by Jo Beverley
The corridor was quite plain, but even so paintings hung on the wall that she would have liked to study. Then she and Perriam turned into a grander space—the main entrance hall, with a black-and-white tiled floor and yet more paintings on the walls. There were weapons too. The swords and pikes were decoratively arranged but probably real. She looked higher and saw a ceiling painted with gods and goddesses. Half-naked gods and goddesses!
A rank of doors lined the right-hand side, one open to reveal a richly decorated room with red walls and seating covered with golden damask. The brilliance almost stung her eyes. When Perriam led her toward that door she halted, reluctant to walk on the lush carpet. She’d thoroughly cleaned her shoes, but even so . . .
She had to go forward, had to sit on a gold-upholstered chair. Act as if, act as if . . .
“This is a lovely room,” she said, and thank heavens it didn’t sound as strangled as she feared.
“Grander than anything at Perriam Manor,” he said, “so don’t imagine this is your future. Ah.”
Claris quickly rose to curtsy to the Marchioness of Ashart. How elegantly she moved, and her simple blue gown shrieked expense, even to an ignorant eye.
Claris tried to make her curtsy gracious rather than a nervous servant’s bob but feared she failed.
Lady Ashart came forward, smiling. “Miss Mallow, I’m very pleased to meet you.”
Claris curtsied again, then knew twice was one too many.
Act as if . . .
Act as if . . .
“It’s most kind of you to offer me hospitality, my lady.”
“I’ll enjoy your company, for at the moment I’m trapped with only men apart from my daughter, and she has little conversation. Come upstairs and we can take tea and gossip.”
Claris found herself arm linked and steered briskly out of the room.
“I’m sure you’ve noticed that this is quite an odd house,” Lady Ashart said as they climbed wide stairs. “A drawing room on the ground floor? Ashart’s grandmother arranged it so, for as she grew older she disliked stairs. We are considering how to create a drawing room upstairs.”
She too was talking to put Claris at ease, and Claris appreciated that. Her throat felt tight.
“This is the Grand Saloon,” Lady Ashart said as they passed through an elaborate arch into a high, central space illuminated by a glass dome and hung all around with large portraits.
“It certainly is very grand,” Claris said, managing not to look up, up, up.
“It was called the Royal Saloon, for a banquet was held here once for a monarch and many of the portraits are of royalty, but Ashart prefers something a little less elevated.”
A smile shared the joke in that, and Claris managed to smile back. Not royal, merely grand.
She was steered across one corner of the room, through another arch, partway down a corridor, and into a room.
“This is your bedchamber. Your luggage should already be here. Yes, I see it is. This is Alice,” she said, indicating a woman of about thirty, who’d turned from a drawer to curtsy. “She’ll be your maid here. When you’re ready, come down to the third door on your right. That’s my boudoir.”
She left, and Claris didn’t know if she was relieved or abandoned. The maid returned to the unpacking, which meant she’d be seeing the simple state of everything Claris owned, which meant she’d soon be reporting that to the other servants.
There was nothing to be done about it, and this place wasn’t her future, thank heavens. It was far too large and grand.
She took off her gloves, then unpinned her hat and placed it on a gleaming wooden dressing table. She couldn’t resist stroking the fine wood, delighting in the silky feel. Even at the rectory they’d had nothing so fine.
This room alone was as big as the ground floor of the cottage. It contained a tester bed, a settee, and two chairs, all upholstered in green. At least, she thought wryly, her clothing matched.
There was also a toilet stand, complete with a china washbowl and tiny pots. White towels hung on rails on either side, and a screen stood ready to be put around for privacy. She hadn’t considered that problem before, but would the maid expect to see her in undress, perhaps even naked?
She wouldn’t allow that, no matter how inferior it made her seem.
Another piece of furniture was probably a desk, but such a desk! The mellow wood was ornamented with inlays of black, gold, and ivory. A small table sat by the window with a wooden chair tucked in. So she would be expected to eat here. That would be a relief, but it showed how she was considered.
