“They will know you hunger, also, but if it is your wish . . .” Dorcas shrugged and nodded to the footmen, who gathered up the buckets and left.
A maid at the far end of the room took gowns from a linen press and laid them on the bed, and while Jane enjoyed the steaming water, Dorcas and the servant discussed which gown she should wear.
“No, I do not think she has the complexion for that . . . oh, you dirty girl, why did you not clean the blood from this one? He was a very enthusiastic gentleman. I think with the right jewels this might do. Jane?”
Jane, who was scrubbing the back of her neck, alarmed that she had patches of grime detectable only by the Damned, looked up. “Yes?”
“What do you think of this one?” Dorcas held up a gown of shot silk, gold that turned to crimson as she turned it.
“Too ostentatious.”
“This one, then?” A striped green satin.
“Better,” Jane said. “But is not the neck cut a little low?”
“Not at all,” Dorcas said.
“I should wear a lace scarf if you have one.”
“Nonsense. You have a fine bosom. Don’t you think so, Maria?”
“Indeed, yes, ma’am,” the girl said. “We’ll lace you as much as we need to.”
“Very well,” Jane said, resigned to having her bosom presented to the world, or at least to the Damned at Prowtings. She knew they would be more interested in looking at her neck, that portion of the anatomy having more appeal for the Damned than any other female attributes.
Her bath over—she was grateful that Dorcas did not make any comments on the cloudy quality of the water—she dressed with the help of the maid.
“I’m too old for this,” Jane said, regarding her expanse of revealed bosom.
“You know what the cure for that is,” Dorcas said. “I’ll invite a footman back in, if you like.”
“No!”
Dorcas shrugged, amused by Jane’s vehemence. “You’ll do well enough by candlelight. By town standards you’re quite decent, and I’ve seen women twice your age display more bosom.”
“Very true, miss,” the maid said with bored insolence. “Sit down, if you please, and I’ll dress your hair.”
She had the attitude Jane had noticed in London servants of performing their work as an extraordinary favor to those they served.
When Jane sat in front of the mirror, her reflection was still there, to her relief; and despite the immodesty of the gown, she thought she looked well. Not only did the maid dress her hair, but she added a headdress of tall ostrich feathers.
“I feel like a fool,” Jane grumbled. “I’ll have to bend my knees every time I pass through a doorway, and if I can step into the carriage managing the train and the feathers both, it will be a miracle.”
“You’ll do well enough, miss, I daresay,” the maid said with a distinct lack of interest and a toss of her head.
Jane stood and walked across the room, accustoming herself to the drape of the train (she had not worn a gown with a train in some years) and the constriction of her stays, laced far tighter than normal. She glanced in the tall mirror that stood in a corner of the room—Dorcas and the other occupants of the house would have little need for it—and was surprised at her own elegance.
“You need a fan.” Dorcas pressed one into her gloved hand. “There. Now you must speak with William.”
Jane followed Dorcas out of the room and into the parlor, where William and Tom, both in breeches and silk stockings, bowed to her. She saw the admiration in Tom’s gaze and fluttered her fan at him.
“Yes, indeed, you look very fine,” William said. “Pray take this seriously, Jane.”
“I assure you I do. I have as much, or possibly even more at stake in this venture than you.”
He bowed his head. “Indeed. I have always admired you for your courage, Jane, although so often it takes the form of impropriety toward your Creator. Yet I do not think you anticipate the danger to which you subject yourself tonight.”
“Sir, I cannot dwell on possible horrors or misery. It is not in my nature.”
“I have sent a formal letter of introduction this afternoon, announcing your arrival.”
“Why?” She had thought that she would take the letter with her, thus affording her arrival an element of surprise.
“It is the way things are done.”
“Very well.”
“But I have decided to break protocol by arming you.”
“Arming me?” She glanced down at her bosom. “There is scarcely enough fabric to contain my person, let alone a pistol.”
“Not that sort of a weapon.” He reached into his pocket for a small key, with which he unlocked an ivory-inlaid mahogany box on the mantelpiece.
Jane shook her head and took a step away, raising one hand to her breast where her injury burned cold again even though the mark had faded. “I think not, sir.”
He opened the box. “Keep your gloves on; the blade will not harm you. It will be in a leather sheath, and you may slip it into your stays.”
The stone knife glowed gray on its bed of dark velvet. Tom and Dorcas gazed at in silence and then at her.
“I cannot do it, sir,” she said. “It is not the action of a person in good faith.”
“And if they do not act with good faith?”
“It is a risk I must take.”
He closed the box, placed it back on the mantelpiece, and locked it. The sense of unease that Jane shared with Tom and Dorcas ebbed. William said, “I may not be able to help if things go wrong.”
“I know. I shall make sure they do not.”
“I shall follow you—in your mind, that is—for you must go alone. I have asked Raphael, since he is of like condition, to accompany you in the carriage. I hope that is acceptable? He will carry pistols.”
“Thank you.” What William said made sense, in case any of les Sales roamed the countryside, but she had not wished to see Raphael again, or at least be alone with him.
