Chapter 6
Celeste paused on the threshold of her new chamber.
It was vast and splendid in its own forbidding way—high ceilings ribbed with oak beams, heavy curtains the color of dried blood, and an enormous bed carved with grim, martial lions.
Not a single ribbon, cushion, or vase of flowers softened the space.
It was less a lady’s retreat than a garrison in velvet. So this was to be her sanctuary.
Well, she’d made do. Nothing that a bit of tulle and ribbons could not remedy.
A maid stood stiffly by the hearth, looking like an accessory to the grim decoration. “I’m Prudence Templeton, and I’m to await you, as your lady’s maid.”
Celeste brightened at once. At last, a maid of her own! A friend. Perhaps even an ally in her quest.
“My name is Celeste—I mean, Lady Cecilia,” she said with an eager smile. “I’m very pleased to meet you. Do you have experience—”
The maid gasped. “Oh, my lady! I assure you I have no experience. Not a touch, not a whisper, not a sinful thought has ever tainted me!”
Celeste’s entire body went hot in mortification. “I… I beg your pardon?”
The maid clasped her hands tightly. “The flesh is weak, but I have resisted!”
“I… I see,” Celeste managed, trying desperately to steer the conversation back toward something sensible.
A knock at the door mercifully interrupted. A footman entered, balancing her luggage.
“Your trunk, my lady,” he said politely.
The maid’s gaze snapped to him, lit with a feverish urgency.
“Thomas, vouch for me!” she cried, flinging out an arm. “Tell the lady that never have your calloused hands touched my flesh!”
Celeste let out a choking sound.
Thomas turned scarlet. “I—” He cleared his throat roughly. “Where would the lady like the trunk?”
“Say it, Thomas!” the maid pleaded, voice rising. “Say that I have been unblemished by man’s wicked urges!”
Thomas looked like a cornered rabbit. “The trunk, my lady?” he repeated, more strangled than before.
“Oh, wretched soul!” she clutched at her heart as if pierced by some invisible dart. “Can you not even say it? Are you so tormented by your own yearning?”
The poor footman dropped her luggage with a thud and fled.
The maid exhaled heavily. “Oh dear. I have spoken too much again, haven’t I?”
Celeste could only nod, her hand creeping to her brow.
“It is my curse,” the maid murmured wistfully, staring at the door Thomas had escaped through. “To feel so deeply, and yet be doomed to silence.”
“I don’t think it is my right to pry into your personal business, Prudence. All I wished to know was whether you have experience with coiffure.”
“Oh, miss!” she exclaimed. “I can make even the ugliest of crones as beautiful as Venus herself.”
Celeste’s heart lifted at once. “Truly? Do you know the latest fashions from London?”
“Indeed!” Prue declared. “Every last one of them.”
Celeste clapped her hands together.
But Prue’s expression darkened as swiftly as a storm cloud. “But I have vowed never to touch a cosmetic again.”
Celeste froze. “But why?”
“I shun all that tempts the flesh.” Prue pressed a hand dramatically to her chest. “For beauty is but a trick of the devil. A mask for temptation. And I shall not be its tool!”
Celeste’s shoulders sagged. What would she do? A maid who refused to do her job?
She was still reeling when the door swung wide without a knock. Rue Archer, her newly appointed chaperone, swept inside, skirts bristling with authority, her bonnet askew as though it had lost a battle with a strong wind.
After a terse greeting, Rue marched across the chamber straight to the window. She braced her hands on the sill, peering into the courtyard below.
Celeste followed her gaze. Captain Graves stood in the field, his saber flashing in the sun as he barked orders to a clutch of wide-eyed recruits.
Rue sniffed. “Look at him. Guard too low. The fool will have his spleen opened before luncheon.”
Her chaperone clucked her tongue, leaning so far out of the window that Celeste feared she might tumble headfirst into the yard. “Raise your guard, Ambrose, you stubborn oaf!” she bellowed, loud enough to make the recruits falter in their footwork.
Celeste pressed her fingers to her lips, aghast. “Madam—he can hear you!”
