The Proposition, page 15
“She says it is a reminder of all she suffered,” Audric muttered, running a shaking hand through his graying black waves. When he spoke next, he sounded out of breath. “For years I have hunted other men like Boyle, men that use girls and drain them like that evening’s claret and toss them away to let them shatter. Whatever justice the woman wants, that is what I give—a lashing, a thrashing, just a look, or a word, whatever is required. But Delphine would prefer we never speak of her suffering again. That it is eventually forgotten. She wants to move beyond it. But what she cannot see is that one does not move beyond such things. The world should not move beyond such things. The world should stand still, and gasp and weep, and have to look at their dear little sister sprawled on a bed dyed red with her blood. The world should have to witness the ripping of a child away from its mother and hear its cries, and watch as it is taken out into the cold, and pretend it is just a sack of flour and not a much-beloved nephew.”
Clemency squeezed her eyes shut. “I am…so sorry. So, so terribly sorry,” she said. Audric seemed to ignore that, his face slack and his eyes wandering. “And I am so, so enraged. Devoured by rage. Trembling with it.”
His eyes snapped back to her, a squint leading her to believe he was seeing her in a new way. “You are not repulsed by our secrets?”
“I am repulsed, of course,” Clemency replied. “But not by you.” He said nothing, but nor did his eyes stray. “I want to help. I realize it is unfeeling to go against Delphine’s wishes, but I want…” Clemency faltered a little, afraid of the words even as she burned to say them. “If it were me, I would beg for a brother brave enough to do as you are doing. Please, I want to hold your hand as the knife goes in.”
12
It was only a matter of time before Delphine recovered and came to harangue him. Not that he believed himself undeserving of her scorn. She arrived like the presaging of a blizzard, the air in the room going still and flat, a moment of anticipation winding a knot between his shoulders, and then Audric heard the office door hinge squeak, and he let out a long-building breath.
“You should have told her everything,” Delphine murmured, her voice ragged from the sobbing she must have done in her chambers. “If you wanted her to be a partner in your cruel business, you should have made the terms of her participation clear.”
Audric was too cowardly to immediately face her. He stared instead out the window, the desk between him and it, his fists pressed into the hard surface, digging, hurting, to the point where the pain had become punitive.
“How could I tell her?” he asked softly. “When I can hardly tell it to myself?”
“Oh, yes, it is impossible to accept,” Delphine whispered. She sounded exhausted, as if the sadness had broken like a fever, leaving her only weary. “And yet we must accept. And now she must too. It is all so terribly disappointing, Audric. All of it. I thought you were courting her in earnest, and now I have to grieve that lie too.”
The candles in his office had burned low. He stared at one not far from a stack of papers left by his bookkeeper. The flame flickered and danced, and burned its way into his sight, so that when he finally rose and stood straight and turned in profile toward his sister, the fire followed, a yellow smudge blighting his vision. He didn’t know how to respond to Delphine—to deceive her further seemed inconceivably cold, but his own thoughts when turned toward Miss Fry were murky. In his mind, she stubbornly eluded labels like “friend” or “acquaintance.” They had kissed, and he was not fool enough to declare it unwanted. He wanted her but understood their arrangement made any innocent, romantic notions unlikely. Clemency after all despised marriage.
He might remain a hunter ever eluded, and the thought stung. At least he would not become what his father had become to their mother—an ominous, looming taskmaster. A master, not a partner.
“Miss Fry is wary of men and marriage generally,” he said. “One can hardly blame her. My only concern right now is your—”
“My what?” Delphine laughed and crossed the office to where he stood leaning against the desk. She took his hand and held it loosely in the warm weave of her ten fingers. “My safety? My happiness? I am as safe as I can be,” she added, staring up at him. He still could not meet her gaze and winced when she dropped his hand and reached up to fix one curl of his hair. “And I am as happy as I can be. Look to yourself, brother. What about your safety and happiness? Take care, or you will wind up like Father, all alone in an empty house, staring down a long line of loveless memories.”
