chapter V
A NTHONY DEVERIN, LORD FERRIS, WAS PREPARED to put up with a great deal of inconvenience, even of affront. But he did not readily forgive. In the matter of his stymied marriage, he put the blame where it truly lay: not with the gormless Fitz-Levi clan and their bubble-headed daughter, but with his ancient and annoying enemy, the Duke Tremontaine. Ferris needed to know: had the duel been a mere whim, an opportunity to discomfit him and show off the duke’s latest family eccentric, or was it more, the opening salvo in a plan to bring Ferris down altogether? It would not do to wait to find out. He would strike first, to make sure Tremontaine knew he was not without resources.
Ferris made certain inquiries and was not disappointed; if anything, he was a bit surprised at just how many fronts young Campion had left himself exposed on. Going after him would be like shooting arrows at a popinjay tied to a pole. Only the question of St Vier remained open. But it was early days, yet.
It began, innocently enough, with a bit of doggerel and a little artwork, nothing out of the ordinary in a city where printers regularly catered to the tastes of a population that simultaneously gloried in the glamour of its resident nobility and loved seeing them taken down a notch.
On this particular broadsheet, it was His Lordship of Tremontaine being taken down. But instead of the usual willing boy or overendowed swordsman, the duke’s partner was a grossly fat woman, dressed like a cross between a peasant and a shopkeeper from what one could see, for her skirts were up over her head with His Lordship crawling under them exclaiming: Behold the motions of the stars! while she pointed upward, responding: No, you fool! They’re up there still!
The duke’s Riverside household staff, from scullions to secretaries, were far from pleased. What went on between their walls was private business, family business. Those snooty Hill servants might be given to passing on gossip up and down town, but in Riverside things were different. For the duke’s ugly Mathematical Girl to be the butt of city jokes was dead wrong. Someone had been talking, and the wrong person had been listening.
“I’ll have them put out on the street,” the duke told Flavia, “whoever it is.”
“You’re an idiot,” she said mechanically. The Ugly Girl herself was unaware of the rush of sympathy the household felt on her behalf. She’d received little of it in her life, and did not look for it now. “It could be anyone—one of your scholars, drinking in a tavern, making a quip where some apprentice would overhear him, that’s all it would take.”
“I’ll find someone to whip the printer, then. If it distresses you so.”
“Don’t be an idiot.”
The second broadsheet was even more offensive: calculations on a slate being made by a piglike woman with the duke’s own tool engulfed in her hammy hand—
“And they’re not even right!” she wailed, waving the sheet.
He chuckled. “Would you expect them to be?”
She said, “Yes, dammit. They owe me that, at least.”
Again he said, “I’ll make them stop, if you mind so much.”
She looked bleakly at her friend. “How will you make them stop? Will you really set bullies on the printer? the artist?”
“Why not?” he said airily; but he knew he was in the wrong. He answered her unspoken accusation himself: “It’s not unheard of. Karleigh did it when they targeted his mother. Davenant is known as a man not to mock. In a city where most of the wealth is controlled by a small few, certain things are overlooked, particularly when it comes to the assertion of privilege.”
“Don’t you dare.” She stood rigid, clutching the latest broadsheet in her two hands in front of her.
“Well, it’s not as if I can cry challenge on tradesmen, more’s the pity.”
“You damnable hypocrite, don’t you dare.”
The duke paced his study once, twice. His back to her, he stopped and said, “Flavia. I’m the Duke of Riverside. I build things here and pretty much keep the peace, and discourage certain behaviors. If you think all that has been achieved through entirely civil and lawful means, you’ve had your head in a bucket.”
“I’ve enjoyed having my head in a bucket. It’s a very nice bucket. I’ve enjoyed the books and the fire and food and conversation. But you’re right to call me on it. You’re right.” She picked up a couple of books, examined the spines. “These are mine, aren’t they? You really did give them to me?”
