Chapter 6 The Tour #2
For that big of a house, it didn’t seem like that big of a staff.
But the book I was writing was about modernization and how that shifted the world on its axis.
Including having the effect of blurring the lines of the haves and have-nots as many more people had many more opportunities to make a lot more money.
But on the other hand, with telephones and vacuums and cars and gas stoves and washing machines and lawn mowers, it made having a vast staff who needed to offer copious manual labor obsolete.
We moved to the ground floor, and Prudence started in the south wing, introducing me to sitting rooms (the most formal of them an exquisite study of greens and cream), a couple of salons, a morning room, the library, Battle’s study with its door closed (we skipped that, and not only because I’d already seen it), and at the very end, a fantastic armory.
We went upstairs next, which was mostly bedrooms, though, at the end of my wing, there was a nursery, music and school room.
All the Talyn family’s bedrooms were in the south wing, obviously including Battle’s, which Prudence waved a vague hand toward the door at the end of the hall, stating that was the duke’s chamber, and where it was situated meant he had the whole cap of the end of the wing.
And for that reason and that reason alone (I told myself), I was dying to see it.
I didn’t share that desire with Prudence, however.
As we were heading back downstairs, Prudence said, “I want you to be able to get some work done, so we’ll save the attics for the weekend.
Though I’ll head up there after I show you the studio.
I’ll have a dink around to see if I can find anything of Harmony’s, or anything else you might be interested in. ”
I was chomping at the bit to see what she’d pulled for me, so I was grateful for this offer, and to share that, I hooked my arm in hers as we kept walking.
“That would be awesome.”
She smiled at me as we turned towards the stairs.
I took that opportunity to probe.
“Battle tells me you have six cats.”
She stiffened, which I thought was strange.
“I do,” she confessed. “I don’t know where they all are. They’re masters at hiding.”
“I love cats, so I’m bummed that over the last year I didn’t get to oo and ah over cute cat pictures.”
Even walking down the stairs, she looked at me. “You don’t think having so many cats makes me some kind of crazy cat lady?”
Fuck her father and all the bitches who bullied her.
I forced a laugh hoping it didn’t sound forced and shared in all truth, “Girl, if I had this huge house, I’d have eight cats, five dogs and probably a colony of guinea pigs.”
That made her laugh, and hers was straight-up genuine.
I stopped her at the table and chandelier.
“Is that why you didn’t tell me?” I asked. “Because you thought I’d think you’re a cat lady?”
Her humor was gone, and her shrug was uncomfortable.
As such, I wasn’t sure she was up for another one of my Let Your Freak Flag Fly lectures.
Then again, I didn’t think she was at all freaky.
She was just…
Prudence.
I set us to walking again, saying, “Well, let’s get one thing super straight. I like you. And unless you admit to something dire, like you have a side hobby of poisoning, nothing about you is going to make me not like you, though it’ll probably make me like you more.”
She leaned into my arm, but other than that, didn’t say anything.
Though, that was all she had to say.
The north side of the house had what I’d describe as the entertaining rooms: the breakfast room, dining room, the parlor we’d been in last night. There were also more parlors, salons, a games room, a billiards room, a smoking room, and what Prudence called “the ladies’ lounge.”
All of this was not surprising considering we were nearing the end of that wing, which I could see from the open double doors was the ballroom.
My heart started thumping.
It was like Prudence felt it, because she whispered, “I saved this for last.”
We held each other close as we came to a stop in the threshold of that stunning room.
A room that brought us together.
The room that brought us to right now.
Three grand crystal chandeliers lined the center of the ceiling.
The floors were intricate Versailles parquet.
The walls were stark white as were the floral garland moldings.
There were massive gilt-framed mirrors on the walls in between the big windows that showcased the gardens and parkland.
And along the walls were several Georgian settees upholstered in ivory and early Georgian armless chairs upholstered in gold.
“Where Harmony and Charlie fell in love,” Prudence whispered.
“Yes,” I whispered back reverently.
“Marie didn’t want to do it,” Prudence told me something she’d already shared.
“Open The Downs to soldiers, nurses, doctors, officers, as a convalescent hospital. She didn’t want the common riffraff filling her bedrooms, making offices of her salons and messing up her ballroom. Harmony guilted her into doing it.”
“Other great houses went so far as to tear down structures to donate iron and other materials to the war cause,” I added. “Also offering space for makeshift hospitals and turning over formal gardens to plant vegetables.”
“But not the Duchy of Burleigh,” Prudence said. “Until Harmony intervened over a year into the war.”
“It was do it or she was going to London to offer her services, meaning she’d have been in London during the Blitz.”
