“Eunice Maggot? Heavens, no! She’s an old maid.”
“It’s Baggot, dear.”
“I don’t care a fig for her whether she’s a Maggot or a Baggot, and, I daresay, she’s even duller than you are. Why, she leaves the house even less frequently than you do; furthermore, she laughs like a dying cat.”
“What a catty thing to say.” Emma gave vent to the yawn she’d been stifling this last half hour. Perhaps Milli was right and she had toured the streets of London in her sleep, for she was ineffably and inexplicably tired this morning. To say nothing of her dirty feet.
“Now what are you doing?” Milli glared at her sister as Emma seated herself by the window that fronted Milk street.
“I thought I might sketch the prospect.”
“Again? No, I have a better idea!”
“Surprise me,” Emma muttered, sharpening her pen.
Milli jumped up from the divan and clapped her hands together excitedly. “Had we not better go outside and enjoy the city instead of collecting dust like dour spinsters?”
“I am a spinster, lest you forget.”
“Faugh! Now that you no longer insist on wearing those awful spectacles you no longer look like a bluestocking.”
“Before you give voice to further insult, I shall remind you that I have every intention of replacing them.”
“I wish you would not, for your eyes are your best feature and I do hate to see you hide their brilliance behind such thick glass.”
Grey was hardly a brilliant color—not really a color at all and not worth consideration—so Emma dismissed Milli’s flattery, such as it was, and began sketching.
“I wonder that we have had no letter from Victoria,” said her sister.
The edge of Emma’s pen stalled momentarily as memories of Victoria’s brother invaded her mind afresh—that wolfish grin of his was never really far from her thoughts. “Why should you wonder about them at all? It is not as if they are close acquaintances, and we hardly move in the same circles.” And thank goodness for that. “I should think poor Miss Baggot wonders when she will have a letter from you.”
“Hang Eunice!” With a rude sound, Milli flung herself onto the divan. “The maggot girl will have a letter when I have had one from Victoria.”
“I somehow doubt that.”
After grumbling about the injustice of having a tedious older sister, Milli left the room to amuse herself elsewhere.
At one o’clock Emma heard her uncle leave his library. She set her sketchbook aside, stood up, and crept to the parlor door, gnawing her thumbnail. The library door was open and there was no sign of her uncle. Pursing her lips, she marched resolutely to the library and paused at the entrance. The Times lay discarded on a chair, and within its pages she knew she’d find the murder inquest. She knew her uncle preferred she not delve into the vile details, that she preserve her inviolate woman’s ignorance, but she had every right to know what monsters lurked in the darkness; moreover, so far as she knew, most of the victims were fellow inviolate ignorants like herself. To remain naïve was to disarm a woman. But her uncle would only deem her curiosity distasteful, unhealthy, and unseemly in a lady. Best to keep him ignorant of her extracurricular reading; she had much rather not upset his delusions of feminine ignorance if she could help it.
It was with determination, therefore, that she snatched the newspaper up and absconded with it to the parlor. Unfortunately, it seemed she was not long to have the parlor to herself.
“What are you reading?” Milli said around a mouthful of the sugary treat she had filched from the kitchen.
“Shh!” She shot her sister a warning glare.
Milli merely shrugged her shoulders and licked her fingers, unconcerned by her sister’s secretive perusal of the newspaper. Emma hurriedly skimmed her eyes down the columns of the broadsheet, barely glancing at the mundane articles and advertisements while she searched out what she was looking for.
On Sunday a pearl brooch was lost in Vauxhall Gardens…
She read on impatiently, uncaring of whether or not Lady Beresford ever found her poxy brooch.
Governess wanted.—A young person in possession of elegant accomplishments who has lived in that capacity and can be well recommended to take charge of two or three children…well principled and strictly religious…etcetera, etcetera.
Here Emma paused to ruminate, for she had, for some time now, been meditating on the prospect of finding herself a situation of employment. If not to work in a convent then a post as a governess would do well enough.
