by Maia Chance
Then a third rowboat nosed into Ophelia’s vision. Off to the right and a little behind them. It must have been hidden in the reeds.
“Professor.” Ophelia tipped her head.
“I had no notion the lake would be such a popular spot this evening.” Penrose leaned into the oars, and they sped up.
The third boat was occupied by two narrow, hooded forms. Were they two ladies, or two slight gentlemen, or one of each? Impossible to tell. But they were plainly aware of Ophelia and Penrose, for two pale faces turned towards them. Ophelia’s scalp crawled as she stared into the hollows of two pairs of eyes.
She’d never believed in ghouls, but she was thinking about giving it a try. “I fancy those two spooks are turning their boat towards us. Steer away, would you? I don’t know who they are, but I don’t reckon I wish to.”
Penrose stole a quick glance. “Good heavens, it cannot be—no. Impossible.”
“What? Who?”
“Don’t laugh, but I would avow that is Lady Cruthlach at the oars.”
30
“Lady Cruthlach behind the oars? How could that be? Her arms would snap like twigs if she tried to row a boat. And Lord Cruthlach can’t sit up like that. Hume carries him around.”
“Hume was concocting elixirs from that book. They might’ve had a revivifying effect.”
“I couldn’t believe that hogwash if my life depended on—”
CRACK! Something zinged past Ophelia’s ear. One of the spooks had fired a gun.
“Get down!” Penrose cried. He rowed harder, and Ophelia threw herself to the bottom of the rowboat.
Another CRACK! Penrose stopped rowing and hunkered down. He patted at his jacket.
Searching for that revolver of his, no doubt.
“Let me row!” Ophelia said. “They’re catching up!” The spooks’ oars were splashing closer and closer.
“No. I could not live with myself if something were to happen to you.” Penrose pulled the revolver from his jacket and checked the cylinder. He lifted his eyes and the gun’s barrel over the edge of the rowboat. He aimed.
BANG!
Ophelia heard a plop. Penrose slid the revolver back into his jacket.
“That’s it?” Ophelia asked.
“Shot it out of Lord Cruthlach’s hand.”
“Almost too easy.”
“I’ve had a bit of practice.”
“I’m afraid to inquire.”
“Suffice to say that you and I, Miss Flax, could go into business together as a circus act.”
“You’d shoot apples off my head?”
“Something of the sort.” Penrose was on the seat and rowing again. “Do stay down, Miss Flax. They’ve drawn rather close, and they might have another gun.”
Penrose rowed hard for a half-dozen strokes. His jaw was tight.
Suddenly, an oar splintered through the side of the boat, just in front of Ophelia’s face. Water gushed in.
“Hang it,” Penrose muttered. He patted for his revolver.
Ophelia tried to struggle upright, but the boat was already tipping. She dumped sideways into the lake. She knew how to swim, but one did not customarily swim in a crinoline, corset, boots, and four layers of skirts. Her bottom half swelled with water. She churned her arms but she could barely stay afloat. Penrose shouted to her, reached out. He wasn’t watching Lord and Lady Cruthlach.
Lady Cruthlach, her face hidden in the shadow of her hood, pushed Ophelia under with an oar.
Ophelia screamed into the black, cold water. It filled her mouth, eyes, ears. She thrashed her arms, but the pressure of the oar bearing down between her shoulders was insurmountable.
She would die here.
A bright picture flickered. The swimming hole in New Hampshire, where she and her brother, Odie, had gone when the air was thick with damp summer heat and biting insects. The water there had been cool and sun-dappled, it had smelled of minerals. She saw Odie’s smiling brown eyes, which she had not seen for years past now. She had always supposed, but never known for certain, that he’d died in the war, so seeing him like this now, did it mean she was dying?
The pressure of the oar lifted. Ophelia surged to the surface, her lungs burning for air. She fought against the dead weight of her skirts for a brief moment, and then strong arms were around her waist, pulling her through the dark water as she coughed and said good-bye to Odie’s eyes. She was carried through the shallow waters to the shore. She was set down upon the gravel.
“Miss Flax,” Penrose murmured. “You were almost—oh God.”
