by CE Murphy
“Our Rosa is very like you,” Mrs Dover said in triumph. “Though I should say she is a gentle and happy soul rather than a simple one. I should like to say that of you, too, Mr Webber, for I feel you have depths that go unplumbed.”
“There is nothing to suggest that a deep and intricate soul is more worthy than a light and forthright one,” Elsabeth objected, and chose not to look at Mr Archer while she spoke. “Indeed, the gift of accepting the world for what it is, without judging or disapproving, is far more worthy than seeking out reasons to be offended by it.”
Mrs Dover, squinting between Elsabeth and Mr Archer, replied, “Quite,” in as thoughtful a tone as she had at her disposal. The very next moment, she rose, proclaiming, “We must be going. We are in your debt, Mr Webber; I cannot thank you enough for your solicitous care of our Rosamund. I am sure she will be able to return to us in a week or so”—a phrase which Elsabeth saw caused Miss Webber’s face to pale—“and until then, I hope we may have some chance of seeing you again. Girls, we will go to the village before returning home, for I believe you have some intention of—”
“Yes!” Leopoldina cried as she stood. “I promised you a ball, Mr Webber, in return for the one you so kindly hosted here. We shall have one as soon as Rosamund is well enough, and this time, there shall be no shortage of gentlemen, our good friend Colonel White has returned and all his officers will attend. You will find yourself fighting for Rosamund’s attentions, Mr Webber! You had best secure them while you can!”
Elsabeth, mortified, could do no more than hurry her family toward their waiting carriage, though it was with some relief that she glanced back once and saw consideration writ on Webber’s brow, even if Archer and the others looked as appalled as Elsa herself felt. In Elsabeth’s ear, though, Mrs Dover chattered, “I believe that went as well as it ever could have. So well done, Dina! You could not have done better than to press Mr Webber on the topic of both ball and Rosamund, though I dare say he is already quite taken with her. Why, if we are fortunate, he will have asked for her hand before the ball is even held! Elsabeth, perhaps you will come with us to the village—”
“I will not,” Elsa said with too-emphatic horror. “I must tend to Rosa, Mamma; you know that. I will send daily missives to keep you abreast of her health, but I think it is best you stay away for the next several days. After all, we would not want to distract Mr Webber’s attentions from Rosa in any way, would we?”
An approving smile blossomed across Mrs Dover’s pretty face. “Indeed, you are right, Elsa. Very well, girls, let us hasten to town and then home again to tell your father all the news. I’m sure he is eager to hear all about Rosamund’s prospects.”
“Rosamund’s prospects are quite in hand,” Dina said with a sniff. “It is our own that we should be worried about now, Mamma. You would think we were quite invisible, for all the attention we are paid by the officers. Why, perhaps we are invisible! Elsa, can you see me?” Winking with mischief, Leopoldina raised her hands as she stepped toward the carriage, and a whisk of dust-heavy wind spun around her skirts.
Elsabeth seized her hand and propelled her bodily into the carriage, then stood upon the footstep to hiss, “Do not risk such foolishness, Dina! Never mind your own happiness: Rosa’s, and perhaps the fortunes of our entire family, depend on discretion! You are not invisible!” Shaking with passion, she stood back to gaze in frustrated sympathy at her youngest sister, toward whom she felt a slow softening. She was a pretty girl, was Leopoldina. More open and fresh-faced than Rosamund’s quiet and beautiful reserve, she chafed more than any of them save perhaps Elsa herself at the constraints they had to observe.
More gently this time, Elsabeth repeated, “You are not invisible, Dina. Indeed, you are quite one of the loveliest creatures I have ever seen, and you are barely fifteen. In time, you will catch the eye of a handsome officer. Try not to be impatient, my sweet.”
“But I don’t want to wait,” Dina said in desperation. “We always have to wait, Elsa. We have to wait for everything!”
Unspoken went the acknowledgment that the one thing these two sisters wanted most deeply was the one thing for which they would wait forever. Elsabeth sighed and squeezed Dina’s hand, then stepped back to see Tildy looking between them with a longing that said she, too, shared their frustration at what they could not do. Perhaps it was easier for Rosamund and Ruth; the one seemed happy enough without using her magic, and the other disapproved of it entirely.
