by Edith Layton
“Oh cousin, the marquess gave me a book today, when he visited with me. I searched for you all afternoon to show it to you, but Katie said you were suffering from the headache. I’m glad to see you recovered so that you may accompany us to the concert. Joscelin said you might not, you know.”
Joscelin! thought Leonora, it is Joscelin now? But it was Joss for me once. Is it that he knows that even in that he must take no liberties with a true lady? And finds her a lady bred, and me a lady born, but only that? She was so taken with the thought that she did not make an immediate reply after her cousin went on to describe some virtues of the book and urge its perusal.
“No,” she said distractedly when she could, “no, Belle, I don’t wish to read with you now, even if it is a lovely book by Mr. Blake.”
“Tomorrow then,” Annabelle said comfortably, “for I know you’ll like it. Joscelin said he purchased it years ago when Mr. Blake had a showing of his pictures here in Town on Broad Street. And that he was so pleased that someone took an interest in his works, for very few had come to view them, you see, that after Joscelin had purchased a few, he offered him a volume he had just done with composing. It hadn’t even been published as yet, and still has not been. And it is mine now.”
Leonora repressed an urge to scream, Am I to keep count? Is that it? To see how many “Joscelins” you will utter in an hour? As Annabelle went on, “Joscelin said that he felt very guilty about buying an uncirculated book, but Mr. Blake insisted, and practically pressed it upon him. But that he didn’t feel badly about it now, knowing it would be mine. I think you’d like it, cousin, there are two very nice pictures in particular; two angels, one is dark, and one is light and has a face that looks very like mine, Joscelin said.”
Three “mines,” five “Joscelins.” I understand, please stop, thought Leonora.
“What are we to hear tonight, cousin?” Annabelle asked, changing the subject abruptly.
“Some of Mr. Purcell, some of Corelli, some Bach, of course, among others I think,” Leonora said immediately, relieved to be on a less painful subject. “It’s to be a baroque recital, and we’ll hear several compositions for the brass.”
“I’ve had no opportunity to ever hear such before, as you know,” Annabelle said softly. “Do you think I’ll enjoy it?”
“Oh yes,” Leonora said. “I know that I do, enormously.”
“But cousin,” Annabelle said quietly, plaintively, “I don’t know half so much about music as you. I shall feel quite out of place knowing nothing about it, and having nothing to say.”
“Don’t worry,” Leonora smiled in a more kindly fashion, for her cousin did look like an abashed little girl as she sat down with her eyes downcast. “No one will expect you to give a critique. With music, it is always enough to merely listen and take pleasure in it and say as much.”
“Oh,” Annabelle cried, “but I should never presume to comment on music in such learned company. You mistake me, cousin. I only wondered if you would explain it a little to me, only so that I don’t feel so altogether out of place and out of my place tonight, you see.”
Leonora did see, and though she was not a supernaturally forgiving soul, she could step back enough from her unhappiness to know that with Annabelle, at least, there was nothing to forgive. If Annabelle had won Severne, she could dislike it, she could envy it, but she could not hate her cousin for it. She might as well be angry with a blossom for attracting a honeybee. And so, to take her mind from the coming ordeal of the evening, and in some small way as expiation for the intense, though just as intensely resisted and denied dislike she felt for her former protégée, Leonora passed the time before they had to leave by explaining the intricacies of baroque music, and expounding upon music in general.
“And so,” Leonora concluded, her eyes shining with enjoyment, for as so often happened, she had been carried away by her own enthusiasm and her attentive audience, “I think that when anything becomes too great to express in words, then one must turn to music. For music is to emotion as poetry is to prose. It is what happens when a soul, or when a thought must sing ... or so I have always imagined,” Leonora ended in embarrassment, realizing that she had become overemotional from the way her audience, Katie and Annabelle, sat watching with wide-eyed wonder.
“You ought to write that all down, my lady, yes, you ought,” Katie said, nodding her head vigorously, “for I never felt that way about a tune before, and now I know I always shall.”
