“When can we expect the Duke?” he asked.
“Before midnight, I am sure,” replied the Comte.
“Have you spoken to him?”
“Crabbé has spoken to him,” said the Contessa. “There is no reason for anyone else to do so. It would only confuse things.”
“I know everyone got to the train—the various parties,” added Roger. “The Colonel was collecting the Duke personally, and two of our men—”
“Ours?” asked the Comte.
“From the Ministry,” clarified Roger.
“Ah.”
“They rode ahead to meet him.”
“How thoughtful,” said the Contessa.
“What of your cousin Pamela?” asked Xonck. “And her disenfranchised brat?”
Roger did not reply. Francis Xonck chuckled wickedly.
“And the little Princess?” asked Xonck. “La Nouvelle Marie?”
“She will perform admirably,” said the Contessa.
“Not that she has any idea of her part,” Xonck scoffed. “What of the Prince?”
“Equally in hand,” rasped the Comte. “What of his transport?”
“I am assured it sails to position tonight,” answered Xonck. Miss Temple wondered why he of all people would be the one with information about ships. “The canal has been closed this last week, and has been prepared.”
“And what of the mountains—the Doctor’s scientific marvel?”
“Lorenz seems confident there is no problem,” observed the Contessa. “Apparently it packs away most tidily.”
“What of the … ah … Lord?” asked Roger.
No one answered at once, exchanging subtle glances.
“Mr. Crabbé was curious—” began Roger.
“The Lord is agreeable to everything,” said the Contessa.
“What of the adherents?” asked the Contessa. “Blenheim sent word that they have arrived throughout the day discreetly,” answered Roger, “along with a squadron of Dragoons.”
“We do not need more soldiers—they are a mistake,” said the Comte.
“I agree,” said Xonck. “Yet Crabbé insists—and where government is concerned, we have agreed to follow him.”
The Contessa spoke to Roger across Miss Temple. “Has he any new information about … our departed brother-in-law of Dragoons?”
“He has not—that I know of. Of course we have not recently spoken—”
“Blach insists that it’s settled,” said Xonck.
“The Colonel was poisoned,” snapped the Contessa. “It is not the method of the man the Major wishes to blame—aside from the fact that man assured his employer that he did not do it, when having done so would have meant cash in hand. Moreover, how would he have known when to find his victim in that vulnerable period after undergoing the Process? He would not. That information was known to a select—a very select—few.” She nodded to Xonck’s bandaged arm and scoffed. “Is that the work of an elegant schemer?”
Xonck did not respond.
After a pause, Roger Bascombe cleared his throat and wondered aloud mildly, “Perhaps the Major is overdue for the Process himself.”
“Do you trust Lorenz to have everything aboard?” asked Xonck, to the Comte. “The deadline was severe—the large quantities—”
“Of course,” the Comte replied gruffly.
“As you know,” continued Xonck, “the invitations have been sent.”
“With the wording we agreed upon?” asked the Contessa.
“Of course. Menacing enough to command attendance … but if we do not have the leverage from our harvest in the country—”
“I have no doubts.” The Contessa chuckled. “If Elspeth Poole is with him, Doctor Lorenz will strive mightily.”
“In exchange for her joining him in strenuous effort!” Xonck cackled. “I am sure the transaction appeals to his mathematical mind—sines and tangents and bisected spheres, don’t you know.”
* * *
“And what about our little magpie?” asked Xonck, leaning forward and cocking his head to look into Miss Temple’s face. “Is she worthy of the Process? Is she worthy of a book? Something else entirely? Or perhaps she cannot be swayed?”
“Anyone can be swayed,” said the Comte. Xonck paid no attention, reaching forward to flick one of Miss Temple’s curls.
“Perhaps … something else will happen …” He turned to the Comte. “I’ve read the back of each painting, you know. I know what you’re aiming at—what you were trying with your Asiatic whore.” The Comte said nothing and Xonck laughed, taking the silence as an acknowledgment of his guess. “That is the trick of banding with clever folk, Monsieur le Comte—so many people are not clever, those who are sometimes grow into the habit of assuming no one else will ever divine their minds.”
