He smiled at her, flirtatiously, and because Lina had never been in such close contact with a man, or danced with any male except for a relative, she felt for the first time in her young life the thrill of being flirted with, and it made her quite forget where she was.
They finished the dance, and Lina was so overcome that she had to steady herself on his arm again as she left the floor.
“Are you quite well?” Mr. Carrington inquired.
“I am,” Lina said, gripping his arm, “feeling very... much... as though I need to sit down. Or take refreshment.”
Mr. Carrington guided her through the small crowd at the edge of the dance floor and spoke to the gentleman who had requested the next dance with her. Lina was not sure what he said, as another round of clapping arose at that moment and drowned out his voice. The party, by society standards, had become quite rowdy.
Mr. Carrington guided her to the supper room, where she sat and he retrieved her lemonade. She felt much better, but he said she looked pale, and inquired whether she might like to stroll about the garden as a means to take in some fresh air.
And so, because it sounded delightful and Charlotte had insisted that she need not worry about the details of proper etiquette, as the gentlemen at the ball would concern themselves with such matters, and because she felt even more intoxicated than after drinking the champagne, she agreed.
Mr. Carrington led her to the gardens through various passageways, and it seemed to grow hotter as they went, so she was feeling quite dizzy and almost ill by the time they reached the doors to the gardens. She had, as they hurried along through unoccupied parts of the great home, considered several times declining the gentleman’s offer, and returning to the ball, but she was feeling so odd and could not think clearly of how to make such a request without causing offense. Not only that, she was sure the fresh air might make her feel better.
The garden was lit by a few solitary lights and the light cast from the windows of the great ballroom. No one else appeared to be outside, which was something she found to be different than she had expected: she had assumed a gentleman like Mr. Carrington would, as Charlotte advised, ensure that all propriety was adhered to. The cool night air did not have the effect she had hoped for, and one of the last thoughts she had was that she had made a terrible mistake in judgment.
She was turning to Mr. Carrington to explain all of this to him, and then, all was blank for an amount of time that seemed no more than the blink of an eye.
* * *
The next thing she knew, she was lying down, and the earth was shuddering beneath her, and she could hear the sound of horses and the sharp voices of two women talking.
She would never be sure what motive—self-preservation, or perhaps years of practice pretending to be asleep while she was not—caused her to close her eyes as soon as she awoke, and feign the continuation of the fainting spell that had overtaken her. She was terribly confused, but she had enough sense to know from the tone of the voices, that something had gone terribly wrong.
“Surely you saw them leaving together, Elizabeth,” hissed a familiar voice, which took Lina a moment to realize was the voice of Charlotte, for it had such a venomous edge to it that it was rendered almost unrecognizable.
“Oh,” Elizabeth said, almost diffidently.
“Oh, surely, Elizabeth, you cannot expect me to believe that you didn’t have your keen eyes glued to Mr. Carrington’s every move. The entire world knows that you are looking to marry, and you are looking for wealth first and foremost and dashing good looks second, and that Mr. Carrington is whom you’ve set your eyes upon. You cannot convince me that you did not see him lead Lina away.”
“Oh, so what if I did?” Elizabeth hissed in reply.
“You knew well it was improper, and yet you said nothing, until it was too late. In fact!” Charlotte cut herself off, and there was a curious silence. When she spoke next her voice had lowered to a scathing whisper. “It wouldn’t surprise me if you were the one to alert the guests to the scandal.”
There was no response from Elizabeth.
“You are a miserable little... brat. I do so hope you get what’s coming to you.”
“And perhaps I shall, Charlotte. You could learn a thing or two about looking out for your own fortunes. Caroline is a commoner and a bastard and an ill-bred...tart! She does not deserve to marry into such a large fortune.”
“I think,” Charlotte hissed, “that you were simply jealous that Mr. Carrington, the miserable man, took a shine to Lina instead of you, and now you’ve gone and ruined absolutely everything for everyone!”
