Mad Miss Mimic

by Sarah Henstra

  “Are you boring the ladies again with your pharmaceutical prattle?” he teased the doctors.

  “Oh, mercy, yes. Do make them stop, sir!” Christa said, clasping her hands and casting her eyes heavenward. “Tell us of pirates in the Orient. Or shipwreck!” she breathed.

  “Shipwreck’s a tender subject for you these days, isn’t it, Thornfax?” Dr. Johnstone interjected.

  Mr. Thornfax met the man’s gaze at last. He arched an eyebrow. “’Twasn’t a wreck, exactly. But if you call the loss of a vessel worth fifteen thousand pounds ‘tender,’ then yes, I suppose it is.”

  My sister paled. “Did you lose a ship? Oh, I didn’t mean to make a joke of it.”

  “Not at all, not at all,” Mr. Thornfax assured her. “A chemical explosion at sea. It was the crew I mourned, of course, more than the ship. Some of my finest men.”

  “Nitroglycerin, as I heard it,” said Dr. Johnstone. “What the devil were you doing transporting that stuff after all the reports of its destructiveness? Dewhurst, I hope you weren’t behind it. That compound’s effectiveness on heart patients is still a matter of some debate, you know. Certainly not worth risking human lives in the procurement!”

  My brother-in-law frowned and was about to make a retort when Mr. Thornfax put a hand on his shoulder and said, “I agree, Johnstone. The sacrifices we make for science are not to be treated lightly, nor in casual conversation.

  “Now that is enough of ill fortune!” he continued. “Miss Somerville looks positively parched. I will not rest until I have seen her safely glass in hand.” He offered me his arm and led me away from the two men and my beaming sister.

  We drew many admiring glances as we crossed the room together. I was glad for his suggestion of something to drink. It was a distraction, and I should be able to hum wordless agreement over my glass in response to everything my companion said. But Mr. Thornfax stopped me just short of the punch table and bent his golden head to mine. “You know, Miss Somerville,” he murmured, “it occurred to me just now that I’ve never had the pleasure of hearing your part in a conversation. I thought I had better pry you away from your charming chatterbox of a sister.”

  I leaned away, offering him my most winning smile, but my stomach clenched in alarm.

  “What do you think of the party?” Mr. Thornfax offered, by way of an invitation.

  I stared at his handsome, expectant face and saw no cunning or ill will, no intention to test the affliction of which Daniel had warned him. Yet Christa had ordered me not to stammer or not to speak at all. Frantically I tried to conjure an answer containing none of the syllables that typically tripped me up. As I knew from bitterest experience, though, there were no safe syllables when I was put on the spot. I withdrew my hand from Mr. Thornfax’s elbow and brushed an invisible wrinkle from my skirt.

  He peered into my face. “Are you well, Miss Somerville?”

  Helpless, mute, I shook my head.

  He took my gloved hand in his. “Please do not be uneasy with me. I wish you to be just yourself, you see.” His voice, as I’d noted before on his visits to Hastings, was a most pleasing baritone, all modulated refinement on the surface but suggestive, too, of untapped depth and power. Up close, pitched for my ears alone, it put me in mind of the sound a lion might make when he was choosing not to roar. A tawny purr, in which Mr. Thornfax now said to me, “I believe in seeing things for myself, Miss Somerville. ’Tis the only way to discern fact from fantasy on any subject. Would you not agree?”

  But here? In public? I sensed all eyes upon us. I knew as well as my sister did that everyone at this party had high hopes of a scene, hopes fuelled by vague and fantastical rumours of my madness and uncontrollability. Everyone watched, and everyone probably hoped I would flee Mr. Thornfax, or scream at him, or be sick on his shoes, or sprawl at his feet like poor Hattie.

  “Are you quite all right?” he said again.

  “Quite, sir. But I’m wary of refreshment, lest I should burst my stays!” No hesitation, no stuttering marred my statement.

  Mr. Thornfax blinked.

  “If you could only see the architecture that holds me inside this gown. ’Tis a marvel of modern engineering.” Not a single syllable was out of place.

  Another blink. “You … you sound exactly like Mrs. Dewhurst,” he observed.

  “You flatter me, sir. But do remember that I am much younger than my dear sister. Cleverer too, I daresay, though I’ll thank you not to tell her I said so.”

