Chapter Seventeen
Most important historic decisions were made in the one
place we can never access: the depths of a person’s heart.
I, on the Past, Cornelius Ottersock
Thursday afternoon decayed with a sullen, creeping slowness into grim shadow.
A storm that had raged all day finally dissipated, leaving only a mild breeze like a ghost. The quiet felt sinister.
A few lingering raindrops weeping from the ancient stone eyes of Ravenscroft’s gargoyles sounded like a countdown when they splashed against the ground below, as if the atmosphere might soon explode.
Caleb drifted through the manor with a semblance of melancholia to disguise the fact that he’d managed to get lost looking for the drawing room.
It was there that the company were to meet for a little pre-dinner gathering Lady Ruperta had arranged, according to the butler, Grimshaw, who’d announced the fact like one announced the date of a funeral—lugubriously, but with a promise of drinks and snacks.
They were ostensibly celebrating yet another room of antiques having been assessed and cataloged, and Caleb suspected that Lady Ruperta was hoping the event would serve as a farewell for the academics.
He hoped the same. Either way, after this interminable assignment, he was seriously looking forward to a dab of expensive paté on a minuscule cracker. And several glasses of wine.
Mind you, that would be meager solace in the face of not having been able to touch Amelia these past days.
During their first week at the manor, Caleb had feared his health would suffer from not being able to mingle his fingers with hers, brush back her hair, or pretend to remove lint from her shirtwaist. But now, he knew real suffering.
The places where she’d stroked him ached with a desperate longing that not even his own hand could assuage.
The loneliness of his lips made him want to cry out.
Were it not for the volume of Keats’s poetry he’d brought with him, he’d probably not have survived.
And now he could not find his way. It was altogether tragic.
By the time he eventually reached the drawing room, most of the food and the best subjects of conversation would be taken.
And romanticizing the experience of being lost only worked until you accepted that you really were lost. Opening a door to reveal yet another unoccupied room, Caleb resigned himself to starvation and wandered in.
Incredibly, the room, although large, was empty but for a dusty velvet chaise lounge and a grand piano that appeared to be made of oak and diaphanous light.
Not a single antique blighted the view. Caleb perked up slightly.
Walking across just for the pleasure of not having to wind a path through stacked books, boxes of dishware, and statuary, he lifted the piano’s fallboard and gazed down at the keys.
They were spotless, as if this were the sole item in the house that someone cared to clean.
His hand hovered over the keys, hesitant.
It was a strong hand, pale from a career spent indoors, but somehow in this moment, against the piano’s ivory perfection, he could see the ghosts of scratches all over it, black with dirt from the stable filth he’d handled every day as a child, scraping horseshit from corners a broom couldn’t easily reach, just to earn a penny.
These days he kept the nails manicured, the hands safe and comfortable in his pockets as often as he could, although good society deplored such a habit.
And actually, most of the time he forgot those old grim days.
Touching Amelia helped. She was his balm.
But the piano keys daunted him just a little.
Of course he would not besmirch them if he reached for music, and yet…
Laying his right hand so gently on the keys they made no sound, he took a deep breath, then shifted his gaze to the nearby window.
Outside, the early evening countryside was more beautiful than a landscape painting in a museum.
Trees smoldered with autumn colors against the dimming light.
The sky was polluted by nothing worse than a cloud wandering lonely.
Looking out at such countryside, a man might suppose he’d never enjoy the comforts of civilization again.
He’d become a rustic, with soiled shoes and a dire lack of good-quality starch for his shirt collars.
He’d grow so bored, he’d take to chewing books for entertainment.
If, that is, he didn’t fade away into spectral semi-existence from handling too many thaumaturgic antiques.
Or perish outright from his longing to kiss Amelia just one more time.
But Caleb knew what to do with unpleasant thoughts.
He was expert at it, and expended little mental energy in burying them within a coffin of self-mockery.
Then donning a pensive smile like a man about to have his portrait taken, he looked down once more to the piano’s keys and, with his right hand, played a slow, quiet tune.
