Beauty, Beast, and Belladonna

by Maia Chance

  “Recovered from the shock of learning his father is Sir Percival Christy?”

  “Oh, yes. He’s moved on to boasting about that.” Penrose smiled. “Says he’s going to found an explorer’s society at his school, lead the other boys out on tramps through the countryside.”

  They stopped before a fountain filled with dead leaves. Penrose took a deep breath. “Miss Flax, I suppose you know why I’ve come.”

  “I reckon that I do, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to say something first. It might—well, it might change things.”

  “Go on.”

  “I’ve had news of my brother, Odie.”

  “That is wonderful!”

  “I know.” Ophelia’s gloved hands shook as she dug out the newspaper clipping from her reticule. She unfolded it, smoothed it out. “It’s only a bit of a news story, but his name is in there, clear as day—see?”

  “He hasn’t—he hasn’t gotten into any trouble, has he?”

  “No. Go on. Read it.”

  Penrose read it.

  Ophelia knew the tiny column by heart now: One American gentleman by the name of Odysseus Flax was awarded a medal of honor from the mayor of a tiny town somewhere in Switzerland, for catching a thief.

  “What is he doing in Switzerland?”

  “I don’t know. I am setting out for there tomorrow. I must find Odie. He’s the only family I’ve got.”

  Penrose’s eyes look bruised.

  Ophelia rushed on. “You and I are friends, and we’ll always be friends, Professor, and I do . . .” She gulped down the painful lump in her throat. “I do care for you. Very much. But can’t you see? Money and love, they don’t mix. We’d never be on equal footing, you and I. You and your title and estate and the university—and, well, me. There isn’t anything to me.”

  “I don’t agree—but first, love. You said love.”

  “Well, yes.” Ophelia met his eyes. “I . . . yes. But true life isn’t like a fairy tale. Things between us, the imbalance between us, won’t suddenly change—we won’t suddenly change—simply because we make a promise or two. Don’t you understand? I can’t be like all those other actresses and chorus dancers, Professor. I can’t be like Henrietta. I’ve got my pride. I can’t be kept.”

  “Marriage needn’t be like that, Miss Flax. I regard you as my equal—indeed, in many ways you are my superior, as in your resolve, your fortitude, your quick thinking”—Penrose smiled a little—“and your deft hand at disguises. My title, my estate, the university—those have nothing to do with you and me.”

  “But people don’t live only in a house, Professor. They live in a world—a world with other people, customs, expectations. . . . I would never fit into your world, and you wouldn’t ever fit into mine.”

  “Allow me to change your mind.”

  Ophelia shook her head. “I can’t live in your world, surrounded by people who would always think less of me because of where I’ve come from.”

  “I will protect you from them.”

  “You can’t. I’m not a china doll.” She looked away, the hurt in Penrose’s eyes too much to bear.

  He didn’t speak or move for a good long while. Finally he said gently, “You will travel to Switzerland now, to search for your brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you—”

  “Money? Yes, I have enough. You see? Money. You’ve got lots, and I haven’t.”

  “We would share.”

  “That’s not how things are arranged. At any rate, I’ve got a job that will take me to Switzerland.”

  “A job? As an actress?”

  “Something to that effect. We leave tomorrow.”

  Another long silence. Penrose pushed his hands into his greatcoat pockets and tipped his head to study the sky. “Miss Flax, I will not do you the dishonor of attempting to convince you further on the point of matrimony. But I will ask that I might write to you—and, perhaps, ask you to, from time to time, send me a note. If only that I might know that you are well, and safe. And happy.”

  “All right. I’ll write to you, but I won’t have a proper address for a while yet, until I’ve tracked down Odie and, well, I reckon I’ll return to America after that.”

  Penrose scribbled his address with a pencil on the back of a calling card. He gave it to her. “Do not forget me. Please. Good-bye, Miss Flax.” He turned and walked away.

  He was always just leaving. How it made Ophelia’s chest ache. Yet, wasn’t it true that she was always sending him away?

  She spent the rest of the day walking restlessly through the Paris streets, dimly hoping she’d see the professor again. That he’d make her change her mind, somehow, and this cracking feeling in her chest would abate. She did not see him, though, and the cracking feeling kept on.

