Marquesses at the Masquerade(46)

Aunt Sally squirmed uncomfortably in her seat. She couldn’t abide silence for very long. “Then... there is the Cornish gentleman who owns a coal mine.”

“I should like a coal mine,” Shelley said and licked the pudding off her spoon.

“I should like to put you in a coal mine,” Phoebe responded.

*



The ladies gathered in the drawing room after dinner, where Phoebe regaled Annalise with the plot of every London play for the last three months and descriptions of what the leading ladies wore. Annalise said, “How fascinating,” or, “What a wonderful plot,” or, “What a lovely gown,” at appropriate times, but her mind continued to drift to Exmore.

He had remained a villain in her mind. As if he had been cast a part in a play like the ones Phoebe described, and Annalise had never recast him. She still blamed him for sending Patrick away. Often, in the evenings, when she was exhausted from taking care of her mother or father, she would stare out at the night beyond her window. She could still make out the unextinguished lights from the neighboring village, twinkling over the fields. She would imagine that Patrick never left. That he was beside her, whispering comforting words.

Now she gazed out the window onto Wigmore Street, the sound of Phoebe’s voice muting in her mind. The London fog had settled in that evening. Horses and carriages seemed to emerge from it like ghosts and then disappear again. She remembered how dearly Exmore had professed to love his wife. How worried he had been about the late marchioness that evening. She had felt his deep anxiety and concern, breaking through her own pain, when she had embraced him.

The death of his wife must have destroyed him. What else would cause him to act against his nature?

“And have you decided on your costume, Annalise?”

Annalise glanced up. “Pardon?” She shook her head. “What play are we discussing?”

“Not a play, goose,” Phoebe said. “For the masquerade tomorrow night.”

“I think I shall go as a country girl who forgot her costume. Or perhaps as a young lady whose clothes were in fashion three years ago.”

“No, no, we must come up with something jollier. It’s my very first masquerade. I can barely contain myself, I’m so excited. I do hope something almost wicked happens to me.” Phoebe ran through a list of costume ideas. Annalise didn’t care for any of them. She wanted to ask about Exmore. How did he fall from respectability? What had he done?

*



A little after eleven, Annalise retreated to her chamber, a cozy room near the servants’ quarters on the upper floor. There would be no escaping from this room and sneaking away on a rainy night to Exmore’s home. The chamber was small, but she had it to herself. A lush carpet covered the floor, and heavy blue brocade drapes kept out the cold and outside sounds. On one side of the four poster bed was a toilette table and on the other a writing desk. The fire in the grate lit the entire tiny room.

Mrs. Bailey helped her out of her clothes and into her nightgown, all while complaining about the other servants. “Their fancy manners and ways, as if I wasn’t good enough for their filthy city with its black-soot sky. This city is fit for sinners. It’s not for us, miss. And look at this clothespress, miss. A wee church mouse would be hard-pressed to fit his clothes in it. No, we should go to your relatives in Holland like your father wanted, though it would break my English heart.”

“If I go to Holland, you should return home. In fact, if London is not to your pleasing, why not go home?”

“What? I’m not leaving my little girl alone in the world,” Mrs. Bailey said, outraged. “Good night, miss. You are holding up well, you are. I’m proud of you.”

But when the door closed behind her and Annalise was all alone, she felt her strength falter. Mrs. Bailey had put away her clothes and toilet bottles, but she had set the two leather portfolios on the writing desk.

She opened the top one, drew out father’s delicate drawing of Digitalis purpurea, and studied it as the shadows from the fire danced over its surface. Her papa had been a quiet man. He had once told her that some people you knew by their conversation and others by their silence. She hadn’t known what he meant until the last year of his life—that some kinds of silence held much more meaning than words could express.

She carefully let her fingers touch the edges of the image as tears sprang to her eyes. Futile homesickness filled her. When she had given her keys to the new tenants of her childhood home, she had known she would never pass its threshold again. Even if she could, it wouldn’t be her home without her parents. She wished she had tried to know her parents better when they were healthy, rather than waiting until the last months of their lives.

“Annalise.” Phoebe’s head popped around the door. “I had another idea about what you can dress up as for the masquerade. A siren! That would be wonderful.”

Annalise discreetly blinked away her tears before they could fall.

“Yes, then I could go naked and not worry about a costume.”

“Oh, you are very naughty, Cousin,” Phoebe said admiringly.

Annalise studied her cousin. “May I ask you a question, and you needn’t answer it if you feel that I shouldn’t ask it... but I have to know. What has happened to Lord Exmore? I cannot believe he is disrespectable.”

Phoebe’s eyes lit with mischief. She closed herself into the room. “He is the most wicked rake in all of London,” she said in an excited whisper. “The most handsome and the wildest. All the ladies want to tame him. It’s better than anything at the Royal Theatre or Covent Garden. He keeps company with actresses, and there are rumors of fights and deep gambling. Wicked, delicious stuff.”