Chapter 2
THE SISTERS
The blue salon was, indeed, blue.
Ice blue.
This mingled with a continuation of the richly creamy creams of the entryway and was, as Prudence shared when she’d escorted me there, “Where we like to take tea because it’s cozier than any of the other sitting rooms or parlors.
Except, of course, for the one where we have cocktails before dinner.
But you can’t have tea and cocktails in the same place! ”
After she said this, she’d giggled, like I knew this rule and the very thought of enjoying both beverages in the same room was a universal understanding of ridiculous.
However, once accosted by the room, I wasn’t sure she had a handle on the meaning of the word cozy.
Set in the central section (not in a wing), on the hall off the south side of foyer, that room was like all the rest I’d encountered: huge.
And like all the rest, it was a study of contrasts. Old and new. Antique and modern. Formal and relaxed. Stiff yet comfortable.
But all of it expensive.
The sisters were a study of contrasts too.
There was Prudence with her avant-garde clothes and auburn hair.
And then there was the blonde I saw out in the garden.
Chastity.
She’d taken off the cardigan and hat to have tea, and her blue dress was a sundress—pretty and as ethereal and delicate as she was (no way I’d garden in that dress, but I was not Lady Chastity Talyn).
Her hair was wild and thick and chaotic and amazing.
Her face had that pinched but pretty Nicole Kidman look to it.
And her eyes were a startling, almost-hard-to-witness sapphire blue.
She was soft-spoken to the point every word she said was a whisper, hard to hear, and she never made eye contact.
Not even close.
Temperance, on the other hand, was seriously something.
Shining ebony hair falling from a middle part in loose curls along the sides of her exquisitely beautiful face, her hair tumbling further down over her shoulders and chest. Her cold gray eyes were watchful and calculating.
Her skin was so pale, you could see the blue of her veins.
Her lips were perfectly slicked with a bright crimson lipstick.
And her body was covered in a pair of casual black slacks, a complicated, edgy, short-sleeved black blouse, and a pair of black patent leather, four-inch Louboutin heels, with the lipstick sole that matched her lips.
She spoke in a sophisticated, catty, aristocratic drawl that reminded me of any of the actors who played the Royals on The Crown.
We sat around the low coffee table covered in a formal tea service and tiered trays filled with crustless sandwiches, pastries, biscuits (or to Americans, cookies), little cakes—and thank you, God (I’d had two)—scones filled with jam and clotted cream.
Chastity poured.
She also sat in one of the ice-blue Louis XV bergère chairs opposite the one Temperance sat in.
Prudence and I sat together in a curved-back settee that faced the fireplace.
I wasn’t sure Chastity knew I was there.
I wasn’t sure Temperance wanted me there.
But I was sure Prudence could talk for England.
“So I think Vivi’s book will span from Reign to Saint, or Bishop,” she was now saying after she’d pretty much outlined everything from my very first email to The Downs’s steward, to now, a history it was clear both her sisters already knew.
Though, curiously through this, she’d sometimes suddenly go off on another tangent that had nothing to do with what she’d been saying. Or she’d trail off and stare into space for a second, like she was in a mini trance, before she’d shake herself and start right back up where she left off.
With the practiced way Temperance and Chastity reacted to this, that was to say, they didn’t react at all, I got the sense this was just a thing for Prudence.
She and I had never been able to schedule a FaceTime, what with the time difference and both of us being busy, so I’d only ever known her in written conversations.
Truthfully?
It might be curious, but it was also kind of cute.
Fortunately, her talking meant I could scarf down four sandwich triangles (two coronation chicken, one egg, the last prawn and avocado), a little cake and two scones.
And she was correct about the time period during which my book would take place.
I would be starting it around the turn of the twentieth century, when Reign Talyn was duke, through World War II, when Saint Talyn held that title, and just beyond, when Bishop Talyn was duke.
Duke Saint Talyn being the one who flatly refused to allow his daughter, Harmony, to marry the man she’d fallen in love with: an American soldier convalescing at The Downs.
My great-grandfather.
“And I think, as I’ve told you, from what Ravenna told me, if Harmony and Charlie’s story is shared, the curse will finally be broken,” Prudence declared.
Chastity gave no indication she even heard these words.
Temperance rolled her eyes.
I said nothing.
Though, through our email correspondence, Prudence had shared at length about what she considered The Curse of The Downs.
