by Jo Beverley
Rothgar moved a lever, and the bird came to life. It turned its head, flexing a little, then lowered its beak and picked an olive branch from among greenery and raised it. Genova was caught in the illusion that the dove had selected it, that the bird was real.
“There was only the one branch before,” Ash said, “and there was a click when the bird’s beak grasped it.”
“There’s still a slight click, but the branches rattle a little and hide it. Distraction is a powerful device.”
Then the bird spread its wings to reveal words written in gold beneath, peace, paix. They were glimpsed for a moment before the wings settled again with the slight ripple of a bird adjusting its feathers.
Everyone applauded, and someone demanded that it run again. Rothgar showed the man how to wind it up and set it in action and stepped back to join Ash and Genova.
“It stayed open before,” Ash said.
“And took skill to reset. A serious miscalculation in design. When it closes, as now, the natural impulse is to want to see it open again, and it only needs winding. Before, it stayed open, and that was that. But then D’Eon had reached the stage of miscalculation in many things. I am tempted,” he said, considering the dove, “to strip away pearl and diamonds and substitute feathers.”
“To make peace real?” Ash asked.
Rothgar looked at him. “Precisely.”
And Ash said, “So be it.”
Genova looked between the two cool, dispassionate men and wasn’t sure what she’d just witnessed, but she prayed it was what she thought.
Problems would still remain, but surely Rothgar would help his reconciled cousin regain the king’s favor. Hope stirred on her own behalf, but she knew one issue didn’t really connect with the other.
She turned back to the various mechanisms displayed on the bench. If people were machines, everything would be a great deal easier.
Rothgar joined her, demonstrating what each did, then encouraging her to take one clock apart, explaining what each piece did as she freed it.
When she thought to look around, everyone else had gone, even Ash. She rose quickly from the stool she was sitting on. “Oh, I’m sorry!”
“There’s no need to apologize for sharing an obsession, Miss Smith, though Ashart was perhaps surprised when you didn’t notice him leave.” His lips were twitching, but he added, “Don’t let guilt even touch your mind. Even the deepest devotion should not lock us away from the wider world. I hope he knows that.”
She looked back at the clock she’d investigated, accepting that she was reluctant to leave it half explored. “Is it something a woman can do?”
“There are few things a woman cannot do, though many that are made difficult for them. It might be hard if you tried to set up shop, but not for private work, especially as an amateur.”
“How would I learn? As an amusement only,” she added, unready to admit the grip this had on her.
“You may stay here and explore the mysteries if you wish. I employ two craftsmen.”
She looked at him, startled.
“Or if your destiny carries you elsewhere, I know others who will be pleased to share their knowledge.”
It seemed her ambitions would never stay within reasonable bounds. “What if I wanted to earn my living this way? I may have to.”
He didn’t seem shocked. “Private commissions would be possible. It would take time to learn, however.”
“I have a portion that could support me for many years.” Then she shook her head. “This is idiotic. I had no notion of this an hour ago!”
“But that is often how it is, isn’t it?”
She knew what he meant. She recognized also that he had not argued with her assumption that she might be free to learn a trade and possibly earn a living with it. In other words, unmarried.
As she carefully picked up her artificial hearth, she tried to let that settle in her mind.
She left the room with Lord Rothgar, coming to terms with another change. Once she had been in awe of this man. She didn’t think him any less grand, but now she could talk to him almost as easily as she could talk to Ash, perhaps because of a shared desire to make things work. To burnish away rust and corrosion, apply grease, and see order restored.
An inveterate need to meddle, in other words, she thought with a wry smile. She felt free to ask a question. “There is peace between you and Ashart?”
“Of a sort, but loosely pinned.”
“It could fall apart again? Because of his grandmother?”
“She will certainly do her best.”
“Doesn’t that all hinge on”—she hesitated, realizing she was about to speak about his mother—“Lady Augusta? If it could be shown that her actions were nothing to do with the late marquess, wouldn’t that help?”
He looked at her. “I warned you about trying to make the world run smoothly, Miss Smith. And how can my family have had nothing to do with it? How can those around a tragedy not have contributed in some way, if only by what they failed to do?”
They had arrived back at the hall, where in a real fireplace, the Yule log crackled. Candles blazed, and the distant notes of a harp trickled through the great chamber, hinting at life elsewhere. The only other person, however, was a still, silent footman. Rothgar summoned him and the man carried her present up to her room.
“You wish to heal the Trayce family wounds,” he said, “and so do I. But alas, people are not clockwork.”
“He carries such a burden of hate.”
“He carries the burden of the dowager marchioness and her hate. Did he tell you that he was raised by her?”
She considered him warily, unsure if it was right to discuss Ash with him. “Yes.”
“It’s reasonable, even noble, that he feel allegiance to her, and I suspect she loves him like a mother. Not all mothers, however, are benign. She raised him to be a weapon. Or more precisely, to fire the ones of her making.”
“I think he sees himself more as Loki than Loki’s blind brother.”
“We all prefer to be the wielder rather than the tool.”
