Chapter 11

C HAPTER 11

The next three days tested Hester's ingenuity to the limit. It seemed like whenever she turned around, Evangeline was giggling in a corner with the Squire. At least once, she was fairly certain that she had averted a kiss by the thinnest of margins.

At wits' end, Hester finally appealed to the highest power that she knew.

"You summoned me, my lady?" asked the butler from the doorway.

"Willard, my old friend, shut the door and come in." Hester gave him a rueful smile. "I'd have come to you, but I fear my knee can't do the steps to your quarters any longer. You'll tell me if they begin to wear on you, won't you?"

Willard's mouth, normally set in a professionally blank expression, relaxed a fraction. "All else may give out, madam, but my knees remain as solid as ever."

"Ah, what must it be like…" Hester gestured to a chair opposite her. "Please, sit down. I have a problem, and it strikes me that you're the only one who can help me."

Willard's eyebrows went up infinitesimally at this, but he sat, balancing on the edge of the chair like a youngster about to give a recital.

"How long has it been?" asked Hester, slumping back in her chair. "Since I was a little girl and you fished me out of the duck pond and I clung to your neck like a limpet?"

He smiled, very briefly, which would have stunned many of the younger servants. "Do you really want me to tell you?"

"No, probably not." She sighed. "About our current houseguest, the Lady Evangeline…"

"Ah," said the butler, packing a world of understanding into a single syllable.

"Yes. She seems very determined to latch on to my brother."

"If I may be so bold, madam—"

"For the purposes of this conversation, Tom, I'm Hester. You and I share a single opinion on the matter, I think?"

Tom Willard, who had been sixteen when he fished a five-year-old girl out of the duck pond, rubbed his face in his hands. When he spoke, his voice had the smallest trace of accent, the vowels a tiny bit broader, an old man remembering the tones of his youth. "I don't trust her."

"Neither do I. And I suspect that if she gets her feet under the table, she's not going to make either of our lives easy."

He nodded glumly and sat back in the chair himself. "It's not my place to judge your brother's paramours, but she's much too glittering and her daughter is much too frightened."

"Yes. Exactly." Hester paused. "You saw that about her daughter too?"

"Terrified of being any trouble, and no idea how anything works," said Tom shortly. "The maids gossip."

"Does she cause any problems?"

"Mostly the sort you cause by trying not to cause any. She wanted to help them clean the room, if you can imagine, which would make everything take ten times as long. But no, she's very biddable."

"Mmm. Has the mother done anything?"

"Nothing that one could nail down, no. She's on her best behavior with the Squire, I think, and trying to come across as… oh, sweet and charming and a trifle naive. No one who's been in service for more than ten minutes buys the act." He stared at his hands, with their long fingers and carefully trimmed nails. "When she isn't bothering to pretend, she's a cold one. I'd be quite interested to speak to anyone who's served belowstairs in her house."

Hester snorted. "I can't even figure out where her house is. Somewhere near Little Haw, apparently, but that's a vast amount of ground, all of it out in the country and poor as dirt, I think. Which I wouldn't care about, if she wasn't so cold."

Willard nodded gloomily.

"Right. So, Tom, how are we going to stop her from marrying my brother?"

He raised both eyebrows a proper amount. "I could push her down the stairs, but that seems a trifle drastic."

"We'll take murder off the table for the moment," said Hester, not without a trace of regret. "No, I am more concerned with keeping my brother free of entanglements. Do you know if they have… ah…?"

"I don't believe so, no."

The servants would absolutely know, so… no. "She can hardly claim to be compromised, given that she's a widow, but it would make things a good deal more difficult." She folded her hands on her cane. "I fear that I interrupted something yesterday. Something that might have turned into, god help us, a prelude to a proposal. We need to keep such things interrupted. Can you help?"

"That I can manage. Your brother will never be so well attended." He paused, then added, "You know that if he actually orders us out of the room, though…"

"Yes, I know. If he does, send for me at once." She closed her eyes, grimly anticipating stomping down the stairs at high speed to try to reach the room before her brother did anything foolish, like declare his undying love. Her knee twinged just thinking about it. "If we can get through the next few days, the house party should help provide a buffer. I hope."

Willard nodded, then said, reluctantly, "Or provide witnesses, if we aren't successful."

"I know. I thought of that, too, but…" She spread her hands helplessly. "We have to jump in some direction. Perhaps with a little more time, we can find some weakness. I'm not above blackmail, you know."

The butler's lips twitched in amusement. "I should be appalled, I'm sure."

"You should be. I don't suppose she's left anything useful lying around? Incriminating letters? Enormous piles of debts?"

Willard shook his head. "Nothing. Well… no, nothing."

"What is it?" Hester frowned at him. "Anything might be useful at this point."

"Gossip, though I doubt it's useful. One of the chambermaids is stepping out with a stable lad, and apparently Lady Evangeline's horse is much discussed there."

"Good horseflesh?"

"Let us say, uncanny horseflesh. I am told he has green eyes."

"Unusual, but not unnatural." Hester had done a great deal of reading on livestock breeding when she was working on her geese, and had run across the discussion more than once. "Particularly in a white horse."

"As I said, it's probably nothing." Willard looked uncomfortable. "Stablehands are a superstitious lot. But they do not like her horse. He doesn't act quite right. There's even a rumor that he is enchanted somehow."

"Enchanted!" Hester sat back. "No, I can't believe it. She's as poor as a church mouse. She would hardly pay a sorcerer to cast some glamour on a horse, of all things, and if she were capable of such illusions herself, I doubt we'd know that she only had two or three dresses to her name."