Ophelia coughed again. Water poured from her mouth and nose.
“Lord and Lady Cruthlach are escaping to the other side. And the prince and his lady, too, have disappeared onto the far shore. But we shan’t give chase. Come, now, are you able to walk?”
Ophelia nodded. She wished she could cry.
Arm in arm, they limped, dripping, back to the château.
* * *
When Ophelia entered Miss Stonewall’s guest chamber, soaked and shivering, she found Prue and Dalziel hunched over a chessboard by the fireplace.
“Who taught you to play chess, Prue?” Ophelia asked, smearing water from her eyes.
“Ain’t playing chess. Playing checkers with the chess set.” Prue looked up. “Ophelia! What happened to you?”
“Suffice it to say that I’m in need of a hot bath.” Ophelia glanced at Dalziel. He seemed a nice enough fellow, but he was Lord and Lady Cruthlach’s grandson. “Will your grandmother and grandfather attend the ball this evening?” she asked him. She couldn’t bring herself to admit that she believed the old codgers had nearly drowned her in the lake.
“They were invited, but no, they will not attend. They are at home in Paris. You have not met them, Miss Flax, but it is rather difficult to picture them on a dancing floor.”
Prue laughed. “Hume would have to do all the work. All right, Dalziel. Time for you to hook it. Ophelia needs her privacy. But won’t you come back later and keep me company till midnight?”
“Of course, Miss Prudence. And I shall bring you something to dine upon.”
“You’ll make certain nothing happens to Prue, won’t you?” Ophelia asked.
Dalziel studied her. “I shall guard her with my very life, Miss Flax.”
Ophelia had no choice but to trust him.
“Quite a puppy dog, isn’t he?” Ophelia said to Prue, once Dalziel had gone.
“It’s only fair, Ophelia. You’ve got two.”
* * *
After the incident at the lake, Gabriel bathed, tended to the bump on his head from Hume’s wooden spoon, the other bump on his head from the automaton’s champagne bottle, and affixed a fresh plaster to his bullet-nicked ear. Then he changed into evening clothes and went down to Prince Rupprecht’s opulent gaming room, along with about half of the chaps in the château. After nine o’clock chimed, he went out to the ballroom to find Miss Flax. He brought his glass of Bordeaux with him.
What he meant to say to her would not be easy. But it had to be done.
At first, he did not see her. He was just about to wonder if he’d been foolish to leave her unguarded with Lord and Lady Cruthlach on the loose, when he saw her.
His heart wrung itself.
Miss Flax stood against a wall beside a row of glum wallflowers in gilt chairs. But Miss Flax was no wallflower. She wore a ball gown of eggshell blue, with an embroidered cream satin overskirt and a snug bodice with tiny tulle sleeves. Her hair was swept behind a cream satin band. Her cheeks were flushed and her dark eyes flashed.
She did not resemble the woman he’d been fretting over in the gaming room. The woman who would hang nappies out on a clothesline across Harrington Hall’s rose garden, or instruct their children how to do the horseshoe-toss in the portrait gallery, or serve Indian pudding and molasses to
aristocrats. No, Miss Flax looked like . . . a gentlewoman. And that was, oddly, a bit dismaying. Because for some reason, Gabriel did not wish for Miss Flax to be a gentlewoman; he wished for her to be simply herself.
He swallowed the last of his wine, set aside the glass, and waded through the crowd towards her.
“Miss Flax,” he said when he reached her.
She lifted her brows. “What’s the gruff voice on account of, Professor?”
“Truth be told, I’ve a blinder of a headache. Would you . . .” He swallowed. He felt like a bloody schoolboy. “Would you kindly come outside with me please, Miss Flax, and desist in peering into my mug as though you were looking through a spyglass?”
“You certainly do seem as though you require a breath of air.” She took his proffered arm, but gingerly.
This was off to a dismal start.
* * *
Outside the ballroom, a terrace overlooked the formal gardens and, beyond, a great, shadowy park. A strip of starlit river shone behind black trees. Hanging paper lanterns lit up the gardens, a fairyland of topiaries, fountains, gravel walks, and white stone stairs.