“Put those down,” he said. “Don’t be an idiot. Our theories stand. We both see clearly; we know what’s right. Even if it’s not always possible to act on it, don’t you think it matters to be able to call things by their true names?”
“It’s not your fault,” she said. “I’m not a total idiot. I know you do your best. I was just stupid to think you could—I could—” She shrugged and swiped at her nose with one wrist, her hands being full of books. “I thought I would be safe here.”
“You are.” For the first time, he touched her, touched her hand. “Safe from everything but paper and ink. Please. Put those down.”
“Paper and ink.” She clutched the books to her ample chest. “They’re not nothing, Alec. They’re pretty much everything to me: the embodiment of ideas, of thought—of free and open thought. Of inquiry and supposition. All of it.”
“I know,” he said. “But—”
“You’ve got all your other things—your poetry, your drugs, your pretty men and fancy clothes. You don’t need just this. I do.”
He said with unusual patience, “Do you think, if you leave my house, everything will suddenly slip back into place?” And when she didn’t answer right away, he said more heatedly, “And you’re going back where? To an unheated room at University and one cooked meal a week, tutoring students too stupid and lazy to attend lectures given by masters with half your brains? You’d leave my house for that?”
“Your patronage,” the Ugly Girl said. “I’m leaving your patronage. Don’t you understand? I don’t like being looked at. I don’t like being talked about. I don’t really like compromise.”
He said, “And I don’t like you letting them chase you away. It seems, well, cowardly.”
“It is. I have my limits. Clever of them to find them. Who are ‘they,’ by the way?”
“I don’t know,” the duke said. “I wonder who I’ve offended lately?”
“Everyone. You offend everyone.”
“Don’t leave,” he said. “It will give them so much pleasure.”
“Almost, for that,” she conceded, “but no. I’d better.”
“Come to dinner next week,” he urged. “Ridley and his gang are going to argue about circulation. Maybe he’ll demonstrate on a roast chicken again.”
“No,” she said. “I’m going to disappear for a while—as much as I can, anyway; nobody really cares about the University. And I never liked those dinners. Didn’t you notice? It was always best when you told me about them after.”
“Breakfast next morning, then?”
“Don’t wait up,” she said.
She left the crumpled broadsheets on the floor. And she left an enormous space in the duke’s library, in his study, in his days and nights.
But in the end he got back at her, even if he never got her back. Before the year was out, the stuffy old University at the heart of the City boasted the first ever Women’s Fellowship in Mathematics, which was taken by the only suitable available candidate, a large and ugly woman of indeterminate age who always wore a voluminous black scholar’s robe over her shapeless gowns and lectured with a combination of rigor and dry wit that made her classes, in time, immensely popular.
A RTEMISIA FITZ-LEVI WITNESSED LORD FERRIS’S second strike against the duke herself.
She witnessed it from a box at the theatre in the company of her mother, her brother, and her cousin Lucius. Lucius Perry had not yet declared himself a formal suitor, despite his parents’ indication that they would view the match with favor, but Lady Fitz-Levi still wanted him seen with her daughter, and Artemisia was simply grateful for his company.
The truth was, it took courage for her to go out in public. Despite her friends’ assurances that it was nothing, she knew people were still talking about her ruptured betrothal and its possible causes. Although no one who knew them well could seriously entertain the notion that the Fitz-Levi family had hired Tremontaine’s wild niece, the proximity of the challenge to Lord Ferris’s break with Artemisia was hard to ignore. There was talk of a romance between the two girls, though no one had ever seen them together. Those who believed the challenge lay between Ferris and the Mad Duke were still free to wonder what had caused the Crescent to release Lady Artemisia from her betrothal. If she had not been the wronged party, then perhaps something else about her had put Lord Ferris off, and her deficiencies were lovingly enumerated, even by her friends.
