by Maureen Lang
“Meg!”
Hazel Hibbit beckoned, but beside the stout school matron bustled her sister, Beatrice. Meg smiled, far from alarmed. The Hibbit sisters were forever distressed about something, perhaps more often now that Hazel had become the matron. Meg added the weed to the others she’d collected and set to the side for the gardener to remove, then stepped back onto the grass.
“A message!” Hazel called.
“Yes!” Beatrice added. “For you!”
Curiosity stirred, Meg held the puffed flounces that trimmed the bottom of her silk day dress out of the way to wipe her feet on the downy lawn. Obviously it wasn’t a letter from a former schoolmate, an invitation to a soiree, or even a note from some prospective beau. Such things wouldn’t have warranted any more attention than to be left with the others upon her silver card holder by the door.
Only a message from one person would hasten Hazel’s step and add a bloom to Beatrice’s cheeks. It must be from Meg’s father.
“Open it, child! Look, it’s bordered in black.”
Meg reached for the sealed envelope. Indeed, the stationery was outlined in black, though her name was written neatly in the center where the paper had been left white. She tore it open, seeing it was dated that very day.
June 7, 1883
Dearest Meggie,
I write to you today with a heavy heart and unsteady hand. Your beloved father passed on to his reward this very day. I will, of course, see to all the arrangements of his burial.
Please be assured he did not suffer but breathed his last in the peacefulness of sleep.
Respectfully,
Ian Maguire
“He’s dead.” Meg’s words, like her heart, were untouched by the news. So it was over. Her hope that he would one day arrive knowing how to be a father to her, or to share with her anything of the family to which she was bound by blood.
“Your father?” Beatrice’s voice was usually high-pitched, but just now piercingly so. “He’s—he’s gone?”
Meg nodded, folding the note and slipping it back into the envelope. She walked past the sisters, back to the three-story house that had once ranked among the finest Federal estates on the hills between Boston and New York. For the past twenty-five years, this home had been one of the most expensive, exclusive schools in New England. One that taught European grace and manners to the next generation of accomplished wives and mothers, all under the far-reaching umbrella of Christian love. Even after Madame Marisse died two years ago, the staff had carried on in her absence so that it was still regarded as one of the finest schools along the East Coast.
Beatrice fluttered behind Meg, taking one of her arms. “Oh, dear, we’re so very sorry for the news!”
“Yes, of course we are,” Hazel added, reaching for Meg’s other arm. “How sad the world has lost such a gentleman.”
Indeed.
Meg stepped up to the porch that served as the entrance to the back of the school, walked past the sunroom, where she and countless others had learned not only the art of watercolor and charcoal drawing, but the art of conversation and genteel manners. Here they had been taught how to be demure yet confident, all the while reminded of the delicacy of a woman’s constitution and the greater delicacy of a woman’s reputation. She passed the music room, where she’d learned not only to sing and dance and play piano, but the history of musical elements as well, because Madame Marisse had believed in the depth as well as the breadth of knowledge—at least as it pertained to becoming an asset to a husband. And she continued past the sitting room, where she had rested after lawn tennis or horseback riding or long afternoon walks. Or had spent time with the mundane to the profound, from idle embroidery to discussing the greatest literature known to man. Where she’d prayed with other students and the staff alike in English as well as French. Because Madame Marisse had believed in educating the whole person, physically, intellectually, and spiritually.
Meg passed all the rooms in which she had been a student, a friend, a protégé. But never a daughter.
In the front hall, at the foot of the stairs, she turned back to the sisters. “Thank you for your concern, but I wish to be alone for now.”
“Oh yes, of course,” Beatrice said.
Meg put a foot on one stair, then another, realizing for the first time that she’d left her shoes in the garden. But they didn’t matter now.
“But . . .”
One hand on the polished walnut handrail, Meg turned back.
Hazel looked up at Meg with the oddest expression, one of uncertainty rather than sympathy.
The look disappeared as Hazel turned away. “It’s too soon, my dear. Never mind. Go upstairs, and we’ll talk when you’re ready.”
“Pertaining to what?”
Hazel faced Meg again. “Pertaining to your father, dear.”
“There is nothing to be said.”
“You’ll want to go to his funeral, of course,” Beatrice said.
Meg shook her head. “Even if I did, I wouldn’t know how. That boy—” She amended her thought of him; the last time she’d seen Ian Maguire, he had been a boy, but surely he was as grown as she by now. “A Mr. Maguire will be attending to all of the details.”
Hazel pulled at the bottom of her cuirass bodice, which shifted despite the finest of corsets beneath. It would fit even tighter by the end of summer, during which time Hazel annually added a few pounds, eating quantities she would never permit herself—or others—to consume while school was in session. “Yes, well, that isn’t exactly what I meant, but we needn’t discuss anything right now.”
Meg descended the two stairs she’d mounted. The school was newly quiet with only her and the sisters there, besides the reduced year-round household staff.
“If there is anything to be said regarding my father’s death, Miss Hibbit, you might as well tell me now. Has it something to do with my place here?”