They rarely spoke of their father. Their mother, Elise, was all but sainted in their eyes. She had endured so much in that big, sprawling house along the river. Even alive, she had been like a specter haunting Fox Ridge, a vanishing smear of sunlight against their father’s encroaching night.
“That is too far,” he whispered, ragged.
“Maybe,” Delphine said. “Maybe someone ought to have told him the truth too. He might have met a better end. We might have loved him more.”
Audric had always pictured their father’s final moments as an oil painting, curling at the edges as it burned. The chamber where he spent most of his time had been consumed by a sudden fire. The damage to the house was not extensive, but their father’s room was obliterated. He imagined his father sitting at his desk, hunched over, his black curtain of hair parting only to reveal empty, staring eyes. He showed no emotion, no regret, no fear, as the flames brought annihilation.
When Audric walked the smoldering remains of that wing, he had found melted glass in hardened pools all around the bedchamber. He never escaped the sense that the fire was not mere accident.
“I will look to my life,” Audric promised. “But we must look to revenge first.”
“That cannot be so,” Delphine chided. With a sigh, she left him, sweeping back toward the door, the gray shawl looped through her elbows and falling to her feet swishing softly across the carpet. It reminded him of some haunted specter glimpsed at the end of a long, dark hall. Like their mother. Yet the gentleness that entered her voice defied that comparison, and she sounded young, and almost hopeful, and Audric tried to hold tight to that. “For my happiness is tied to yours, brother. Remember that. While you and Miss Fry are on this crusade of yours, remember that.”
She lingered at the door, and Audric risked a quick glance in her direction. Her thin smile was long-suffering with sisterly affection. He owed her better, he knew, yet seemed terminally incapable of providing it. If he let go of the sputtering rage in his heart he knew it would make her glad, but how could he? What would he be, what would inspire him, if he doused that ever-burning ember?
“Are you angry with me, poupette?” he asked. Audric couldn’t remember the last time he sounded so helpless or so small. Only Delphine was allowed to see him like that. “Please, do not be angry with me. Are you?”
“No,” Delphine admitted, sighing at him again. “I have made peace with our disagreement. I know you cannot be dissuaded, and foolishly, I am almost pleased that you are no longer doing this on your own. When I think of you with Miss Fry it brings a smile to my face. What an unlikely pair you make.”
That bolstered his spirits, just a little, enough to convince him it was safe to stop clinging to the desk and truly turn to look at her. She drummed her pale fingers once on the edge of the door, then began to glide away into the gloomy corridor. Of course, she could not do so without having the last word. She had more than earned it.
“Yes, it pleases me to think of you two together.” Delphine’s voice was fading, but still utterly comprehensible, and it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up in alarm. “My brave but foolhardy champions. I wonder, Audric, if you know what you are getting yourself into with her. I saw something awaken in her eyes tonight; it shakes me to remember it. Strange, but I think you might truly deserve each other.”
* * *
—
I am going to destroy you, Clemency thought, watching Turner Boyle sing a full-throated tenor rendition of “No One Shall Govern Me,” one hand flourishing on the words, while Tansy accompanied him artfully on the pianoforte.
Whatever happens to you, she further concluded, you will have earned.
She stood in the airy, vaunted beauty of Lady Margaret Veitch’s drawing room, the rest of the company sprinkled about the room, arranged at intervals like subjects of a Titian painting. It would take a party of no fewer than forty to make the drawing room feel cramped. Instead, they were allowed to sit or stand wherever they pleased, and with so much space, one could almost feel solitude creeping in. The next closest person happened to be her brother, William, seated what felt like a street’s length away on a pink-and-gold chaise longue nearer the pianoforte. Plaster angels soared above them, merry and rotund, and a chandelier dripping crystals presided over the music and tea-drinking. The whole house had a baroque feel to it, though Lady Veitch and her two daughters had done an admirable job of bringing the curtains and carpets and upholsteries up to modern style.