Something caught his eye, and Genova turned to see brilliance. Ash was watching them.
Genova knew now who Loki was. The Dowager Marchioness of Ashart.
“Ah, Ashart,” Rothgar said easily, leading Genova across the hall. The click of heels and the rustle of her own silk skirts seemed loud to her.
She expected to simply be handed over, but Rothgar said, “I have some things that might interest you, Ashart. Could I persuade you to accompany me?”
Ash looked wary, as well he might. What now? But then he bowed. “I am at your command.”
“Do you want Miss Smith to accompany us?”
Ash glanced at her, frowning slightly, but said, “It can only add to my delight.”
Rothgar took them upstairs and to a room beside the library. It was a library of sorts itself, but much smaller and in plain form, with the lower level composed entirely of drawers.
“The muniment room,” Rothgar said.
Genova’s interest sharpened. This room housed the family records and archives. Most would concern business and politics, but there could be letters and other such personal documents.
What had Ash been brought here to see? What had she been brought to see? Rothgar had included her in a way that would have been hard for Ash to avoid.
There couldn’t be an easy solution here. If there were, the Mallorens would have produced it a generation ago.
One long table sat in the middle with just two chairs by it, though two others sat against the wall beneath the window. There was no fireplace, but she thought the room shared a section of wall with the library chimney, taking off the chill. Even so, it was cold enough to make her shiver in her silks, and she wished she still had two shawls instead of just one.
Rothgar opened a wide shallow drawer. “These are my mother’s papers. There are no startling revelations, no accusations or vindications, but you may want to read them.�
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Genova saw some bundles of papers and two books or folios.
“Why were they not returned to Cheynings?” Ash asked, unmoving.
“At your family’s request, my father returned everything that my mother had brought with her, but he kept anything from after the marriage. By then, my mother was a Malloren. The dowager has always been welcome to come here and inspect them if she wished.”
“But you knew she’d never do that.”
“I was a child of four when my mother died.”
Genova saw Ash flinch at that reminder. No, his mind still wasn’t free of long training.
“But you say there’s nothing of importance there,” he said.
“That’s not precisely what I said. You have over an hour until dinner.”
Rothgar left, and Genova wondered what her part in this was. If she could help, she would be glad to do so.
For long moments, Ash made no move. Then, slowly, resistantly, he walked to the open drawer. “Anything that casts a shadow on the Mallorens will have been destroyed long ago.”
“It will do no harm to look.”
“Isn’t that what Pandora said?” He touched a bundle. “Are these letters she received, or did she make drafts? Or even use a secretary? And what are these?”
He untied a gray ribbon around marbled boards, revealing that it had once been red. When he turned back the top board, Genova saw a sketch of a Grecian temple, adequately but not brilliantly executed in pen and ink. He flipped through the sheets. “Her art? Do pretty pictures of false ornaments show the soul?”
He closed the folio and picked up the other bound boards. No, it was a book. He untied the ribbon and turned to the first page. Even from by his side, Genova could read the well-trained but overlarge writing.
June 14th, 1724. I am now the Marchioness of Rothgar and vastly pleased with my new state…
“Unless that’s a forgery,” Genova pointed out, “she was a happy bride.”
“If a rather silly one.”
“She was only sixteen, I understand.”
“Wicked, wouldn’t you say?”
“Many girls marry at sixteen.”
“And some are ready to.”
She pulled a face. “You can’t blame the Mallorens for that, Ash. Her parents could have forbidden the banns.”
“Not so easily. The rules were loose before 1753. If a girl was willing to run away with a cur, there was little her parents could do about it, short of locking her up. But as best I know, everyone approved of this match.” He closed the book and handed it to her. “If you’re interested, you read it.”
Genova kept her hands by her side. “No. You must.”
“Must?”
“We’re done with that game.”
“Pity.” He looked at the book. “Why am I so reluctant to read this? Because I fear disappointment, or fear breaking free of chains that support me?”
“Chains bind rather than support.”
“But we can still become dependent on them.”
He gestured to the table. “If I’m to read this, you will sit and read those letters.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
Sharing his wariness, Genova gathered the three bundles of papers and the portfolio of drawings and seated herself at the table. Ash sat down opposite, flipping the richly embroidered skirts of his coat out of the way. Then he began to read.
She watched for a moment, looking for a change of expression, but seeing none she started with the simplest part of her collection and nipped through the drawings, wishing her hands weren’t already chilled.
Lady Augusta had been well trained but lacked talent. The pictures all seemed to be dutiful sketches made around Rothgar Abbey. Then Genova paused.
In a recognizable sketch of the Tapestry Room, Augusta had drawn a man sitting in a chair reading a book. The figure was wooden with a poorly drawn head, but surely it was her husband. Would a wife try such a picture of a husband she feared?
She found two others, one a disastrous attempt at a man on horseback. Disastrous in technique, but again without indication of malice. Part of the disaster came from the attempt to show a wide smile. No normal human showed quite so many teeth.
