by Maia Chance
It had better not be. Ophelia said, “This is—”
“Mrs. Henrietta Brighton,” Henrietta said quickly, and then gave a sad smile.
Precisely when had Miss Henrietta Bright become Mrs. Henrietta Brighton? And . . . oh, merciful heavens. How could Ophelia have been so blind? Henrietta was in black. All in black.
“Did Miss Stonewall neglect to mention that I would chaperone her on this visit?” Henrietta asked Griffe. “I am a dear friend of the Stonewall family, and I have been on a Grand Tour in order to take my mind away from my poor darling—darling . . . oh.” She dabbed her eyes with a hankie.
Griffe took Henrietta’s arm and patted it as he led her through the front door. “A widow, oui? My most profound condolences, Madame Brighton. You are very welcome here.”
Ophelia and Forthwith followed. The parakeet’s feet clung to Ophelia’s finger, and tiny snowflakes fell from the darkening sky.
“You’re shameless,” Ophelia said to Forthwith in a hot whisper.
Forthwith grinned. “Aren’t I, though?”
2
Ophelia’s conscience demanded that she call off the entire visit now. Because, well, the gall of Henrietta and Forthwith, springing those fake identities on her at the last minute. On the other hand, she didn’t have a centime to her name. Griffe would surely kick her out on her ear when he learned she was a fraud. She needed a little more time to cook up a plan.
She was led upstairs to a chamber with a canopied bed, walls painted with dark forest scenes—trees, rivers, castles, and wild animals—and a carved marble fireplace. Footmen brought up the two trunks of finery borrowed from Artemis Stunt, and then a maid arrived.
The maid, a beautiful blond woman of about thirty years with the full, sculptured figure of a Roman statue, tapped her chest and called herself Clémence. As Clémence hung the finery in the wardrobe, she furtively inspected Ophelia from top to bottom. Then she led Ophelia down a creaking corridor to a small bathing chamber. Marble from floor to ceiling, with a tinned copper tub and gold water spigots shaped like duck heads. Clémence ran the bath, gave Ophelia a cake of soap and parting glance of disdain, and left Ophelia to bathe.
How discomfiting, having people tend to you. Especially when they made you feel that you ought to be waiting on them.
After her bath, Ophelia returned to her bedchamber, dried her hair before the fire, and arranged it in a frivolous braided knot. Then she squirmed and laced herself—she would not ring for Clémence—into corset, crinoline, evening slippers, and Artemis’s green velvet dinner gown.
After that, she checked on the parakeet. Griffe had sent up an unused brass birdcage from somewhere, its bottom lined with newspaper. Ophelia hung the cage near the fireplace with a saucer of water and a little bowl of bread crumbs. The parakeet was fluffed up, its eyes mostly shut. “Are you all right?” Ophelia whispered.
The parakeet ignored her.
Outside the windows, snow blew sideways through blackness. The Baedeker claimed that it never snowed in the Périgord.
A rap on the door.
“Entrez,” Ophelia called. She was picking up licks of French.
Clémence had returned, carrying an envelope. She gave it to Ophelia in sullen silence and left.
Ophelia looked at the envelope—it read Mademoiselle Stonewall—and sighed. She knew that sloped, smeary handwriting. Although she hadn’t seen the Count de Griffe since the day after she’d accepted his marriage proposal, he’d written her daily rhapsodic letters from England. Luckily, she’d been spared the need to reply because he had been traveling.
She tore open the envelope and read,
Dearest Mademoiselle Stonewall,
It is with a swollen heart and fevered brow that I welcome you at last to this, my ancestral home. How ardently I dream of showing you every inch of this sacred place, the formal gardens by moonlight, the riches housed in the library, the Roman statues alongside the ornamental canal, the fruits and blooms in the orangerie. How I long, too, to show you the more intimate features of your future home.
Ophelia’s palms started sweating.
For instance, my late mother’s own wedding gown, preserved in delicate tissue in a box, and the nursery and schoolroom where I once romped and studied and where, God willing, our own children will romp and study, too.