Thus the Fitz-Levi party arrived early at the theatre, so as to be settled in their box before the crowds started in. Artemisia sat towards the back of the box where she would not easily be seen, wishing she didn’t have to. All thought of her own situation vanished, though, when the play began. Candles were lit, and there was Stella’s bedroom, with its tall window and canopied bed, exactly as in the book. In walked a beautiful woman—a little old for girlish Stella to Artemisia’s critical eye, but she carried herself well. “No, thank you,” the actress said, her head turned a little offstage. “I will put myself to bed.”
“Let the duke do it!”
A man’s voice, crude, from the cheap back seats. There was general shushing, and the scene went on. The Black Rose won Artemisia over with her portrayal of Stella’s gentle innocence. When Fabian appeared in her chamber, armed and ready to kill her as he was sworn to do, Artemisia clutched her fan so hard she nearly broke it. Stella did not plead for her life; she let her youth and beauty of spirit plead for her. And the swordsman succumbed, as he must. “Lady Stella,” he said, “your girlhood ends tonight. Whether by my sword or in my arms, I leave the choice to you.”
“It is no choice,” she said, trembling. “Either way, my will is forced.”
“Is it?” Though the length of his sword was still between them, he looked deep into her eyes. “Know this, then: that you choose for us both. For in taking your life tonight, I end mine as well. The sun cannot rise on the face of a man who has destroyed such a jewel.”
“What is your name?”
“If you will it, it is Death. Death for us both.”
“And if I will otherwise?”
“Then I will give you joy.” He fell on his knees before her, his sword at his side, the distance still between them. “And I am your servant, now, until the moment I draw my final breath.”
Artemisia found that she was weeping—not the slow pleasant tears that theatre usually called forth, but wrenching sobs she felt her body could barely contain. She tried to stifle them, to hear what came next, although she knew the words by heart:
“Then rise,” bright Stella said. “I choose freely, and I choose you.” She held out her hand.
“Save it for Tremontaine!” A different voice, from a different corner of the theatre.
“Shut your face!” a woman shouted back, and others chorused agreement. This was Stella’s moment, and no man would take it from them. The theatre was silent as the Black Rose parted the curtains of the huge bed, and silent as the couple embraced within them.
Silent, too, as Viola appeared on the stage above, jacketed and breeched as Tyrian, wondering what had happened to keep Fabian so late.
The two friends met (while the bedroom was made to disappear), and Fabian explained his desperate case and even more desperate remedy. To save Stella’s life he must betray a patron, and in so doing betray his honor, a swordsman’s most cherished possession, and next to his sword, his most valuable. But one bright, fated woman had turned the world inside out, changed honor to disgrace and death to life. He would leave the city now and send word to his patron that he had found the mark too easy, that his blade rebelled and sought a worthier foe.
“Think you,” said Tyrian, “they’ll let it go at that? Dream on, my friend. I will watch your beauty, and if she be not worthy of your love, I’ll challenge her myself.”
Mangrove appeared next. In the book this happened later, but Artemisia could see that it was time to present the villain, who was Stella’s evil cousin’s swordsman and second in command. Mangrove waited for Stella in a temple, where he knew she was coming to pray, which was not in the book but allowed them to drop some impressive columns from the flies above. He leaned arrogantly against one and said, “Here comes the lady now.”
The Black Rose entered, veiled head to toe in midnight blue.
“Is it raining?” Lady Fitz-Levi inquired. It wasn’t rain: all around the theatre, people were hissing. The sounds of shh! mixed with the hissing, making it worse. The Black Rose said something, but no one could hear her. She stood very still, and so did Mangrove, frozen in his sneer.
Someone began a rhythmic clapping, making it impossible for the actors to be heard. People in the audience started shouting, and the language wasn’t pretty.
At last the noise subsided. Stella lifted a hand to her veil, and Mangrove stepped forward. “Gentle lady,” he said, a terrible mockery of Fabian’s opening lines, “allow me.”
