chapter III
A YOUNG GIRL STEPS OUT OF A TRAVELING CARRIAGE into a courtyard already in shadow. But all above her, the house’s high windows glitter with the last golden rays of the sun.
She is wrapped in a simple grey wool traveling cloak. As she looks up at the house’s glorious facade of honey-colored stone and many-paned glass, she furls a corner of the cloak like a ballgown, and slowly pivots in place.
M Y UNCLE THE MAD DUKE LOOKED ME UP AND down.
“You aren’t very tall,” he said.
Beyond his face I could see his back reflected in the convex mirror over the fireplace, so that he swallowed up the room. “No, sir.”
It was a delicious room, painted blue and white with touches of gold; very modern, very airy, filled with pictures on the walls and curios scattered on little tables that seemed to have no other purpose but to hold them. Tall glass doors opened onto gardens overlooking the river.
He said, “This is Tremontaine House. It is very elegant. I inherited it from my grandmother, the last duchess.” When he mentioned her, the planes of his face hardened in distaste. I recognized the expression from many family dinners of our own. My uncle’s face kept turning familiar, as though I’d known him all my life. A tilt of the head, a flick of the eye—I knew him—and then it was gone, and I was confronting a fearsome stranger. He had my mother’s long brown hair, which looked very odd. I thought only students had long hair. He’d been a student once, but surely that was long ago.
“But you need not dress for dinner,” the duke said. “Nor for much of anything, really.” He drifted off, his attention caught by a china statuette on a little table. I had never been so effortlessly ignored; it was as if I’d disappeared, as if his attention could only hold one thing at a time. He picked the china up, and brought it close to his eye to examine its gilded curlicues in the light.
“I did bring nice dresses,” I said. He’d almost beggared us, but he needn’t think I could not dress for dinner.
“Did you?” my uncle asked idly. “Why?”
“Why?” I repeated. “To—well, to wear.” His attention returned to the statue in his hands. The duke had very long, graceful hands; just the sort I’ve always wanted, only bigger, and studded with jeweled rings: a whole fortune, riding on one hand. This ill-mannered, well-dressed man, the monster of the family stories, was like nothing I’d ever seen before. I had no idea what he was going to do next—and, I reminded myself, I mustn’t anger him. The family fortunes were at stake. But how to make him like me? I should try being more modest, and display maidenly virtue.
“I’m sure they’re not in style,” I said humbly, “but I could make my dresses over, if someone will show me. I do know how to sew, although I’m not very accomplished.”
He finally turned his head and looked at me. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. Dresses. You won’t be needing any.”
Finally! I thought. I’d been right about one thing: the duke was going to dip into his coffers to provide me with a whole new wardrobe. I remembered my manners and said, “Thank you. That’s very generous of you.”
His long mouth quirked in a half-smile. “We’ll see about that. Anyhow, I’ve arranged for your training to begin tomorrow. You will be living here at Tremontaine House for a while. I don’t like it here. I’ll be at the Riverside house. Unless I change my mind. I’ve got you a ladies’ maid, and a teacher…and there are books and things. You won’t be bored.” He paused, and added coolly, “And if anyone tries to bother you—just tell them I’ve said not to.”
I was gone again; I could see it on his face. He subsided into an armchair. How was I going to charm him with my winning ways if he wouldn’t even look at me? Of no use now, the pretty speeches I’d planned in the carriage mile after mile. I stared at the elegant figure. It didn’t seem rude, since by his lights I wasn’t there at all. The duke had ivory-pale skin, long brown hair and long, thinly-lidded eyes and a long, rather pointed nose. He was perfectly real: I could see the fine lines in the corners of his eyes and mouth, hear him breathe, feel him shift his weight when he moved. But he was still like something in a dream. My uncle the Mad Duke.
He looked up, surprised to find me still there. “I should think,” he said, in a slow, drawling purr, “that you would want to go to your room now…” It was one of the most unpleasant things an adult had ever said to me, awash in surprised scorn: “…after the carriage ride, and having to talk to me.”
I risked a smile, in case he was joking. But he did not smile back.
“I don’t know where it is,” I finally said.
He waved one arm through the air. “Neither do I. Looking over the river, I think: it might smell a bit in summer, but the view is better.” He reached out and found a bellpull. “What was your name, again?”
If he hadn’t seemed simply not to care, I might have lost my temper. Still: “Campion,” I said icily. “Like yours. It’s Katherine Samantha Campion Talbert, in full.”
He was seeing me again. The duke leaned toward me. His eyes were green, fringed with dark lashes. For the first time, his face was edged with humor. “I have been the Duke Tremontaine for something like fifteen years now,” my uncle said. I didn’t see what he found funny about that. “Do you know what my real name is?”