“I?!” Elizabeth almost shrieked. “I’ve ruined everything?! She’s the one who was strolling in the gardens in the dark alone with a man, not I! She’s the one who had so much to drink that she became... incapacitated!” Then, with almost a snarl, she added, “If indeed that is what happened.”
Charlotte hissed at Elizabeth, and Lina decided to open her eyes when no more was said for several minutes. She sat up, holding her head, which hurt terribly, and blinked to clear the blurriness from her vision.
Charlotte leaned toward her and grasped her hand. “Lina, my dear, however are you feeling?”
Lina shook her head. Her throat felt dry. “I don’t... I don’t know. What happened?”
Charlotte glared at Elizabeth. She returned her gaze to Lina and held a finger to her lips. “Say nothing until we arrive home, for I cannot be certain what this viper will do with anything she overhears.”
Elizabeth glared at her sister, and Lina’s eyes grew wide. “But I really haven’t any recollection,” she complained. “I was... walking to the garden with Mr. Carrington, and then—”
“Shh!” Charlotte insisted.
Elizabeth jutted her chin and folded her arms. “She can’t incriminate herself any more than she already has,” she said, with a haughty smirk.
“Say no more, Lina,” Charlotte whispered. “I promise you I shall tell you all I know,” she looked over disapprovingly at Elizabeth, “and all I suspect, when we have a free moment.”
Lina’s eyes welled up with tears, and Charlotte shook her head sharply to stop her from saying anything further. The remainder of the voyage took place in silence, the tension between the two sisters palpable in the air.
Chapter Eleven
But Charlotte was never allowed to speak to Lina privately, for news of the great scandal had arrived ahead of them somehow, as all gossip of a salacious nature will do. Lina was found in the garden, draped across the lap of Mr. Carrington, by the hostess and several of her dowdy friends, who had been sent to look at a “most compromising situation” by an unknown source.
By the time the horrified Mrs. Tilton had gathered up the girls in her care and seen to the matter, the ladies had called for a doctor, who examined Lina and concluded that she seemed quite inebriated and little more was wrong with her than that. Mr. Carrington was sent away from the party and the hostess attempted to brush the whole affair under the rug by sending Lina through the garden to an awaiting carriage.
The cover-up was for her own good, not Lina’s, but still somehow the story had reached the Harlowes, and likely all of society. Mrs. Harlowe wailed and threw herself upon a couch, and told Lina to go to her room or she would likely murder her where she stood. Charlotte, before being ushered out the door by Mrs. Tilton, grasped Lina’s hand in both of hers and whispered fiercely: “Stay strong and you shall prevail, you have done nothing wrong!”
Mrs. Tilton wrenched her arm away from Lina’s sharply enough to make her gasp, and Charlotte hissed furiously as they squabbled their way out the door.
Lina went to her room as she was told, and Evangeline sobbed and wailed herself to sleep, crying that her own life was ruined forever.
Lina was almost trapped in her dress, and no one came to help her, so she took it off and considered, momentarily, putting on a nightgown and prowling about to see what she could discover about the evening and what had happened, or perhaps
even confronting the Harlowes to tell them the truth, but she felt quite exhausted, and ill, and terribly sad. Exhaustion, more than any other feeling, won out, and she fell asleep on her side, with her feet still planted indecisively upon the floor.
She was awoken by a banging on her door, and the frantic entry of the house maid, followed by Mrs. Harlowe, wringing her hands. “Caroline, get up, get out of bed!” Mrs. Harlowe almost shouted, while the maid flung open the wardrobe and began to assess it as though it were a pantry, speaking to herself as she did so.
“Oh!” Mrs. Harlowe said, holding her head, and looking about the room frantically.
“Get up, get up!” Mrs. Harlowe said. To the maid, she shrieked, “Go and get the chests, I will have her dressed by the time you return, we cannot waste a moment of time!”
“What is happening?” Lina managed to say. “Mrs. Harlowe?”