  At any rate, she was right to let him go, because he had only talked of what it would be like if she married him and went to live in England. He hadn’t even considered joining her in her world.

  * * *

  The next day, Ophelia packed her shabby carpetbag, bade farewell to Henrietta and Artemis, scooped up Meringue, and left the apartment. She had visited her friend Prue in the convent the day before in order to say good-bye. On the street, Ophelia boarded an omnibus bound for the Bois de Boulogne, an enormous Parisian park.

  In the Bois de Boulogne, Ophelia tromped across a vast, muddy patch of grass that had been flattened by circus tents. The tents were folded up now and loaded onto the wagons. Circus folk milled about, smoking cigarettes, laughing. There was the tattooed lady, and there was the strong man. An elephant trumpeted and an accordion squalled.

  Ophelia had encountered this circus troupe two days ago, the same day she’d found Odie’s name in the newspaper. In weak—but improving—French, she’d spoken to some of the performers, really for old time’s sake, and learned that they were heading towards Switzerland next and that one of their acts had quit. Ophelia had already been training Meringue to jump over pencils and walk on his hind legs, simply for amusement. Ophelia figured that Meringue could surely advance to leaping through flaming hoops, and that she herself could still ride trick ponies as she’d done years ago. She’d begged the ringmaster for the job, and she’d gotten it.

  She had a way to get to Switzerland and a way to keep herself until she found Odie. Who needed an earl with a fortune, anyway?

  Ophelia hitched up her skirts to step over a mound of fresh lion dung. “Are you ready, Meringue?” she said softly.

  Meringue, still slung over her arm, yawned.

  Ophelia climbed up the rickety ladder into a colorfully painted circus wagon. She shut the door.

  Keep reading for a preview of Maia Chance’s next Fairy Tale Fatal Mystery . . .

  Snow White Red-Handed

  Available now from Berkley Prime Crime!

  1

  SS Leviathan

  Somewhere on the Atlantic Ocean

  August 1867

  Miss Ophelia Flax was neither a professional confidence trickster nor a lady’s maid, but she’d played both on the stage. In desperate circumstances like these, that would have to do.

  “Who told you that our maid Marie gave notice?” Mrs. Coop said. Her diamond earrings wobbled.

  Miss Amaryllis, sitting beside Mrs. Coop on the sofa, sniffed and added, “Uppity French tart.”

  If ever there were two wicked stepsisters, here they were, taking tea in the SS Leviathan’s stuffy first-class stateroom number eighteen: thick-waisted, brassy-haired Mrs. Coop, clutching at her fading bloom in a deshabille gown of pink ribbons and Brussels lace, and her much younger sister, Miss Amaryllis, a bony damsel of twenty or so with complexion spots, slumped shoulders, and a green silk gown that resembled a lampshade. They looked up at Ophelia, expectant and hostile.

  Ophelia stood before them, tall and plain in the gray woolen traveling
dress, black gloves, and prim buttoned boots she’d borrowed—stolen was such a rotten word—from the costume trunks of Howard DeLuxe’s Varieties in the ship’s hold.

  “Your maid’s abandonment of her post,” Ophelia said, “came to my attention during my midday promenade on the first-class deck.”

  She needn’t mention that her own cramped berth was in the bowels of third class, where it stank of sour cabbage and you felt the ship’s engines vibrating in your teeth.

  “Embarrassing scene.” Mrs. Coop pitched herself forward to reach for a cream puff. “The way Marie threw her apron at me! She always did behave as though she were my—my superior.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, ma’am,” Ophelia said. “French maids are notoriously fickle. They’re not the best for service, I’m afraid.”

  “But everyone in New York’s got one. They’re simply mad for them.”

  “It is my understanding, ma’am, that while a certain . . . class of society cling to the outdated notion that a French lady’s maid is the height of elegance, the Van Der Snoots and De Schmeers and”—Ophelia scanned the stateroom’s luxurious furnishings—“St. Armoire ladies have of late discovered that a Yankee lady’s maid is best.”

  “Yankee?” Mrs. Coop’s bitten cream puff hovered in midair. Yellowish filling oozed from the sides.