It seemed important to know it. As if, by knowing it, I might prove to him that I was real. Put all his names together, and I might come to some understanding that would tell me what he wanted.
I stared back at him. As if we were mirrors of each other, I felt curiosity, and fear, and excitement—and did not know whether those feelings were his, or my own.
“I know two of them,” I said. Campion, and the one my mother had called him. “Three, if you count Tremontaine. I can ask my mother for the rest.”
“No, you can’t. Not for six months, anyway.” The duke swung himself round in the chair, hooking his long legs over one arm in the graceless sprawl of a child settling down with a book. “Don’t you read your contracts before you sign them?”
“I couldn’t sign. I’m not of age.”
“Ah, of course. Your family took care of all that for you.” He swung back around to face me, with an expression on his face that made me feel cold all over. “Do you understand the terms?” he demanded. “Did she even tell you? Or did they just send you here like some sacrificial goat to buy me off?”
I met his fierce gaze, although I hated doing it. “I know about the swords,” I told him, “and the six months. I have to do what you say, and wear the clothes you give me. Of course they told me. I’m not a goat.”
“Good.” He swung away, satisfied.
A very handsome man with short blond curls and a snub nose came into the room. He walked right past me without a glance, and leaned over my uncle’s chair. He leaned down farther and farther, and my uncle reached up one arm and put it behind the man’s head, and pulled him down farther still.
There was no mistaking the meaning of that kiss. This was one, just one of the many reasons my uncle the Mad Duke was not considered fit to know. I could not stop looking.
And I saw the beautiful man as he came up for air cast me a triumphant glance.
He murmured to the duke so I could hear, “Having truck with serving girls, this time?” I tugged at my dress to smooth it. It was not cheap cloth by any means, even if it was plain.
The duke hauled himself up in the chair to a level nearer dignity. “I am dismayed, Alcuin,” he said in that unpleasantly smooth voice, “that you do not immediately note the resemblance. This is my niece, my only sister’s youngest and dearest child. She will be staying here awhile, so you had better keep a civil tongue around her, or you will not be.”
“I beg your pardon,” said the beautiful Alcuin. “I see it now, of course—a certain, ah, cruelty about the mouth….”
It took all my self-control to keep from wiping my mouth. The duke said, “Alcuin, you’re not very bright. You’re just nice to look at. I suggest you play your strongest suit.”
The beautiful man dropped his eyes like a maiden. “Certainly, sir, if it pleases you. Will you be my master at cards, as in other things?”
“Always,” said the duke dryly; “and I’m doing you a favor.” Then they started kissing again.
I went and yanked the bellpull myself. Whatever it produced next, it could not be worse than Alcuin.
A boy slipped into the room like a shadow. He nodded at me, but addressed the busy duke: “My lord. Fleming asked me to remind you that your guests will begin arriving in two hours’ time, and do you really want to wear the blue velvet tonight when it’s this warm?”
My uncle disentangled himself from Alcuin. “Guests? What guests?”
“I knew Your Grace would say that,” the boy answered with perfect equanimity. I wanted to laugh, and I thought he did, too. “You invited the poet Almaviva to read his new work here tonight. And you’ve invited a great many people who don’t like poetry, and a sprinkle of ones who do. It’s not really a fair fight.”
“Oh.” My uncle turned to me. “Do you like poetry, Lady Katherine?”
“Some,” I managed to answer.
“Then you must swell the ranks of the believers. Can you drink?”
“What?”
“Can you drink a great deal of wine without behaving like an idiot?”
“Certainly,” I lied.
“Good. Then go have a bath and all that. Don’t rush: it’ll be hours before they all get here so we can eat. Marcus, tell me, did Betty ever show up?” he asked the boy.
“Oh, yes: she’s in the kitchen, practicing her curtsey.”
“Well, she can practice it up here. I expect,” my uncle said to me, “your room will be wherever they’ve put your bags. Someone will know.”
B ETTY PRACTICING HER CURTSEY WAS A TERRIBLE sight to see. She had each separate move in the right sequence, but getting them to flow together seemed beyond her skill. She tugged her skirts out to each side of her. She crooked her knees. She came perilously near the ground. Then she did it again. And again; but it was never very convincing. Short and fat with middle age and scarlet with embarrassment, she resembled a quaking beet-pudding about to collapse in on itself.
“My lady,” she stammered, “forgive me—there’s a right way to do these things, I know—and I’ll begin as I mean to go on, just the way you like it…”
“Thank you,” I said, in an agony of impatience; “yes, thank you.”
