white flesh, let it slip under the neckline of the Clarence blue dress.

The Viscount Perrin blushed an even deeper shade of red, very much like the strawberries he had sent Lillian this afternoon before the ball.

Her stepmother would have preferred cherries.

The viscount put a gloved hand over Lillian’s fingers on his arm. “I am sorry you had to witness that.” His voice sounded both angry and embarrassed, and with a slight tug on her arm, he drew her on. Lillian wondered what he would have thought had he known what she had witnessed at Château du Marais.

But then, nobody knew.

Nobody even suspected.

Not even Nanette.

“The daughter of a commoner,” Perrin muttered. “Medlycott only married her for the money, and now she… she…” His voice was lost in a splutter.

“She wants to climb,” Lillian said softly. “The Marquis of Hertford is a friend of the Prince Regent, is he not?”

Again, the round blue eyes were turned on her, clearly showing surprise at her insight. Then they darkened ominously. “He is, but…he is not a man a respectable woman would want her name linked to. A gamester of the worst sort, a… a…” Apparently he had difficulties finding a fitting term that would not shock his fair partner’s sensibilities. “A scapegrace and… and a libertine.”

Compared to her stepmother, the Marquis of Hertford sounded like a puppy dog. But, of course, Lillian could not tell Viscount Perrin that. Graciously, she bowed her head. “I see,” she murmured.

The young nobleman frowned. “Medlycott should call him out, demand satisfaction. I would, if I were him. This… this is an affront to his honor.”

Lillian looked straight ahead, focusing on the bright orange feather stuck in the turban of the lady in front of them. “So you would kill a man for this?” It seemed to her as if she could hear the song of the dogs in the distance, yearning to sink their teeth into flesh and bone. She could almost see ruby droplets blooming on white linen, and perhaps a pistol shot would sound like the crack of a whip searing skin.

Lillian blinked.

Beside her, she felt Perrin square his shoulders. “My honor would demand it. As would the honor of every respectable man.” Her question seemed to have affronted him. “You might think me inexperienced in battle. True, I have not been to the war as my cousin, but he has no father who would have prevented him from going.” All at once, he sounded wistful. “I would have liked to gain glories on the battlefield. How sublime it must have been to fight at Wellington’s side at Waterloo…” Here his voice trailed off, and his blue marble eyes turned to the distance, shimmering, as if he would burst into tears any moment, so moved was he by his glorious visions of heroic deeds for king and country.

All Lillian could envision, however, were nightmarish sights of blood and gore, the smell of scorched flesh, the cries of men. She suppressed a shudder. To banish these images, she grabbed at the next best question she could think of. “So your cousin was at Waterloo?”

Perrin frowned, blinked, then shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. “No, he was not. He was wounded in some skirmish or other several months before and taken prisoner.” Their round through the room had almost come to an end. This seemed to make him remember his gentlemanly obligations. His fingers pressed reverently down on Lillian’s. “Would you like some refreshments, my lady?”

Refreshments meant that she could forego the next dance. “Yes, my lord.” She bowed her head. “Thank you.”

With purposeful steps the viscount guided her toward the refreshments room, a man with a mission. When they arrived, the smaller room was already filled with other thirsty dancers, smiling, talking, and sipping sparkling wine. Debutantes fingered their necklaces, rows of pearls or sparkling stones, and giggled while they stood beside their dance partners, who in turn puffed out their chests and held their wineglasses with elegant nonchalance.

“Could I tempt you with a cup of soup?” Perrin asked solicitously His hand still rested over hers in an oddly protective gesture.

Lillian looked at it.

Or perhaps it was just possessive.

Yet who would think such a thing of Alexander Markham, Viscount Perrin, with his innocent blue eyes and blushing cheeks? She lifted her gaze and met his, stared at him as if to penetrate all his secrets. But in the end, it did not matter. What ever did?

His eyes darted away.

“I would like a glass of lemonade,” Lillian said softly.

~*~

He sent her a delicately painted fan the next day, which Lillian’s aunt could not stop admiring. “He must be in love with you, my child!” she exclaimed, obviously pleased with herself that she had managed to secure a good
parti
for her niece during her very first season. Aunt Louisa, a woman with an ample bosom and a preference for rainbow-colored dresses and cheerful turbans, exuded the soft scent of violets as she bowed over the viscount’s latest present. “Charming, absolutely charming,” she murmured. “Come and see, Lillian, my dear. Such an exquisite miniature. A scene from
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, I believe.”

Lillian stood up from the window seat of her grandfather’s drawing room, which conveniently overlooked the busy street outside. This way, the ladies of the house could observe what was going on in the neighborhood, who was paying a visit on whom, who had a new bonnet or a new walking dress. Lillian usually just stared out of the window without seeing anything.

“Nanette, have you seen it?” Aunt Louisa asked the older woman, who sat knitting in a corner of the room. “It is truly charming, is it not?”

Lillian magicked a smile on her face as she stepped beside her aunt to admire the fan, which was laid out on the small side table in front of them. The smooth ivory plates of the fan were, indeed, embellished with an Arcadian scene, showing a woman in a shift cuddling close to a donkey-headed man. Lillian touched the fan with the tip of her finger. How curious this was—a man with a donkey head.

“And so very clever,” Aunt Louisa went on and clapped her hands in delight. “To send you a fan with a scene from the play we are to attend tonight.”

Lillian, now truly enveloped in violet perfume, nodded and smiled and kept her ignorance to herself. There had not been many books in Château du Marais. They were things Camille had no use for.

All at once, clouds seemed to darken the sunny March sky, and Lillian had to fight to keep her smile in place. “Will I take it with me to the theater, then?” she asked quietly.

“Of
course
, my dear, of course.” Aunt Louisa turned to Nanette for support. “We want our Lillian to encourage the viscount’s suit, do we not? A very eligible young man, that Alexander Markham. And very handsome, too, if I may say so. I know his mother.” This hardly came as a surprise to Lillian. Aunt Louisa seemed to know everybody in London. “A very nice woman. Very elegant, very refined. She was quite a catch in her time. How devastated she was when her nephew was reported to be missing in action two years or so ago. Dreadful story that. But thankfully, the boy returned. He looked horribly haggard for some time, they say, but nothing like poor Ponsonby. Have you heard of Frederick Ponsonby, my dear?”

Lillian nodded. Aunt Louisa had already told her all about Frederick Ponsonby.

“A stab in the lungs is no laughing matter, or so they say. That boy should be happy to be alive. Well, Murgatroyd Sacheverell is probably happy to be alive, too, I say, even though he just looked haggard for a month or two. Now,
that
one is quite a catch, too. The Earl of Ravenhurst. A girl could do worse.” She gently patted Lillian’s cheek. “But this is nothing
our
girl has to be concerned about. You are quite well off, yourself, my dear, if I may say so. To have caught the attention of Alexander Markham, Viscount Perrin! He will be a marquis one day, you know.” Her face took on a dreamy expression. “The Most Honorable the Marchioness of Waldron—wouldn’t that be a fine title for our Lillian?”

~*~

He came to their box that evening, during the interval. He brought a napkin and oranges, which he proceeded to peel and separate into juicy slices to tempt the ladies. Their fresh scent mingled with the perfume of violets as Aunt Louisa chatted on about dreadful incidents she had seen happening on and off stage. “And the night Drury Lane burnt down…” Like a trapped bird, her fan fluttered against her heaving bosom. “The whole sky across London was lit up by the blaze. And the moon was all red that night, blood red…” She sighed, rather theatrically so.