The Black Angel (The St Ives) Page 14

  I am enjoying, this very moment, your collection of flowers. There are a good many in bloom; the roses, of course, and some others. My favorite is a yellow orchid with tiny brown spots on the petals. I am sure you would correct me in the correct Latin name if you were here. You must come soon for a visit, you know. You and Julian and Gabriel could trade adventure tales.

  The letter occupied three-quarters of a very quiet hour, during which a solid rain began to fall, casting a chill through the rooms. She fetched a warm shawl and put new coal on the fire, then wrote to Ophelia and Cleo, together. In this one she described the dressmaker's shop and the assistants and the French dolls and the gowns she'd ordered, knowing how much they would enjoy the vicarious pleasure of it. She left out the confrontation with Malvern's mother, of course. She ended with a cheerful postscript:

  We are invited to a rout at the Duchess of Sherbourne's mansion. I shall wear the pink silk.

  She sealed both and gave them to a footman to be posted.

  And still there was nothing to do. Around her the house echoed with silence, broken only by the murmur of voices from the kitchen or the absent humming of a maid as she went about her chores. Out in the street the world hurried on, and for a time she stood by the window of the parlor, looking out. She wondered where her brother and husband were, what exciting business engaged them; she imagined them in some bustling spot, with voices and newspapers and plenty of debate.

  At home at Hartwood she would have gone out for a walk. The idea made her faint with terror today.

  If she had been born a man, where would she be in this moment? Certainly she might have spent her morning engaged in correspondence, but it might not have been with family. Perhaps she would have been a scholar or in the church or engaged in politics.

  No. She wrinkled her nose. Cassandra would have been the scholar, Phoebe in the church. It was impossible to imagine Ophelia as a man at all—she was so very suited to womanhood. Cleo? Cleo was as yet unformed, her interests colored by Ophelia's gentle frivolity.

  What would she herself have loved? Adriana wondered. Adventure. Travel. Perhaps she'd have bought a commission and sailed the seas. Or built an import trade.

  From the doorway the housekeeper asked, "Would you like some tea, milady? It's right cold this morning."

  Drawn from her thoughts, Adriana turned, absurdly grateful for the small kindness. "Yes, Mary. Thank you."

  She was bored. And lonely. It was too quiet here, and she was too afraid to venture out for fear of meeting yet another member of Society who would cut her.

  The idea bloomed naturally: What if she did not venture out as herself? What if she went out as a servant? Borrowed a gown from Fiona and pretended to be a housemaid running an errand for her mistress? She could buy a mutton pie for her lunch and eat it on a bench under a sheltering tree, with perhaps a little cider to wash it down with.

  Or—a logical extension of her thoughts this morning—why not a man?

  Well, there was one practical consideration. She wondered quite seriously if she could bind her breasts tightly enough to hide them. First she would try the servant's gown.

  Why not? With a little chuckle she hurried upstairs to find Fiona, and found her darning a pair of much mended socks in the anteroom off her bedroom. "Fiona, I have a wicked plan, and need your help."

  "Wicked, my lady?"

  "Well, not that wicked." She plucked the socks from her maid's hands. "These are worn through. Throw them away and I'll see you have ten new pairs by day's end."

  The girl's hazel eyes grew shrewd. "And what crime am I committing to get them?"

  Adriana laughed. "No crime! I only—" She glanced over her shoulder and hurried to close the door before she continued. "I want to borrow your clothes. Some dress you keep for days off?"

  "My lady, I have only two, and they are very poor."

  "Let me see."

  Plainly thinking her mistress had lost her wits, Fiona put down the darning and opened the small wardrobe in the corner. She took out a simple blue wool with a white collar. It was worn but generously cut. The other was also wool, this one the color of a good claret, and obviously Fiona's best. A little lace adorned the skirt and sleeves. "This suits you," Adriana said. "Put it on. I'll wear the blue. When you're ready, come help me dismantle my hair."

  "Yes, milady." She did not quite dare look askance at Adriana, but her expression showed some alarm.

  "We'll not do anything dangerous, Fiona," she said. "I promise."

