Chapter One The House Where Women Went Quietly #2
Marianne took in the girl’s pallor, the ink stain on her cuff, the absence of a maid, the careful way she held one arm beneath her cloak as though guarding a parcel or an injury, and the angry red mark at her wrist where a bracelet or fingers had lately pressed too hard.
Mrs Finch saw the wrist too. Her nostrils flared, but she said only, “Come in, miss. You will take cold.”
The girl swallowed. “Is this Lady Theodosia Vane’s house?”
“It was,” Marianne said gently. “Lady Theodosia died last autumn. Miss Helena Vane keeps the house now.”
The girl’s composure flickered. “Then I am too late.”
“No,” Marianne said, because it was what Lady Theodosia would have said, and because in Lantern House lateness had a different meaning. “You have come to the right door.”
The girl looked at her then, truly looked, and Marianne felt the familiar moment in which strangers tried to decide what she was.
Not mistress of the house. Not servant exactly.
Not young enough to be harmless, not old enough to command immediate deference.
Plainly dressed, though not poorly. Quiet.
Still. Useful-looking. Most settled upon her as one settles upon a chair placed conveniently near the fire: necessary, unremarkable, and not worth further study.
That, too, had its uses.
“What is your name?” Marianne asked.
The girl’s lips trembled before she caught them between her teeth. “Lucy Harlowe.”
“Then come in, Miss Harlowe.”
The girl stepped across the threshold, and Bess shut the door quickly upon the damp morning and the coachman’s mutters.
Mrs Finch relieved Miss Harlowe of her cloak with an efficiency that left no room for refusal, while Marianne noted the bundle beneath the girl’s arm: papers wrapped in muslin, tied with a gentleman’s cravat.
Not a lover’s token. The knot was too hurried, the cloth too tight. Panic had tied that bundle.
“Bess,” Mrs Finch said, “tell Cook we shall need chocolate in the small parlour.”
“Yes, Mrs Finch.”
“And toast.”
“Yes, Mrs Finch.”
“And if that coachman is still there in one minute, tell Tom to pay him what is fair and not one farthing more for his noise.”
Bess vanished, relieved to have instructions.
Miss Harlowe stared at them both. “I cannot pay for a room.”
Marianne heard Mrs Finch’s small intake of breath and answered before the housekeeper could declare that such matters were not discussed on thresholds. “That is not the first question we ask here.”
“What is?”
“Whether you are safe where you were.”
The girl’s face changed. Not enough for someone careless to see. Enough for Marianne.
“No,” Miss Harlowe whispered.
Mrs Finch’s hand closed briefly over the girl’s shoulder. “Then chocolate first.”
It was not Marianne’s task to hear the whole story.
Not yet. That belonged to Helena Vane, who had inherited from her aunt not only the house but the burden of deciding which catastrophes must be handled with law, which with money, which with secrecy, and which with a carriage waiting in the alley before dawn.
Marianne merely escorted Miss Harlowe to the small parlour, saw her seated, placed the bundle of papers where it could not be snatched by a sudden change of courage, and rang for the fire to be stirred.
By the time she returned to the breakfast room, the house had woken.
Lantern House at breakfast was a gathering of women who had each learned, in her own fashion, how to enter a room without revealing what had driven her there.
Mrs Alderley, a general’s widow with a trumpet-shaped ear and a talent for mishearing everything except gossip, occupied her usual chair near the fire and was complaining that the marmalade was thinner than it had been under the late King.
Mrs Lennox, who had once possessed a house in Devonshire and now possessed strong opinions on everyone else’s correspondence, was reading a three-week-old newspaper as though she intended to contradict it.
Miss Clara Winslow, presently employed as a governess during the day and resident at Lantern House only between positions, sat straight-backed over her tea with the alert stillness of one who could translate French at sight and secrets more quickly.
At the far end, Miss Beatrice Ashcombe, who was too vivid for the room even in a plain muslin gown, was pushing a piece of toast about her plate with a violence that suggested the toast had insulted her.
Marianne paused in the doorway and counted cups, plates, tempers.
Mrs Alderley had eaten. Mrs Lennox had eaten and wished to deny enjoyment. Clara had eaten exactly half of everything, which meant she was worried. Beatrice had not eaten at all.
Marianne crossed the room and took the seat beside her.
“Your toast is in danger,” she said.
Beatrice looked up. She was twenty-four, fair-haired, bright-eyed, and possessed of the dangerous beauty that families liked to display until it acquired opinions.