But she kept her hands on her veil. “Sir, you are not known to me. My face—” The rest of the speech was lost in a volley of hisses. Every time the Black Rose opened her mouth, it was the same.
“Let’s go,” said Lucius Perry. “They’ll never get through the play.”
Her mother was outraged. “Can’t they make them stop?”
“You can’t control such an audience, Aunt.”
“But what’s wrong?” Artemisia asked. “I think she’s very good.”
“Goose,” her brother said fondly. “It’s a setup. Someone’s paid to have her booed. A rival, perhaps—for the part, or for her affections…”
“Well, whoever did it, I’d like to slap them,” his sister said. “Oh, look, Robert, people are throwing flowers! Quick, rush out and buy me some, I want to throw them, too.”
The stage was slowly carpeted in blossoms. When they grew deep enough, the Black Rose scooped up a great armful, and swept offstage.
W ORD REACHED RIVERSIDE QUICKLY. THE DUKE Tremontaine sent his carriage for her, and it carried the Black Rose unimpeded to the Bridge, where a closed chair waited to bring her to him.
“They booed me.” Her eyes flashed regally, and she would not sit down, although she accepted a goblet of brandy. “I have never been hissed in a theatre before. Never.”
He said, “How lucky for you. Whom have you managed to offend?”
She stopped her pacing long enough to fix him with her startling eyes. She was not a small woman, and the duke was sitting down, teasing at a flower that had fallen from her hair. “Don’t you know?” she said. “I heard it clearly, and so did everyone else, I’ll be bound. Your name, dear, not mine. I am very popular. You, it seems, are not.”
“What a surprise.” He dropped petals on the floor. “And what a good thing I don’t care.”
“How nice for you that you don’t have to.”
“Meaning,” he drawled, “that you do.”
“Just so.” She leaned down and kissed him long and hard, ’til she felt his breath quicken and his hands grow restless, then she pulled away and said complacently, “It’s a good thing you’re not stuck on screwing actresses, dearie, or you’d have a very dry time ahead of you.”
The duke straightened his jacket. “You weren’t by any chance brought up in Riverside, were you?”
She knelt before him in a rustle of skirts, so that her eyes were level with his. “You don’t remember me, do you?” He looked dubious. “Well, why should you? I was just a scrawny girl, wiping down the tables and clearing away the beer mugs at Rosalie’s.”
“Rosalie’s?” It was a name he hadn’t heard in years: the tavern where he used to drink and wait with his lover, the swordsman St Vier, for a challenge or a fight.
“I thought you were a prince back then,” Rose said. “I made up stories about you. You and him, you was—you were like magic, something no one could touch. I wanted people to look at me like that. And the way you talked—oh, lord…Rosalie let me bring you a drink, once. You were dicing—”
“Probably losing.”
“Oh, yes, losing.” She smiled. “When I brought it, you said, Look, a glass of fresh luck!” She imitated him perfectly. “You took the drink, but the swordsman paid for it, because you were broke. I remember, he said—”
“No.” The duke held up his hand. “That’s enough.”
“It’s all right,” Rose said. “I never could do him the way I could do you. I used to make the other girls laugh with it….”
“What a good thing I didn’t know! I might have had him kill you.”
“Never.” The Black Rose smiled. “He didn’t do women, everyone knew that.”
The duke said, “Last year. I sent you my ring, with that note…. When you came here and saw me, you must have been surprised.”
“Oh, no, Alec. Not at all.” Her arms twined around his neck. “Why do you think I came?”
He ran his lips along her cheek. “Revenge on a crooked lover, I thought. Not that I wasn’t grateful. I put what you brought me to good use, I assure you. And I’m grateful yet. I won’t let Ferris chase you from the theatre.”
“No,” she said, “you won’t.”
Through pride and perversity he strove to keep her with him as long as he could, but in the end she rose from the tangle of clothes and said, “Farewell, my prince. Act heartbroken if you can; curse me if you must. I’d rather one curse from your lips than a hundred boos from an annoyéd crowd.”