She surveyed the rest of her domain. The floor was of polished wood, with a small carpet on either side of the bed, but richly patterned carpets in jewel-like colors.
Paintings hung on the walls, and ornaments sat on the mantelpiece. One was a ticking clock, its mechanism visible through a glass dome. She longed to inspect it but remembered, act as if. She must stop gawking and do something.
“May I have washing water?” she asked, then wondered if she should have commanded it.
“Of course, ma’am.” The maid curtsied and hurried away.
Alone at last, Claris sank into a chair, blowing out a breath, but when she slid her hand along the upholstered arm, her fingers snagged.
The green damask was silk.
You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear came to mind and brought back the memories she’d resisted earlier.
Before today, the only silk she’d ever touched had been Aunt Clarrie’s silk fichu.
Her mother had treasured the portrait of her dead sister and turned it into a sort of shrine, with several of Aunt Clarrie’s possessions hung around. There’d been ribbons, a perfumed sachet that still held a lingering rose perfume, some invitations, and a lovely silk fichu of fine cream silk embroidered with delicate flowers.
Claris hadn’t been able to resist, and one day she’d taken it down to wrap around her own shoulders.
She’d been birched fiercely for that.
Seeing a fine thread raised from the damask by her rough finger made her understand her mother’s anger. Clearly she should have listened to Athena’s complaints about her hands and accepted the lotions offered to improve them.
When her mother died, her father had buried all Aunt Clarrie’s belongings with her, even the portrait. Claris had desperately wanted to save that silk fichu. . . .
She stood and went to inspect the marvelous clock. She watched the golden parts moving, backward and forward, backward and forward. They had a simple clock in the cottage, encased in wood, its workings hidden. The tall clock in the rectory hall had also kept its secrets.
So many secrets.
The maid returned with a jug of hot water and poured it into the china basin. She uncovered a china pot to reveal soap. Claris washed her hands and face.
She was drying her hands when the maid came over with a pot. “Where should I put this, Miss?”
Claris recognized one of Athena’s pots and took it. Was it . . . ? It was. The hand cream she’d neglected to use. She quickly smoothed a generous amount into her hands. It wouldn’t work an instant miracle, but it gave her hope. Hands could be smoothed, so perhaps a sow’s ear could become a silk purse—that is, a lady suited to be the Honorable Mistress Peregrine Perriam.
Whether that was possible or not, she must cease her delay and face the marchioness. She checked her appearance in the mirror—one without a flyspeck anywhere—and left the room.
She found Lady Ashart seated on a settee reading a book, the tea things in front of her on a table.
“I’m sorry for keeping you waiting,” Claris said.
She’d been resolved not to gawk but couldn’t help looking around in surprise. The marchioness’s boudoir was not at all as she’d expected.
“Unusual, I know,” Lady Ashart said, putting aside her book, “but to my taste. Some see it as too plain, but I receive such people in the drawing room.”
“It’s lovely,” Claris said, and
she was honest. Here, for the first time, she felt comfortable.
The room was little bigger than the kitchen at Lavender Cottage. Even the ceiling was almost as low. It had handsome paneled walls in a honey-colored wood, but the one window was hung with simple blue curtains and the seating was covered in a blue cloth that surely wasn’t silk. The floor was carpeted, but instead of one large piece, there were three smaller, mismatched ones.
“I spent years living either on board one of my father’s ships or in lodgings ashore. I don’t feel comfortable in vast rooms.”
Nor do I, Claris thought, but didn’t admit it.
“Large chambers can be splendid,” Lady Ashart went on, “but I think them impractical for daily living, especially in winter. I had the ceiling here lowered, for in a high room the heat rises. Hot heads and cold feet. Even the king and queen have modest rooms for winter use.”
Claris’s comfort shattered.
She’d moved from marquesses to royalty!