Ophelia went to a side table, where she’d seen a decanter of red liqueur. She poured herself a small glass and drank it down. Cherry. She coughed. She wasn’t really a tippling lady, but the image of a half dozen hairy baby Griffes crawling around in diapers required blurring.
She turned back to the note.
We did not enjoy even one moment alone upon your arrival today. Might I beg you to join me at half past eight this evening—dinner will be served at nine o’clock—in the ballroom? There is so much in my heart I must convey, ma chérie—may I call you that?—and a pressing question I must ask.
Your most humble and obedient admirer, Griffe
Oh, lorks.
Ophelia checked the mantel clock. Almost half past eight already. She stuffed the note in a drawer and sat down to wallow in guilt until nine o’clock. She’d rather stick her hand in a beehive than be alone with Griffe. She could tell him she’d fallen asleep.
* * *
At two minutes till nine o’clock, Ophelia slid on Griffe’s ruby ring, over her satin elbow glove. The ring was heavy, and too tight. Probably served her right. She trudged downstairs.
At the bottom of the stairs, she turned left and found herself in a long, dim gallery with a checkerboard floor and tall windows. Snow piled up in the corners of rattling windowpanes. Gleaming suits of armor lined the gallery, along with a couple of cannons and cases displaying swords, bows and arrows, and guns.
Griffe’s voice boomed from beyond the far doorway. Drat. Ophelia didn’t relish the notion of meeting him here. Too dark.
His voice again. Closer.
Ophelia dodged behind a suit of armor, one of four standing close together. She was hidden.
Griffe speaking. She caught the words perhaps and dinner . . . Wait. Ophelia held her breath. Her eyes slid sideways.
Someone else was hiding behind the suits of armor, not three feet away. A tall, shadowy male form—
The man cleared his throat.
She’d know that ahem anywhere. Yet how could it—why—what was he doing here?
“Professor?” Ophelia whispered. “Professor Penrose?”
“Ah, it is you, Miss Flax,” Penrose murmured. “How good to see you.”
“What are you doing, hiding back here?” Ophelia’s eyes adjusted to the faint light. Penrose held a wineglass and wore evening clothes. She saw the glow of his spectacles, his square shoulders, the line of his clean-shaven jaw. Her heart skittered. “I thought I’d never—”
“I merely wished to inspect the mechanism at the back of this helmet.” Penrose tapped one of the knight’s helmets. It clanged softly. “Fascinating type of hinge.”
“In the dark? Stop fibbing. Who are you hiding from?”
“Who are you hiding from?”
“Griffe said nothing of you being here.” If Griffe had said something, Ophelia would’ve never come. Penrose had told her I love you three weeks ago, right after she’d impulsively promised her hand to Griffe. She fancied she’d broken the professor’s heart. She’d broken her own heart, too, and since broken hearts must be let alone to mend, she’d banished him from her thoughts.
Another disaster.
“It was a last-minute invitation,” Penrose whispered.
“Professor, if you happen to notice . . . anything odd. I mean to say, well, I still haven’t gotten the chance to tell Griffe that I—”
“That you aren’t Miss Stonewall, the Cleveland soap heiress?”
Ophelia swallowed. “Well, yes. And Henrietta is here, too—”
“Henrietta Bright? On the husband hunt, I suppose? Not to worry. Your secrets are safe with me.”
Griffe said loudly, “He cannot be far, my dear.” He was inside the gallery now. “Shall we seek for him in the gaming room? It is through the artillery gallery here.”
“I suppose so,” a woman said in a crisp British accent. “I can’t think why he would simply disappear like this before dinner.”
“Penrose is a scholar, Mademoiselle Banks,” Griffe said. “Scholars become engrossed in their studies, I understand, to the point of sheer distraction and forgetfulness. Perhaps he has gone not to the gaming room but to the library? Come along. We will find your mislaid fiancé yet.”
Fiancé?
Oh.
Griffe and Miss Banks passed by in a breeze of lilac perfume and silken rustles. Penrose didn’t move a muscle.
“Dreadfully rude of him.” The woman’s voice was sulky. “Once we are married, I’ll insist that he remedy his ways.”
“You may insist,” Griffe said, “but gentlemen rarely undergo change. Particularly after matrimony.”