  “Yes, ma’am. Yankee girls are honest, hardworking, modest, and loyal.”

  Miss Amaryllis slitted her eyes. “I suppose you’re a Yankee girl?”

  “Indeed I am. Born and bred on a farmstead in New Hampshire, miss.”

  That was true. She’d leave out the bits about the textile mill and the traveling circus. They didn’t have the same wholesome ring.

  “I’ll find a new maid when we reach Germany,” Mrs. Coop said. “I’ve made up my mind. Why, if I had known Marie would quit in the midst of my honeymoon voyage, I’d have left her on the dock in Manhattan!”

  “Another virtue of Yankee girls,” Ophelia said, “is their ability to arrange coiffures, make cosmetic preparations, and, if needed—although I’m certain ma’am has no need—apply powders and tints with a hand as subtle as nature herself.”

  A lie, of course. But Ophelia was an actress—or she had been up until four hours ago, when Howard DeLuxe had given Prue the boot and Ophelia had been obliged to quit—and putting on greasepaint was one thing she knew how to do well.

  “Yankee girls use face paint?” Mrs. Coop said. “Why, you said it yourself. They’re as plain as potatoes.”

  “But they learned from their grandmothers, ma’am, the arts of medicinal plants. My own gran taught me to whip up an elderflower tincture that returns the skin to snowy youth—”

  Another fib. But Mrs. Coop’s eyes glimmered with interest.

  “—and a Pomade Victoria of beeswax and almond oil that makes the hair shine like gold, a salve of Balsam Peru that makes complexion spots vanish.” Ophelia leaned forward. “I could not help noticing Miss Amaryllis’s unfortunate condition.”

  “Why, the cheek!” Mrs. Coop’s bosom heaved.

  Miss Amaryllis glared up at Ophelia and bit into a biscuit with a snap.

  “And,” Ophelia said, “a pleasant-tasting tonic of vinegar that slims a lady’s waist without effort.”

  Mrs. Coop’s half-eaten cream puff plopped onto her plate.

  Ophelia had hooked her halibut.

  “Here,” Ophelia said, drawing two sealed envelopes from her pocket, “are my letters of reference. I, and my young acquaintance, Miss Prudence Bright, were traveling to England to work in the employ of Lady Cheshingham at Greyson Hall in Shropshire.”

  Lady Cheshingham was, in truth, the lead character in the risqué comedy Lady Cheshingham’s Charge, which Howard DeLuxe’s Varieties had performed in May. The letters were forgeries Ophelia had penned an hour earlier.

  Mrs. Coop fingered the envelopes. “Ah, yes, yes, Lady Cheshingham.”

  “While already shipboard, I belatedly read a missive I’d received from Lord Cheshingham on the eve of our voyage, which informed me that the lady had passed away.”

  “Good heavens.”

  “Yes. A tragedy. She was so young.”

  “I had heard so many wonderful things about her.”

  “Miss Bright and I, then, are in want of employment.”

  Want of employment didn’t really pin down the gravity of their circumstances. With the steamship barreling towards Southampton, Ophelia and Prue, with no jobs, only a few dollars, and no acquaintances in England, were well and truly up a stump.

  “There are two of you?” Mrs. Coop sounded uncertain. “I—I must ask my husband. We are staying at our castle only until the winter.”

  Castle? Hm. Surely a figure of speech.

  “Of course,” Ophelia said, and made a show of tearing at the cambric handkerchief she’d plucked from her sleeve.

  But she oughtn’t get too carried away in her role. Mr. DeLuxe had always complained that she, having once beguiled her audience, tended to careen towards the melodramatic.

  She put the hankie away. “Have you, ma’am, tried Russian face powder?”

  Mrs. Coop touched her thickly powdered cheek. “I’ve always used French.”

  “Russian is the best, used first by the czarina Catherine. It’s got crushed pearls in it—pearls from the North Sea, which restore the complexion to a state of infancy. But don’t tell anyone. It’ll be our little secret.”

  “Pearls for Mrs. Pearl Coop,” Miss Amaryllis said into her teacup. “How poetic.”