Tansy had apparently made quite an impression during her visit, winning them all an invitation to take tea with the widow and her daughters, Arabella and Adeline. Sir John Veitch, Clemency was told on the carriage ride over, had died fighting the French. He was, as it turned out, an actual knight and a member of the nobility. Lady Veitch had greeted Turner with an initially chilly demeanor. Clemency’s heart had soared. But Turner quickly mentioned that his close friend Denning Ede sent his regards, and Lady Veitch’s suspicions were all forgotten.
Clemency decided she would not be defeated, burning the name Denning Ede into her brain for later.
Four nights had come and gone since Clemency’s secret trip to the Ferrand townhome. She had expected that over time, her outrage and despair would cool somewhat. The opposite proved to be true. While Boyle deemed it necessary to spend only the evenings at the Bagshot residence, the experience of existing within his orbit for those four evenings of cards, music, poetry recitation, and conversation stoked the searing fire in Clemency’s chest higher and higher. That he dared smile in her direction, touch her hand, flirt with her, struck her as disgusting and ludicrous.
Yet somehow she did not find it hard to perform the role of Naïve and Trusting Intended. In fact, she was perfecting the part. Boyle seemed delighted by her quiet, pliant nature of late. He did not know, nor probably even suspect, that the wide-eyed, openmouthed gaze of wonder Clemency turned upon him was not one of doting affection, but one of constant, awestruck horror.
And now the villain was holding court, luminous in a suit he had stolen or borrowed. He was unbearably handsome, of course, his hair more radiant than ever, his eyes bluer than the queen’s own sapphires. But Clemency was hardened against his beauty. She saw only a perfumed Lucifer, and any brightness in his eye or twinkle in his smile she immediately deemed nefarious. Whenever a look of excitement or joy flickered across his face, she assumed it was only because he was brewing up some new and horrid way to enrich himself. The song ended. It was one of her favorites, which Boyle knew, and he had thrown her mischievous looks throughout the whole ordeal, very pleased with himself indeed that he had managed to remember a single thing about her tastes.
Perhaps it was unfair to compare him to the devil. At least Lucifer had at one time been an angel.
What have you ever been, she thought, but selfish?
“The absolute bastard,” Clemency muttered.
“Sorry?” Tansy was suddenly at her elbow, appearing there like a lacy apparition. She had no idea how the woman had traveled from piano to her side in a mere blink.
Clemency spun toward her, composing herself, stretched smile at the ready. Yes, she was becoming good at playing this part. “I said what amazing plaster,” she chirped, batting her lashes and pointing to the bouncy cherubs above them. A few columns were littered about the space too and wound with real, vibrant ivy.
“Mm. Lady Veitch has the most finessed style; do you not agree?” Tansy asked, loud enough for the widow herself to hear and smile, and nod, and fan herself with elegant approval. “The columns were shipped from Rome,” she continued, now apparently Lady Veitch’s confidante after only days of acquaintance. But Tansy was like that, infinitely good-natured, warm, and easily impressed, and easily making a warm impression. The perfect friend for an aging widow with dim-witted, unremarkable daughters.
Full credit to Arabella and Adeline, Clemency thought gently, they were not spiteful or nasty, but nobody had ever asked a single thing of them in their lives. Their wealth and position alone made them interesting, and neither of them had aspired to be anything greater than growing into human-shaped wife material. That was perhaps for the best, Clemency decided—it was easier to swallow the barbs of matrimony if one lacked even the desire to understand why it stung so.
“Arabella and Adeline are completely taken with India these days,” Tansy said, pointing out the obvious. Both girls were swaddled in bright gold-and-magenta silks, their wispy blond hair mostly concealed by orange brocade turbans. “Lady Veitch dotes on them so, she is considering redoing the whole space and calling it a Dream of Calcutta! Marvelous. Her daughters are both a vision of loveliness.”
Clemency tried on another of her new, cool, agreeable smiles. “They are both perfectly tolerable in every way.”
Tansy shot her a warning glance. “They are introducing me to very good society,” she whispered. “It will make London quite what I have always wanted….”
“I will not jeopardize your chances, Tansy,” Clemency assured her, softening. “The girls are not mean-spirited, and that is high praise. They are rich enough to be whatever they want, and they have chosen to be harmless. That should be celebrated.”