“Oh no, of course not!” Beatrice spoke before Hazel could, shaking her head and taking one of Meg’s hands, patting it. She was as wont to be thin as her sister was to be plump. When the students returned in the fall, one sister would eat with those whose diets were curbed, while the other ate with those whose diets were embellished. At the end of every summer they were able to provide guidance and personal example for those girls who had to work at becoming the ideally sized debutante.
“Your position is secure as long as you like,” Beatrice added. “Madame Marisse made that so very clear, you know, before . . . well, before she passed on.”
Meg turned her eyes back to Hazel, and as so often happened when Meg leveled a gaze at anyone, man or woman, Hazel let her own stare linger. It happened because of the color of Meg’s eyes; she knew that. The eyes she’d inherited from her father. Eyes that people simply wanted to peer into.
Hazel took Meg’s other hand, leading her from the hall and back toward the wide, curved threshold into the parlor. It was a large room appointed in the finest fashion: furniture designed by such famous people as Phyfe, Lannuier, and Roux; side chairs and sofas and a pair of French ladies’ desks trimmed with inlaid mahogany; and nearby, a rococo center table of marble and rosewood offering an inviting surface for a silver tea set imported from London.
Hazel headed to one of the desks. “I wonder if you might think this a bit sudden, considering the news has had but a moment to make an impression.”
Meg stared at Hazel, wondering if the older woman truly believed her own words. Did she think Meg’s lack of emotion was simply because her father’s death hadn’t sunk in yet? Did she expect Meg to mourn a man she barely knew? Other women might not have been immune to the charms of John Davenport, but unlike them Meg had never once wanted to simply stare at his handsome face.
“What is it you’d like to say about the matter, Miss Hibbit?”
Hazel looked from Meg to the desk beside her, the one used only by the staff. Meg expected, one day, that she would use that desk. Knowing there were few other options for her future, Meg had deci
ded to transform this school from a luxurious factory of wives and mothers to an institution that could offer women more choices: to be instructors or lecturers, doctors or lawyers, or anything else they wished. It wasn’t the kind of future she’d envisioned as a child—one in which she made others’ dreams come true as she ignored her own—but with so little choice left open to her, it would have to suffice.
Hazel withdrew a key from her pocket. “Please, make yourself comfortable. Perhaps Beatrice could summon some tea.”
Meg could hardly sit, let alone drink tea. “What is it you want to share with me?”
“I have a letter for you.” She opened the desk as she spoke. Meg had seen the interior a thousand times or more: little compartments neatly holding bills and records, a small inkwell, pens and tips, stationery and envelopes. Nothing unusual. It was, in fact, the perfect model for students to reproduce while studying household management.
But then, after Hazel withdrew a small stack of envelopes, she pushed the edge of the corner compartment. In one surprising instant the rear wood piece dropped down. A shadow appeared, from which Hazel drew another lone envelope.
Holding it in her thick fingers, Hazel turned back to Meg. “It’s from Madame Marisse regarding your father. We were instructed to look at it if you were ever at death’s door. Otherwise it was to be given to you upon the day you left our school or the day your father died. Whichever came first.”
How silly of Meg not to have had some kind of premonition of this. But she hadn’t; Meg was completely, utterly stunned that Hazel knew something concerning her father that she did not.
“A letter from Madame to me, about my father. Do you know what it says?”
Hazel shook her head.
Meg took the envelope, instantly disappointed in its weight—or rather, the lack of it. Surely it was a short letter.
She didn’t open it right away. Instead, she stared down at the familiar script. So precise, so feminine. The perfect handwriting, as perfect as everything Madame Marisse had done. As controlled as Meg had learned to be.
Meg broke into the envelope, withdrawing the paper inside. She recognized at once the school stationery, upon which was written a few meager lines and a New York address.
The address below is to be used to contact John Davenport, should anything happen to Meg. If there has been any change, the proprietor of this business will know where Mr. Davenport can be reached. Only to be used in the most dire of circumstance.
Meg allowed the sisters to read the words over her shoulders.
“Well, then, there is no reason for you not to attend his funeral,” Beatrice said. “You have means to contact his estate now.”
Hazel nodded. “We’ll accompany you, of course.”
Meg shook her head. “No. I’ll not be going.”
She folded the letter, slipped it back into the envelope, and crumpled it with the other one, the one from Ian Maguire that had revealed her father’s death. Then she walked from the room.
It wasn’t until she was up the stairs, down the hall, through the very last bedroom door, and inside the perfectly decorated room that she fell to her knees, pressing those letters to her breast. And then she burst into tears.
2
A young man worthy of a lady’s attention must be impeccable in manner and dress. He must be humble yet confident, strong yet sensitive to his ladylove’s nature, and above all else, he must put the needs of others before his own.
Madame Marisse’s Handbook for Young Ladies
Near Peekskill, New York
Ian Maguire rubbed the soft fur behind Roscoe’s ears. He needed the comfort of the massive dog just then, if only to steady his hands after writing explicit instructions for the undertaker who waited nearby.
He could barely read his own writing. But there they were, directions for the stonemason on what was to be inscribed upon John’s headstone.