Then Genova came across a series of pictures of a child, of an infant just beginning to sit up. Perhaps Lady Augusta had taken more lessons, for the attempt was a little better. Or perhaps the drawing master had done more than instruct. Many a lady’s portfolio of sketches was the work of her drawing master, not herself.
Whatever the explanation, the solid roundness of the infant was clear, and the positions seemed natural.
The head was in proportion to the body. Surely the many pictures of her firstborn child were not the work of a trapped, unhappy woman. Mrs. Harbinger had said she doted on her firstborn. But carelessly.
Genova remembered that this was Lord Rothgar as an infant. What was it like to grow up in awareness of such a troubled mother? To witness her at her worst. Was that why he’d developed an obsession with machines, which could be controlled, could be made right?
What did that say of herself? Perhaps her own interest in machines was as insignificant as a preference for cherries over plums, or perhaps it sprang from a rootless life often at the mercy of chaotic elements. Or even from her mother’s shocking, inexplicable death.
She shivered.
Ash looked up. “You’re cold?”
He rose and walked around the table, shrugging out of his embroidered coat. With some difficulty, she noticed. It was made to fit without a ripple.
He put it warm around her shoulders.
She could make a number of polite protests, but she gathered it close. “Thank you.”
He sent her a look that was troubled but caring, then sat again to his book. He’d read through over half of the journal, but she still could see no reaction.
She allowed herself a moment to admire him in his fine lawn shirt and embroidered silk waistcoat, and another to savor the delicious sense of him that encircled her from his coat. She peered at the buttons. She thought they really were diamond, but close to, she saw they were composed of many small stones.
She’d progressed far into absurdity if she could be relieved at that.
She settled back to work.
She put the pictures of husband and child to one side and closed the folio, then began on the letters. She untied another faded ribbon, red again. Lady Augusta had clearly liked red. Did her son’s fondness for it come in the blood?
She found a mix of letters to the Marchioness of Rothgar, and drafts or copies of letters Augusta had sent. They were in order, so someone had organized them. Of course they had. Two Marquesses of Rothgar must have searched these documents for evidence of Augusta’s motives.
Genova settled to read, holding Ash’s coat close, and admitting to some guilty pleasure at having an excuse to peer into private lives.
She skimmed letters from Lady Augusta’s mother, which were doting, but often included admonishments to cease being so wild and reminders that Augusta was a great lady now and must act with dignity.
Augusta’s letters to her mother were stilted and dutiful. The ones to her sisters and brothers were more relaxed but revealed no secrets. There were occasional letters back, and the sisters at least clearly envied Augusta her amiable, indulgent husband.
If Augusta had problems, to whom would she confide them?
Friends?
There were a few letters from friends, but by the time Genova started on the second bundle, she was struck by their rarity.
She herself was in the same situation, but it was because of her wandering life. She’d made and left a hundred friends. Sometimes she’d tried to keep up the connection through correspondence, but mail was slow and unreliable and she wasn’t an eager letter writer.
She glanced at Ash again. Perhaps one of the unusual skills she’d developed was the ability to judge people rapidly, and develop a friendship quickly. Someone met in a port might leave in weeks o
r even days.
Was it that friendships, like love, needed the test of time? Could she trust her rapid, passionate response to him? Was he, perhaps, wise to fix his eye on steadier goals?
She sighed at that, and he looked up. “This is tedious, isn’t it?”
He began to close his book, so she said, “No, it’s not that. Just a thought. I’ll tell you later.”
Maybe, she added silently as he settled again.
She returned to Augusta and friends. Lady Augusta Trayce hadn’t led a wandering life, so her circle of acquaintances would have been stable. Yet Genova found no sign of a regular correspondence with one particular friend.
Of course, those letters could have been destroyed. If so, what might they have contained?
No. To follow that path was to join the Dowager Lady Ashart in her obsession. Genova had to believe that these papers were as complete as they could be. She kept reading, hoping for a glimmer of something among the banal.
A distant bell began to ring.
“That must be the dinner bell,” Ash said, seeming pulled from elsewhere. “Well? Revelations that escaped Rothgar?”
Genova refolded the letter she’d been reading. “I don’t think so, but you might like to look at these drawings.” She pushed them over.
He spread them. “Not very good, was she?”
Genova didn’t mention her thoughts. She wanted to see what he made of them.
“We have none of her drawings at Cheynings as far as I know. I wonder if Grandy destroyed them.”
Genova started at the affectionate name for the woman she had begun to think of as Loki incarnate. “Why would she do that?”
“Nothing can be allowed to tarnish the angel’s halo.”
“Lady Augusta?” Genova couldn’t keep the astonishment out of her voice.
“Aren’t mothers supposed to dote? Anything else?”
Genova desperately wanted his account of the journal, but she gave him her impression of the letters, uncomfortable about judging the long-dead woman who had been younger than herself.
“The journal?” she asked at last.
He placed the drawings in the book to mark his place. “Flighty, self-centered, spoiled. At first all is honey, but she’s beginning to complain of his unkindness.”