“We will not always have to wait,” Elsabeth said, and, knowing it to be an empty promise, sent her sisters and mother away.
(13)
We will not always have to wait was a phrase taken perhaps too much to heart by the youngest Dover girl. Leopoldina clasped Tildy’s hand as they drove to town with their mother, whose happy commentary about Rosamund’s health and future was the stuff to which Dina would usually be most attentive. Today, though, as dust kicked up from the horses’ heels and clouded the blue sky above, and Elsa’s words rang in her mind, Dina could not listen to their mother. It was not that Rosamund’s fate was trivial: indeed, it was critical to them all. But it was Rosa’s fate, not Dina’s own, and her own seemed so long delayed.
Dina could not remember being unready to start her own life, being unready to have a husband instead of a father; being unready to command her own household instead of following the law of her mother’s. She was no fool, despite what Papa thought. To live as she wished, she needed a husband, and moreover, needed one who did not much care about social standing or, indeed, her activities. She did not want to flaunt her magic; Papa did not flaunt his. It remained within the household, warming tea and drying clothes. But she wanted to use it, and Society be damned. Dina blushed to even think the bold words, but there it was: Society be damned! She would sail to America if she had to: surely, on the frontier, even a woman’s magic would be welcomed against the known power of the native savages. But she needed a husband, or an income, and neither were to be found.
Tildy sneezed twice and fanned a hand in front of her face, miserable with dust crusting her cheeks. Dina squeezed her fingers and spread her other hand, low, where Mamma could not see what she was doing. Wind was so quick to respond; it always had been. A signal, Papa said, of Leopoldina’s flighty nature. Perhaps it was true, but it was a stance which discounted both the strength of the wind and its delicacy. It took so little effort to guide it around the carriage, yellow dust sweeping past them on either side and mixing together behind them again. No one could see that magic was at work, or so Dina told herself: from above, it still appeared that heels and wheels kicked up dust, and that the swift passage of the carriage left it behind. Matilda took a sudden deep and grateful breath, her lungs clear again, and squeezed Dina’s hand in return.
Mamma, rattling on as surely as did the carriage wheels, noticed not a thing. Their driver, a rather handsome fellow with sandy hair and brown eyes, did; he glanced back without expression to meet Dina’s gaze, then returned his attention to the road where it belonged.
Satisfaction rose in Leopoldina’s chest. It was not a secret amongst the servants, of course, that the Dovers had magic. It had not been since they had fled London two years before Dina’s birth; some of the servants had come with them, and those who had joined them in the years since had been carefully chosen not by Mrs Dover but by the other staff, who had gradually sought out those who would not be afraid of or betray the Dover secret.
No one of quality could doubt that their household servants could destroy them, should they be of a mind to do so, though few on either side of the stairs ever considered it. A servant who ruined the family she worked for would never work again; a family with secrets to keep had to trust that their staff would not wish to break that trust. The unspoken choice of the Dover family was to ease their servants’ way as much as possible in order to assure that trust remained in place: Elsabeth’s mud-drenched skirts usually went to the laundry suspiciously clean by comparison to when she’d removed them; nev
er once did Dover servants have to bathe in icy water. Coach drivers were protected from swirling dust on the road; on and on it went, a secret agreement to achieve a quiet life.
Leopoldina Dover did not want a quiet life. She studied the approving coachman’s shoulders, thought of the scandal and held Tildy’s hand so that she would not do anything ruinous for her family. It was therefore Tildy who straightened with a squeal and pointed ahead as they approached the town’s edge: red-coated soldiers made bright splashes against the morning sky, standing out amongst the black-clad gentlemen and the pastel-coloured ladies. “Mamma! Mamma!” Tildy cried. “Oh, we are fortunate today! Perhaps we shall meet an officer or two!”
Mrs Dover, smiling beneficently, did not deign to turn and look, but rather admired the soldiers as they sailed past in their coach. “Oh, my,” she said with a satisfied sigh. “A uniformed man always could catch my eye, and I dare say I caught the eye of a few myself, in my day. No longer, of course; I am too old now, although I find I am not too old to admire them still.”
