The Ripper's Wife(11)

The door opened before us and I found myself staring into a face rigid as a marble soldier’s, so frigidly strict and superior beneath its tight, smooth-lacquered mahogany-red coiffure that I felt instantly inferior, as though I had just been found guilty of the most grievous offense and was about to be stood up against a wall and shot. I blinked and blinked again, then sighed with relief. The face I now saw before me was smiling, gracious, and inviting. I must have been more tired than I realized. Or it was just a trick of the light.

“Welcome,” she said, stepping back and ushering us into the oak-paneled entrance hall. “Welcome to Battlecrease House!”

“Didn’t I tell you Matilda was a marvel?” Jim smiled as he set me down.

I couldn’t answer him; the sedate opulence that surrounded me had quite stolen my voice away. I was standing on a Turkish carpet, an oriental fantasy worked in deep red and antique gold, and right beside me, within fainting distance, was a beautiful oak sofa carved with an intricate pattern of clinging vines and flowers, upholstered in deep crimson, echoing the leaf pattern of the paneling and the crimson damask covering the walls.

In those, my first moments inside Battlecrease House, a sort of magic was at work. This was my home and I never wanted to leave it. I felt the most enchanting, wonderful contentment falling like fairy dust from the ceiling onto me, seeping through my skin straight into my soul. If a fairy had emerged from the woodwork right then and asked me my wish I would have instantly replied, To live and love here forever with Jim. No girl had ever been as lucky as me.

Like a child on a treasure hunt, I wanted to explore every nook and cranny, but Jim’s hand was gently cupping my elbow, guiding me into the parlor.

Here all was royal-blue and white damask rococo splendor, as though Jim and I were a pair of lovers walking right into the Blue Willow pattern. There were sofas and chairs and footstools with ball and claw feet, all upholstered with blue and white damask, rich royal-blue velvet curtains trimmed with silk bobbles, tables and cabinets of gleaming dark mahogany, and an impressive array of gold-rimmed Blue Willow china pieces on display. Presiding regally over the mantel of a fireplace set with porcelain tiles illustrating the ancient love story that had inspired the famous pattern was a beautiful statue of the Chinese Goddess of Mercy mantled in rich blue and gowned in white with a fat black-haired almond-eyed baby in her arms. And a big blue and white Buddha sat cross-legged with a lotus blossom blooming out of his outstretched palms on the tea table.

I stood there awestruck, no doubt giving a fine imitation of a slack-jawed country yokel who had never seen the inside of a fine house before. It wasn’t that I was unaccustomed to such opulence. Far from it, I had never known anything but the finest things in life, in the various plantations, town houses, mansions, chateaux, country estates, seaside castles, baronial manors, and hotels I had stayed at throughout the years. It was simply that this time I was not a guest; this was my home! I had never felt such an instant connection to a place, as though the walls had a life of their own and were reaching out with invisible hands to welcome me. I wouldn’t be packing up and leaving when boredom set in or a new sensation beckoned. Jim and I would live, love, and grow old here together. This wasn’t fleeting; this was forever! Everything here that was new now would become old, familiar, and dear, timeworn, and even more wonderful. I would give birth to our children in one of the beds upstairs, play with them in the nursery, celebrate their birthdays, and someday toast their engagements in the dining room. And if Heaven blessed me with a daughter, when she turned sixteen I would host a ball here in her honor.

Mrs. Briggs cleared her throat and Jim gently nudged me forward.

A man with a big black walrus mustache and fast-retreating hairline was seated at the piano, idly tricking out a tune. Abruptly he stopped and with the cold and distinctly superior air of a Prussian general stood up and came to bow stiffly over my hand.

This was my husband’s famous brother, Michael, better known and beloved by the British public as Stephen Adams, the composer and singer of popular songs. Jim had told me all about him. Michael, whose brilliance had first been remarked when, as a boy, he sang in the church choir, was the darling of the music halls. He had toured the world, given concerts at Covent Garden and command performances for crowned heads. His fine baritone voice, equally adept at grand opera and popular ditties, everything from stirring sea chanteys to sentimental ballads, had been heard soaring in Mendelssohn’s Elijah and Wagner’s Lohengrin. I had seen him in the latter myself during my travels with Mama and had even thrown a red rose at his feet when he took his bow. But, of course, he hadn’t noticed me. Why ever would he? I was just one amongst the admiring throng. I had even heard that when he played the music halls, where the atmosphere was wont to be rowdy, some—I hesitate to call them ladies—had even been so brazen as to throw their drawers onto the stage. Some even attached little notes giving an address where he might meet them for some amorous disport if it pleased him.

Michael’s talent had afforded him two fine homes—a London mansion overlooking Regent’s Park and a summerhouse on the Isle of Wight—and a reputation as one of London’s most desirable bachelors, rendered even more irresistible to covetous females because he appeared entirely impervious to their charms. Some whispered that he and his songwriting partner, Frederick Weatherly, were partners in an even more intimate manner. But I never knew Michael well enough to ascertain whether there was any truth to those rumors. He would later, albeit in the aftermath of the Oscar Wilde scandal, suddenly marry his housekeeper, the aptly named Laura Withers, a butcher’s forty-year-old icebox-cold spinster daughter with a face like a meat cleaver who was happy to be married in name only to a famous man if it meant she could gad about town in feathered hats and fine dresses in a black japanned carriage and lord it over all the shopkeepers who had once looked down upon her as a servant.