“That is enough,” said the Contessa. “Celeste has done damage to me, and so—by all our agreements—she is indisputably mine.” She reached up and touched the tip of Miss Temple’s bullet-scar with a finger. “I assure you … no one will be disappointed.”
The coach clattered onto the cobblestone plaza in front of Harschmort House and Miss Temple heard the calls of the driver to his team, pulling them to a halt. The door was opened and she was handed down to a pair of black-liveried footmen, the cobbles cold and hard beneath her feet. Before Miss Temple had scarcely registered where she was—from the second coach she saw the Prince and his party descending, Miss Vandaariff’s expression a shifting series of furtive smiles and frowns—the Comte’s iron grasp directed her toward a knot of figures near the great front entrance. Without any ceremony—and without even a glance to see if the others were following—she was conveyed roughly along, doing her best to avoid a stubbed toe on the uneven stones, only coming to a stop when the Comte acknowledged the greetings of a man and woman stepping out from the larger group (a mixture of servants, black-uniformed soldiers of Macklenburg, and red-coated Dragoons). The man was tall and broad, with grizzled and distressingly thick side whiskers and a balding pate that caught the torchlight and made his entire face seem like a primitive mask. He bowed formally to the Comte. The woman wore a simple dark dress that was nevertheless quite flattering, and her affable face bore the recognizable scars around her eyes. Her hair was brown and plainly curled and gathered behind her head with black ribbon. She nodded at Miss Temple and then smiled up at the Comte.
“Welcome back to Harschmort, Monsieur,” she said. “Lord Vandaariff is in his study.”
The Comte nodded and turned to the man. “Blenheim?”
“Everything as ordered, Monsieur.”
“Attend to the Prince. Mrs. Stearne, please escort Miss Vandaariff to her rooms. Miss Temple here will join you. The Contessa will collect both ladies when it is time.”
The man nodded sharply and the woman bobbed into a curtsey. The Comte drew Miss Temple forward and shoved her in the direction of the door. She looked behind her to see the woman—Mrs. Stearne—dipping again before the Contessa and Miss Vandaariff, rising to kiss each of the younger woman’s cheeks and then take her hand. The Comte released Miss Temple from his grip—his attention turned to the words passing between Xonck, Blach, and Blenheim—as Mrs. Stearne took up her hand, Lydia Vandaariff stepping into place on the woman’s other side. The three of them walked—with four liveried footmen falling in place behind them—into the house.
Miss Temple glanced once at Mrs. Stearne, sure that she had finally located the fourth woman from her first coach ride to Harschmort. This was the pirate, who had undergone the Process in the medical theatre, screaming before the audience dressed in their finery. Mrs. Stearne caught her look and smiled, squeezing Miss Temple’s hand.
* * *
Lydia Vandaariff’s rooms overlooked a massive formal garden in the rear of the house, what Miss Temple assumed was once the prison’s parade ground. The entire idea of living in such a place struck her as morbid, if not ridiculously affected, all the more when the rooms one lived in were so covered in lace as to seem on
e great over-flounced pillow. Lydia immediately retreated to an inner closet with two of her maids to change clothes, muttering at them crossly and tossing her head. Miss Temple was installed on a wide lace-fringed settee. This had served to expose her filthy feet, prompting Mrs. Stearne to call for another maid with a basin and a cloth. The girl knelt and washed Miss Temple’s feet carefully one at a time, drying them on a soft towel. Throughout, Miss Temple remained silent, her thoughts still a-swim at her situation, her heart alternating between anger and despondence. She had committed their path from the front door to Lydia’s apartments to memory as best she could, but with only the barest hope of escape for that way was lined with servants and soldiers, as if the entire mansion had become an armed camp. Miss Temple could not but notice that nowhere around her was a single thing—a nail file, a crystal dish for sweets, a letter opener, a candlestick—she might have snatched up for a weapon.