He looked critically at her. “Someone else wrote that.”
“Of course. I changed it a little to fit the circumstances, that’s all.” She busied herself with the hooks of her bodice, and he did not offer to help. “I’ll do what I can to let them know we’ve quarreled. You do the same.”
On the stairway she found the duke’s niece, that peculiar girl with the sword. Rose straightened herself just a little more and adjusted her glow to become once again the Black Rose. “Katherine,” she said brightly. “How wonderful to see you again.”
“Oh.” The girl looked startled. “Hello, there.”
“I salute you,” said Rose. “You are the hero of the hour.”
“Am I?”
“The duke is very proud of you, and so he should be. Remind him of it, when you can. He’s sad,” Rose said. “I am a little, too.” She put her hand on the girl’s soft cheek, and Katherine blushed. “I know,” the Black Rose said. “It’s all so very difficult, until you get the hang of it.” She kissed the girl on her brow, and left the Riverside house.
I T WAS NOT FAIR. THE DUKE ALWAYS GOT WHATEVER he wanted. What did he need the Black Rose for? He had the whole city to choose from. She liked me, I knew she did. Hadn’t she kissed me in the theatre?
It probably wasn’t her fault at all that she’d ended up with him. She was just an actress, and he had money and influence that she probably needed, while I had nothing to offer but my true heart and my sword. Girls were dying all over the city for her. And there she was, patting me on the head and telling me to cheer up my uncle and look after him. Why didn’t she tell anyone to look after me?
I didn’t go down to dinner; I did not want to see the Duke Tremontaine that night. I found some old biscuits in my emergency hunger tin and ate those. But it turned out I’d missed a meal for nothing; the duke, too, was taking his meals in his rooms.
Or so Marcus told me, when he banged on my door to see what had happened to me.
I opened the door a crack. “Go away,” I said. “You’re not supposed to be in here alone with me. Betty doesn’t approve.”
Marcus laughed. “Betty,” he said, “is making up to Master Osborne, who knew her back in the old days when he wasn’t good enough for her. You don’t have to worry about Betty for a while. He’s got the keys to the wine cellar, after all.”
“Well, anyway, I’m busy. I’m thinking.”
“So am I,” Marcus said insinuatingly. “I’ve been planning amusements and diversions. Want to know?”
“Tell me,” I said.
“I’ll tell you when I’ve got all the bits worked out. Maybe tomorrow, if all goes well. Meanwhile, I’ll have a tray sent up. You must keep up your strength. Then you can practice killing someone. It’ll do you the world of good.”
He was the most provoking boy.
D AVID ALEXANDER TIELMAN CAMPION, DUKE Tremontaine, knew that he had annoyed a lot of people. It wasn’t fair to blame everything on Lord Ferris. He set his network to make inquiries, first through the usual channels: the University and Riverside. Riversiders got around. Some were virtuoso housebreakers and pickpockets, still others had climbed up the social ladder to become house staff of various kinds. Servants, all but the most disciplined, talked. So did scholars—outrageous gossips all, even those who now worked as tutors and secretaries to the nobility, many of whom Tremontaine had helped out in their starving student days. Spread his nets wide enough and something would turn up that he could use—and, as usual, a number of things he hadn’t been looking for that could be useful later would come to light as well.
The question was, how serious were these strikes against his friends? Did his enemy wish only to annoy, or was this the prelude to something worse? It was not the first time Tremontaine had been under attack. When he’d inherited the duchy quite a few disgruntled contenders had tried to alter the succession through means foul and fair. And there had been others since then. He was well defended, now, with swordsmen and lawyers and everything in between. But what was he to defend against?
