Chapter 4 #2
Then Madame had her behind a screen, where a quiet young assistant waited with pins and a tape. The measuring began — shoulder and waist, the length of her arm, the numbers passing softly between the two women, half of them in French.
“Mademoiselle has worn short stays until now, I think,” Madame said, not unkindly, as the tape went round.
“For these gowns you will want a proper pair, corded, to hold the line of the high waist. They will sit strangely a day or two. Then you will forget you wear them at all.” She caught Viola’s eye in the glass and smiled.
“Every lady is made a little new by her first good stays. You will see.”
There was, besides, a gown already made up that wanted only taking in — an evening gown of pale blue, near enough Viola’s size that the assistant could pin it to her in a few minutes.
Viola stood very still while they worked, and watched the stranger in the glass take shape: taller, the waist high, the skirt falling clean and narrow.
It was beautiful. It was also cut a good deal lower at the bosom than anything she had ever worn.
“Might it come up a little, here?” She touched the line of it at her breast, her color rising. “And perhaps a little lace along the edge.”
Madame’s brows rose a fraction. “It is worn lower this season, mademoiselle. All the young ladies — ”
“I am sure they wear it beautifully.” Viola did not look away. “I should be more comfortable with the lace, I think. If it is no trouble.”
“But of course.” Madame inclined her head, and something like approval crossed her brisk face.
“It is your gown, mademoiselle. And the modesty will become you better than the fashion would.” She set a pin.
“This one you may have for your ball. Call back this afternoon, and it will be taken in and the lace set along the edge, just as you ask.”
Of the gowns yet to be made, nothing would come to her that day; there were fittings to be kept, two and three for every one, and the cornflower silk would not be ready for a fortnight.
But the pale blue would do for the morrow, and the rest would follow across the coming weeks, a gown here, a spencer there, each arriving in its box.
Out on the pavement, the noise of London closing back around them, Hannah tucked Viola’s arm through her own and sighed with deep satisfaction.
“That,” she declared, “is how a young lady is brought into society. Not with a will and a great cold house, but with good silk and a sister who knows her business.” She slanted Viola a look. “You laughed twice in there. I counted.”
“Did I?”
“You did. I had begun to fear you had forgotten how.” Hannah pressed her arm. “The house is still to be faced, I know. But it can wait. For just now you are only a young lady with a wardrobe being made, and nothing dreadful is required of you at all.”
Viola looked at her sister, at the warmth in her face, and felt the fear loosen another degree. Whatever waited at Grosvenor Square — and she knew already it would be heavy — she would not have to carry it alone.
“Thank you, Hannah.”
“Always.” Her sister led her toward the carriage. “Now come. Let us go and be frightened of a great cold house together.”
* * *
The carriage slowed as it turned into Grosvenor Square. Viola, who had spent the better part of the drive with her hands gripped tight in her lap, made herself look out of the window, her breath clouding faintly against the glass as the house came into view.
Stoneleigh House stood with a quiet authority she could almost feel.
Its pale facade rose in calm symmetry with its neighbors, the iron railings freshly blackened, near-identical shrubs standing guard at the foot of the stone steps.
The windows were tall and caught the afternoon sun.
A brass plate gleamed upon the door. It was by far the grandest house in this part of London, and Viola felt like a thief come to study it before slipping inside.
“It is larger than I remember.” Hannah blew out a breath. “I cannot quite believe it is yours.”
“I still fear some dreadful mistake has been made.” Viola looked down at her hands.
“There is no mistake.” The carriage rocked to a halt. “You were given the key, were you not?”
She had. It had come the evening before, sealed in an envelope and carried not by one man but by three from the solicitor’s office — three, so that no one but Viola might take it, lose it, or claim it as their own.
In that, she supposed, there could be no mistake at all.
And yet the small, stubborn thought would not leave her: that somewhere, somehow, something was wrong.
“Then you are mistress of the house.” Hannah smiled broadly. “Come. You must be the first inside.”
Viola had no chance to answer. The door opened, the tiger handing them down, and a footman from the house came out to stand ready at the step.