  He stared, then broke into a laugh and made me a short bow. “Younger and cleverer: noted and committed to memory.” He stepped back and looked me up and down in frank appreciation. “Prettier too, since we are speaking truth for the record. I am a great admirer of your … architecture. And I’m very glad to have met you properly at last!”

  But Mr. Thornfax hadn’t met me, of course. He’d met Mimic.

  FIVE

  Mimic had leapt in to rescue me from trouble. She’d allowed me to adopt my sister’s voice and manners wholesale, so that I could say whatever Christabel would say—or whatever I might imagine her to say—in precisely the way Christabel would have said it.

  When I am particularly uncomfortable or anxious about my stutter, I sometimes fall into mimicry of another person’s voice, and the stuttering disappears. I know not how I perform this mimicry so perfectly, nor why my tongue can untangle itself in other voices but never in my own. Neither do I have perfect control over when, or whom, I imitate. It could be a voice heard long ago, words long forgotten but suddenly recalled somehow and rearranged to suit the occasion. It is this unpredictability that had prompted Christabel, when we were still small girls at Holybourne, to personify my phenomenon and name her “Mimic,” as though my speech were governed by a mischievous devil or evil sprite quite under its own power.

  I was relieved that this time at least Mimic had chosen an imitation that made sense. Christa and I were siblings raised in the same house. It wasn’t impossible our voices should bear a resemblance, even if it was an uncanny one. I was lucky this time. Mimic could just as easily have taken on Bess’s country manners, or the dressmaker’s foreign accent, or the street cant of a nameless beggar I’d passed on the sidewalk without consciously noticing.

  At the refreshment table Mr. Thornfax chose grapes and gooseberries for me, and a little cake with soft cheese. Mimic continued in easy conversation with him, veering only briefly into the voice of a fat woman standing behind us in the queue for the punch bowl and then, luckily, landing on Christa again. A keen glance my way was the only sign that Mr. Thornfax had noticed.

  When we rejoined my sister, though, I had to bite down hard on my tongue to keep her from discovering me. Even if I considered Mimic’s presence a rescue, I knew that Christa would consider it a travesty.

  “Such enthusiasm for charity, even I cannot keep track of it all,” she was saying to a group of ladies. “To some of his urchins he even offers employment if they are well enough. You might see our Hattie about, or young Will at your carriage step. Dr. Dewhurst loves them practically as much as his own little sons!” One of Christabel’s favourite topics in company was her husband’s doctoring of London’s penniless classes. “’Tis a strain on our resources, but what is our purpose on this earth except to ease the suffering of those less fortunate?”

  “Leonora! There you are.” I turned to see my cousin Archibald Mavety, a short, neat man with thinning blond hair and a snub nose. Tonight Archie had dressed with characteristic flamboyance in checked trousers and an orange silk cravat.

  Risking rudeness I turned my back on Christa’s circle and lowered my voice—Mimic’s voice—to introduce him to Mr. Thornfax. Archie quirked his brows at me when he recognized my sister’s way of speaking, but he had the good grace not to comment for the moment.

  “Mr. Francis Thornfax,” he said instead, clasping my companion’s hand. “You are the son of Charles Thornfax, the Lord Rosbury, are you not?”

  “Indeed,” replied Mr. Thornfax wi
th a polite smile.

  Archie grinned at me and narrowed his eyes at Mr. Thornfax. “And are you as stout in your conservatism as that honourable gentleman?”

  Mr. Thornfax’s smile faded a bit. I inched the men away from my sister. Christabel would fly into hysterics if she heard our cousin goading Mr. Thornfax in this way.

  Archie waved his hand. “I am a journalist, sir. ’Tis my professional duty to know who’s who in the House of Lords. Rosbury spoke just this week against the campaign to stop importing opium into England. ‘An economic impossibility,’ he called it. For him ’tis all a question of profits, of supply and demand. For him the thuggish violence, the public menace posed by drug gangs like the Black Glove, doesn’t even signify!”

  “Are you quoting to us from one of your own articles?” Mr. Thornfax said, frowning. Then he glanced at me and his face relaxed. “Mavety, is it? I see you do know your business. But in that case I’m sure you’re already aware that I do not share my father’s politics. Or his companionship, for that matter.” His face wore that easy, open smile again, and it was impossible to say whether the mocking edge in his voice was directed at himself or at my cousin.

