Without another word, she pushed herself to her feet and stalked away. When her aunt tried to call her back, Nora ignored her.
“Speaking as a gentleman myself, I can say with some expertise that a smile will draw more admiration than these rumples of your brow, Nono.” Christopher brushed Nora’s forehead as if he could erase the furrows.
She pushed his hand away. “I’d rather not have notice, thank you very much. And don’t call me Nono.” Normally, she didn’t mind her childhood nickname, but tonight, in her—now seemingly eternal—cross temper, it chafed.
He laughed and chucked her under the chin. “I see why Auntie foisted you on me this evening.” He helped her to her seat in their theatre box and took his own seat at her side. “She must need a break from all this gloom. Soon, the Season will be over, and you’ll be turned loose again to run wild by the sea. Perhaps next year, you’ll be ready to take this business seriously.”
“Don’t you dare condescend to me, Christopher. Unless you’ve run off to Gretna Green to marry a housemaid, your Season was no more successful than mine.”
“I think this Season was perfectly successful for both of us, was it not? You have no more wish than I to be caught in the clutches of matrimony. So we’ve staved off the horror for one more year, perhaps.”
Nora rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. Christopher couldn’t possibly fathom how different their circumstances truly were. He had the choice not to ask for the hand of a lady. He was in high demand and had his pick of any of them. When next year’s Season opened, there would be a fresh batch of newly-minted ladies and a run of this year’s remainders trying all the harder to garner his interest and capture his name. He wasn’t yet thirty. With his looks, title, and wealth, he could be as old as forty and still have his pick of marriageable women.
Nora, conversely, would start next Season as a failure, with a reputation for foul temper and a tendency toward embarrassing outbursts. Her prospects would be even bleaker, and she had no other option. Her only role in life was to marry.
Now, she wanted to be wed. But she couldn’t have the man she wanted, so all that was left was to find someone, anyone, of sufficient station who might want her.
At least he was right about the time between. He could carry on with his charmingly roguish ways in London, and she could go home to Kent and be free for a little while longer.
The house lights of the Prince of Wales Theatre dimmed, and the curtain rose, foreclosing any further discussion. As this performance of ‘The Balkan Princess’ got underway, Nora wondered what Aunt Martha had planned for this evening, after she’d so emphatically sent her out for a night at the theatre with her brother. Now that she knew what subterfuges her aunt was capable of, a whole new world of shadows lurked on the edges of this one.
At the intermission, Christopher led her into the lobby. As he maneuvered through the crowd toward the refreshments, pulling her along, he stopped abruptly, and she crashed into his broad back.
“Christopher!” she muttered, but her brother wasn’t listening.
“I say, old bean!” he said to someone she couldn’t yet see. “If I’d known you planned to be here tonight, I wouldn’t have complained so much when Aunt Martha pressed me into service.”
“Hello, Chris,” an American voice said warmly. “It was a last-minute decision.”
William Frazier. In the act of stepping outside her brother’s shadow, Nora froze, her lungs twisting shut. William Frazier stood right there, just beyond the high wall of Christopher’s shoulder.
She hadn’t seen him since the night of Lady Spenhall’s fancy dress ball, when she’d humiliated herself and seen the end of her hope. Three weeks, but the shame and pain was fresh as yesterday.
“And who is this lovely young lady?”
“Lord Christopher Tate, allow me to introduce my friend, Mrs. Caroline Sweeney.”
“My lord,” a sultry female voice said. A female voice. A sultry voice. Attached to a sultry female being introduced by her Mr. Frazier. Nora resolved to stay right where she was, shielded from view by her brother’s large form.
But of course, her uncooperative, oblivious brother yanked her forward, into view. “Mrs. Sweeney. It’s a pleasure. Look, Nora! You remember my friend William Frazier.”
