Chapter 16 #2
Elf welcomed the excellent report of Fort’s progress, though she’d have preferred a message asking her to call. She knew just how likely that was. To preserve her sanity, she set about other business, the first being to call on Amanda and explain everything.
Her friend listened, mouth loose with shock. “Lud, Elf. Such things could only happen to you!”
“They happened to him, too,” Elf pointed out, helping herself to more tea.
“You know what I mean. You are every bit as rash as you were as a child, and every bit as fortunate to escape with your life!”
Elf sighed. “I don’t feel fortunate.” She stirred a lump of sugar into her cup. “Except in my family, of course.”
Amanda actually paled. “You mean they know? All?”
“Of course.” Elf shrugged. “The foolish man insisted on making it clear to Cyn and Rothgar’s face.”
“Perish me! And . . . ?”
“And, what?” asked Elf in spurious innocence.
“And what happened?”
“They’ve given me a job.”
“No! Don’t tell me Rothgar’s set you to scrubbing in the kitchen.”
Elf burst out laughing. “Amanda! Of course not. I’m in charge of part of the family affairs. Would you care to come with me to inspect silk warehouses?”
“Silk. How delightful!” Amanda leaped to her feet but paused. “You mean that’s all that happened? You plunge into mad adventure, end up in danger and scandal, and you’re put in charge of buying the family’s silk?”
“That’s all.” Elf didn’t bother to try to explain the extent of the Malloren enterprises.
“Well, I think it abysmally unfair! I, quite the innocent party, received a stern lecture on folly.”
“I’m sorry for embroiling you, then.”
“Oh, don’t be.” Amanda broke into a smile. “Looked back on, we had quite a splendid adventure, didn’t we?”
“Yes,” said Elf with a sigh. “We most certainly did.”
Some hours later, after a tour of London’s principal silk warehouses, Elf returned Amanda to her house and ordered her carriage to continue to Sappho’s house.
She made a more decorous entrance this time. Her footman knocked at the front door, and being informed that the mistress of the house would receive Lady Elfled, came back to hand her out.
A maid led her upstairs, but not to the drawing room. Elf was taken to a disorderly study strewn with books and papers and flooded with the light of three long windows.
Sappho, in a loose gown, her hair in a long braid, came over to take Elf’s hands. “My dear! You look much improved.”
Elf smiled, surprised at the burst of affection she felt for this strange woman. “I doubt that was hard to achieve. I was a veritable wreck when I invaded here last.”
Sappho drew her to a chaise, pushing off a drift of scribbled papers to make room. “I’m so pleased you felt able to come to me.”
“I might not have even dreamed of it if Amanda hadn’t said I was with you.”
“But still, you felt able to come. And Lord Walgrave? How is he? I hear he was wounded.”
Elf caught the question in the statement. “Lud, I didn’t shoot him!” She gave a simple version of the Scots plot and its ending.
“Well,” said Sappho, leaning back in the chaise, “I think I am quite cross with you both. No one thought to invite me on this adventure. I’d have liked to have been on that barge in the river.”
Elf chuckled. “It never occurred to me that you would wish it. I apologize.”
Sappho waved an elegant hand, heavy with unusual rings. Elf wondered for a moment whether she could take to wearing loose clothes in rich oriental fabrics and heavy rings in fantastic shapes.
“I don’t think so,” said Sappho gently, as if she could read her mind.
Elf knew she was blushing. “I suppose not. I have neither the height nor the looks for it. I do wish, though, that I had a style of my own.” She spread her pale green skirts with dissatisfied fingers.
“Whenever I choose clothes to suit my own taste everyone swoons with horror, so I end up wearing things like this.”
Sappho tilted her head, studying her. “Very often, you know, we think an outward change will bring about an inner change that we desire.”
“You mean—?” Elf stared at her. “Are you suggesting that my taste for bright materials is because I want my life to be brighter? That seems . . .”
“Strange? Indeed it does, but there is truth in it. And there is truth in the deed, as well. I suspect that your adventures were not carried out in cream and pale green.”
Elf shifted uneasily, thinking about her scarlet outfit and her lacy stockings, and the moods she’d been in when she’d bought them. “But what does that mean? It would mortify my friends and family if I were to go about in gaudy clothes.”
“Yes, we have to balance our needs with those of the people we love. What outfit would you want now, today?”