Their footsteps receded.
Ophelia whispered to Penrose, “I recall you speaking of Miss Banks with great enthusiasm last month in Paris. Congratulations on your engagement. Your swift engagement.”
“Miss Flax. What I told you three weeks ago . . . I beg your pardon about all that.” Penrose adjusted his spectacles. “I was rash and, indeed, mistaken. Paris had gone to my head, I suppose.”
“I see.” He’d taken that I love you back. Well. What an absolute relief.
“I do hope I did not cause you a moment of unease,” Penrose said.
“Unease? No. Certainly not. I will see you at dinner, I reckon.” Ophelia stepped out from behind the suits of armor and hurried in the opposite direction from that in which Griffe and Miss Banks had gone.
And this lump in her throat? Well, it must be that she was thirsty from traveling all day.
* * *
Gabriel Augustus Penrose, Fifth Earl of Harrington and lecturer of philology at St. Remigius’s College, Oxford, was accustomed to sitting firmly in the saddle at all times. Events rarely unhinged him. And by Jove, he’d known all along that Miss Flax would be here and that she was still engaged to marry Griffe.
Her serene oval face, just shy of beautiful. Those darting, dark eyes of hers like the centers of poppies. The glossy upswept hair, her queenly posture—none of it moved him anymore.
So why was it so dashed difficult to chew this roast venison?
“Do tell everyone why you are here, Lord Harrington,” Bernadette called from the foot of the dinner table. Mademoiselle Bernadette Gavage, Griffe’s sister, was a sturdy, genteel lady of middle years with the misfortune of having, like her brother, one long eyebrow instead of two shorter ones. “Besides for the shooting, that is. Your work is terribly fascinating.”
Gabriel washed venison down with wine. “There is an old woman in the village here who knows an unusual version—a local version—of the tale La belle et la bête—Beauty and the Beast. It seems that her memory is, alas, rapidly fading. I happened to dine with Griffe in England last week and he invited me here, knowing my scholarship concerns, in part, fairy tales. I will commit the old woman’s tale to paper before it is lost forever.” Gabriel raised his wineglass. “To my host and hostess.”
“No, no,” Griffe said at the head of the table. “To beauty.” He tilted his brimming glass towards Miss Flax. She sank lower in her chair.
Ivy Banks, Gabriel’s betrothed, blushed. She had mistaken Griffe’s toast to be in her honor. An honest mistake; Ivy was a dainty beauty of twenty-four with a peaches-and-cream complexion, a heart-shaped face, and masses of light brown curls. “To the hunt,” she said gaily.
Everyone toasted. Footmen poured more wine. Gabriel refused a third glass. Another course was served, strange, fibrous root vegetables in truffle and juniper sauce. Griffe ate with gusto, grunting softly as he sawed his meat. Flecks of sauce stuck to his stubbled jaw.
On Gabriel’s right, Albert Banks checked his pocket watch for the fifth time since dinner had begun. Gabriel’s future father-in-law was severe, gray-muttonchopped, and rotund. He owned many wool and silk mills in the northwest of England, and he doubtless had work he wished to complete before bed. Banks had come along on this trip because Ivy had insisted upon coming, and Ivy and Gabriel could not travel without a chaperone. Banks couldn’t say no to his darling, motherless child.
Thorstein Larsen forked up truffles with relish on Gabriel’s left. Larsen was an elderly, smallish Norwegian gent with side-whiskers stained yellow from tobacco. Larsen seemed oblivious to the general conversation. He kept saying things such as “We will track those boars easily in the snow tomorrow,” and “Those beasts do not stand a chance with Griffe’s pack of hounds—fine creatures.”
“I always pity the boars,” Bernadette said in response to one such comment. “Snuffling about the wood in peace and then—bang!—out of nowhere, a hunter kills them.”
“They are monsters, dear lady,” Larsen said. “Their tusks will gore you straight through.”
Bernadette touched the brooch pinned to her bodice.
“I am so eager to hunt tomorrow,” Henrietta said to Larsen with a crafty shift of her décolletage. She slid Gabriel a nervous look. Gabriel supposed that Henrietta feared he’d betray her wealthy-widow scam.