“I hope he can,” Rue snapped. “Else the man’s skull is thicker than his boots. What good is a soldier who leaves his flanks wide open? A cannonball has better sense.”
Prue clasped her hands primly to her breast. “Oh, Lady Cecilia, forgive this display. I fear Mrs. Archer has given herself over to violence.”
Rue turned, one brow arching. “Violence, child? Then you’ve never seen a real battle.”
Celeste moved closer because, well, optimism had been deeply ingrained in her from childhood. “Mrs. Archer, might I ask you something delicate?”
Rue grunted, not turning her head.
Celeste faltered. “It’s about courtship. Aristocratic courtship.”
That earned her a sharp glance. “Courtship? I know nothing about it. But I can tell you how I married seven husbands.”
“Seven?”
Rue shrugged, lifting a circular candleholder from the table and weighing it in her hand.
“The first—ambushed him with charm before he marched to war. The second—outmaneuvered him by feigning illness until he fetched a special license. The third—stormed his lodgings like a cavalry raid, gave him no time to think.”
Celeste’s jaw fell. “And love? Was there love?”
“Love?” Rue dabbed at one eye with her sleeve.
“Love in times of war is a fool’s gamble.
These men would sooner pledge themselves to a cannon than to a sweetheart.
Look at that handsome piece of uniform! No regard for his safety.
None! He will leave for war and shatter a woman’s heart without considering the ruin he left behind. ”
Before Celeste could blink, Rue launched the candleholder with terrifying precision. It sailed out the window, clanging squarely against Graves’s shin.
He jerked back, clutching his leg with a hiss.
Celeste gasped. “You nearly crippled him!”
“Better a bruised shin than a widowed bride.” Rue turned back calmly, as if nothing untoward had occurred. “As I said. Courtship, I cannot help you with. But siege tactics, widowhood, and battlefield discipline—I know them intimately.”
Celeste sank into the window seat and closed her eyes. How would she ever find love here? This house sucked every tender impulse straight out of the air and spat it back as orders, drills, and bruises.
“This is hopeless. I had more chance of finding the love of my life in the Convento das Flores.”
Perhaps this was her fate then… Soon, she would be marching, dressed in a formless uniform, and throwing projectiles at unsuspecting gentlemen.
Rue’s rough palm patted her hand like she was a skittish warhorse in need of calming. “It’s not that bad. Once you get accustomed to the loneliness.”
Prue sighed mournfully. “I can do your hair. So long as I wear gloves. And perhaps a chastity belt.”
Celeste opened her eyes, staring at them both. “I thank you dearly. But don’t you want to fall in love?”
Rue’s lips twisted. “Love? With Major Graves? Ha! That man will march off, catch a cannonball in the ribs, and leave me a widow for the eighth time. I refuse. No more black crepe. No more tears at dawn over a blasted drum.”
Prue shuddered violently, clutching at her skirts.
“And I cannot love. I made a vow. To never expose my flesh to such temptations. Poor Thomas has begged me ten times for my hand—ten! Each time I refused, Lady Cecilia, because if I wed him, I would be compelled to present him with my body. And my body…” Her eyes rolled heavenward.
“…is a furnace of wickedness. No, I cannot. I must not.”
Rue sighed, dabbing at her eyes with a kerchief. “And there you have it. One woman too afraid to bury another husband, the other too terrified to lift her skirts without bursting into flames.”
Celeste studied them both—Prue trembling at her own flesh, Rue glaring cannonballs at the man she clearly adored—and her heart squeezed. Loneliness clung to them like dust in the corners of this imposing house. They were as starved for tenderness as she was.
Smiling, she slid her arms around them both. Rue stiffened as though Celeste had attempted a wrestling hold. Prue nearly swooned into her embrace, fanning her crimson face.
“Oh, fear not, my new friends. I have the answer to all our woes. By Act Five, we shall be paired—or perish!”
Rue shook her head but did not remove her arm from Celeste’s hold.
Prue gasped and flapped her prayerbook so furiously the pages nearly tore.
But Celeste grinned, filled with a giddy, reckless certainty.
If this house insisted on marching to the drum, she would simply conduct the orchestra.
Rue and Prue might not know it yet, but their roles were already cast.