“I wonder, since she had such determination, how they managed to tear her and Charlie apart,” Prudence mused.
This was a great question.
And hopefully Harmony journaled and didn’t destroy her letters from my great-grandfather, so we might find out.
Prudence shot me an impish look. “Shall we?”
I grinned at her. “We shall.”
And with that, we stepped onto the parquet.
Instantly, my world turned blue, then green, then purple, the kaleidoscope of colors all a haze as I found myself among couples twirling around the floor in a waltz. I could hear the muted conversation, the orchestra playing, even the wisp of slippers and hems of ballgowns sweeping the wood.
Prudence’s arm in mine guided me into the miasma swirling around me as women’s feather-bearing heads turned this way and that, men’s coattails fluttered, jewels glowed murkily.
I heard a giggle, a low chuckle, a whispered insult.
We kept walking.
And the view changed.
The colors were gone, it was all in a mist of blue that I saw the lines of beds, the privacy screens, the old fashioned IV stands, nurses wandering, doctors reading charts, patients hobbling.
A woman sat by a man in bed, and I listened to him dictating a letter to her as she carefully scribbled.
He did this because he had no hands.
To my darling Jane…
My attention shifted to a set of double French doors at the end of the room as I saw the back of a man with a crutch under one arm, his other arm busy with the woman at his side clutching his other arm at his elbow.
He was smiling down at her as he led her out into a blinding blue sunshine.
“Vivi?” I heard Prudence call as I pulled from her hold to go after them. “Vivi!”
I hit the doors; they were closed.
I tried to open them; they were locked.
The key was in the lock.
I turned it and stepped out onto the terrace.
And it all faded away.
“Vivi!” Prudence cried again as she grabbed my hand.
I looked down at her vaguely, then turned my attention to the ballroom, which was just an empty ballroom.
Okay.
All right.
Okay.
Holy hell.
What the fuck just happened?
“Are you all right?” Prudence asked, pumping her fingers around my hand.
“Did you—?”
I couldn’t finish.
Because…did I?
Did I just see what I just saw?
Did I just hear what I just heard?
Did that just happen?
“Did I what?” Prudence asked.
I said nothing.
“Vivi, you’re worrying me. Are you okay?”
“I…have a very vivid imagination,” I told her.
Her smile was shaky. “I would suppose so, considering you’re a writer.”
“And I could swear I just saw a ball happening in that room, circa the Regency,” I rushed out. “And then it morphed into a convalescent hospital during World War II.”
Her head drifted so she could look into the room, and she asked, “Really?”
“You didn’t…you…?”
Of course she didn’t.
How long was my jetlag going to last?
Prudence came back to me. “There’s a lot of history here.”
I nodded, fervently.
Yes, she was right.
Historical places had feels. So did historical things.
I’d twice seen the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights displayed in the Rotunda of the National Archives, and both times, all those around me spoke in hushed tones in the presence of such important documents written and signed by men who changed the entire world.
Hell, just a few days ago, I was fortunate enough to see both original copies of the Magna Carta on display at the British Library, and the same thing happened.
This was my thing.
This was my gig.
This was my muse.
Since I found Great-Granddad Charlie’s letters, I’d been obsessed by what happened between him and Lady Harmony Talyn in that room.
So of course my imagination would stir up something spectacular the instant I stepped foot in it.
Right?
Right?
Okay, so nothing that profound, and frankly bizarre, had ever happened to me before.
But I wasn’t blood relative to anyone involved in writing the Constitution or the Magna Carta.
So of course this would be more powerful.
“Should we go to the studio now?” Prudence asked hesitantly. “Or do you, maybe, want to lie down again?”
She was worried I’d think she was a crazy cat lady.
Now I was worried she thought I was just crazy.
I shook my head and plastered on a smile. “No. No. Let’s go to the studio. I was just…overwhelmed I was finally where it happened. Maybe, I guess, you know, if it had worked out for them, I might not be here. And maybe that all just…got to me.”
“Maybe,” she agreed.
“It was actually kind of cool,” I lied.
Because it was not.
It was freaky as fuck!
She giggled. “I wouldn’t mind being in the middle of a Regency ball.”
“It was pretty rad,’ I lied again.
So, maybe it was.
It was still freaky as fuck.
She guided me to the side of the terrace where there were some steps down to the gardens, doing this saying, “I bet it was.”
Note to self: avoid the freaking ballroom.
Our feet hit soft turf, and I finally felt the cool air against my face, so I focused on it.
Later, I’d think about passing out the instant I saw Battle and wandering among phantoms waltzing in the ballroom and what those wild things happening might mean.
Now, I had a job to do, and I was finally going to be able to start doing it.
And that was all I was going to think about.