“I should wear a turban next time,” Tansy mused, glancing over at Lady Veitch’s daughters. “Perhaps I shall wear one to your wedding!”
Clemency coughed, hard, tapping at her own chest. Over Tansy’s shoulder, arranged in a pleasing tableau with her daughters at the center of the room, Lady Veitch gasped in alarm.
“Stevens! Fetch Miss Fry a ginger tonic at once. At once. There is a horrid little disease making the rounds this month; I shall not have her falling prey to it, and under my roof!”
There was no avoiding the woman anymore, and so Clemency wandered arm in arm with Tansy toward the sofas. Lady Margaret Veitch fanned herself on a chair placed to the left and slightly diagonally toward her daughters, who sat like posed marionettes on a low, cushioned bench. They did not often move their hands or arms, but rather their matching ice-blue eyes flitted swiftly around the room, and in almost uncanny unison. The heavy silk turbans wrapped around their heads looked quite hot, and both girls wore a sheen of sweat that beaded on top of their perfumed face powder.
With nowhere convenient to sit, Tansy and Clemency hovered while Lady Veitch inspected Clemency from head to foot, perhaps searching for signs of the ailment she so dreaded. The old woman had once been a beauty, that was obvious, though her cosmetics and dress spoke of a bygone era of panniers and severe corsets, and she still wore a good amount of candy pink rouge in generous circles on her cheeks. She and her daughters shared a dull, porridge complexion and a rather wide neck.
“Ah! There is Stevens!” Lady Veitch sighed with contentment as a footman, also dressed like a rococo antique, hurried over, thrusting a copper cup into Clemency’s hands with a bow. She took the concoction and sniffed, and nearly shed a tear from the overpowering smell.
Subtly, Tansy nudged her. She took a sip and grinned while the stuff burned its way down her throat.
“Very thoughtful, Your Ladyship,” Clemency burbled.
“Not at all, not at all. I suspect you will feel much refreshed; that particular tonic is an invention of my physician and always fills me with immense vigor.” Lady Veitch thumped her palm thoughtfully with her closed fan. “Stevens! More chairs. These poor ladies are looming in a most uncomfortable manner.”
Stevens leapt back into action, trotting out to the gallery beyond the open drawing room doors and returning with light wicker chairs for both Clemency and Tansy.
Tansy lowered herself into the chair and smoothed out her skirts, and Clemency pretended to sip the tonic while trying not to gag just from the odor.
After she was seated, Lady Veitch gave her another close inspection. “I enjoy your company, Miss Fry, I do, and Mrs. Tansy Fry speaks very highly of you. Very highly. Though there is a sharpness about your face that I usually find unbecoming in a woman, somehow it is not off-putting on you.” She squinted, and her head fell a little to the side. “Hm. The result of too much reading, I think. Yes, that is what it is, I can always detect it. Am I correct? Come now, Miss Fry, I will have your confession.”
Clemency clutched the tonic close to her chest, suddenly red-faced. All afternoon, Lady Margaret Veitch had found it satisfactory to speechify on everything from her late husband’s arduous struggles with gout, his love of German poetry, her daughters’ endless list of accomplishments, the weather, and the horrible fashions at court, to a detailed summary of every social gathering she had engineered in the last six months. Yet now her attention turned to Clemency, and while the woman’s wealth and title did not overly impress her, it was not to be missed that Lady Veitch possessed an intimidating presence.
“I do indeed have a passion for reading. Your Ladyship can hardly dispute that a woman of sense and accomplishment is expected to have an education, and to cultivate a mind for books,” Clemency said, feeling as if each word were a step through a field laced with deadly traps.
Lady Veitch sniffled. “I will dispute whatever I like, Miss Fry, though it is true that the written word, in moderation, adds a certain polish to a lady’s manner. A distinguished air. But under no circumstances should a lady overread. Never! For it leads to a belief in one’s own cleverness, and that is never a desirable trait in a young woman of quality.”