“Ah well,” Leonora laughed, “from what I’ve just said, I suppose it would be far better if I sang it instead.”
They laughed and sported with this theme, oddly in charity with each other, until word came that the marquess had arrived, and the viscount and his wife awaited them. Then Leonora fell silent, and gathered up her wrap and went to the door like the late French queen to the block.
She let Annabelle go down the stairs first, so that Severne could see her at once. And so never knew that his lip curled in disdain as he saw her later entry upon the long staircase, for, his breath taken away by her splendor, he thought only that she would know how to make an entrance so as to take the attention away from her poor cousin.
The marquess was so splendid in his stark white and black evening array that Leonora kept her eyes averted from him after one brief glance at his grandeur. It was only after he’d been greeted by acquaintances in the lobby of the concert hall, when Lord Benjamin and Sybil had joined their group, that Leonora dared to follow that tall lean figure with her gaze.
It was Annabelle that he took in on his arm, after she had hung back in confusion and so was discovered to have been left behind as their party began to mount the stairs to their seats. Leonora walked beside her sister in their wake.
“You,” Sybil breathed in annoyance, “are a fool, my dear. Or at least, you are allowing that creature to make you into one.”
“Nonsense,” Leonora replied in such a hushed whisper that her sister had to bend her imperially dressed head to hear her. “She’s an innocent. She cannot help it if he prefers her.” Leonora no longer thought to dissemble about her feelings for the marquess, knowing that once Sybil got hold of an idea, she could never hope to shake it loose, and knowing, moreover, that she was not so good a liar as to dispatch a notion that was, unhappily, quite true.
“I repeat,” Sybil said, “you are a fool. A great ninny, sister. And I only hope that you do not learn it too late to change things. For although that is a very flattering gown, I cannot say that I like to see you in that cap and bells.”
Sybil timed her statements better than the London-to-York stagecoach schedule, Leonora thought. There was no retort she could make. The thing had been said as a killing exit line, and so it remained, since the last syllable was uttered just as they reached their box. There was little time for thinking about a possible rejoinder either. For soon Leonora forgot Sybil and even the marquess and Annabelle for a space. The flickering lights dimmed, and the music soared, and Leonora allowed herself to fly with it and in it.
It was a fine performance. The musicians played as though inspired. Leonora heard her favorite pieces, and for all her previous unrest she found a certain peace in the night. The harpsichord beat out a fine silver skein while the horns trumpeted like great golden beasts calling to each other across the ornate hall, and she was, for that little while, truly happy.
During the intermission, of course, Sybil and Lord Benjamin were out of their seats at once, since they must promenade to see and be seen by anyone of any importance. The viscount excused himself to visit with a certain baron of his acquaintance, and the viscountess, looking about the box blearily, like a sleeper awakened (which she just had been), demanded her remaining daughter’s escort to the lady’s withdrawing room.
The viscountess met up with a dowager as big with news as she was with importance, and Leonora was relieved when her mama waved her off so that she could hear a particularly good red bit of gossip unfit for an unwed daughter’s ears. They were on the
balcony level, not so far from the family box that Leonora would be remiss in walking back to her seat alone. But still, she could not like being seen loitering in the corridors alone at intermission, as she knew that only Cyprians seeking patrons would behave so. Though very few would mistake the viscount’s daughter for such, hers was not so marvelous a reputation that she could afford the slightest error. Thus, she wanted to go to her seat, and knew that she ought to as well. It was only a pity that she could not.
For as she stood just outside the curtained entry to the box, she remembered that Severne and Annabelle were there together, and so far as she knew, alone. There could be no question of her interrupting an embrace. It was quite proper for them to be alone there, the box, after all, could be seen from every angle of the hall, and thus they had no more visual privacy than they would if they were upon the stage itself. But perhaps they were discussing something important together, such as a proposal, Leonora thought She should not like to walk in on such. When it came to that, she didn’t wish to be the only other person in the box with them, either. So she stood by the velvet drape, and dithered. Until she heard him call her name.