When the girl had finished, collecting her things and nodding first to Miss Temple and then Mrs. Stearne before backing from the room, the two remained for a moment in silence—or near silence, the hectoring comments of Miss Vandaariff to her maids reaching them despite the distance and closed doors.
“You were in the coach,” Miss Temple said at last. “The pirate.”
“I was.”
“I did not know your name. I have since met Mrs. Marchmoor, and heard others speak of Miss Poole—”
“You must call me Caroline,” said Mrs. Stearne. “Stearne is my husband’s name—my husband is dead and not missed. Of course, I did not know your name either—I knew no one’s name, though I think we each assumed the others were old hands. Perhaps Mrs. Marchmoor was an old hand, but I am sure she was as frightened—and thrilled—as the rest of us.”
“I doubt she would admit it,” replied Miss Temple.
“So do I.” Caroline smiled. “I still do not know how you came to be in our coach—it shows a boldness, to be sure. And what you must have done since … I can only guess how hard it was.”
Miss Temple shrugged.
“Of course.” Caroline nodded. “What choice did you have? Yet, to most people, your path would have been plagued with choice—while to you it seems inexorable—quite like my own. However much our characters may be fixed, they are only revealed to us one test at a time. And so we are here together after all, with perhaps more in common than any of us would care to admit—though only a fool does not admit the truth once it is plain to her.”
The woman’s dress was simpler than Mrs. Marchmoor’s, less ostentatious—less like an actor’s idea of how the wealthy dressed, she realized—and she was pained that her heart’s impulse was to think of her captor kindly (this being rare enough in Miss Temple’s life to be a surprise in itself, captor or no). No doubt the woman had been placed for that very purpose, for a natural sympathy that had somehow survived the Process or could at least be readily counterfeited, to worm Miss Temple’s determination that much further from its sticking place.
“I watched you,” she said accusingly, “in the theatre … you were … shrieking—”
“I’m sure I was,” said Caroline. “And yet, perhaps it is most like having a troubling tooth pulled. The act itself is so distressing as to seem in no way justified … and yet, after it is done, the peace of mind … the ease of being—and I speak of a former life of no great difficulty, you understand, merely the fraying worries that are part of every day—I cannot now imagine being without this … well, it is a kind of bliss.”
“Bliss?”
“Perhaps that sounds foolish to you.”
“Not at all—I have seen Mrs. Marchmoor—her sort of—of—spectacle—and I have seen the book—one of your glass books—I have been inside, the sensation, the debauchery—perhaps ‘bliss’ is an applicable word,” said Miss Temple, “though I assure you it is not my choice.”
“You mustn’t judge Mrs. Marchmoor harshly. She does what she must do for her larger purpose. As we all are guided. Even you, Miss Temple. If you have peered into these extraordinary books then you must know.” She gestured toward Miss Vandaariff’s dressing closet. “So many are so tender, hungry, so deeply in need. How much of what you read—or indeed, what you remember—was most singularly rooted in painful loneliness? If a person could rid themselves of such a source of anguish … can you truly find fault?”
“Anguish and loss are part of life,” Miss Temple retorted.
“They are,” Caroline agreed. “And yet … if they need not be?”
Miss Temple tossed her head and bit her lip. “You present kindness … where others … well, they are a nest of vipers. My companions have been killed. I am compelled here by force … I have been and will be violated—as surely as if your finely dressed mob were a gang of Cossacks!”
“I hope that is not the case, truly,” said Caroline. “But if the Process has made anything clear to me, it is that what happens here is only the expression of what you yourself have decided—indeed, what you have asked for.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I do not say it to anger you.” She held up a hand to forestall Miss Temple’s announcement that she was already angry. “Do you think I cannot see the bruises on your pretty neck? Do you imagine I enjoy the sight? I am not a woman who dreams of power or fame, though I know there have been deaths—I do not presume to understand their cause—as a result of those dreams. I know there has been murder, around me and within this house. I know that I do not know what those above me plan. And yet I also know that these dreams—theirs and mine—bring with them … the opposite side of their coin, if you will—a bliss of purpose, of simplicity, and indeed … Celeste … of surrender.”