The notion that he was her footman sat very strangely indeed.
She had never owned anything in her life.
She was a daughter still under her father’s roof, and in the space of a single day she had been handed both wealth and authority, as if set down upon sinking sand and told to keep her feet.
She climbed the steps on legs that wobbled and stepped over the threshold.
The hall gave her pause. A Persian runner ran its length, deep crimson worn to rose down the center by a hundred years of feet that were not hers.
Paintings hung in heavy gilt frames, dim-faced lords and ladies who seemed to mark her passing.
A vase of no doubt considerable worth stood upon a stand in the corner, where one careless elbow might send a year of her father’s income shattering to the floor.
Even the air was different here — thicker, older, scented with beeswax and lavender — and it made her feel an interloper, unsuitable and unwelcome.
She kept her hands close to her sides, the way a child does in a room full of things it has been told it must not touch.
“Miss Trent, I presume?”
She started. A man inclined his head, his tall frame slightly hunched, as if he knew his height and wished not to loom. “Might I take your hat and coat? There is tea waiting in the drawing room.”
“Thank you.” Viola blinked. “You are the butler, I think?”
He nodded, his gaze resting just past her shoulder. “Mr. Phillips, at your service. Welcome to Stoneleigh House. Might I present Mrs. Roberts, the housekeeper?”
A woman stepped forward, graying hair drawn into a chignon, eyes that found Viola’s face directly and held it. Viola’s stomach knotted. Were the servants as uncertain of all this as she was?
“Good afternoon,” she managed, and introduced Hannah to them both.
“The household remains as Lady Warrington arranged it, Miss Trent.” Mrs. Roberts rose from her curtsy. “Though everything is at your disposal, of course. Your rooms have been prepared, and — ”
“Oh, I shall not be residing here.” The words came out before the housekeeper could finish. “For the present, I will stay with my sister.”
A short silence.
“Very well.” Mr. Phillips spoke first, his voice gone thinner. “The documents pertaining to the house are held at the solicitor’s, including the papers for the most recent repairs.”
Viola nodded, feeling she might drown in all of it.
“I think my sister and I shall take a turn about the house, and then sit to tea.” Hannah laid a hand on Viola’s arm — a rope to hold, something to keep her upright. “We will not stay long today.”
“Might I show you the rooms myself?” Mrs. Roberts offered a smile that did not quite reach her steady eyes.
Hannah glanced at Viola, who gave a small nod and kept her hand fast on her sister’s arm.
Mrs. Roberts led them from room to room, and each one undid Viola a little further.
The dining room, where a table ran the length of a country church and a great branched candelabrum stood ready for a company she could not imagine summoning.
The parlor, hung in pale silk that alone would have dressed her for ten Seasons over.
The portraits ranged along the hall in their gilded ranks, generations of a family not her own, watching her pass with painted, patient eyes.
Everywhere was more than she could hold in her mind at once — more silver, more silk, more quiet evidence of a life lived at an ease she had only ever read of — and all the while a band drew tighter about her chest, until each breath came harder than the last.
“Several of the staff have been in service many years,” Mrs. Roberts said. “Some have no other place to call home. Lady Warrington was always good to us. Those who gave their years of service were cared for, every one.”
There was no accusation in it. It struck Viola with force all the same.
The housekeeper expected the same of her, the same kindness, the same generosity, and it was not that Viola did not wish to give it.
It was that she had never run anything larger than a single household purse, and that only by counting every penny twice.
“Lady Warrington kept several charitable obligations besides,” the housekeeper went on. “There are widows in the parish, and families who depended on her through the winter for their coal.”
“How very considerate.” Hannah said it warmly. Viola only murmured something and pressed on, the weight settling heavier upon her shoulders with every door.
As they turned from the gallery, a woman came along the passage toward them — not in the manner of the staff, who had each appeared and bowed and given their office, but easily, as one who belonged to the house and had done for years.
She was perhaps fifty, in mourning black — well-made, the gown of a gentlewoman rather than a servant — her face soft and her eyes steady, and she stopped a little distance off, as if she would not press herself forward uninvited.