He made a list of possible serious foes. Heading it was Anthony Deverin, Lord Ferris. It wasn’t just that Ferris currently had legitimate grudges against both Tremontaine’s lover for spying on him (if he’d found out) and his niece for challenging him. It was also a matter of style. The petty cruelty, particularly directed toward vulnerable women, smelt very familiar.
In the old tales, things always came in threes. So who was next? The duke made his best guess and doubled the guard on certain people who, with luck, need never know that it was there at all. And he sent once last time for the Black Rose, to come in secret and speak to him in his Riverside house, and he asked her to go as his messenger to Highcombe.
A RTEMISIA BEGAN GOING OUT AGAIN TO SELECTED parties. She held her head high, even when she had to sit out dances without a partner. She refused to flirt with any of her old beaux. If the ones who had once clustered around her begging for a smile now thought themselves too good for her, so much the worse for them. She had won her challenge. She was free and in the right. Lydia Godwin’s father always made a point of dancing with her, gracefully and superbly, and so did Armand Lindley. Lydia would take Artemisia’s arm and walk around the ballroom with her in open declaration of affection. Jane Hetley often joined them, though Lavinia Perry, now betrothed to Petrus Davenant, was making herself scarce. It was going to be that way, Artemisia realized: they would be friends in future only if their husbands got along.
She found herself hoping more and more to see Lucius Perry at these events. Lucius would always talk with her, easy and amusing. He made her feel like herself. He was a good dancer, too, and he never failed to claim her for a dance and bow deeply when it was over. Even when he was on his way elsewhere, he seemed to make the effort to drop in where he knew she would be. He would stay long enough to dance with her twice—but the third dance, the one that declared him a serious suitor, that Lucius Perry never gave her.
Once, just once, it almost happened. The music being over, Artemisia held on to his hand that little bit longer, and as the next tune started up they nearly merged back into the dance. She saw him pause, and look at her, and realize. He kept her hand, though, as he guided her back in the direction of her seat, and so doing, he slipped his arm around her waist, drew her a little closer to him—She didn’t mean to flinch and pull back, she just did it.
“What a clumsy dolt I am!” Lucius said smoothly. “Always stepping on people’s toes…”
She felt a rush of great warmth for him then. Lucius understood. As she watched his back disappear across the ballroom floor, off to whatever his next engagement was that night, Artemisia realized that she would marry him if he asked her. She would take good care of him. She’d make a beautiful home, and invite his friends to dinner, and she would see to it that there were always plates of his favorite biscuits, the brown crispy cinnamon ones. They would attend the theatre together, and give musical afternoons, and on quiet evenings she would sew and he would read to her. And he would never, never do anything to her if she asked him not to. Surely he never would.
R OSE HAD NEVER KNOWN A CARRIAGE RIDE TO be so exhausting. It was ridiculous, really; here she was in the lap of luxury—the duke hated traveling, he said, so tried to make his carriages as comfortable as possible, and as far as she was concerned, he’d succeeded. His footmen, in plain dress (as was the carriage, with the duke’s escutcheon covered), were attentive but not presumptuous, and the basket of provisions abundant. It was the opposite of what she usually had to put up with on tour, and she should have been luxuriating in it. But all she wanted to do was sleep.
It was especially annoying because she had lines to learn. Henry had decided to mount a new production of an old romance, Lord Ruthven’s Lady. It was a difficult play, seldom performed, being neither wholly tragedy nor comedy; but based on the success of The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death, Henry felt Lord Ruthven’s Lady would draw crowds.