“Oh, my,” came a woman’s voice from behind him. Glancing over his shoulder, expecting to see Amelia, Caleb was disappointed to find instead Lady Ruperta standing beside the chaise lounge. She clutched the rim of its curved mahogany back as if fearing she might faint.
To be fair, Caleb’s music tended to do that to people.
How the woman had entered the room and crossed the parquet floor to the chaise without Caleb having heard her, he did not know.
She’d added to her usual funereal ensemble a black lace shawl that did little to ease the impression of chill about her, and a ruby brooch was affixed to her throat (or, more precisely—and less painfully—to a black ribbon around her throat) like a drop of blood.
But her eyes were oddly bright, and a few strands of hair had gone awry in her coiffure, as if she’d been out in the breeze, or at least standing at an open window frowning with disapproval at the breeze.
She directed that frown now at Caleb, and it was plain she still held a grudge about the dining table’s destruction, which seemed rather unreasonable considering it had happened more than a week ago.
Unworried, Caleb smiled at her, his charm engaging automatically. “Forgive me for playing your piano,” he said. “I can never resist, when I see one.”
Lady Ruperta’s visage became so arch, it could have served as a war memorial. “But you clearly can,” she replied, “since it is evident you’ve never taken a lesson.”
Caleb laughed. “Lessons would be far too tedious. I just enjoy the chance to look sensitive and sentimental.”
Amusement tugged at Lady Ruperta’s lips, then vanished again so quickly, it would have given a lesser man whiplash to see it.
But Caleb was well used to people annoying themselves by finding him delightful.
After all, he’d mastered adorableness when he was a child, it having been an essential survival skill.
Assessing Lady Ruperta thoughtfully—although she’d never have guessed it from the sweetly pleasant look on his face—he perceived very little danger to him, and conversely, a wealth of opportunity to win her over.
With an hour and the effort of a few smiles, Caleb felt sure he’d have her willing to subsidize any goal he chose to name.
It was easy to decide what he wanted from her.
“Allow me to beg your forgiveness,” he said.
Lady Ruperta’s eyes narrowed—she’d obviously met shysters before and possessed good defenses of mistrust and disdain.
But they would be no better than paper against Caleb.
Even in just an open-collared shirt and trousers, no expensive gold cuff link or silk tie in sight, he could impress this woman.
“You seem like a generous soul,” he lied.
And sliding his hands into his trouser pockets, he leaned against the piano at an angle that took him a delightful inch past indolent into mellow.
Lady Ruperta swallowed rather heavily, and Caleb knew he’d hooked her.
Now to begin reeling her in until she provided some way to get him and Amelia out of this assignment and on a train back to civilization.
He let his smile deepen into one of sympathy and kindness.
“Even so, you must be tired of having so many people in your home,” he said.
And then she bamboozled him utterly. “I am tired of more than you could ever imagine, young man,” she replied.
Caleb was able to do no more than blink at her, his smile frozen.
The hauteur had not eased from her face, but he knew enough about pain to see it in the corners of her eyes and in the way her mouth moved with a habit of tightness, of speaking too few joyful words.
She gave him a look so penetrating, he felt shaken to a degree he’d not for many years, his own defenses usually being excellent. His smile broke.
“Judging from the look on your face right now, perhaps you could imagine it,” Lady Ruperta said musingly. “And yet, how fortunate you are, Professor. You can put down history and walk away from it anytime you like.”
“Only if you mean antiques,” Caleb found himself saying before he could run it through his charm filter.
Lady Ruperta’s mouth twisted as if she felt pity but was resisting it. “Are you married?”
He shook his head.
“I didn’t think so. Come back to me with your ideas about history, material or otherwise, when you’ve been wed half as long as I.
Now kindly leave the room. Your associates”—she said the word in the way someone else would say plebs, and Caleb abruptly lost all sympathy for her—“are in the Mauve Drawing Room down the hall.”