He said it with warmth, with love. “Oh, Nell,” she heard him say, as one says the name of one’s beloved. “Oh, Nell,” he said it with a sweet pretense of exasperation. “Oh, Nell,” he said on half a laugh. There was such a wealth of tender, amused welcome in those two simple words that Leonora drew back the curtain and looked upon him with gladness and relief at this unexpected chance for homecoming. And as she entered, she saw him smiling down at Annabelle with such tenderness in that stern face as she had never hoped to see there, even for herself. It had been, of course, she realized, “Oh Belle,” that she had heard.
She had only just enough wit left to rock back the one pace she stepped forward. And she let the curtain slowly, soundlessly, drop back. But she did not take her hand from it, and she did not move another step. Instead, because she could not resist it any more than she could if they had been the fates discussing the actual date and place of her death, she stayed to listen to their murmurous conversation, even though it might cost her all her future joy in life.
But as it turned out, they weren’t speaking of love, or at least not the sort of love she’d feared they might be discussing.
“Yes,” Annabelle continued in a clear, confident little voice that was almost unrecognizable to her cousin, “for music is to the emotions as poetry is to prose. It is what happens when a soul or, indeed, a thought must sing. Or,” she concluded, in the more hesitant tones that Leonora knew so well, “at least so I have always felt.”
“But that’s quite a charming notion, don’t hang your head for saying it, little one,” the marquess commented in the same warm, tender tones. “In fact, you ought to write it down.”
“Ah well,” Leonora could hear Annabelle say, in eerie reprise, “after what I’ve just said, I suppose it would be better if I sang it, don’t you think?”
The Lady Benjamin found herself accosted in a dim stretch of hallway as she was making her way back to her box. A hand snaked out from a dark niche and clamped onto her arm in a sensitive place, above an emerald bracelet. Before she could call for Lord Benjamin’s help, since he never looked her way as they promenaded, she heard her sister hiss, “Sybil, here, at once.”
The lady bade her husband continue to their box without her and stayed to talk with her agitated sister. She eyed her sibling askance, for Leonora was as flushed and fervent as though she ran a fever.
“Since I doubt you’ve been bitten by a mad dog since we’ve left you, I assume you are in some other sort of dire distress?” Sybil asked coolly.
“Sybil,” Leonora said wildly, “I want to be rid of my cap and bells.”
“Ah,” said Lady Benjamin.
“At once, do you hear?” Leonora cried. “You must help me. I want to stop being a fool, and oh lord, Sybil, for the first time in my life I think I actually want to kill someone.”
“Oh splendid,” said her sister.
THIRTEEN
The slender volume lay unopened upon the table. Though ordinarily Leonora would very much wish to know what treasures awaited between the soft covers, they lay limp and closed. And not the promise of the vision of a dozen angels with the likenesses of her cousin, or a score more with her own dark face, would have tempted her to turn one page of Mr. Blake’s book right now. For her cousin’s angelic countenance was before her in reality, and she had far more curiosity about the answers that would fall from those actual lips, than she had for any wisdom contained in any volume, from any author who had ever lived or written.
“Why yes, of course,” Annabelle said calmly, although with some evident surprise, as though she were amazed that such a question need be asked at all. “Of course I intend to marry him. I have from the first.”
“But you said ... or at least I thought you seemed to think he was reprehensible, you seemed to think I ought not encourage him....” Leonora faltered.
“Why, of course,” Annabelle replied with a little smile that was not remotely angelic upon her pale lips, “because I wanted him, and I thought it wouldn’t do for you to get in my way. Actually, as it turned out, cousin, you made it that much easier for me, and I thank you for it.”
Leonora did not reply at once. She could not. She only stood and gripped hard upon the edge of her dressing table so that the pain in her hands reinforced the reality of the encounter. For, she thought, if it were not for the fact that her fingers certainly ached, she might believe that she had fallen asleep waiting for Annabelle to come to her room as she had bidden her to do, and was merely dreaming this entire bizarre conversation.