An ache in her heart gripped her, and she felt another plunge inside of her, as the events of the evening before came back to her. As she watched Mrs. Harlowe pacing the room, waving her hands about, she felt certain that she was being thrown into the streets.
“Hurry, child, and get dressed. It may be possible to salvage this terrible, terrible... incident, yet. Mr. Blackstone has sent for you, you are to be sent immediately to his estate, and he has made no mention of canceling the wedding, nor anything of the kind. He has sent a telegram... can you imagine such a thing? All the way from there?”
Mrs. Harlowe paused at the wonder of modern technology, however briefly, and then set herself to pushing Lina out of bed and toward the wardrobe, where she stripped her of her shift without so much as a word and started to pull a traveling frock over her head.
“But what?” Lina said, from inside the dress as it passed over her head. “What is happening? Mrs. Harlowe, I—”
Mrs. Harlowe spun her around and held her very tightly by the shoulders. Her eyes were filled with a sort of wild fury that Lina had never seen. They were blue, but her temper had made them burn green. She looked almost rabid. “Listen to me, you most insolent little wench. Your loose, wanton behavior at the ball almost cost us everything! By some grand miracle, Mr. Blackstone appears to have decided to send for you immediately to be married anon. So you are being sent off this moment, that you may hopefully arrive and be wed before the rumors of your terrible deeds reach him.” She put a finger up and wagged it sharply in Lina’s face, a crude gesture Lina had never seen the likes of from Mrs. Harlowe in her life. “I do not know what, but the grace of God, has prompted the man to send for you at this moment, but you shall get dressed and be packed up with your things and sent away, and we shall all hope for the very best.”
“Mrs. Harlowe, I don’t recall what happened last night, but I—”
“Say nothing!” Mrs. Harlowe shouted. “Nothing, about last evening. Not a word, not another word. You have disgraced yourself, and you had better start hoping that you say “I do,” before the rumors catch up to you, or...” Mrs. Harlowe pressed her lips together and shook her head. “I don’t know what any of us will do.”
She was packed into a carriage within the hour. Mrs. Harlowe tossed a bag with bread and cheese into the carriage at the last moment, else she might have starved. She did not get a chance to say goodbye to Evangeline, whose nerves had been so frayed that a doctor had been called to give a sedative for her hysteria, nor to Anna, who managed to wave sadly from a window, and make a sign with her hands and fingers of writing a letter. Lina was in tears as the carriage whisked her away, and she was so distraught that she could not even bear to open the curtains and look, for what might be the last time, on the glorious streets of London.
Chapter Twelve
The carriage rolled to a stop in a dim circle of light cast by two weak gas lamps, so that the facade of the enormous building that had been silhouetted against the moonlit sky was swallowed by the darkness.
The driver dismounted and opened the carriage door for her. “I am instructed to leave you here, Miss Blanchet, and to take your belongings round the service entry.”
Lina stepped out of the carriage, guided by the driver’s hand, and peered into the darkness. Gravel crunched beneath her feet. She could make out, just barely, the contours of an intricately carved, and massive, wooden door just beyond the lamps.
“But I...” she said, bewildered.
The driver, however, had already dropped her hand and mounted the carriage, and with a snap of the reins, the horses had begun a slow trot into the darkness.
“But how am I to... announce myself?” she asked the retreating carriage.
It was gone, around the corner of the wing jutting into the immense gardens, and Lina’s throat closed with a lump of fear.
There was no guard, and as she stepped toward the immense door, she realized that there seemed to be no mechanism by which to knock upon wood.
She tapped her knuckles against the wood, and the sound seemed to be absorbed into it, so she herself heard nothing, and surely there would be no sound traveling to the other side.
She stepped back, lifting her skirts, and peered up at the windows. All of the drapes were drawn severely, and either no light glowed behind them, or they were so thick as to give the appearance of emptiness.
The fear that had closed her throat squeezed even more tightly in her chest.