But she kept right on going: “You’ll get satisfaction from me this time, my lady, and no messing about with the master, not this time, not this one, bless his boots—”
Finally I gave up and just said it: “Please, could you show me my room?”
“Of course,” she panted, nearly worn out with curtseys; “that’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?” I handed her my cloak, in hopes it would steady her. “Of course,” she said. “Of course, my lady.”
She didn’t look as if she could balance much more than the traveling cloak. I picked up my other small things myself. “My room,” I repeated. “Please.”
“Yes, well, it’s a great big house, this one, isn’t it? So many doors you don’t know where you are—not like the Riverside house, well, that one’s big too, but different; here everything looks the same…”
My heart misgave me as I followed her up the sweeping staircase (it was, in fact, the Perfect Staircase of my dreams, but I was too busy handling Betty to notice. Poor woman, I thought; trying to make a good impression and not quite equipped for it! I had considerable sympathy for her, after what I’d just been through).
“Now I know it’s this way,” she repeated as we rounded the same corridor a third time. But at last the door stood open to the right place.
There were my trunks in the corner, looking especially shabby in the glory that was my room at Tremontaine House. A huge bed with gauzy curtains, just right for the time of year; a painted wardrobe set off perfectly against the pale butter-yellow of the walls; prettily framed pictures and vases of flowers…and the whole reflected in the curly gilded mirror that hung over the marble fireplace.
Betty looked at the room, looked at me, attempted another curtsey and fell flat on her bum. When I leaned over to help her up, I found that my sympathy had been misplaced. Her breath smelt like a drover’s on payday.
It was too much. My rich uncle had hired me a drunkard, a slovenly woman from who knows where, to serve as my first very-own lady’s maid!
I looked at her red, babbling face, at my bags, at all of it reflected in the mirror (including my own shocked face and travel-frizzled hair) and burst into miserable tears.
“There now, my lady.” And the creature had her arms around me. “There now.” I let her hold me while I sobbed my heart out on the drunkard’s warm breast.
M Y ROOM DID INDEED LOOK OUT ONTO THE RIVER, and into the hills beyond, where the sun was finally setting. That morning it had found me waking in a strange inn on the road, surrounded by strangers. What a long day it had been! I leaned as far as I could over the balcony—my balcony—drinking in the sight. For natural beauty, the view from my room was not a patch on the rolling hills of home, the long vistas and sudden curves. No one could get lost in these hills, or tired walking along that river. But still they seemed far more exciting. And below me stretched a shadowy garden, suggestive of hedges and statues and paths one could, perhaps, get lost in. I watched as it all went blue and cold, and stars began to come out in the distance.
My huge white bed seemed to glow with its own light. I lay on its downy luxury, just for a moment—and woke to pitch darkness, and a thud against my bedroom door, and footsteps in the hall, and laughter.
Wide awake, I pulled an overdress on over my wrinkled chemise, and peeked out into the hall. A candle on a stand flared in the draft from my door. A man and a woman, whispering and laughing, were running down the hall toward its light, their inky shadows smeared out along the carpet behind them. I turned the other way, toward the stairs, where most of the noise was coming from. There were laughter and shouts, and the strains of string music flowed remarkably placid under the revelers. The party was in full cry.
I had no idea where Betty was, or how to get her to help me dress. I struck light to a candle, and picked out a green overdress that had covered deficiencies in the past; unplaited and combed out my hair, and knotted it up with a couple of pins, and clasped my coral necklace around my neck. My dove-grey slippers were nowhere in evidence, so I had to wear the apple-green, even though they did not match the dress. But I have noticed that, in large crowds, no one looks at anyone else’s feet. I’d be all right if I could just get down the staircase unseen.
I paused at the top of the stairs to examine the scene below. People were spread out across the great hall; they looked like badly arranged pieces on its gameboard squares of black and white marble. They seemed to be just the spillover from the crowded receiving rooms beyond the double-doors.
I did my best to drift inobtrusively down the stairs. I was terribly hungry; there might be food beyond the doors. The people all looked very grand—gaudy, my mother would have said—in rich fabrics and jewels and lace and ruffles. Bobbing amongst them was a dyed ostrich feather, elegantly curled over a sleek, dark head, almost like a little hat. The head turned to me, and suddenly I was looking right into the eyes of a girl my own age. She darted forward, and seized my hands in hers.
“Isn’t this fun?” she said. Her cheeks were pink, her blue eyes sparkled, and she wore a very good pair of pearl earrings.
“I’ve only just arrived. I came today, from the country.”