As to being well principled and strictly religious, she certainly endeavored to be. And her “elegant accomplishments” were not limited to Latin, French, and German, all of which she spoke moderately well; she also had a firm grasp of numbers, could read music, play the harp with some talent, and could sketch tolerably enough. So she doubted not that she could find herself a respectable position with a genteel sort of family, if she so wished.
Milli, she was sure, would one day marry well, but she herself had no prospects, and the thought of becoming a bauble on a man’s arm (not that she was pretty enough for such employment) was out of the question, and being a burden to her parents was anathema to her. There was far less honor in the ignoble dependency of spinsterhood than in seeking to join the proletariat. Something Milli would never understand.
She discreetly scribbled down the High Street address before turning the page; she would reply to the advertisement this very evening. She read on.
“Ah ha!” Emma exclaimed, startling Milli from the Lady’s Magazine. With a flush of contrition, she peeked at the door, lest her uncle or any of his household should notice her unfeminine interest in the macabre. The report read as follows:
The Wood Street Murders.—The Coroner’s Inquest.
Mr. Clutterbuck, the coroner for South-East Middlesex, resumed at eight o’clock this morning the inquiry into the circumstances attending the deaths of Miss Fanny Smith, aged twenty, and her younger sister, Miss Camilla Smith, aged eighteen, whose bodies were found mutilated in Wood Street early on the morning of Sunday last.
Constable Munt, also in attendance, deposed that at three o’clock on Sunday morning, while patrolling Milk Street, he received information as to the discovery of the two deceased. There he noted that the bodies had sustained severe injuries to the chest cavity, the nature of which will, respectfully, not be expounded on in deference to the constitutions of this newspaper’s most esteemed readers and the family of the two deceased. The constable’s report was corroborated by two witnesses, employed at a neighboring slaughter-house, that had summoned him thither. Those witnesses went on to say that they saw no evidence of a weapon of any description laying nearby, nor of their having noticed any persons of interest thereabouts. Dr. Wheatstone was at once sent for and the bodies removed to the mortuary.
This incident is now the third in a series of macabre, unsolved slayings in which each victim was found eviscerated and dispossessed of certain organs. The coroner has ruled the deaths as a result of exsanguination.
The inquiry is ongoing.
Emma carefully folded the newspaper as her bile rose to the fore. Scarcely a moment later she heard the vigorous footfalls of her uncle approaching the parlor, and she hurriedly shoved the paper beneath her skirts.
Her uncle entered the room with an epistle clasped in his hand and upon his face he bore a mischievous grin. “You will never guess what I have here.”
Milli gasped, her eyes brightening. “Tickets to the Full Moon Ball!”
“Even better. I have just this moment received an invitation to dinner.”
Milli suddenly threw her arm over her face and groaned. “Do not tell me we are to dine again at the Stapletons. I cannot bear it.”
“We?” Emma gave a snort. “You begged off the last time, if you will recall.”
“Yes, and I missed out on meeting an Ottoman Prince!”
Their uncle became suddenly very interested in the state of his
cuticles. “Am I now to understand, Milli dear, that you wish not to accompany us?”
“Will Eunice Baggot be there?” Milli had still not removed her arm from across her eyes.
“Decidedly not at this particular dinner party.”
The tricksy look in their uncle’s eyes might have escaped Milli’s notice, but it did not, however, escape Emma’s. Immediately, she guessed the invitation had not come from the Stapletons. The knowledge wrought a strange flutter of premonition in her belly for which Emma could not account. “I have an engagement that night,” she blurted unthinkingly before she could stop herself.
Her uncle looked momentarily taken aback. Then his gaze narrowed over the top of his spectacles as he said, “I have not yet disclosed the contents of the letter, so how can you possibly know which night to avoid, hmm?” Having made his point, he pushed his frames up onto the bridge of his nose and perused the letter. “I daresay you shall both be delighted to know that we are not to dine with the Stapletons Friday next, but with Lord Winterly and his sister.” He lifted his shrewd gaze to Emma, disregarding the happy squealing of his younger niece. “There now, what have you to say to that?” But he promptly lowered his gaze to scan the contents once more, ostensibly indifferent to what she might have to say to that. “It seems our Emma has caught herself an avid admirer.”