Tildy, rashly, wondered, “If you so fancied the officers, why did you marry Papa, then, Mamma?”
“I admired his shoulders, too,” Mrs Dover said tartly. “Now, girls, I must find new lace for our dresses for the ball. You may stay outside, if you wish, but I expect you to behave decorously.” She signaled the coachman to stop and accepted his assistance in disembarking, as did Tildy; Dina met his brown-eyed gaze for too long and with too warm a smile as he presented his hand for her own departure. A flutter of excitement made her smile even more, and when he released her hand, Dina felt its warm pressure for long moments after he returned to his seat.
He was forgotten, though, as a regiment of soldiers strode by in step, much to the admiration of not only the Dover girls but a wide assortment of other young women gathered along the edges of the street. Among them was Sophia Enton, Elsabeth’s particular friend. Dina seized Tildy’s hand and together they hurried to join Miss Enton, who smiled and embraced them. “I have heard Rosamund is unwell. Is it true? Does she recover?”
“She recovers at Newsbury Manor,” Dina reported with a triumphant note much like her mother’s, knowing that this news would not be received gladly by Mrs Enton. “Do you not think the soldiers are very fine?”
Miss Enton glanced toward the marching regiment. “They are very brightly coloured, and I suppose they are terribly warm in wool under this sun. Perhaps, if Rosa is much improved, I might call upon Miss Webber and see Elsa, who I am sure would like news of town. The regiment’s arrival, and all.”
“Oh, not today. Perhaps tomorrow, but you must visit Mamma first and see what letters she has had from Elsa regarding Rosa’s health. Oh, Tildy, look at them. Officer! Oh, Officer! Welcome to Bodton! We are most pleased to have you!” Dina put herself forward with a bob and a wave, but not one officer in the lot stopped his forward gaze.
“Tsk, Dina,” Miss Enton murmured. “You know they are not meant to look aside at the young ladies while they march. Do not put yourself about so.”
“You sound far too much like my sisters. I mean to be noticed, and so I shall be. Will we not, Tildy?”
“What? Yes, of course we shall. We shall? How?”
“Leopoldina.” Sophia Enton caught Dina’s arm, arresting her forward motion before it began. “Do nothing foolish, Dina. Not with Rosamund’s happiness in the balance.”
“What about my own?!” Dina threw Miss Enton off with an unexpected violence, anger flushing her cheeks and raising a wildness in her breast. “Why must it always be her happiness, simply because she is the beauty of the family? Why can I not think of mine? I will not go unseen! I will not!” Released from Sophia’s grip, Leopoldina dashed ahead of the regiment to mount the arching stone bridge that spanned the Bodton river. It seemed a very high point indeed, suddenly, all of Bodton town spread around with only the church’s steeple rising very far above her. Like so much else, the bridge was riddled with dust, yellow threads outlining the spaces between cobbled stones and building up along the sides where no feet fell. She had felt invisible in the dust; well, then, she would wash it away.
The river did not respond as easily to her as wind did; her heart strained and beat too hard with the effort, stars dancing violet in her eyes as the soldiers approached. Waters grew choppy, burgeoning waves slapping against the bridge’s stone walls. Above, the blue sky darkened to grey, winds whipping around until Dina’s light walking dress felt a prison wrapped around her body. She would be noticed. She would pursue her own happiness. She would pay the cost, whatever it was. It could not be worse than the interminable waiting.
The soldiers came on, striding toward her as though she was not even there. Beyond them, standing as sparks of paleness beyond their red coats, stood Sophia Enton and Matilda, who leaned into the roaring wind and held her fists clenched as though she could stop Dina by will alone. The will, though, was Dina’s; no one in the family imagined that Tildy did anything other than follow Leopoldina’s lead.