She’d known from the moment she’d opened her eyes this morning that she must speak with Annabelle. Instead, she’d gone to visit Sybil, as they had hurriedly arranged to do the previous night. And nothing that her sister had said at their early morning council of war in Sybil’s ornate dressing room had changed her mind. All the schemes that Sybil had concocted in the night were unworkable, or at least, she’d known they were so for her. For she’d listened to plots that were far too Machiavellian, too complex, and too full of subversion for her to seriously attempt to follow for any longer than it took for her sister to lovingly detail them.
Sybil might well have been able to carry off the exquisitely convoluted deceptions that had to do with forged notes and double-edged comments, feigned disclosures and servants paid to spy, but Leonora knew she could not. It was, as she had finally sighed, turning down one last scheme that involved a great deal of skulking and lurking, admittedly her own fault Obviously, she wasn’t feminine enough to be up to such rigs, exactly as Sybil, who was very irate at her refusal, snapped at her so crossly. But, as she’d replied as she arose and prepared to take her leave, if it was indeed masculine for her to approach Annabelle and plainly ask for explanation, then she’d just have to be fitted out for trousers, for that was precisely what she intended to do as soon as she returned home.
And that was precisely what she’d done, not ten minutes before. She’d postponed luncheon and summoned Annabelle. Then her cousin had entered the room with her usual meek grace. Katie had been sent away, though Leonora didn’t doubt that her maid wasn’t somewhere in the vicinity with a tumbler up against an inner wall and her own wondering ear attached to that glass, for without doubt Katie was as feminine a creature as Sybil might wish her sister to be.
But then Leonora had never equated stealth and deceit with femininity, nor did she for one moment consider that her gender had any special proclivity or talent for such, either. She reasoned that oppressed creatures of any sort might well develop such tendencies, but she’d never considered herself particularly oppressed. Then, too, all her life she’d known that the gentlemen she knew the best and admired the most were likely her nation’s most superior spies. And none of them were remotely ladylike.
No, whether she’d been born male or female, Leonora knew she lacked the qualities nece
ssary for effective espionage. She was a poor liar, an uncomfortable conspirator, and an abysmally bad actress. She regretted, but accepted these deficiencies in her character. They were, after all, the very reasons her life had been shaped as it had been. She became estranged from her father when she’d been unable to face him knowing what she did of his mistresses, and she’d given up the thought of marriage after learning of the hypocrisy evidently necessary to keep up the semblance of wedded bliss. From such painful experience, Leonora knew she was bad at semblances and worse at hypocrisy.
And so she didn’t count it as either brave or honorable to refuse to resort to deceit She simply realized that she had no other course but to face Annabelle squarely, and have the matter out in the open.
But she’d never expected Annabelle to be as candid with her. Nor had she expected Annabelle to be such an adept at the family trade as to make her own father appear to be merely an amateur.
Though it took a while for Leonora to frame her question, and longer still for her to actually nerve herself to ask it aloud, when she at last did, it didn’t seem to discompose Annabelle in the least.
For, “Oh,” Annabelle said softly, laying the book she carried down upon the table when she was told there was something more pressing upon her relative’s mind. And then, “Yes,” she had said without a blink when she was asked if it were true that she had literally quoted everything her cousin had said about music to the marquess, without ever crediting the originator of the commentary.
“Of course,” Annabelle had then said, smiling, completely undismayed at answering a question whose creation had turned her inquisitor’s cheek to flame, “for it was a clever thing to say, and I know nothing of music, I told you so, cousin. And I needed to impress him. He’s almost at the point of offering for me, and needs a bit of encouragement, you know.”
Leonora was so staggered at this calm admission that she didn’t even take affront when Annabelle then proceeded to thank her, with more evident amusement than she had ever shown on her bland, pale face, for making her task easier by encouraging the marquess’s company. Leonora only clutched at the dressing table to convince herself of her wakeful state and then, despite her amazement, managed to pluck the chiefest, most salient point from her cousin’s answer to ask, “But then, Belle ... that means ... has he asked?”