Elf pondered it, then laughed. “I don’t seem to care. I’ve just gone through four silk warehouses with Amanda. She wanted to buy up the entire stock and I hardly felt any interest at all. Certainly none in the purples and scarlets.”
“Perhaps you are different inside, then?”
Elf tested it. “Perhaps I am.” She was not content, for Fort was a nugget of frustration deep within, but she recognized a new steadiness in herself, a degree of calm.
“But still,” said Sappho, “what outfit would you choose today?”
Elf raised her skirt to study it. It was a corded green poplin with a gray stripe so narrow as to be hardly visible and tiny leaves worked between. “I’m tired of these little motifs,” she said. “They’re . . . timid. They’re also girlish, and I’m no longer a girl.”
Sappho just nodded, encouraging her to continue.
Elf leaned back and closed her eyes. “I suppose I’ve become afraid to choose boldly, and my maid feels it safest to be—well—safe.” She tried to let her mind summon a gown that would please her but after a while she opened her eyes and shrugged. “Perhaps I just don’t have the talent for it.”
“And yet your brother says you choose materials for the houses with great skill and judgment.”
She must mean Rothgar. Elf felt a strong temptation to ask Sappho about Rothgar and his place in her life, but she managed to restrain herself. “That doesn’t seem so set with pitfalls.”
“It proves, however, that you can choose wisely in the right circumstances.”
“I suppose it does. I shall just have to think of myself as a tester bed and decide what hanging will do best!”
Laughing, both women rose, and Elf turned to Sappho. “I do thank you, for everything.”
“I help women,” the poet said simply. “But you are more like a sister to me.”
Now Elf felt compelled to ask. “Because of Rothgar?”
“Of course.”
It seemed as if Sappho was inviting the question, so she asked it. “What is he to you?”
“Certainly not my protector,” said Sappho with a smile. “What we have is not easily named, but very precious. We are close friends. Sometimes we are lovers, but it is an extension of friendship, not the force that ties you and Walgrave together.”
“Ties us together!” Elf exclaimed with a bitter laugh. “Pushes us apart, more likely.”
“No, that is another force. But this is beginning to sound like a lecture at the Royal Society.”
Elf chuckled and pulled on her gloves, a final question niggling at her. In the end, she asked it. “You will not marry him?”
“It bothers you?”
“No,” said Elf, though it wasn’t entirely true.
“We will not marry,” said Sappho, leading her downstairs. “Our bond is strong, but not the bond that would make a good marriage.”
Elf paused at the door, for the question of good marriages interested her greatly. “Why not?”
“Think, Elf.” Sappho gestured around her home with one of those strangely beringed hands. “I am content in my place, as he is in his. Neither of us would be happy in the other’s. What we have, we can have without marriage and without loss.”
“Does marriage involve loss, then?”
“Oh yes, and should only be undertaken if the gain is equal to or exceeds the loss.” Then she laughed. “I am sounding scientific again, and love does not blend with science. Please call again, Elf, whenever you wish.”
“I will. Thank you.”
Elf returned to her carriage, head full of yet more new and challenging thoughts. Perhaps she’d be put out of her misery by her head simply exploding.
As soon as she arrived home, she summoned Chantal and conducted a thorough review of her wardrobe. Yes, definitely. The garments were pretty, but dull and safe except for the few odd outfits purchased in one of her fits of rebellion.
And “odd” certainly described them.
She fingered a gown in a vivid print of tigers. As a fabric it was rather splendid, but both the mantua maker and Chantal had been right to protest that it wouldn’t make a good gown. Perhaps, she thought, she’d just been in a mood to snarl at the world.
She came across a gown of sulfur yellow and winced. Heaven knows what inner turmoil had prompted that. She’d certainly never worn it.
There weren’t actually many disasters left, because last year when Chastity had turned up in rags, Chantal had taken the opportunity to get rid of most of Elf’s nightmares.
Elf still pined a little for the raspberry silk, but Chastity looked magnificent in it and it didn’t suit her own coloring at all.
She gave Chantal permission to dispose of anything she wished and the maid almost wept with joy. Perhaps soon she would find the courage to order new gowns entirely to her taste and see just what resulted.
It would be something else to distract her mind and pass the days until Fort was well enough for her to assault him yet again.