Water roared from the river, a sudden swell that seized Dina and tore her from her stance on the bridge. A scream ripped from her throat as she flew against the bridge wall then in a dizzying tumble, over it and into water both shockingly cold and dreadfully deep. Her breath was gone with the scream; her lungs, when she tried to draw more air in, filled with water that tasted fresh and clean and frightening. A current seized her skirts, drawing her down deeply as if she were Hamlet’s Ophelia, and a terrible truth awakened in Dina’s heart: that her desire to be noticed had brought her to her doom. She fought the current, struggling upward, only to feel her skirts catch on some murderous weight at the river’s bottom. It pulled her down, unwilling to relinquish her. Sunlight glinted above, a bright glittering promise that she would never reach.
A shadow passed between her and the light: Death itself, given form by a frantic imagination. She could not sob, not this deep in the water, not with her chest already filled to aching with the river’s pounding strength. Tildy: Tildy would be destroyed by Dina’s death. And Rosamund; oh, God, they must not tell Rosamund until she had regained her strength after this illness. How could she have been so selfish, so foolish—
A hand seized her wrist, and powerful strokes dragged her upward. Even in the rushing current, Dina felt her skirt tear, releasing her from the river’s greedy grasp. Moments later, she was flung upon the bank and strong hands crashed against her back, expelling the water that had gathered in her lungs. She coughed and spat, tears streaming from her eyes, and when she could draw in a trustworthy breath, she turned, searching in astonishment for her saviour.
A gasping paragon of male handsomeness lay beside her, his golden head framed by sunlight that made him seem an angel indeed. His red coat had been stripped away, leaving him in white cotton soaked through and clinging in a most becoming fashion to the strong lines of his torso. “Thank God,” he said as Dina’s eyes opened. “I had feared you lost. I must introduce myself. I am Captain David Hartnell, and I believe your life now belongs to me.”
(14)
Whilst Leopoldina lay trembling in Captain Hartnell’s embrace, Rosamund rose from her bed with a healthy colour in her cheeks for the first time in days. She was not well; that was too much to be said, but she was able, with Elsabeth’s arm to lean upon, to drift gently down the stairs and to sit a little while beside the fire in the drawing room. There, Mr Webber paid her all the tender attentions she might hope for, and even as he read to her, fetched her tea and wrapped her shoulders in a stole to help keep warm, she was able to watch a curious game played out by Miss Webber, with Mr Archer and her own sister Elsabeth the other two unwilling participants.
Mr Archer sat at a writing-desk in the bay window, his posture impeccable as he sketched lines across fine white paper. Elsabeth, absorbed in a book, sat nearer the fire and Rosamund; her back was three-quarters turned to Archer and she had no evident awareness of his presence. Miss Webber, however, sat with full view of the both of them, and perhaps sa
w what Rosamund, in her own kind-hearted way, observed: that Archer and Elsa were a fine match in physicality, both with dark hair and straight noses; both with a line of conviction to their eyebrows and jaws, as if the one was the reflection of the other. They were, to Rosa’s eyes, a study in opposites for their clothing: Archer wore black that must be very warm in the window’s sunshine. His skin absorbed that kind light until it seemed burnished gold beneath its darkness, and his cravat stood as fiercely starched and pressed as it might be for the most formal of dinners. Elsabeth, in contrast, looked a picture of softness, her white gown dotted with tiny yellow flowers that Rosamund, largely, had embroidered, as she found more joy in making things pretty than did Elsa. A shawl was thrown around her in Elsa’s absent way, its fall making the most of showing one shoulder in a manner all the more artful for its genuine artlessness; where the sunlight touched her there, her skin reflected it, all the brighter for the sun’s kiss.
Into this still life, Miss Webber, quite suddenly, said, “How quickly you write, Mr Archer. I am sure it is a gift to write so quickly.”
The scratch of Archer’s pen paused momentarily, then began again. “Not at all, Miss Webber. I believe I write somewhat slowly, for I find I must to maintain an elegant penmanship.”
“But you write so attentively,” Miss Webber insisted. “Such long letters to your sweet sister. How I miss her! Do tell her how I miss her, Archer. I hope to see her again very soon; you must tell her that as well. I should never be so good at writing so many letters as you do. You must write very many in the name of business, and I already know how attentive you are to your sister. I was delighted last night to hear you tell of how she has improved at the piano. She was already so very good; I am quite eager to hear her play again. You must tell her that as well.”