There was small consolation in the look of abject shock that fleeted across Mr. Frazier’s handsome face. He paled, and for just one tiny second, Nora almost thought he felt some pain to see her. Yet the consolation to be found there was small indeed, for at his side was a gloriously beautiful Amazon of a woman, with hair as dark as jet, eyes as blue as sapphires, and lips as red as rubies. Her ample bosom strained against the confines of an emerald-green Worth gown, and she dripped diamonds from her ears, neck, and arms. Nora could scarcely look upon her without shielding her eyes, but she couldn’t turn away.
“Lady Nora,” Mr. Frazier said, softly. “It’s very good to see you. I hope you’ve been well.”
“Mr. Frazier,” was all she could manage to push past her lips.
The dazzling Mrs. Sweeney cleared her throat prettily, and Mr. Frazier remembered his manners. “Lady Nora Tate, please meet Mrs. Caroline Sweeney.”
“Lady Nora.”
“Mrs. Sweeney.”
Then the four stood in awkward silence. Mr. Frazier stared at Nora. Nora tried not to stare at him and instead let her gaze flit around their group. Mrs. Sweeney watched Mr. Frazier. And Christopher’s eyes shifted back and forth between Nora and his friend. His mouth fell open. He was seeing something he hadn’t seen before.
“Well,” he said suddenly. “It’s good to meet you, Mrs. Sweeney. Enjoy the rest of the show—and Will, I’ll ring soon.”
“Please do. Enjoy your evening.” Mr. Frazier looked straight into Nora’s eyes when he added, “It was very good to see you.”
With that Christopher recommenced dragging her through the lobby. He said nothing about his epiphany, whatever it was, and Nora, shaken to her core, kept silent.
She’d thought that she’d found the bottom of her hope that night in Lady’s Spenhall’s rose garden, or again when Aunt Martha had tantalised her with suffrage and then snatched it away, but she’d been wrong. Seeing Mr. Frazier, a man she thought she could love, might already love, with another, much better, woman at his side—that was the last dregs of her hope seeping into the ground.
That night, Nora couldn’t settle into sleep. She threw herself about her bed, beset by a restlessness that had too many causes to attempt to comprehend. She was closed in by the walls with their striped paper, smothered by the linens and the duvet, trapped by the open windows that no breeze moved through. Hot under the covers and unsettled atop them, with a weight squeezing her chest and a fog filling her head, finally she gave up and rose, while the moon was yet bright and high in the clear, quiet sky.
After covering her scant nightgown with a filmy matching peignoir, she eased open the door and tiptoed down the corridor of the silent, sleeping house, down the stairs, to the back, and out into the garden.
The Kensington Rose Club was a façade for Aunt Martha’s political work, but it worked so well as a guise because she was, in fact, an expert gardener, whose roses routinely won prizes. Nora wandered into the centre of the garden, breathing the rich mingled scents, distinct but similar, of dozens of varieties of the flower. She sat on the wooden bench near the reflecting pool at the centre and gazed up at the clear indigo sky. A slight breeze finally stirred the air and made the roses’ natural perfume burst and swirl around her. Her hair, loose and long over her shoulders, lifted lightly as the breeze brushed her cheeks.
Nora detected the barest hint of chill in that kiss of air. Autumn was near at hand. Soon, she would return to Kent and be free of this dreary city and its dour, constant, censorious gaze.
Funny—in the past few weeks, she’d discovered that everything she wanted was, in fact, here in London. A cause to commit herself to—a fight to wage, a place to use her voice. And love, real love, for a ma
n who wanted to hear her thoughts, and who cared enough to see her clearly—as she was, not as he expected her to be. But she couldn’t have either. She’d been shown that they existed, and then told that they were impossible.
So she would return to Kent until next spring, and then she would try again. Perhaps, in the meantime, she would learn the lessons her father and aunt wished her to learn, and she would be more successful next time.
The thought of her success and what it would mean filled her with bleakness. Nora closed her eyes and turned her mind to Mr. William Frazier—not her most recent memory, of her disappointment and jealousy to see him with another woman, but of the night of the ball, when he danced with her, so dashing in his black mask. Before she’d shamed herself. His hands. His smile. His voice. She’d thought she’d seen something, felt something, in him, and in her memory, she could still feel it. A pull between them.