“And already you’re invited to all the wickedest parties! But I can tell that you are very, very good; I can always tell about people—aren’t you just a little bit terrified, being here?” She gave a theatrical shudder. “Of course, the old duchess had exquisite taste; that’s really why I wanted to come, to see the house, you know. Although the duke’s parties are events all their own—the ones at Tremontaine House—not the Other Place—we wouldn’t go there, of course.” My new friend flashed a smile at the whole room. “Isn’t it grand?”
I could not really see much for all the people. I noticed a cunning little pair of diamond buckles flashing by on someone’s feet—or maybe they were paste, I couldn’t tell. I wished I had a pair.
“Oh, yes!” I breathed.
She put her arm around my waist. “I just know we are going to be the best of friends. Where is your escort? I came with my brother Robert—the truth is,” she pulled me a little closer in; “I made him bring me. He didn’t want to. He said it wasn’t any place for me. But I said if he did not I would tell our parents the true reason he needed the advance on his allowance. He told them he’d given the money to a poor friend who needed it—they encourage us to be generous—but I knew it was really because he’d spent it all on a duel over Lavinia Perry, which is silly, because she’s almost a cousin. I wouldn’t fall in love with a cousin, would you?”
“Oh, no!”
I had been in the city only a few hours, and already I had a friend—someone whose brother hired swordsmen, and who admired me for getting into dangerous parties. I felt very happy as she circled my waist with her arm. My new friend was shorter than I; the feather tickled my cheek.
“So…you’re just up from the country. This must all seem very strange to you—although one wouldn’t know it, you have such natural grace. And of course you will be at all the dances. I’m sure to see you there—we will have such fun, searching out beaux together!” She was leading me out of the press, to a corner where we could be fully absorbed in each other.
“Do you know, I’ve already received flowers from—an admirer!”
I clutched her arm. “Oh, who? Is he here?”
“No, not here; this isn’t the sort of place he would be seen at. I shall get a dreadful scolding from him if he hears about it.” She tossed her head, looking pleased. “But next week…Will you be at the Godwins’ ball?”
“I—don’t know. I don’t believe we’ve been invited yet.”
My elegant friend said, “But I feel sure that Lydia Godwin would dote on you, if only she knew you as I do! I shall speak to her. She is such a dear friend of mine. Perhaps you could come in our party, with your brother. Or was it your cousin?”
“Cousin?”
“With your escort—the one who brought you here.”
“Oh. It’s my—uncle.”
“Oh.” She frowned briefly but prettily. “Not one of those boring old married men who only comes to parties to play cards?”
“No, I—don’t think he’s married. I mean, he isn’t. He’s very elegant.”
“Perhaps you’ll introduce us.” She pulled away for a moment, to fish in her beaded reticule for a little engraved card. “You must call on me tomorrow.” She laughed happily, indicating the throng of revelers: “Not too early, of course!” I had no idea what time it really was. Close to midnight, surely. No one at this party would be up early tomorrow.
I pocketed the card. “I will come, if it’s not being a bother,” I said shyly, picturing a disaster, with no one home. But she squeezed my hand in hers. “Yes, yes, you must! Then you can meet my brother Robert in decent circumstances—maybe even turn his head away from the Perry chit!”
Was that all it took to get beaux—just meeting friends’ brothers? This was going to be easier than I’d thought! I said, “I have no card, not yet—we don’t need them at home, everyone knows everyone else. But let me introduce myself—”
“No, let me. It’s much more decent,” a voice announced from above. “This is my niece, the Lady Katherine Samantha Campion Talbert.” My friend was staring, rather pale, over my head, at the tall duke dressed in black. He turned all the pink and silver and powder blue and turquoise in the room to sugar candy. Even my friend’s delicious feather looked addled. He said, “And you’re a Fitz-Levi. I can tell by the nose.”
She sank down in a very lovely curtsey, with her head bowed to hide her flaming cheeks. “My Lord Duke.”
My uncle looked down at the feather. “Fitz-Levi…hmmm…I don’t remember inviting you. Marcus will know—” His eyes scanned the room, presumably for the boy Marcus. From what I had seen this afternoon, the duke didn’t remember having invited anyone. But I could hardly tell her so at this moment. She flashed me a haunted look, pressed my hand once more and fled. By the time my uncle looked down again, she was gone.
He looked curiously at me, as though I had performed a conjuring trick.
“What happened?”
“You frightened her,” I told him.
He shrugged. “Well. At least you’re still here. Let’s get something to eat. Are you hungry?”
I was ravenous. “Yes, please. But—why did you say that, about her nose?”
“What about her nose?”
“You said she was ugly.”