Her own family had sent her to Lantern House after a quarrel concerning a proposed marriage, a locked jewel case, and Beatrice’s alleged inability to understand what was best for her.
They had expected her to repent within a fortnight. She had been there nearly three months.
“I have been informed,” Beatrice said, “by letter and by underlined repetition, that I am unmanageable.”
“That was not kind.”
“It was not meant to be kind. It was meant to be true.”
“Ah.”
Beatrice pushed the toast a little farther. “My aunt says I have made myself ridiculous. My cousin says I have made the family anxious. Mr Pemberton says I have misunderstood his intentions, which is extraordinary, considering his intentions were explained to me by everyone except him.”
Mrs Alderley lifted her trumpet. “Who is intemperate?”
“No one, ma’am,” Clara said.
“A pity. It sounded interesting.”
Beatrice ignored this. “What does one do, Miss Vale, when everyone agrees one is difficult?”
Marianne poured a little more tea into Beatrice’s cup, for occupation if not appetite. “One first asks whether everyone benefits from one becoming easier.”
Beatrice blinked. “That is not at all what my aunt says.”
“I daresay not.”
“She says a lady’s peace lies in being guided.”
“By whom?”
“People wiser than herself.”
“And are they?”
Beatrice’s mouth opened, then closed. A reluctant spark appeared in her eyes. “Not invariably.”
“Then perhaps your aunt has given you an incomplete rule.”
Beatrice glanced down at her toast. “You make disobedience sound like arithmetic.”
“It is often arithmetic. One must calculate the cost of obedience against the cost of refusal. The mistake is in supposing obedience is always cheaper.”
Across the table Clara looked up briefly, and something like a smile touched her mouth before disappearing into her teacup.
Beatrice considered this, then picked up the toast and took a bite as though it were a declaration of war.
Marianne returned to her own place and accepted coffee from Bess, who whispered as she leaned close, “Miss Harlowe is with Miss Vane now, ma’am.”
“Thank you.”
“And there was a card left late last night. Tom found it by the hall tray. Mrs Finch said as how you’d want to see it.”
Bess slipped the card beside Marianne’s cup. It was thick, cream-coloured, and engraved with a name Marianne did not know: Sir Alaric Brenton. Beneath it, in a different hand, someone had written: With concern for the reputation of your establishment.
Marianne read it once without expression, then again more slowly.
The crest embossed at the top was meant to suggest a baronetcy of age and martial dignity: shield, stag, three stars, motto in Latin. But the stag’s head faced the wrong direction. In heraldry, such things mattered. Gentlemen careless with borrowed consequence often forgot that.
Marianne placed the card beneath her saucer.
Clara’s gaze followed the movement. “A friend?”
“Unlikely.”
“A creditor?”
“Not ours.”
“Then worse.”
“Perhaps only foolish.”
Clara’s expression did not change. “In my experience, foolish men with printed cards are often worse than clever ones.”
Marianne could not dispute it.
Before she could reply, Helena Vane entered the room, and every conversation altered slightly, as conversations did when the person most capable of hearing their hidden meanings came in.
Helena was Lady Theodosia’s niece, though she had not her aunt’s breadth of figure or theatrical force.
Where Lady Theodosia had been all commanding colour, Helena was fine-boned, dark-haired, and composed in the manner of a blade returned carefully to its sheath.
She wore mourning still, though without ostentation, and there was something about the severity of black silk upon her slender frame that made younger women sit straighter and older women conceal their cards.
She paused first by Mrs Alderley, who was telling Mrs Lennox that Bonaparte would never have troubled Europe if English girls had been taught to make better puddings, then by Beatrice, whose plate she noticed without appearing to, and finally beside Marianne’s chair.
“You were in the accounts room before six,” Helena said quietly.
Marianne slid the calling card toward her. “Mr Griggs has overcharged us for coal.”
“That was not my question.”
“No. But it is the answer least likely to distress you.”
Helena looked at her.
Marianne met her gaze for two seconds, which was long enough to acknowledge both the evasion and the concern, then lowered her eyes to the coffee pot. “I slept enough.”
“You always sleep enough when there is something you do not wish to discuss.”
“It is one of my few talents.”
“One of several.” Helena took the card and read it. “Sir Alaric Brenton?”
“The crest is wrong.”
“Is there a Sir Alaric Brenton?”
“There may be. There is also, possibly, a gentleman who wishes us to think so.”
Helena turned the card over. Nothing was written on the reverse. Her face remained calm, but Marianne had known her long enough now to see the tightening at the corner of her mouth.
“When did this come?”