When Nora next opened her eyes, the sky had lightened to grey, and her hair and peignoir were damp with dew; dawn was near. Lest Kate find her bed empty and sound the alarm, Nora hurried back into the house, quietly as she might, up the stairs like an elf.
She stopped dead at the landing, and stared. Directly before her, her aunt’s door was open. New dawn poured in from her bedroom windows and cast the doorway in pale light. Her aunt stood at the threshold, dressed in a lawn nightgown, her still mostly dark hair unfurled over her shoulder.
Mrs. Everham, in a similar gown, her grey hair harnessed into a braid that lay along her spine, stood in the threshold as well. The two women clung together in a passionate embrace.
They were kissing. In the way Nora often imagined kissing Mr. Frazier. Aunt Martha’s hands cupped the sides of her amanuensis’s face. Mrs. Everham’s arms circled Nora’s aunt’s waist. Their mouths moved hungrily together. It was such a close approximation of Nora’s fantasies about Mr. Frazier that her belly did that strange, hot clench that shook her knees.
Nora didn’t understand what her eyes were seeing. Why on earth would Aunt Martha be kissing Mrs. Everham like that? To what purpose? Whatever the reason, it seemed illicit and secret, something they did in the dark of the night, when the house was asleep. Certainly, they’d never touched each other like this in the daylight, not that Nora had seen.
The kiss ended, and the two women touched foreheads and simply rested there.
They hadn’t seen her. She knew she should hurry to her room as quietly as she could, but her feet were fused to the floor, and her eyes would not look away. At last, through a mighty effort of will, and a burgeoning, inexplicable panic, Nora moved her feet and took two steps toward her own room.
The floorboard creaked under her foot. She froze at the sound, startlingly loud in the quiet house, and turned her eyes guiltily back to her aunt’s room. Both women stared at her. Mrs. Everham’s eyes and mouth were a round trio of shocked fear. Aunt Martha’s expression showed every emotion in an inscrutable jumble. Nora still did not understand.
“Go back to bed, little dove,” she said.
“I’m sorry.” Nora ran back to her room and closed the door.
“Kate, if you’re finished, will you leave us, please?”
“Yes, milady, of course.” She set the last pin in Nora’s hair and hurried from the bedroom.
In the mirror, Nora watched her aunt cross the room and sit on a damask chair near the window. She indicated its mate with her open hand. “Come sit, Nora.”
Nora went, and she sat. Three hours had passed since that unsettling scene in the corridor. Both women were now dressed for breakfast. Where Mrs. Everham would also be.
“I’m sorry about earlier, Auntie. I didn’t mean to see.”
“What is it you think you saw, Nora?”
She’d been thinking of little else since, but the only answer she’d come to made no sense to her. “I … I don’t know.”
“Do you remember when I told you that I also know what it is to have one’s life shaped by other people’s demands, when what I would have chosen for myself was something altogether different?”
“Yes.”
“My husband died long before you were born. What do you know of him?”
“I …” Nora knew very little of the man who had been her uncle by marriage. Christopher had been an infant when the Duke of Morevine died, and she hadn’t even been a glimmer of a thought. “He … was very powerful and wealthy.”
“Yes. And?”
“He was much older?”
“Yes, he was. Forty-eight years older than I when we wed. He’d been married twice before, but both wives had died without giving him an heir. I was his last attempt to leave a legacy. And I gave him a son. I did my job. My Edgar died when he was only three, but his father didn’t live to know that grief.” She looked out the window for a long time before she spoke again, and when she did, she kept her eyes on the view beyond the room. “Do you know why my father, your grandfather, the great Earl of Tarrin, a line that stretches back to the Saxons, gave his only daughter in marriage to an old man with a failing heart, Nora?”
Nora could only shake her head. Her throat had twisted itself into a snarl that barely allowed breath, let alone speech.