“Did I?” He considered for a moment. “I suppose I did. I’d better make her an apology, then. I’ll have Marcus send her some flowers.”
“Don’t!” I exclaimed quickly. “You’ll get her in trouble.”
He looked at me again with great curiosity. “What do you care?”
All the while he had been maneuvering us out of the hall and off to a side room where tables were spread with food and drink.
“By the way,” he said absently, “those shoes don’t match that gown.”
He handed me a plate piled with strawberries, bonbons, smoked fish and asparagus.
“Ah!” he said. “Finally. Someone to talk to.”
The duke was looking with great delight at a large, ugly woman coming toward us across the room. Her complexion was muddy; her hair was chopped like badly mown hay, and of the same rough color and texture. It was hard to tell how old she was; older than I, and younger than Tremontaine, I would guess. Under her shapeless dress, her big body looked thick and without contours. She couldn’t be a serving maid; any of them would take pains to present a better appearance. He had terrified my friend with the lovely feather, but was smiling warmly at this troll-like apparition. The corners of his eyes crinkled, which is how you can tell whether someone is really smiling, or just curving their lips.
The ugly woman stumped up to us. “Is this the niece?”
“This is Lady Katherine. She’s not very tall, but I think she’ll grow.”
“How do you do?” I said to her, trying to restore myself to my rightful place in the situation.
“Hello,” she said to me. She nodded to the room. “What do you think?”
It was not a question I, or anyone else, could answer. She didn’t seem to realize it. I reached for the safety of the commonplace: “It’s very nice.”
“Oh.” The ugly woman nodded, as if that told her all she needed to know about me. She seized a bonbon from my plate and bit it in half. “Ig,” she objected. “Peppermint.” She began to drop the other half back onto my plate, realized what she was doing just in time before she did it and cast about for somewhere else to bestow the offending morsel.
My uncle the Mad Duke was watching her, vastly diverted, and not offering to help. I realized I was watching her with the same fascination. It was not right. “How was the poetry?” I asked.
“Brilliant.” “Awful,” they said at the same time.
“It depends on your perspective.”
“It depends on your brains.”
“The most discerning brain could find nothing to catch and hold on to in those babblings.”
“What—the articulation of the soul holds no interest for you?”
“As a matter of fact, it doesn’t.”
I wished I had not missed the poetry. I had thought a great deal about my soul in the past year.
“One wonders, then,” the duke said to her, “why you are here at all, since you don’t like poetry, and you don’t know how to dress for a party.”
“I come, of course, for the food. Here.” She held out her hand, with the squashed and sticky half a bonbon. I could actually watch him making up his mind whether or not to take it. From his sleeve the duke pulled out a clean handkerchief. He pincered the candy in its folds, and turned to a passing gentleman who, at the touch of the duke’s hand on his arm, stopped with a pleased expression.
“Furnival,” the duke said engagingly, “I was wondering if you could take care of this for me?”
He didn’t even watch to see what the man did with it.
“Have you seen Marcus?” he asked his ugly friend.
“Yes, he was stopping some people in the Violet Room from climbing the curtains.”
“What for?”
“They were not professionals.”
“Oh.”
I could see my uncle the Mad Duke eyeing the asparagus on my plate. To forestall them making any further inroads on my supper, I picked up a green spear myself, and ate it as best I could without a fork. It suddenly occurred to me that asparagus was not in season.
I ate another. I realized that my nerves were partly hunger. I couldn’t remember the last thing I’d eaten; maybe some bread on the road. I had a vision of it always being like this: a house without rules, without regular meals, one that came alive only when it was full of guests, a house whose inmates had to inhabit the party world just to get something to eat. Impossible—or so I hoped. But it was even harder to imagine the mundane, us sitting down to dinner together and discussing the events of the day: what lands needed grazing, what room airing out and what servants correcting—I was suddenly brutally homesick. As if I’d eaten something tainted, I would gladly have sicked up this whole new life to get back the old. Stop it, I told myself sternly. I would not cry. Not here, not now—not at all. This was the world I’d wanted: the city, the parties, the glitter and gallants, fine clothes and rare company.
It would be better in the morning.
The Mad Duke had drifted off to make someone else’s life miserable. The ugly woman was gone in his wake like a seagull following a ship to scoop up what amusement he let fall.
I filled another plate, made myself small in the folds of a curtain, ate resolutely, and then found myself so tired there was nothing to do but wend my way back up the impressive stairs. My new friend was nowhere in sight; she’d probably gotten her brother Robert to take her home. I felt the little square of cardboard in my pocket, reassuring like a talisman. By some miracle, I found the door to my own room. The noises of the party roared around me like the sea.