Behold and See as You Pass By
As You are Now so Once was I
As I am Now You Soon will Be
Prepare for Death and Follow Me
Ian had nearly begged John—Skipjack to those who knew him best—not to order such words to reside over him until the end of time. Not to bring such a dour warning out here to the country air they loved, the air that had served them far better than that stinking cloud hovering over New York City.
But John had been insistent. He’d changed in the last few months of his life, had acted as if he’d known death would summon him sooner than any of the rest of them suspected. The inscription itself gave no clue as to why John had presumed the quickness of death, other than the fact that it might be imminent for anyone—something Ian would rather not consider.
It was all Kate’s fault. She’d changed John with her new talk of hellfire, God’s judgment, and all that. She might have kept it to herself if she’d known John’s heart had been brittle as glass. The stress of life had proved too much for him.
Ian folded the instructions and handed the page to the undertaker, who would see to all of the details. With it he sent enough money for the cabinetmaker to build a proper coffin—the newer kind, with lining—and for the stonemason to brick over the grave as an extra precaution, even though John would be buried here on Ian’s own property, a safe distance from the city. No physician’s experiment would John be.
Ian returned to the bedroom where his friend’s body waited. Roscoe followed, the tips of his nails sounding a familiar tap on the uncarpeted floor. Pubjug was in the room, watching over the body alone for the moment. If Ian didn’t count Kate, he and Pubjug would miss John the most.
Served Kate right not to be here when John died, though it was a shame his last moments had been in a borrowed bed. That was Kate’s fault too, having recently thrown John out of her flat. Until they could be wed, of all things! After all this time.
Ian saw Pubjug seated on the chair near the bedside, arms folded, legs sprawled. Barely awake. Ian jabbed his shoulder when he passed.
“I’s watchin’, Pinch,” Pubjug said, calling Ian by a leftover nickname that only he—and John—ever used anymore. “He ain’t moved a mite, not a mite.”
“It’s all right, Pubjug. You can go now. I’ll watch over him for a while.”
Even as Pubjug left the room, Ian knew it was no use. John didn’t need to be watched over anymore. Ian believed the doctor who’d said John was dead. He no longer breathed. Ian had placed his hand under John’s nose often enough just to make sure, ever since he found him when Roscoe started howling that dawn, alerting Ian that something was amiss.
Now Roscoe took up the place he’d been coaxed away from earlier, on the bed and close to John’s cool body. The undertaker would be back shortly to shave and redress him, pack his body in ice to preserve it as well as he could before moving him down to the ballroom, where even now furniture was being rearranged and the dining table brought in. Ian hoped John would look better than he did at the moment, with a few days’ stubble on his chin and his mouth frozen open.
No one could see him this way. They should see him as the man he’d always been in life: strong, handsome. Though no longer charming or decisive or confident. So confident he could make someone believe up was down or the other way around if he wanted. All that was gone now.
Ian ignored the pain in his gut as he thought once again about the note he’d sent with Keys that morning—the one that was to be delivered first thing. Why had he done it? Why had the first note been to her? It wasn’t because John had said to take care of Meggie, because that hadn’t, in fact, been his most urgent instruction.
No. John had indeed told Ian to take care of her . . . but to do it from afar. Just as John had done all his life.
And yet visions of Meggie had come to Ian all morning. Surely she would be sorrowful over her father’s death. Perhaps she would be unable to keep herself away, despite the purposeful lack of invitation to help with the details of her father’s burial. Perhaps she would come here at last, and they could mourn their l
oss together.
“I don’t care what he said. I’m going in there.”
The sound of protest barely registered before the door burst open and there, obviously hastily coiffed, dressed in her habitual red, stood Katherine Kane, called Kate. For a woman nearly ten years older than Ian, she had been a lovely counterpart to John’s own youthful good looks. No doubt the reason that, together, they had profited so well from unsuspecting prey. They’d been too difficult for mere mortals to resist.
“John!” Kate brushed past Pubjug, who looked helplessly toward Ian before backing out of the room and closing the door.
Roscoe greeted her with a wagging tail and submissive ears, along with a little whimper as Kate approached John’s side. She brushed the top of the dog’s enormous brown head in an acknowledgment of their shared suffering, but it was barely more than a graze.
If she saw Ian, she ignored him as she fell at John’s side, a torrent of tears already dampening her unpowdered cheeks.
Despite his best intention, Ian was unable to remain cool in light of her grief. He watched her stroke John’s face, his hair, his brows; she tried closing his mouth, which remained stiff and unyielding against her effort. She uttered words Ian couldn’t decipher, except no, no and too soon.
Then she pressed her face to John’s chest, deep sobs racking her body.
Ian let her cry. But not for long. He pulled her from the bed, and for a moment she turned to him, nearly forcing an embrace as if to extract some small comfort. Ian let his arms fall around her, but even as he did, she backed away.
“Why didn’t you send word to me sooner? I had to find out from Dice, and he said Keys had the list of those who were to be told. I wasn’t even one of them!” Her words were barely out before Ian felt the imprint of her palm against his cheek. “How dare you! How dare you try controlling this, the way you’ve tried controlling everything else lately!”