She knew she should say something, but her tongue seemed stuck.
“Sit, do,” Lady Ashart said, indicating a chair. When Claris was settled, her hostess went on, “I wasn’t thinking of comfort when I designed this room. I realized later that I was re-creating a captain’s cabin on board a ship—except that no captain would allow all these ornaments. They’d be tossed around and broken. Which is perhaps why I like them. They represent my settled life.”
It was true that every surface was scattered with something. In addition to china and glass ornaments, Claris saw a number of books, an odd carved wooden statue, a dish of sweetmeats, and some needlework.
Claris forced out some words. “You traveled a great deal, my lady?”
“Constantly.” Lady Ashart opened her tea box and spooned leaves into a china pot. “My mother couldn’t bear to be far from my father.”
“My parents did their best to avoid each other, even within the rectory.” Claris wished her tongue had stayed stuck. “I’ve hardly ever left Old Barford,” she hurried on. “And even then I’ve never gone far.”
“Then you’ll have much to discover.”
“Good and bad.”
“Isn’t there good and bad everywhere?”
Lady Ashart lifted a kettle from the stand where a flame kept it hot and poured steaming water into the pot. Claris was relieved to see that a marchioness’s tea etiquette was similar to the way she’d been trained. One thing she could do right.
Lady Ashart replaced the kettle, put the lid on the pot, and then smiled. “May I call you Claris? I make you free of my name, Genova. I was named for the Italian port where I was born.”
“I was named for an aunt.”
“The one who laid a curse on a Perriam.”
Claris hadn’t expected that to be known, but of course Perriam had told his friends. He’d probably told them everything.
“There are no such things as curses,” she said.
“No? Ashart scoffs at the very idea, but in my travels I came across strange beliefs and the equally strange effects. I saw one sailor sicken and die after being cursed by a kind of priestess on a West Indian island. He’d raped her daughter.”
“Then he deserved it.”
“Ah. The case bears some resemblance to that of your aunt, doesn’t it? However, I thought the sailor died out of belief, fear, and perhaps even guilt.”
“I don’t have the impression that Giles Perriam suffered guilt.”
“No, and yet his innocent wives and children suffered.”
“That had nothing to do with me,” Claris protested.
“Did I seem to accuse? My apologies. I simply find such subjects fascinating.”
“I don’t believe in curses,” Claris reiterated, “and still less that my aunt would have attempted one. She was a gentle, virtuous lady. I’ve seen her well-used prayer book.”
“But you must also have seen the curse, written in her own hand.”
Claris had no answer to that.
“Resolute of her to have attempted it,” Genova said.
“Perhaps,” Claris said, hating to be seen as part of a cursing family, “but the apparent results could have been ill fortune and nothing more.”
“I’m sure you’re right. Do you take milk or cream in your tea?”
“Milk, if you please.”
Claris accepted her cup and saucer and added sugar, which here was presented pounded down to a fine powder. It took little stirring, but Claris lingered over the task, awkwardly unable to think of a thing to say.
Lady Ashart sipped her own tea. “Let’s talk of your wedding. I expect to enjoy assisting you there, and helping you prepare to be mistress of Perriam Manor. But you mustn’t let me harry you if you wish to rest.”
She seemed sincere, and in any case, there was no purpose in pretense.
“I’ll be grateful for any help. I’ve lived simply, even when in the rectory, and I wish to arrive at the manor in as suitable a condition as possible.”
“Excellent! We’ll increase your wardrobe, and of course provide a special gown for your wedding.”
“What I’m wearing will do.”
“It could,” Lady Ashart agreed, “but any lady wishes to have something new for the day.”
“There’s no time to have a new gown made.”
“But time enough to have one altered. You’re shorter than I, but a gown of mine might fit in other respects.”
“I couldn’t take one of your gowns, my lady.”
“Genova, please. I have too many, I assure you.” But then she turned serious. “First assure me that you’re not sacrificing yourself for your brothers. If you need funds to give them a start in life, I will assist you without demands.”