  * * *

  She was quite transformed, Adriana thought, admiring herself in the mirror over her dressing table. Fiona was of a size, and the gown fit well, though she had to scramble for shoes, finally deciding on a pair of leather slippers she wore when the weather was fine for gardening. Fiona brushed out her hair and pinned it in a simple knot at the nape of her neck, then draped a large woolen shawl around her shoulders and pinned it at her waist.

  "Will I do?" Adriana asked.

  Fiona frowned doubtfully. "You look like a lady dressed as a peasant," she said sadly.

  "Surely not!" She scowled at herself in the mirror.

  "Do not stand quite so straight," she said. "Let your shoulders go, and your hips. Only ladies have to walk so straight, the rest of us have to work too hard—we've got to be free to move our bodies."

  "Oh!" Adriana took a breath and shook her shoulders. She thought of childhood, of running along a beach with her brothers and of climbing trees. The tension left her hips suddenly, and she turned. "Better?"

  Fiona's expression said not.

  "Very well, then." She stripped off the shawl and put it in Fiona's arms. "I'll return in a trice."

  She did not bother to rifle through either of her brothers' or her husband's things. They were all too thin to accommodate her bust. Instead she marched down the passageway to her father's room and pushed open the door.

  The smell of him—leather and horse and powder—struck her with the force of a whip, cutting deep into vulnerable flesh. Stunned, she only stood in the doorway for a long moment, a sense of fresh loss upon her. The windows were shuttered, leaving the room dark and cold, and she felt strangely reluctant to enter. He'd not lived in these rooms for more than five years, not with any regularity, anyway, and her memories of him here all came from the days when she'd been presented at Court. Before he grew ill. Before she met Malvern. Before the duel.

  She closed her eyes and leaned on the door frame for a moment, allowing the sense of her loss to fill her for one moment. She had genuinely, deeply loved James St. Ives. Unlike many fathers of her acquaintance, he'd never held himself distant from his children. He'd involved himself in their affairs—sometimes with maddening results—and arranged things to make them happy when he could. He talked with them, and listened, and wanted to know who they were. His loss had left her numb for months.

  Somehow, she had forgotten him in all this upheaval the past few weeks, but it had been his hand that pushed it all in motion, hadn't it?

  For the first time, she wondered what his purpose had been. What had he seen, particularly, in Tynan Spenser, to cause him to select the man from the scores he knew on some level or another? And Tynan himself had said that the Earl was most specific about which daughter he should wed—Adriana.

  To the room that smelled of him so insistently, she said aloud, "What were you thinking, Papa?"

  But of course there was no answer. Remembering her purpose, she went first to the windows and flung open the shutters, then marched to the wardrobe and pulled out a handful of coats. More of that rich smell came with them, along with dust that made her sneeze, twice.

  The Earl of Albury had favored a dandy's colors—apple-green and bright yellow, satins in rather exuberant stripes, and sleeves heavy with lace. Perfect. She chose the green coat with gold buttons and a finely made shirt of lawn with cotton lace that would drip well over her knuckles. Before his illness, he'd been stout, so there was no trouble finding a waistcoat roomy enough to hide her bo
som. Breeches to match, white stockings flocked with gold, and a pair of shoes with buckles. The whole was only a little outdated.

  Finally, from the stands on a table, she chose a wig imported from France, made of natural auburn hair dressed in a queue. Gathering it all up, she closed the door carefully behind her and rushed back down the hall to her own chamber. Fiona stood up as Adriana rushed in with a happy squeal. "Not even my sister will know me when we're finished here," she cried.

  The maid widened her eyes.

  "Oh, don't worry," Adriana said. "No one will catch me out."

  The girl helped her bind her breasts with a length of linen, and while Adriana pulled the shirt over her head, Fiona brushed the coat vigorously. They stuffed more bits of linen into the too-big shoes, and Adriana pulled on the silky gold and white stockings.

  By then even Fiona grew a little giddy. "I've always had a yen to do this meself," she confessed, helping Adriana into the coat like a true valet. "But you're tall. It helps you." She took up the wig. "Sit down, milady."