This, according to Prudence (which was according to Ravenna), started with Harmony losing her beloved Charlie (my great granddad).
And it affected every generation since, according to Prudence (read: Ravenna).
Prudence’s clairvoyant, the aforementioned Ravenna, I sensed, but only very carefully alluded to Prudence, had more of a bent toward charlatanism than being able to read the mystics.
And I’d just learned Temperance and I might be of the same mind about that.
“Don’t roll your eyes,” Prudence snapped at Temperance.
“Darling,” Temperance drawled. “There is not a curse on this house.”
“So how do you explain what happened to great-great-grandfather and great-great-grandmother?” Prudence demanded.
I sipped tea and listened hard, knowing she referred to Saint and his wife Marie.
Doing this wasn’t entirely nosy (though it was also nosy).
Learning things like this was why I was there.
Prudence was referring to the fact that Saint and Marie, who had seemed at one with all things The Duchy of Burleigh, suddenly found themselves with such irreconcilable differences, she spent most of her time in the studio in the garden, which was a waste of a big, beautiful house, because he spent all of his in their home in London.
Or, that was, he did when he wasn’t in his mistress’s bed.
“Marie did her duty,” Temperance replied.
“She provided an heir, a spare, and a couple of girls they could use to advance their positions in society. In their case, lord those poor, wretched brood mares over others and grant permission for them to use our very blue blood to advance their positions. Once they were all raised and gone, Marie could stop pretending she liked her husband and spend her days painting and, I don’t know”—she fluttered a regal, scarlet fingernail-tipped hand off to the side—“fornicate with stable boys or something.”
“Tempie!” Prudence snapped.
I bit my lip to stop from laughing.
When I got control over that impulse, I took another sip of tea and kept listening.
Whisper-talk came from Chastity’s direction. “That doesn’t explain what happened to Bishop and Caroline.”
Bishop was Saint’s son and heir, Harmony’s older brother, and Battle, Temperance, Prudence and Chastity’s great-grandfather.
See what I mean about the names?
“Yes,” Prudence jumped on that. “Is it just coincidence he fell off his horse…and broke his neck? And she fell down the stairs…and broke hers?”
“She was eighty-seven at the time,” Temperance replied.
“And it was twenty years after her husband met his untimely end by the same means, if in different places doing entirely different things. So yes, I would say it was a coincidence. An unfortunate one, but for her part, she’d lived a long life. ”
“A goodly amount of it without her husband,” Chastity whisper-added.
Temperance made no reply.
“All right. Then explain grandpapa and grandmama,” Prudence challenged.
In order to keep track, that was Cannon Talyn and his wife, Victoria.
Temperance, clearly having had enough of this topic, leaned forward and dropped her delicate china teacup and saucer with a clatter on the table, snapping, “For goodness’ sake, Prue. They both got food poisoning from eating the same food. Three of the staff died too.”
For once Chastity met someone’s gaze.
And it was Temperance’s.
“And Father and Mother?”
That would be Atlas and Rebecca.
Temperance appeared to be attempting to shoot laser beams out of her eyes at her youngest sister.
“Ah-ha!” Prudence crowed to Temperance who appeared to be stymied. “You don’t have anything to explain that away.”
Temperance sat back, aimed her chilly gaze at her second youngest sister and stated, “He was an ass. She was a spoiled brat. They were a match made in heaven, meaning they deserved each other. The problem was, they couldn’t stand each other, so after she gave him the issue required of her, she buggered off to Corfu to live in a fabulous villa and fuck copious Greek men who were built like gods, something, as far as we know, she’s still doing.
As such, he was free to open his revolving door of whores anywhere he wanted on British soil, until he died of a heart attack whilst fucking one of those whores. ”
Again, all true.
Even that last part.
Regardless of how hard the Talyn line did their best, and mostly succeeded, to work to guard their privacy, that particular tidbit had been spread widely.
Though, what hadn’t been, but what I’d learned from Prudence, was the fact that Rebecca had not that first thing to do with her children after she left for that Greek island, something I’d come to learn affected Prudence very much, as it would do.
I couldn’t imagine not having a mom who loved and adored you, got frustrated by you acting like an idiot, but allowed you the freedom to do it so you could learn from it, shared her wisdom with you, and then when you finally got to a certain age, became the best friend you could ever have.