But she draped her train over her arm and took William’s arm and descended the staircase. Footmen sprang forward to open the front door of the house, and armed with only her own wit and nerves, she stepped forward to do battle.
Chapter 14
Raphael held open the carriage door, bowing, and Jane stepped inside, remembering only just in time to bend her head and save her ostrich feathers.
He stepped inside after her, closing the door, the carriage creaking and tilting with his weight.
“Pray say nothing of fine feathers,” Jane said. “I assure you they are a nuisance.”
He sat opposite her and laid a pistol on his knees. “If this were a normal evening, I should compliment you on your looks.”
“You may do so if you wish. I cannot stop you.” Oh, for goodness’ sake, Jane, stop flirting. “But this is hardly a normal evening. Generally a gentleman does not accompany a lady in a carriage with his weapon exposed so.” Worse and worse. “I beg your pardon, I am nervous and given to bawdy talk at such times. It has got me into trouble upon numerous occasions and earned me many a severe scolding from my sister. She says gentlemen do not marry a woman who talks so, yet she, who would not recognize a double entendre if it hit her on the head, remains unmarried still, so . . .” She came to a halt.
He leaned forward and laid his gloved hand upon hers. “Come, we shall be friends.”
“Very well,” she said. “But tell me, Raphael, I wonder that you have traveled all this way, at some danger to yourself on a continent at war, and after taking the Cure, to be with William, knowing what his presence and his influence could do.”
“I do not wish to become Damned again, as I have told you, but I wish to be with my brother. After all these years, he is all I have left. But why did he abandon you after creating you?—that is, if you do not mind telling me. It seems unlike him. But I find I must learn my brother’s ways all over again.”
“He had good reasons to do so, for he was charged with the protection
of the Prince of Wales.”
“And little good that did him.” His gaze, which had darted from her face to the darkness outside the carriage, returned to hers. “I am astonished.”
“He wishes to make amends now.” She shrugged. “I know I injure him by my refusal, but I feel I have no choice.”
He looked outside again. “Every day I pray it will not happen, yet I fear my metamorphosis is inevitable.”
“I, too, and this is why I have made a bargain with William.”
“And yet he has arranged for us to be alone in a dark carriage.”
“I know. And we are both in a celibate state, but I am sure we can resist temptation for this very short ride.”
He held up a hand and shifted to the other side of the carriage, snuffing the air, then shook his head and returned to his former position. “I thought . . . it is a good thing I am charged with your protection, for it keeps me occupied.”
“I shall ask you something, and you need not reply unless you wish to. You and I have both been celibate for some years—at least I presume you have been so, although I have been led to believe that life in a closed order is extraordinarily depraved—but if we met under different circumstances, without the curse of Damnation hanging over our heads, what then?”
He was silent for a while. “I would say you are one of the most witty and handsome women of my acquaintance, ma’am. I should be a fool not to pursue you.”
“We are almost here, I believe. I can see the lights of the house. I barely have time to smack you with my fan and cry ‘Fie upon you, sir,’ or some such.” She hesitated. “In truth, I believe I would put up little resistance. It is a great pity.”
“It is, but I believe your affections are bound elsewhere.”
Before she could respond, the carriage came to a halt. A footman emerged from the house to open the door of the carriage and lower the steps.
Jane ducked her head in time to preserve her headdress, gathered her train, and stepped down. She raised her head and walked toward the front door, held open by another footman, and into the house. It was an old-fashioned sort of place, ancient, expanded and improved by many generations, and she stepped into a flagstone hall that was similar to that at the Great House, but here dark oak panels reflected the light from a candelabra. The door shut quietly behind her as she heard the coachman click his tongue and the crunch of hooves and wheels on gravel from outside.
She was alone in the stillness of the house, a place she had previously considered friendly and welcoming, and that she had visited many times before. But now, standing in near darkness with the candles casting flickering light, the house breathed danger and hidden threats. The footman who admitted her to the house had disappeared, melted away into the shadows as easily as his masters.
It was a deliberate ploy to intimidate her, to keep her waiting in the dark, and almost certainly she was observed. She feigned a yawn and unfurled her fan. She admired as best she could in the dim light an elaborate painted mythical scene, the sticks and handle of gilded ivory, and wondered if it was of French origin, while willing herself to be calm and untroubled. What was worse even than being observed was the possibility that her thoughts and emotions were similarly open to view, and she was certainly going to give away as little as she could.
At last, footsteps, and she quenched as best she could the joy and desire that washed over her. He was close to her in the darkness, as he had been so many times before, and she reached out her hands before she could stop herself. A slight movement of cool air indicated his hesitation, and then her gloved hands were in his—no vivid thrill at the slide of bare skin, but eloquent and strong enough to intensify all she could hear and feel. The fan, hanging by its silk thread from her wrist, swung back against her skirts, and the feathers atop her head bobbed with her movements. Now she was aware of his form in the darkness and his beloved scent, but a jolt of pain in her canines and the sharpness against her lip reminded her once more of the danger of being with the Damned.
She loosened her hands from his and stepped back to make a curtsy. “I trust I find you well, Mr. Venning.”