Miss Temple sniffed sharply and swallowed, determined not to give way. She was not used to hearing her name so freely used and found it unnerving. The woman presented the Cabal’s goals in terms of reason and care—indeed, she seemed a higher level of antagonist altogether for not seeming one at all. The room was unbearable—the lace and the perfumes—so many and so thick—were smothering.
“I would prefer it if you referred to me as Miss Temple,” she said.
“Of course,” said Caroline, with what seemed a gentle, sad sort of smile.
As if by some rotation of the gears of a clock, they no longer spoke, the room settling into silence and subsequently into contemplation. Yet Miss Temple could only think of the oppressive vacuity of the furnishings around her—though she had no doubt they were the heartfelt expression of Miss Vandaariff—and the low ceiling that, despite the luxurious cherry wood, still bespoke confinement. She looked at the walls and decided at least four prison cells had been opened up together for this room alone. Was it inevitable that this luxuriously impersonal lodging was her final refuge as a whole-minded person? As if her burdens had become at once too much to bear, Miss Temple’s tears broke suddenly forward, quite dissolving her face, her small shoulders shaking with emotion, blinking, her pink cheeks heedlessly streaked, her lips quivering. So often in her life, tears were the consequence of some affront or denial, an expression of frustration and a sense of unfairness—when those with power (her father, her governess) might have acceded to her wishes but out of cruelty did not. Now Miss Temple felt that she wept for a world without any such authority at all … and the kind face of Caroline—however much she knew it to represent the interests of her captors—only reinforced how trivial and unanswered her complaints must remain, how insignificant her losses, and how fully removed from love, or if not love, primacy in another’s thoughts, she had become.
She wiped her eyes and cursed her weakness. What had happened she had not already known in her heart to expect? What revelations had challenged her pragmatic, grim determination? Had she not hardened herself to this exact situation—and was not that hardness, that firmness of mind, her only source of hope? Still the tears would not cease, and she covered her face in her hands.
No one touched her, or spoke. She remained bent over—who knew how long?—until her sobbing ea
sed, eyes squeezed shut. She was so frightened, in a way even more than in her deathly struggle with Spragg, for that had been sudden and violent and close and this … they had given her time—so much time—to steep in her dread, to roil in the prospect that her soul—or something, some fundamental element that made Miss Temple who she was—was about to be savagely, relentlessly changed. She had seen Caroline on the stage, limbs pulling against the leather restraints, heard her animal groans of uncomprehending agony. She recalled her own earlier resolve to jump from a window, or provoke some sudden mortal punishment, but when she looked up and saw Caroline waiting for her with a tender patience, she understood that no such rash gesture would be allowed. Standing next to Caroline were Miss Vandaariff and her maids. The young woman was dressed in two white silk robes, the outer—without sleeves—bordered at the collar and the hem with a line of embroidered green circles. Her feet were bare and she wore a small eye-mask of densely laid white feathers. Her hair had been painstakingly worked into rows of sausage curls to either side of her head and gathered behind—rather like Miss Temple’s own. Miss Vandaariff smiled conspiratorially and then put a hand over her mouth to mask an outright giggle.
Caroline turned to the maids. “Miss Temple can change here.”
The two maids stepped forward and for the first time Miss Temple saw another set of robes draped over their arms.
Caroline walked between them, black feathered mask across her eyes, holding hands with each, the three followed by another trio of black-coated Macklenburg troopers with echoing black boots. The marble floor of the corridor—the same great corridor of mirrors—was cold against Miss Temple’s still bare feet. She’d been stripped to her own silk pants and bodice and, as before, given first the short transparent robe, then the longer robe without sleeves, and finally the white feathered mask—all the time aware of the eyes of Miss Vandaariff and Caroline frankly studying her.
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