Ophelia slipped her arm out of the professor’s as soon as they got outside. He was acting shirty and she hadn’t a notion why. Things had seemed fine enough when they’d parted after their dip in the lake.
Ophelia walked silently at Penrose’s side down a few flights of steps and into the formal gardens. Ladies and gents were already up to some naughty tricks in the maze and behind statues. Ophelia and Penrose both pretended not to notice. A string quartet sat on a platform in the middle of a marble pool. The musicians sawed away—Mozart, maybe—by the light of candelabras.
“Feel better?” Ophelia asked Penrose. “Your headache, I mean.”
He stopped, pushed his hands in his pockets, and scowled into the distance.
“Well. Perhaps you ought to be by yourself, because you seem mighty testy,” Ophelia said. “I think I’ll just go—”
“Miss Flax,” Penrose said. He didn’t look at her. “There is something I must say to you. Something rather important.”
Her innards flip-flopped. “Oh?”
He paused. Gathering his thoughts. That didn’t bode well. When folks had to gather their thoughts, it usually meant they were scrambling around for the nicest way to say something rotten.
“In recent days,” Penrose said, “or, really, not precisely in recent days, but beginning in Germany, when and where I first made your acquaintance, but particularly in recent days, we have, at any rate, I believe we have, ah, become something of—well, we have formed a bit of a friendship. Have we not?”
“I reckon so. Yes.”
“I am glad we are in agreement on that point. Now, there are certainly those who would argue that a lady and a gentleman cannot and indeed, by rights ought not, form friendships. In particular, young, unmarried ladies and unattached gentlemen.”
“Unattached gentlemen? What about Miss Ivy Banks?”
“That is precisely it, Miss Flax. Precisely. It is with these social reservations, as it were, that I—”
“Hold it right there, Professor.” Ophelia steadied the wobble in her throat. “I see where you’re headed.”
“You do?”
“You’re about to remind me of Miss Banks. I don’t require a reminder.”
“Yes. I have a confession to make. You see, I admit that there was some truth in what I said about Miss Banks. My mother, for instance, wishes me to marry a lady of a certain . . . well, for lack of a better term, of a certain class.”
Ophelia’s heart frosted over.
“And Miss Banks is the very epitome of the lady I ought to marry. Do you understand what I am saying, Miss Flax?”
“You’re saying we ought not be friends anymore. I couldn’t agree more. You can have your Latin-spouting, fossil-digging, retiring lady and her perfect handwriting, because I don’t give a hoot or a holler.” Ophelia spun around and grabbed handfuls of slippery silken skirts. She ran up the stairs to the terrace, nearly losing her left slipper along the way.
* * *
Ophelia pushed into the ballroom and made tracks to the champagne table. The crowd was thick, the orchestra sounded shrill, and guests chattered and elbowed.
Why must the professor so cruelly rub her nose in things? Or was he only being honest?
Ophelia didn’t know. She only needed to patch up this jagged wound. She wasn’t a tippling lady, but there had to be some reason folks turned to tiddly when the times got rough. She reached for a glass of champagne. Thick, gloved fingers whisked it away. She opened her mouth to give someone a piece of her mind.
“Mademoiselle Stonewall,” Griffe said over the din of flutes and oboes, “how is it that la plus belle, the most beautiful lady, is also the one with the so-sad face?” He passed the glass to her. “Come, ma chérie. Drink. It will do you good, eh? What has happened to your shoulder?”
The mechanical bear-claw marks showed on Ophelia’s bare shoulder. “Cat scratch.”
“Ah. What an enormous cat it must have been.”
Ophelia drank the champagne down like water and held out her empty glass for more.
Griffe refilled her glass, tucked her arm in his, and led her out onto the terrace.
Ophelia scanned the gardens below. No sign of Penrose. Probably off composing a love sonnet to you-know-who.
“Deserve to have each other. Prigs,” she muttered.
“Pardonnez-moi?”
“Did I speak aloud?” Ophelia looked into her empty glass.