  “It is easier, Amaryllis,” Mrs. Coop said through clenched teeth, “to catch flies with honey than with vinegar.”

  “Whatever would I want with flies?”

  “A figure of speech, dear. Perhaps it would be best if you married your own fly, rather than straggling along with Homer and me.”

  “Homer a fly?” Miss Amaryllis smirked. “More of a frog, don’t you think?”

  “If I may be so bold,” Ophelia interrupted, “it would be a privilege to attend to such lovely, refined ladies.”

  Mrs. Coop blinked, and Miss Amaryllis leaned against the sofa arm and propped her chin sulkily on her hand.

  Mrs. Coop sighed and picked up her cream puff. “It seems we’ve no choice in the matter. When can you start?”

  Ophelia held in an exhalation of relief. “Immediately, ma’am,” she said.

  * * *

  “Well?” Prue flung herself face-up on her narrow berth. Her cheeks were blotchy and wet with tears.

  Ophelia shut the cabin door. “We have jobs.”

  “That’s splendiferous!”

  “I am to be a lady’s maid—”

  Prue’s face fell.

  “—and you are to be a scullery maid.”

  “Scullery maid?” Prue struggled to a seated position. Golden ringlets tumbled around her flushed face and her eyes of enamel blue. She was the closest thing to a china doll that a nineteen-year-old American girl could be. Until, that is, she opened her mouth to speak. “I ain’t cut out for a scullery maid, Ophelia. I’m clumsy, for starters, but more than that, I ain’t got the concentration to peel carrots all day.”

  Ophelia wholeheartedly agreed. “You’ll manage,” she said. She stripped off the stolen gloves. “It’s only a bit of washing pots and scrubbing vegetables.”

  “Why can’t I be a lady’s maid, too?”

  “Mrs. Coop and Miss Amaryllis desired but one lady’s maid between them. We are lucky they agreed to take you on at all. Don’t look so weepy. It’s only for a few months, until we save up enough to buy passage back to America. Besides, we don’t have another plan.”

  The plan had been to perform with Howard DeLuxe’s Varieties in its limited engagement at the Pegasus Theater on the Strand. “Limited engagement” meant for however long gin-soaked London gents would pack the seats to watch the t
roupe’s bawdy skits and musical numbers. “The Lusty Whalers of Nantucket” had top billing, alongside a bit about cowgirls and Indians, a romantic scene in which Ophelia played Pocahontas, and “Paul Revere’s Bride,” featuring a horse that galloped offstage with a scantily clad Puritan wench.

  “We could go find my Ma,” Prue said. “Nat—you know, the feller who paints the scenery—told me this afternoon he heard she was in Europe.”

  “We haven’t any notion where.” Ophelia sank onto the edge of her own berth. “Europe is enormous, not to mention expensive. And she could just as easily be in New York.”

  “A scullery maid.” Prue’s tears were spouting again. “What’ll become of me? I ain’t got anyone. Ma never wanted me—”

  “Now you know that isn’t true.” Ophelia handed over a hankie.

  “If she’d hornswoggled a millionaire into marrying her when I was a baby, she would’ve left me then.”

  “Nonsense.”

  Prue noisily blew her nose.

  Her mother, Miss Henrietta Bright, had been the star actress in Howard DeLuxe’s Varieties, and like so many actresses, she had supplemented her income with—to mince words—additional business endeavors. Last year, she’d run off with one of her admirers. Some said he was a Wall Street tycoon, others that he was a European blue blood. Either way, Prue’s mother had abandoned a flighty girl who possessed all the common sense of a tadpole. Ophelia had no living family of her own—a missing brother and a father she’d never met hardly counted—so she’d taken Prue under her wing.

  Ophelia bent to unbutton the stolen boots; they were too small, and her toes felt numb. “You know I have a little money saved up, in the bank in New York—”

  “For your farm! You’ve been scrimping for ages.”

  “I have.” A vision of misty green fields, a white barn, and sweet-eyed dairy cows rose up in Ophelia’s mind’s eye. It was a vision that often lulled her to sleep, that got her through slushy November afternoons and exhausting double matinee performances. “When I buy my farm someday, well, you can come and live with me there.”