  “Are you saying, then, that you would support an opium ban?” Archie persisted. “Even if it meant an end to your profits as an importer?”

  Enough was enough. “Pray excuse us cousins for just a moment, sir,” I said, and marched Archie halfway across the room. “What are you doing? Leave him alone, won’t you? You don’t even know him.”

  “What are you doing?” Archie shot back, poking me playfully in the shoulder. “You should leave Christabel’s voice alone. It doesn’t suit you at all.”

  Mimic pulled forth Christa’s best whine: “Don’t be so cruel, Cousin. I deserve your support if I deserve anyone’s, do I not?”

  Archie gave a theatrical shudder. “Do stop, Leo. It’s absolutely terrifying. Can’t you find a nice Frenchwoman or—I know what! Do Mary Mathilda. How I loved your Welsh accent!”

  Archie was teasing me. He knew I couldn’t call up a voice on purpose like that, not at his convenience or at mine. Mary Mathilda had been my aunt Emmaline’s chambermaid when we were younger. When I was ten years old, staying with my aunt at her Kew estate, my cousin was expelled from Cambridge for something he’d written in the student newspaper. Aunt Emma had invited him to stay for the summer, and I spent many a happy day with Archie riding round in the pony trap, frogging in the pond, and building signal fires in the fields. We even put on plays for Aunt Emma— my role mostly pantomime, of course—using the scripts she’d saved from her time as a stage actress at the Adelphi Theatre. Archie knew all Mimic’s tricks—knew the entire panoply of voices through which I might cycle in the course of an ordinary day of play and adventure.

  I cast a glance round the party, taking in the lace, the jewels, and the high-piled French hairstyles. Nobody was staring at me for the moment. Dr. Johnstone was now seated at a card table, engaged in some heated debate about the rules of the game. Mrs. Fayerweather was laughing at something Mr. Greer had said to her, her broad-brimmed hat flapping so wildly that a nearby gentleman leaned away in alarm. Still dismay seeped through me. It was all very well for Archie to love Mimic: my cousin had early declared his intention never to marry, never to bend to society’s rules. His dream was to travel the world, speaking always in the name of what he called journalistic freedom and truth.

  But Archie was right about me, too. I wasn’t suited to this. I couldn’t possibly bring it off. At best I was a fool in motley, a jester with his bag of amusements, speaking nonsense. At worst I was a madwoman. What I could never hope to be was a lady. My extravagant gown, the paint and powder—I felt as if the mask were slipping, leaving me stripped bare, naked and defenceless as a babe.

  My cousin must have read the plummeting of my spirits on my face, for his own expression softened, and he wrapped a supportive arm about my shoulders. “Oh, go on; you’re fine. No one suspects a thing. But later I demand an audience with Miss Somerville. I’m never sure you’re listening when you’re like this.”

  “I am listening,” I assured him. “Only don’t alienate Mr. Thornfax. He’ll have plenty of other reasons to flee my side soon enough.”

  Archie clucked his tongue. “The sooner the better, in my opinion. Francis Thornfax is a regular pirate! D’you know he scuppered his own ship when they tried to seize his opium in Hong Kong?”

  “I understood it was an accident,” I said primly. Archie Mavety was always in possession of different information than the rest of the world, and he always interpreted the facts in the worst possible light—the better to sell his newspapers, he’d once confessed to me without a hint of shame. The more success he achieved as a reporter, the more I learned to take his wild tales of conspiracy and murder with a grain of salt.

  “Well, ’tis no accident he’s zeroed in on you, Leo. You look positively delectable tonight.” Archie tweaked one of my curls so that it sprang back against my neck. “Is your sister’s plan to have Thornfax propose to you or to swallow you whole? Look there, how the man glares at me for comman-deering you!”

  I made a point of not looking over at Mr. Thornfax. “Stop your pestering, Archibald. You should learn to be happy even when you don’t happen to be the centre of attention.”

  “Careful! That’s the Lady Hastings, not Mrs. Dewhurst,” Archie laughed.