Banks whispered in Gabriel’s ear, “Strange coincidence that he turns up here, what?”
“Who?”
“That Norseman. Larsen.” Banks hacked a dry cough into his napkin.
“What ever do you mean? Have you made his acquaintance previously?”
“Know him by reputation,” Banks said darkly, and beckoned a footman to refill his wineglass.
Larsen was in timber, herring, copper mining, shipping, and the ice trade. Gabriel supposed he and Banks must have crossed paths in business at some juncture.
Across the table lounged the slick, vapid young chap claiming to be Cleveland soap heir Forthwith Stonewall. Gabriel assumed Forthwith was another actor. Poor Griffe. A château full of American actors, and not a clue.
Moldy, runny cheeses and hothouse pomegranates were served for dessert. As the last plate was cleared, Griffe’s wineglass was topped yet again, and he stood on swaying legs. “A toast.”
“Another?” Ivy pursed her lips.
“In this, the valley Vézère,” Griffe said, “a long tradition exists of weddings, important weddings, fateful weddings, on the winter solstice, the longest, the most enchanted night of the year.”
Bernadette nodded, and Miss Flax’s face turned pink.
Gabriel’s heart, unaccountably, wrung itself.
Miss Flax said, “Perhaps we should—”
“So it is with deep pleasure, gratitude, and grande joie,” Griffe said, “that I announce my marriage to Mademoiselle Stonewall in five days’ time, on the twenty-first of December. Here, in the château chapel.”
Silverware clanked on china, and Henrietta squealed.
Miss Flax was pale as everyone turned to congratulate her. She mumbled her thanks, looking every inch the bashful bride-to-be.
Gabriel decided another glass of wine would be rather nice, after all.
3
Everyone got up and filed into the grand salon, with its splendid mural-covered walls, carved furniture, huge gilt mirrors, and faded carpets.
Ophelia wouldn’t panic. She would not. She itched to corner Griffe and give him a piece of her mind about pulling that wedding date—in five days!—out of his hat. What about her fake parents in Cleveland? Weren’t they invited?
But Griffe was as drunk as a skunk. No, she would call it off in the morning, give his ruby ring back, tell him the truth, and be on her way. Even if it meant wading through snowdrifts to golly-knew-where. Would Artemis mind if sh
e pawned this fancy dinner gown for a ticket back to Paris?
Forthwith grandly announced that he would perform a conjuring trick.
Ophelia cornered him. “Truly?” she whispered through tight teeth. Forthwith was placing two flowerpots on tall, narrow, cloth-covered stands. “Magic, dear brother?”
“My sister is weary of my tricks,” Forthwith said loudly over his shoulder to the others. “I am a bit of an amateur conjurer, as all of our circle in Cleveland will attest. Poor Ophelia has endured countless parlor shows, and, as a girl, she even acted as my assistant.”
“Did you saw her in half?” Henrietta asked.
Forthwith smiled. “No, I simply made her disappear. Most enjoyable for everyone.”
Professor Penrose caught Ophelia’s eye. She’d been making an effort not to look at him, for his keen hazel eyes behind his spectacles, his straight dark eyebrows, his square chin, and his brown, wavy hair worn longer than she remembered, well, they made her throat squeeze. She looked away.
“Now, if you will seat yourselves on these sofas here,” Forthwith said, “—yes, that’s excellent—I shall perform our dear mother’s favorite trick, ‘The Magic Rosebush.’” He tilted the flowerpots on the stands. “Observe: There is nothing in these pots but sand.”
Everyone murmured in agreement.
“Good,” Forthwith said. “Now I shall plant a few seeds.” He drew something from his waistcoat pocket and sprinkled it in the sand. Then he produced a large white paper cone, showed it was empty inside, and placed it over the pot. “The seeds, you see, require darkness in order to germinate.” He snapped his fingers and removed the cone. A little green sprout had appeared in the sand. “And so life begins anew, with a single hopeful sprig.” He fiddled with the cone and the second pot, and another green sprout appeared.
Everyone clapped and murmured. Everyone, that is, except Ophelia. Forthwith was up to no good.