  They'd carefully pinned her hair into a circle around her head, and as Adriana sat, cocking her head in a faintly mocking way, she was deeply pleased. She didn't at all look like a woman, but a young man with too much time on his hands and a stipend to waste. In the servant's gown, she'd appeared only a slightly altered version of her youthful self, not at all invisible, as she'd hoped.

  But now Fiona settled the wig on her head and the dark hair erased the last bits of Adriana. It made her skin paler yet, and took some of the brightness from her lips, putting the focus instead on her eyes, making them brilliantly blue, like the promising eyes of a rake.

  She raised a brow and drawled, "Strike me blind."

  Fiona could not halt a delighted little giggle, which she tried to catch back with her hand. Then she stepped back and made a little curtsy. "Milord."

  Adriana even felt different as she rose. Taller, leaner, stronger. She liked the illusion of night-bred pallor the dark hair gave, liked the way her mouth appeared not flirtatious in a pout, but disdainful. Experimentally, she walked across the room, checking the fit of the shoes—and oddly, the sense of them being too large was a help. She set them down with more authority than she used in everyday life. From a casket on her table she withdrew a small bag of coins, which she tucked neatly in her waistcoat pocket. "Well, what do you think now, Fiona?"

  "Very good."

  "I suppose I have to venture out alone now," Adriana commented, admiring herself. "Wouldn't want your reputation harmed." She rolled her eyes. "Not that I can do it more damage than has been done simply by being my maid." Then a practical thought made her frown. "How am I going to get out of the house like this?"

  Fiona grinned and fetched the hooded dun cloak from the bed. "Keep your head down till you're well away, and none will think to question it."

  Adriana resolved to reward the girl richly upon her return home this afternoon. She donned the cloak and tied it tight beneath her chin, tugging the front low to cover the edge of the wig. "Come with me, and play lookout."

  The conspirators tiptoed to the door, where Fiona peeked out and waved her hand for Adriana to follow. They hurried down the hallway and paused again at the top of the stairs. Fiona held up her palm and they waited for Peter, one of the footmen, to move away. His footsteps faded toward the kitchen and Adriana clutched Fiona's elbow tightly for a moment. "Wish me good adventure," she whispered.

  Instead Fiona said, "Be careful."

  Adriana rushed down the stairs and slipped out the door. For several blocks she kept her head down against the steady drizzle, keeping her cloak close around her. Nearby a butcher's she ducked into an alley and shed the cloak, leaving it on a protruding nail for some lucky washerwoman to find. Although the color pained everyone, it was warm and in good condition, and it pleased her to think someone would get use from it.

  Loosening her shoulders, letting her arms swing free by her side, she strode out into the gray day. The clothes were surprisingly warm, and the hat she'd tucked under her arm kept the worst of the rain from her face. For the first few blocks, she was very conscious of her masquerade, afraid at any moment that someone would look at her in shock and surprise and point a finger.

  But the clothes themselves seemed to cause a shift in her. Very quickly, she was striding along in the too big shoes, her arms swinging loosely, the coat billowing out around her thighs. As she walked, without any particular sense of destination, she thought again of Martinique and her brothers and their games of pirate on the beaches and in the forests. In those days, Adriana had thought nothing of donning a pair of breeches and a shirt stolen from a brother. If her mother had lived, she would have likely made Adriana behave in a more ladylike fashion, but her father had been more indulgent.

  She found a jaunty little bounce in her step, and to go with it, she created a story for her male persona. She was a cousin to the St. Iveses, since anyone who knew the family would see the resemblance. Given the preponderance of mythological names both her mother and her sister—Leander's mother—had bestowed on them, she ran through the choices in her mind, and with an ironic smile settled on Linus. Linus St. Ives, just come from India, a younger brother to Leander.

  Linus, she decided, was a rake and a notorious gambler with uncanny luck. These guineas in her pocket now were winnings from the faro tables last evening, and she was anxious to waste them appropriately.