  “Oh, d-d-damn,” I stuttered, and blushed scarlet. He was right. In chiding my cousin, and perhaps in remembering my fond history with him, Mimic had shifted to the regal tones of Aunt Emmaline. I shook my head and dug my nails into my palms, desperate to silence myself.

  “Anyhow, I’ll give you your point: Thornfax takes up too much space in the room for my liking.” Archie sighed and patted my shoulder. “’Tisn’t fair that any man should be that dashing and that rich! Here he comes,” he warned, nodding toward Mr. Thornfax with a good imitation of friendliness.

  By the time Archie left me alone with my suitor again, I’d recovered from Mimic’s lapse.

  “’Tis stuffy in here, don’t you find?” said Mr. Thornfax. His hand was warm upon my elbow. “Mightn’t we escape to fresher air? Your sister suggests the plum court would be pleasant on a mild evening like this.”

  Never too soon to throw us together, is it, Christa? I thought. Still I had to admire Mr. Thornfax’s poise in taking up my sister’s unsubtle hints without betraying any awareness of her overeagerness.

  The courtyard between the main house and Daniel’s consulting rooms was dominated by a solitary, ancient plum tree. The sheltered site had encouraged the tree to an unnatural stature. Tonight its budding branches screened out the moon, throwing a dense thatch of shadow across the cobbles. The yellow square that marked the surgery window seemed very far away, and none of the party noises reached us this far past the kitchens. It was indeed a mild night, but I shivered anyhow at the sudden darkness and silence.

  Mr. Thornfax slipped out of his coat and placed it over my shoulders. I breathed his scent of leather and tobacco, and from under my lashes allowed myself to admire the sculptural hollows between his jaw and the white wing-collar of his shirt.

  “I hope I have not made you uncomfortable with my directness concerning your difficulties with speech,” he said.

  I shook my head. It was all the staring and whispering that made me uncomfortable, all the sympathetic patting of my hand and the exaggerated kindness of tone that made me feel like a leper or an especially slow schoolchild. Mr. Thornfax’s directness was an unprecedented relief.

  “I called on the Lady Hastings last week to discuss the matter. I know it was rash”—he looked at me sidelong, ducking his head in a charming gesture of apology that made me smile—“but I understood from Dr. Dewhurst that I’d need to meet with the countess’s approval in any case, if I’m to have a chance at your hand.”

  “N-now that is d-direct,” I said. Joy fluttered like a flag within me at this forthright statement of his intentions.

&nbs
p; I saw Mr. Thornfax pause, noting how I had stuttered, how my voice had changed—for it was my own voice now, lower and less strident than Christabel’s. Then he continued as if nothing had happened. “If I am direct ’tis nothing compared to your aunt. She was rather short with me, I thought.”

  I bit my lip. Aunt Emmaline had an irritating habit of telling people precisely what was on her mind. And unlike my sister the countess was in no great hurry to see me married. She had herself been married at sixteen and widowed at twenty-five. I’d heard her say she wished she’d had a chance to know herself before knowing a husband. But Aunt Emma knew that my situation was exceptionally difficult, and she’d promised Christabel she wouldn’t stand in the way of a marriage if the man was suitable. “What did she s-say?” I managed.

  “She was of the opinion that there was no point in her bothering to become further acquainted with me until you were sure of me.”

  “Unt-til I was sure of you,” I repeated. Was that a smile tugging at the corners of Mr. Thornfax’s mouth? Was he laughing at me? It was too dark to be certain.

  “Yes. She was quite clear about it. I was bold enough to inquire how such a condition could be ascertained, and she suggested I ask you directly.”

  I felt very warm. Was he about to make a proposal?

  “Are you?” he said, and touched my hand.

  “W-what?”

  “Sure of me.” He was definitely smiling now. I could hear it in his voice.

  Of course I am sure! I wanted to shout. What could Aunt Emma possibly have been thinking? Only look at the man, I wanted to tell her. Francis Thornfax was the delivering angel I’d longed for, the shining knight come at last to my rescue. I’d hardly dared hope that Daniel might be right—that Mr. Thornfax might not mind my deficiencies, that he might be immune to society’s disapproval. And now that I’d heard, from the man himself, this confirmation of his interest in me? The darkness barred me from a clear view of his beautiful face, those guileless blue eyes, and that full, shapely smile— and I was grateful for the darkness. I felt I might say anything, do anything!