“It is perhaps, mademoiselle, that you are unsettled by the crush. Perhaps they do not have such balls in Ohio, in the Cleveland?”
“Something like that.” The champagne had already peeled off a layer of care. “I’m feeling much better, as a matter of fact.” Griffe really was nice, in a burly, furry fashion. He was like one of those alpine rescue dogs who carried little casks of brandy around their necks.
“Better, eh? Then perhaps I shall take the opportunity to ask you an important question.”
Oh.
“You must be aware, Mademoiselle Stonewall, how taken I am by you. How enchanted. You are a prize among women, a flower, a gem, a pearl, an angel—”
Ophelia parted her lips.
“Ah!” Griffe pressed a gloved finger to her lips. “Allow me, I beg of you, to finish, before I lose my—how do you say?—nerve.” He dug in his waistcoat pocket. Extracted something. A small, sparkling something. “Your papa is across the sea so I cannot do this properly by first begging for his approval. I must ask you now and perhaps later, during our betrothal, your papa might make the journey to France—or we could sail, if you like, together to Cleveland.” He knelt down on one knee. “Mademoiselle Stonewall, will you do me the very great honor of giving to me your hand in marriage? Of becoming the Countess de Griffe?”
Ophelia stared at the ring he held up. A berry-sized ruby glistened darkly. There were smaller diamonds, too, a constellation around the ruby, all set in dark gold. If a lady slid that onto her finger, it’d weigh her down like a ball and chain. Still, Ophelia had never, ever owned something so fine, or even touched something so fine.
Griffe held his breath, hound eyes pleading.
Penrose appeared at the top of the steps and passed across the terrace several paces behind Griffe. He didn’t see Ophelia, but she felt again that stabbing pain, that plummeting sense of inadequacy. Penrose went inside.
Ophelia looked down at Griffe and said the rottenest thing she’d ever said in all her days. “Yes,” she said. “Yes.”
31
The next two hours passed in a ruby-tinted, champagne-heated haze. Ophelia danced waltz after waltz with Griffe, who was tender, charming, and solicitous. She was having a fine time pretending she hadn’t a care in the world, and the champagne quite numbed her sore toe. She
ignored the awful thought that she would have to break things off with Griffe. Why had she said yes?
Professor Penrose was nowhere in sight, but Ophelia glimpsed Eglantine and Austorga seated on chairs against a wall. They were bickering, although Austorga’s face was hopeful. Miss Smythe, beside them, gazed dully through her spectacles into the swirling throng. Mrs. Smythe read a book.
When Ophelia and Griffe sailed by a wine table, Ophelia caught sight of a pair of cunning, whiskey-colored eyes that she’d know anywhere.
She nearly tripped on her own feet. “I must go arrange my hair,” she said to Griffe. She left him standing in the middle of the dance floor. “Henrietta!” she whispered at a cascade of chestnut curls.
Henrietta turned. She wore a pink brocade gown that displayed her bosom like a bakery shop window. Her delicate eyebrows lifted. “My, my. Ophelia Flax. The things you see when you—”
“What’re are you doing here? I ought to be happy, but I’m furious! I’ve searched Paris high and low for you! Prue thinks you could be dead.” Ophelia snatched Henrietta’s wineglass and took a gulp. Why not? She wasn’t in New England anymore.
“Of course I’m here, darling. I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. Goodness. I’ve never seen you looking so feminine, Ophelia.” Henrietta’s voice was the same as ever: silky, and clear enough to project to the uppermost seats in a theater. “You never used to be much for making an effort with your looks. I figured you were one of those girls who attempt to get by on cleverness.”
“Do you know your daughter Sybille is dead?”
“Yes. I saw the newspapers. So sad.”
“But you’d met her. You’d given her Howard DeLuxe’s name.”
“How did you dig that up? Yes. Sybille wished to leave Paris. Man trouble.” Henrietta poked out her lower lip. “But come now, Ophelia. Must we speak of such rotten, gloomy things?”
“That tone of voice isn’t going to work on me. I’m not one of your dullard gents.”
“Speaking of which, who was that long-haired gentleman I saw you dancing with? He looked rich.”