  But first, something for Fiona. She ducked into a haberdashery and purchased ten pairs of good woolen stockings, but it did not seem enough to repay the maid's goodness this morning, so she ordered several lengths of ribbon in various colors, then spied a thick velvet in the same shade as the girl's good dress. "Give me that one, too," she said. Her voice was deep enough that she didn't need to alter it much, but to be sure, she roughened it ever so slightly. The man behind the counter seemed to notice nothing amiss. "Very good, sir," he said, and pointed out some silver buttons. "Maybe she'd like those as well." Adriana waved a bored hand. "All right." Duty discharged, she emerged from the shop with a wild sense of freedom and lifted her head to admire the streets that were hers for the day. To do with as she wished. Tucking the package wrapped in brown paper under her arm, she set out to see what she could see.

  * * *

  In Barclay's coffee shop, less than a half mile from where Adriana surveyed the world, Tynan hunched over the scandal sheets and pamphlets he'd collected this morning. Although the coffeehouses boasted of egalitarian mixing, there were certain differences between the various establishments. The Stag and Pointer, which Gabriel frequented most regularly, had evolved from a medieval tavern. It crouched between worlds; the City and all its political glories on one side, with the town's most crumbling tenements on the other. Its clientele reflected the mix, drawing the politically minded from the darkest neighborhoods. Barclay's, situated toward the West End and the more fashionable areas, attracted idle young lords who came to boast of their amorous and gaming exploits to other bored and wealthy young men who would inherit grand estates and titles… someday.

  Tynan did not particularly care for the crowd here. He'd learned, as a young man, to ape their ennui, but he found their idleness appalling. Even at twenty he'd been industrious, building on his father's modest success in glass manufacturing, seeking new methods of generating capital and more efficiency, which could, in turn, be returned to the workers and the business, creating work where none existed. He'd come to London in those days to learn what he might of the ruling class. He'd learned well, learned to affect the good-humored boredom, the lazy witticisms required for membership.

  He'd also availed himself of the abundance of females—widows and actresses and bored wives—and the other extravagances available to the men of his class. He'd been quite young, after all.

  Now he came here to reestablish connections he'd made in those days, to feel out the political possibilities that might exist for him, and to reinforce the notion that he was a mindless fop who'd do no harm in
Parliament.

  But this noon he sat alone, scowling away any overture that came his way. He drank coffee and grimly surveyed the papers he'd collected this morning, from the crudest to the most wittily elegant, all gleefully exploiting this choice gossip.

  The drawing he'd shown Adriana had told him this was bad. Much worse than he'd originally understood.

  The collection showed him just how bad it was—and with a burn in his gut, he found it centered most intently upon the wife he'd taken. In various levels of crudity, she was shown tearing off her clothes, lifting her skirts, chasing a pack of men with her tongue hanging out.

  And in spite of himself, he was shocked.

  He supposed he'd thought it a simple matter of a rake seducing a naive young virgin. The scandal sheets and lascivious tone of the drawings suggested that Adriana had been a more than willing participant. Was that true, or had Malvern's mother been busy?

  "Spenser," said a voice at his elbow. "You're famous this morning, man."

  He glanced up to find John Stead, Baron of Cheveley. Always gaunt, he now wore the hollow-eyed, pasty look of an opium addict. "Stead," Tynan said without interest. The man loathed him and made no secret of it, for Tynan had unwittingly stolen away an actress for whom Stead had conceived a desperate passion. "Enjoy it while it lasts," he added. "There'll be something to take its place next week."

  Stead leaned a shoulder against the high back of the booth. "I don't think so." He crossed his arms lazily over his chest. "The trial starts Tuesday next, y'know. I'll be sitting with the House of Lords. Wouldn't it be a shame if we voted to hang?"

  Tynan made his eyes cold. "A shame," he said, quelling the quick fear the words triggered in him. Then, recovering, he added, "Though not so much to me, since I stand to—" He broke off, his attention snared by a figure passing before the window of the shop.

  "Excuse me," he said quickly, and leaving everything where it lay, pushed by Stead and rushed outside.