After a moment, Emma recovered her composure and settled in her mind that it was not her company Lord Winterly sought, it was the amiable Milli that Victoria wished to see. What else could she think? He had made it known to her that her churlish words had not gone unheard, so there was no other explanation for the invitation other than that Milli was being favored by Victoria and she, Emma, was to be tolerated. The haut ton were not the easiest coterie to infiltrate and, though her uncle was fairly flush in the pockets, he was still considered only merchant class and, therefore, beneath the notice of most, if not all, nobility.
Uncle Haywood pressed his lips together in consternation, regarding Emma’s reaction with obvious disapprobation. “Well, you needn't look so shocked, girl. Your face is pallid. Are you ill?”
Emma cleared her throat awkwardly, not wishing to pique his suspicion. “I am well, but as to the letter, surely we need not go, Uncle.”
“Not go?” He seemed stupefied by the idea.
“No!” cried Milli, shooting Emma a dirty look, “I must go!”
“Ay, we had better go.” Her uncle considered the note again with a bespectacled frown. “Wouldn't wish to insult his lordship, now would we?” With that he made to leave, but halted and looked about the room as if he had forgotten something. “I can’t seem to recall where I left The Times? I thought it was in the library.”
Emma flushed, but it was Milli that answered. “I rolled it up and bludgeoned a fly with it earlier.”
“Well put it back, for pity’s sake.” Uncle Haywood’s mouth flattened. “And next time you feel inclined towards insecticide use the Lady’s Magazine instead.”
When he left, Emma turned a scowl at her sister. “You needn’t have lied for me.”
“Then you ought not to have smuggled it under your skirts like a thief.” She held her hand out and waited till Emma handed The Times over.
“Borrowing is hardly stealing,” said Emma. “I hope you are not making a habit of telling fibs, Milli.”
“Well, if I am then we make a jolly pair—the liar and the thief.”
“Do be serious.”
“I shall be if you stop being so tiresome.” Then Milli hugged The Times to her breast as though she was hugging Victoria herself. “Gads, we have very little time to prepare.”
“Prepare for what?”
“Our gowns and coiffures for the Winterly dinner, of course! There is so much to be done, Emma. How can you be so nonchalant about this?”
“We have a week, you silly creature. At all events, I have already decided on my gown.”
“I insist you wear the red organdy, for it looks very pretty with your dark hair.” Having delivered her edict, Milli flounced from the room with an airy skip, leaving Emma to brood in the parlor.
For what possible reason would a viscount and his blue-blooded sister want to associate with the nieces of a tradesman?
On the eve of the Winterly dinner party, Mr Haywood’s household was fraught with excited energy. It was all, by and large, due to the youngest Miss Rose’s frenetic preparations. But that was nothing to the upheaval that struck the townhouse on the day itself. The ladies maid rushed about the upper rooms as she saw to both her mistress’s needs and the silk-laden young general. Emma watched the madness ensue, twisting her small gold crucifix between her fingers. Her nerves had become ever more taut as this day had approached, now it was time.
Apart from her stays, and the little red sprigs adorning her hair, she had, for the most part, seen to her own toilette and finished above an hour ago. She and her uncle had since been waiting in the drawing room for the other two to join them. In the end—perhaps to vex her sister—Emma had chosen not to wear the red gown of Milli’s choice.
At length the small party was assembled downstairs and the carriage brought around. Emma could not help but admire the elegance of her sister’s gown. It was a light blue silk creation with gold trim at the bodice, hem, and sleeves. Her hair was beautifully curled and lifted into a high chignon that was contained within a golden diadem.