“Mr. Blackstone?” she said, but without bothering to say it loudly, for she knew there was not a soul that could hear her. She formed a fist and pounded against the door, but the sound was so muffled when it reached her own ears that she gave up readily.
A bird of prey screeched in the distance, causing tears to well up in her eyes.
A monster.
Mr. Blackwell’s reputation was becoming more and more grotesquely real by the minute.
Lina shivered, though it was quite warm. The sky in the east lit up with electricity and a rumble rolled over her.
“Mr. Blackstone!” she yelled, suddenly infuriated.
Her voice bounced from cold, dark wall to cold, dark wall.
Tears welled up and spilled to her cheeks, and she wiped them impatiently away.
She stood for a long time in the silence, and was on the verge of daring to walk around the enormous building to seek out the service entrance, while battling the urge to run away, when she heard a great rattling behind her. A sliver of weak light spread out upon the ground, and when she turned toward the door, she found it ajar.
Wiping one last tear away, she repeated dully, “Mr. Blackstone?”
There was no answer, and her heart pounded away in the stillness for several moments. But with no other recourse, she concluded that she had no choice except to enter.
The door was heavy, and she had to throw much of her weight into pushing it open.
She found herself in an immense hall, dimly lit by gas lamps that cast a sufficient glow upon the floor to reveal stone flooring of excellent workmanship, and an enormous Oriental rug. The foot of a grand staircase, nearly as wide at the bottom as many of the rooms in her old home, disappeared in a curve into the darkness above, where lights on the second floor illuminated the shapes of arched windows overlooking the foyer—she did not know if such an enormous space could so be called—from every side. Well-kept ferns, and sparse furniture of expensive countenance, were lined along the walls of the otherwise empty room. A single tasteful table with a vase of fresh, exotic flowers stood in the center of the rug.
Finding herself lacking entirely any thoughts about the proper etiquette for such a situation, she pushed the door closed, waited, and finally said, though she was certain it was impertinent, “Hello?”
Surely, the state of the place required that an army of servants were in the employ of Mr. Blackstone. But the house was silent as a tomb.
“Mr. Blackstone,” she said, in a tone that was quite impertinent, but her nerves had now become quite undone. “I demand that you, or at the very least, a... a... butler, or a maid, appear at once and explain to me this most... unu
sual welcome.”
The dark figure silhouetted in one of the arched openings above her had perhaps been there all along, for she had not seen it appear. It was deathly still. But the voice was unmistakable, a low, commanding purr that sent tingles along her spine.
“Miss Blanchet,” Mr. Blackstone said, using the French pronunciation of her name. “You are in no position to make demands.”
The cool feeling coiled in her abdomen slithered to life, and Lina was grateful for the darkness around her, for surely Mr. Blackstone could not see the odd expression her features took on, nor the flush on her cheeks, the provenance of which was unknown even to her: partly fear, partly the wicked excitement she had felt what seemed like a lifetime ago in the attic of her own home, and partly something else entirely that she knew not how to describe. Her heart kicked wildly and her chest felt like ice was spreading through it like the first frost across the gardens, branching out from the center to her limbs, until she was frozen.
“I expect,” Mr. Blackstone said, “That you shall learn this soon enough, though I had rather hoped the task would not be so very... monumental.”
“I apologize,” Lina rushed to say. Her voice was much quieter than she had expected. “I simply... there was no one to meet me at the door and no—”
“Speak no more.” Mr. Blackstone’s voice was no louder than her own, but it commanded such authority that it quashed Lina’s and sent a stab of fear through her chest. “Mongrave.”
Lina squinted, confused, and then started, taking a small jump backward as a figure in tails stepped into the circle of light. He was an old man, with a stern face that revealed nothing of his thoughts, and he looked every bit the butler.
“Shall escort you to your quarters. We will begin tomorrow.”
The butler, if that was what he was, extended his hand in the direction of the stairs, and then proceeded to walk in that direction, producing from seemingly nowhere a gas lamp which he carried with him as he walked.
Theirs to Train: A Victorian Menage Romance Page 6