“Because he caught me in bed with a pretty scullery maid.”
“What? I don’t—Auntie, I don’t understand.”
Aunt Martha turned and faced her, her eyes solemn. “I am attracted to women, Nora. Romantically. I have never in my life been attracted to a man.”
It was the conclusion she’d come to herself, but it made no more sense now than it had when she’d puzzled it out alone. “But that’s not possible.”
“I assure you that it is, little dove.”
“But I’ve heard you say things about men. Bawdy things.”
“Because it is expected, and it makes a shield for me. What I am—that is not expected. Nor is it tolerated. Were it to be known, I would likely be committed to an asylum for the insane. Am I insane, Nora?”
“No! Of course not! But … I don’t … how …” Words failed her—how could she make meaning when there was no sense?
“The how doesn’t matter; nor does the why. Here are the things that matter: I’ve trusted you with this information to explain truthfully what you saw this morning, and because I believe you love me and will keep me safe, even if you can’t understand. Do you love me, Nora? Will you keep my secret and keep me safe? And Sylvia as well?”
“Of course I love you, Auntie. You are dearer to me than myself. Of course I’ll keep your secret.” Nora’s mind reeled. She tried to catch hold of any thought at all in the whirlwind. She grabbed a strange one, and it had the cast of truth about it. “Do you … do you love Mrs. Everham? That way?” The stout, grey-haired, bespectacled Mrs. Everham?
“Yes, I do. Very much. We’ve been in love for fifteen years.”
At long last, one thought settled at the centre of her mind and pulled all the rest into a steady, comprehensible orbit. “And are you happy?”
“I would be happier if I could love her openly, and not send her from my bed each morning before the house wakes, but inside the cage we must live in, yes, I am happy. She gives me joy every day, and I try to do the same for her.”
“Then I’m glad for you. But I still don’t understand how it’s possible.”
“Nor do I. When I was young, I wished fervently to be like the other girls. To be normal. But I have never been, and no amount of wishing or prayer or effort has changed who I am. I know you don’t have the same anomaly that I do, but I think you understand what it is to be different no matter how hard you try not to be. Eventually, you cannot resist your nature.”
“Then … if you understand, why do you insist I do what my father wants?”
“Because it was in my submission that I found my freedom, Nora. When I stopped fighting and gave them what they wanted, when I did my job, I found a way to be me. Even before the duke’s death, I had room to be myself that I hadn’t had before. I want that same for you. I want you to find y
our happiness, dove.”
SIX
William pushed the papers aside and rubbed his hands over his eyes. He was stymied. Building a tunnel under the English Channel seemed so obvious an improvement to him. In fact, there was a protocol in place between England and France for exactly such a project, and in 1881, they’d even begun excavation. But that project had failed, largely due to the same ridiculous, entrenched obstacles William encountered now. They had nothing to do with the potential of the venture and everything to do with distrust. And with the absurd, endemic English devotion to the past.
Atop all the other unreasonable reasons he’d been told no at every turn was his particular obstacle: no one liked the notion of a ‘Yank’ coming into England and proposing they change the way they did things. But he had the technology. His father’s greatest accomplishment wasn’t elevating the luxury of rail travel, though it was his most profitable innovation to date. Profitable as that was, Henry Frazier would not be remembered for the quality of his premium trains. He would be remembered for inventing and patenting an excavation method that made tunneling faster and safer.
No one had ever dug a thirty-mile underwater tunnel before, but every innovation had a first time, and William knew how to get this done.
If only he could convince these stodgy Brits.
His father had been excited by the idea, but now, after weeks of failure, he was agitating for William to come home. He’d been in London now for three months. The Season was over, and the lords and ladies had returned to their country estates. The streets and parks were quieter, and there seemed to have been a collective sigh among the working people of London. The tempo of the city had calmed.
There was still plenty of business to be done here in this capital of world commerce, but the financiers, engineers, and architects had seen all they wanted to see of William Frazier, the arrogant Yank.
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