Emma’s ensemble was, by comparison, quite simple; she’d have called it understated, but her sister deemed the word merely a euphemism for boring. She wore a sheer white cotton batiste fabric with red embroidery that was concentrated at the bodice. The sleeves of her gown tapered demurely towards the elbows, but stopped short of reaching them. She wore no more accouterments than the red ribbon woven into her coiffure, her matching silk fan, the long silk gloves, red slippers, and her best red drop earrings to compliment the total effect.
Once her uncle had handed the ladies into the carriage, the feathers of her aunt's turban inciting his hearty sneezing as they tickled his nose, they set out for their dinner engagement at Winterly House on Half Moon Street. Emma had not eaten all day and it was already half past eight o’clock! Very late for a dinner party. The Stapletons always dined before six.
The sun was low in the evening sky, an uncanny sort of filmy cloud diffusing the light into a reddish halo. Emma had read somewhere that the ancients had considered it a bad omen or a sign of change. Hopefully it meant the latter.
The strange fluttering in her belly struck again and grew ever more acute as the conveyance sped steadily westward. All too soon they were on Piccadilly. Not long now and she would have to face him again.
Chapter Eleven
Winterly House
My dear Mary,—The coroner has ruled the nightmares as a result of exsanguination, not gothic romances. I long for the quietude of Little Snoring, where my sleep is in no danger of being assassinated by London terrors. Yours wakefully,
Emma.
Winterly House, unlike its master, was no more intimidating than the rest of the neighboring four story mansions. She almost laughed at herself as she alighted from the carriage, having fancied him residing among gothic buttresses and snarling gargoyles. Instead, it had turned out to be a most benign and stately terraced home of rectangular stone and stucco with a sloping slate roof and chimney stacks fringed by a parapet.
Behind it the evening sky spilled its roses and violets, limning the rooftops in a dying splash of gold. There was a quaint square of garden in the front, now swathed in shadow, and a red Palladian front door, with a semicircular fanlight above it, that stood neatly beside the two large sash-windows of the first floor.
Emma was very soon to find, however, that the gargoyles she’d imagined, though absent from the charming exterior, were in fact waiting within.
The front door opened before the party had reached the stairhead and from within there appeared a bloodless face with dour, black eyes squinting against the early twilight. A butler. He wordlessly admitted t
hem into the dim vestibule. Though tall, he was a stringy creature, his onionskin flesh stretched unnaturally across his skull so that the blue network of veins stuck out in prominent webs. Emma found herself transfixed not by the elegance of their surroundings but by the strange servant who shut the door soundly behind them, his waxen features relaxing visibly beneath the candlelight once the door was closed.
As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, the butler received their pelisses and jackets and handed the articles to a liveried footman who had somehow exhumed himself from the outlying darkness with the stealth of a spider. He was possessed of an equally fearsome grimace better suited to guarding the stonework of an ancient cathedral with its fellow grotesques. The butler hemmed, having caught her staring like a fool, and then proceeded to guide them into the drawing room.
Here the light was far more cheery and the assembled faces—most of whom were strangers—as beautiful as the servants’ had been frightful.
“Good evening,” said Victoria, drifting gracefully towards them. “Welcome. We are delighted to have you for dinner.”
The gentlemen behind her exchanged amused glances whilst the hostess pressed her cheek first to one sister and then the other, whereupon she warmly greeted the Haywoods as though it were not the first time she was meeting them.
Emma’s eyes had briefly met Lord Winterly’s when she entered, but his searing gaze quite overpowered her and she dropped her eyes almost as soon as they locked with his. Instead, she took up the task of appraising the sumptuous furnishings which were undoubtedly splendid, though she did not care for the dark ostentation; it was all carmine velvets, red and gold silk wall coverings, elaborate black hardwood furniture, and a ceiling of ornate gilding. It was all perfectly hideous. The direction of her regard did not, however, mean she was oblivious or invulnerable to her host’s piercing attention, which she felt as palpably as if he were touching her.
Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1) Page 7