“Tolerably, ma’am. Come. The others are waiting for you.”
“They send you to do their bidding?” she said as she walked beside him in the darkness, her hand laid on his arm.
“I am new to the household.”
“Or they think you will dazzle me with your presence and charm me to a state where I will agree to anything.”
“Oh, of course. That also.” His answer matched hers in irony.
Once they had been well matched indeed, and her whole being, the mortal Jane and the vestiges of her existence as one of the Damned, yearned for him. Would it be the same if she had yielded to Raphael?
Beside her, Luke drew in a sharp breath.
He had been eavesdropping on her mind. “Jealous, sir?”
“I did not realize you contemplated taking him as a lover.”
“I did not realize it was any of your business, sir.” A door opened into a room crowded with wax candles (the thrifty spinster in her was appalled at the expense) where the other inhabitants of the house, Duval, Margaret, Clarissa, and a handful of others she remembered from the evening at the Great House, stood in a semicircle.
Duval walked forward and bowed.
She dropped into the deep curtsy she had practiced, holding the pose at some discomfort to her thigh muscles, and wondered, for an idiotic moment, if she and Duval were to remain frozen in a competition of manners, waiting to see who would yield first. But he straightened, and so did she.
“We are most honored by your attendance, Miss Austen.”
She bowed her head.
“Let us be seated,” Duval said and gestured to the large oval mahogany table that stood in the center of the room. A footman stepped forward to draw a chair out for Jane.
The table held three sets of candelabra and a footed china stand on which was heaped a pile of hothouse fruits—grapes, figs, nectarines, peaches, and pineapples—more for decoration than anything else, for if anyone were to pick a fruit, doubtless the whole edifice would collapse. The highly polished surface of the table held a reflection of the fruit arrangement and candles as though they stood on water.
Duval took a seat on the opposite side of the table, flanked by Margaret on one side and Clarissa and Luke on the other. Another footman approached with a tray holding a decanter and glasses, which he placed on the table at Duval’s hand.
“Some wine, Miss Austen?”
“Thank you, sir.” She was surprised that the wine was white, knowing the preference of the Damned was for red, and grateful that this way she would not become intoxicated if blood had been added.
Duval gave a small smile. Jane attempted to overhear his thoughts—for almost certainly he had intruded upon hers—but caught nothing. This would not do. “Before we begin, sir, may I request that none of you attempt to listen to my thoughts?”
“Of course. Is there anything else, Miss Austen?”
“Yes, sir. That we put aside all hurts and injuries between us and discuss this matter like rational beings. Doubtless you know, sir, that I was once the Consort of Luke and a friend to Clarissa; furthermore, that it was my decision to banish Margaret after she betrayed me to the French.”
“That is all past,” Duval said. “As for Margaret’s banishment, I can only be grateful, for that is what brought her to my household.” He took Margaret’s hand as he spoke and raised it to his lips.
“May I suggest also, Miss Austen,” Duval said, “that you do not let my association with Miss Anna influence you.”
Jane took a sip of wine to cover her anger at Duval’s arrogance. Anna’s association with Duval could lead only to ruin or Damnation; there was no happier outcome, at least not for Anna.
My dear Jane, do not give him the upper hand so soon. He diverts you from the real reason for this meeting; he wishes emotions to sway your reason.
Luke! Well, she had asked Duval
not to stray into her thoughts, and apparently he kept his word, for she did not think Luke would express himself so openly otherwise, but what of Margaret and Clarissa?
Do not concern yourself. Clarissa is your friend, still, but neither she nor Margaret hears us.
Jane smiled. “I assure you, Duval, Anna is a silly flirt who figures very little in the larger scheme of things, and I am sure you will tire of her before long. I have quite washed my hands of the girl. She is disobedient, and I long to return her to her father.”
Duval poured a little more wine into Jane’s glass. “So, Miss Austen, what is it that you wish of me?”
Slowly, Jane. Don’t stab him right away. Feint a little. Flirt if you wish.
It was Luke who had taught her to fight. “Pray, address me as Jane. Once, I was one of you. I fought side by side with your present companions.”
“You did, ma’am, and I honor you for it.” Duval raised his glass.
“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; / For he to-day that sheds his blood with me / Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, / This day shall gentle his condition.” Jane saw the look of recognition on their faces as she quoted the words. Had they attended a performance at Shakespeare’s own theater?
“Ah, yes. We fought against the French at Agincourt, too,” Luke said. “You were there, Duval, I believe.”
“You enjoy the theater, Miss Austen?”
He’s trying to divert you. Don’t let him. He can see where this is going.
“Very much, sir. It is my great regret, however, that one of our band of brothers has behaved in a way unbefitting his rank.”
Duval laughed. “We were princes when the Hapsburgs were grubbing in the dirt with their swine.”
“I daresay, sir, but he is the one with the gilded palace now. And the debts to prove it. He wishes to forget those who saved his head and his throne, but others, like the people in this village, do not. They know what the Damned did. They remember and tell the tales around the hearth, father to son, mother to daughter. They shall not forget.”
Jane Austen: Blood Persuasion Page 14