Claris stared. “Why? I’m a stranger to you.”
“We’re women in a man’s world. In my eyes marrying Perriam will be greatly to your benefit, but you may not see it that way.”
She was serious.
She was offering a way out.
Claris was surprised to realize that she didn’t want it. She didn’t want to be anyone’s pensioner, but more than that, she wanted the prize she’d bargained for—comfort, wealth, and to be mistress of a manorial estate.
“I’m not doing it for my brothers,” she said. “I’m not reluctant. Frightened, yes, but not reluctant.”
Genova smiled. “It’s good to be honest with ourselves. More tea?” When Claris accepted, she poured, saying, “I helped him to prepare that basket.”
“Why?”
“Because of his necessity, but also because I saw the advantages for you and your family. However, I told him that I would stand by your side, and if he mistreated you in any way, he would feel my wrath.”
“How?” Claris asked, fascinated.
“I left that unspecified, but I did once shoot a Barbary pirate.” Genova’s eyes twinkled. “That story seems to give all men pause. I gather you attempted much the same.”
Claris put down her cup. “I shudder to think of it! I could have killed him. My wretched temper.”
“It’ll do him no harm to be wary of stirring it.”
Claris considered the other woman, who truly seemed friendly. “Will you teach me about pistols? How to load and fire them?”
“You don’t know?”
“The pistol belonged to my grandmother. She prepared it, but praise heaven didn’t put in a ball.”
“An interesting woman. She sounds somewhat like Ashart’s oldest great-aunt, though Lady Calliope has never traveled. She and her sisters are not from a common mold either. The common mold is so very common, isn’t it? We don’t aspire to it.”
“We don’t?” Claris asked warily. Had the marchioness really meant the two of them?
“We don’t,” Genova said. “Very well, we need a pistol suitable for a lady, and a number of gowns, one suited for a wedding. Let’s move to my dressing room.”
The dressing room was larger than the boudoir and contained two clothes presses, a dressing table, and a
curtained bath. A maid was summoned and gowns taken from drawers. Even the simplest ones frightened Claris with their grandeur, but she wanted their beauty, by heaven she did.
“Blue,” Genova said, holding a gown of blue cloth sprigged with spring flowers in front of Claris. “No, I don’t think so. Pink might suit you, but it’s overly sweet on me, so I have none.”
The maid offered a sage green one.
Genova rejected it. “Far too dull for a bride.”
The maid took a pale dress out of a drawer. “What about this one, then, milady?”
“Too dull,” Genova said again, but when the maid held it in front of Claris, she exclaimed, “How clever you are. It’s perfect!”
Claris had wanted the sky blue scattered with flowers, and even the sage green with its frills and braid, but see, dull suited her. When Genova turned her to the mirror, however, she sucked in a breath.
The gown had ruffles along the hem and quiet embroidery on the bodice, but it was the color that was magical. By some means, the ivory shade made her sun-spoiled complexion look less sallow and her brown hair a little richer.
“With deep pink trimming, perhaps, milady?” the maid suggested.
“The very thing! And truly, Claris, this gown has been hardly worn, for Ashart says it makes me look as if I’m trying to hide. It makes you glow. Undress and put it on and we’ll see what needs to be done.”
Claris was unhooking her bodice when someone rapped on the boudoir door. The maid hurried to respond and returned to say, “Mr. Perriam asks to speak to Miss Mallow, milady.”
Claris hastily refastened herself and went through, her heart thumping. From fear of him? No, she still feared this future being snatched away. She wouldn’t return to Lavender Cottage. She wouldn’t!
“All is well?” he asked.
“Lady Ashart is being most kind.”
“I come to take my farewell . . .”
Her heart thumped harder.
“. . . but also to measure your finger for the ring.”
Claris had to put a hand on the back of a chair.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She straightened. “Yes, of course. Everything is moving so quickly.”