Lord Ruthven is a courtier who offends the king’s young sister Helena by his callous and predatory conduct toward women. Helena persuades the court wizard to turn Ruthven into a woman, cursed to remain so until he can gain a woman’s love. As a woman, Ruthven realizes he loves Helena and must bend all his skills and powers toward seducing her in his woman’s form, or perish of terrible, unslakeable desire unlike anything he has ever known. Rose would play Ruthven once he was transformed. She had seen the play done entirely for laughs, but she had no intention of letting that happen here. While there were certainly comic moments to work with, her Ruthven would be troubled and passionate, vulnerable and confused, and ultimately tragic. By the time Helena finally returned Ruthven’s love, she wanted all the ladies in the audience to be moaning with need. Her dear friend Jessica Bell was cast as Helena. Jess would give the princess just the right mix of fragility and backbone, and her slender pallor would play well against Rose’s robust stature. Never one to leave a profitable thing unexploited, Henry had insisted on writing in a part for Viola Fine: Helena now had a pageboy with a crush on Ruthven-the-woman, which was gilding the lily with a vengeance, in Rose’s opinion. But Rose did not doubt that once the show opened, she would have her pick of noble lovers, passionate adoring women who would make a very nice change from the tortuous intrigues of Lord Ferris and the Mad Duke Tremontaine.
She would, at least, if she could ever learn her lines. Rose had begun studying the part and was finding it almost impossible. Long speeches usually gave her no trouble; she loved the rhythm of the words, but these refused to stick in her head. There was a lot of repartee and wordplay, as well, and she kept jumbling phrases. She had to be word-perfect or the comedy would be lost, and you needed the play’s wit to balance the poignancy. From the top, dear, she told herself, and put her hand over her playbook and began the transformation scene:
What is this heaviness about my chest?
My arms feel lighter, without strength or power.
Have I been sleeping? Ill? I cannot tell.
What, boy! Attend me here!—What is that sound?
That is not mine—my voice! My voice! My voice!
Oh, she was going to have a good time with this. Triple repeats gave you so much to do. The next line was—was—God, she’d lost it already. She’d lost it, and she was going to puke. She should know better than to read in a moving carriage. But it had never given her trouble in the past. She opened the basket, looking for the wine. There was something in there—something that smelt like—quinces. Quince tart. She loved quince tart, and the duke had remembered, how sweet. But not this quince tart. This one was overwhelming. It was as if she was choking on the very smell of quinces. It sat in her hand, all crispy and golden. She threw it out the window.
The air made her feel better. She took a sip of wine and lay back. Her corsets were too tight. She’d told her dresser to tie them looser, but Emily must not have been paying attention. Her breasts were popping right out of her bodice. Rose lay back and closed her eyes.
She was asleep when the carriage pulled into Highcombe and came to a halt on the sweeping drive before the house’s front door, where torches were already lit, expecting her arrival. The duke had insisted that she travel alone, but he had sent an outrider on ahead, and the household’s small staff miraculously included women who could take care of her. Muzzy with fatigue, she let them usher her up to a quiet bedroom and unlace her shoes and coo over her elegant dress and petticoats, hang them up and bring her water to wash away the journey. “Put your feet up, my lady,” they said in their thick country accents, and she did not correct their assumption—she’d played great ladies often enough, and could certainly do so now—“that’ll help they swelling to go down.” She had never enjoyed the unlacing of her corsets quite so much. This was the country, and there was no “adoring public” here, no audience except for the mysterious personage she was to meet, for whom the duke had hired her to read the letter she carried. With that duty discharged, she could go with her laces loose for a couple of days; maybe it would ease the ache in her breasts.
Sitting upright in her chair with her feet on a stool, waiting for a soothing tisane, Rose fell asleep again, and was roused by an elderly maid who, unsure of the etiquette for waking nobility, was holding the steaming mug under her nose. The acrid smell of herbs made her flinch. “Take it away,” she said; “I don’t want it.”
The sharpness in her own voice surprised her. These people were trying to be kind. Rose shook her head and laughed. “I’m sorry! I don’t know what’s wrong with me!”
“That’s all right, my lady,” the servant said. “It just takes some women that way, is all.”
“Oh, no,” Rose laughed, “I’m usually quite a hardy traveler.”
The older woman chuckled. “Most every woman finds this journey hard, ma’am,” and Rose said, “Oh, no,” in quite a different tone.