Willard nodded. "I shall keep an ear to the ground for anything more solid, but this, I believe, is not."

"Please do," said Hester. She paused then, and met his eyes. "Tom—I swear to you, I'm not just thinking that I don't wish to lose my place here. It isn't jealousy."

He reached out and took her hand in both of his. "Hester," he said kindly, "I never thought so."

The message said to wait upon her mother an hour before noon. Cordelia went to the Blue Drawing Room with her heart in her throat. She was wearing a gown that she didn't recognize, which she suspected that Lady Hester had had someone alter to fit her. Alice had laid it out in the morning without comment and Cordelia had been too flustered by the message to think too much about it.

A servant came with her, left, and was replaced by another bringing tea. "Would milady like something to eat?" murmured the maid, pouring.

"No, thank you," said Evangeline.

"Cook has prepared some very fine pastries, if—"

"No, thank you."

"May I bring you anything else, milady?"

" No, thank you, " her mother said, her smile sliced so thin that Cordelia half expected it to cut her lips. "That will be all."

The maid curtsied and left again, shutting the door behind her. Evangeline waited two breaths, then slumped against the back of her chair. "These servants," she announced, to no one in particular, "are going to drive me quite mad."

Cordelia took her teacup and held it between her hands. "They seem very attentive," she said, which was a neutral enough statement that she didn't think it would get her in trouble.

"Attentive! They are impossible. Every time I turn around, these past few days, there's a maid or a footman or that horrible butler. I can scarcely get five minutes alone with the Squire without one gliding in to interrupt. There is no privacy."

The sheer scope of this hypocrisy took Cordelia's breath away, but fortunately her mother was warming to her subject and didn't notice.

"Do you know how difficult it is to seduce a man under these conditions? No, of course you don't." Evangeline reached up as if to clutch at her hair, recalled her elaborately coiffed locks, and began running her nails fiercely over the velvet arm of the chair instead. "The kind of magic I need to do is hard enough without so much interruption."

Dread sank into Cordelia's gut. She was suddenly glad that she hadn't been able to eat anything that morning. "I… I thought you said you couldn't use magic to make someone marry you…"

"Not to compel him, obviously." Her mother rolled her eyes. "But there's a world of subtle magic available, if you know what you're doing. Just a little touch to make him notice you. A touch to call attention to your lips or your breasts or what have you."

Cordelia gulped her tea, mortified.

"Then once you have his attention, you let the spell fade. It has to be so delicately done that he doesn't notice. Fortunately, men rarely question why they're thinking about a woman's breasts." Her lips curved wickedly. Cordelia stared into her teacup, sure that her ears were turning red.

"Of course, none of that will matter if these wretched servants don't leave us alone long enough for it to work. Gah!" She flung her head back. "It's like juggling smoke, and just when it's starting to take hold, in comes the butler. When I'm lady of this house, I shall see him turned out without a reference."

"Without a reference?" squeaked Cordelia, who knew, from listening to Alice, that this was a savage blow to any servant. "Isn't that harsh?"

"He'll be lucky if I don't turn him out without his feet, " her mother snapped.

As if on cue, the door opened. The maid bobbed her head and said, "Just brought you a little warm-up on the tea, milady."

"How kind, " said Evangeline, through her teeth. Cordelia smiled helplessly at the maid, trying to warn her off with her eyes.

As soon as the door closed, Cordelia's mother leaned back in her chair, pinching the bridge of her nose. The cups began to rattle on the tray and Cordelia grabbed for hers, burning her hand as the tea slopped over the side. The tongs vibrated against the rim of the sugar bowl.

Evangeline exhaled, slowly, and the vibrations stopped. Cordelia swallowed. She could not remember the last time her mother had displayed so much frustration.

It's because she can't take it out on anyone. She always gets angry and does something, but she's not allowed to do anything here, not yet, because it might draw attention.

Cordelia stayed very still, hoping that her mother would not realize that she had a potential victim sitting in front of her.

"About this house party," Evangeline said abruptly. "The old lady's mentioned it to you?"

"Yes, Mother." The thought of interacting with so many new people made Cordelia feel a little ill, but she had tried to express polite enthusiasm. She didn't think Hester had been fooled.

"Lord and Lady Strauss have a son," her mother said. "A little older than you, I think. You will be expected to associate with him and be friendly, but it is imperative that you not be caught in a compromising position with him, do you understand?"

Cordelia blinked at her mother, wondering what a compromising position was. Before she could find a way to word the question, Evangeline had continued. "The Strauss fortune is adequate, but I will not waste you on a youth who will linger on an allowance for thirty years, waiting for his father to die."

"Yes, Mother," said Cordelia.

Her mother narrowed her eyes. "You will not fall in love with this youth," she said. "Do I make myself clear?"

Cordelia had not even considered such a thing. Her mouth fell open and she knew that she was gaping like a goldfish flipped out of a pond.

"It's fine if he falls in love with you. Useful, even." Evangeline raised a warning finger. "But you will not fall in love. You go about falling in love and you start keeping secrets. At worst you'll catch pregnant and waste all my hard work. Do you want that?"

"No, Mother."

"You may think that he'll marry you once there's a baby, but they never do, do you hear me?"

"Yes, Moth—"

The sugar bowl turned over, spilling cubes everywhere. Cordelia yelped, then hurriedly began trying to gather them up. When she grabbed one, it vibrated in her hand like a trapped insect.

"I already made that mistake once," Evangeline said. "I thought your father would have to marry me. But he didn't, and so I had to take steps."

Cordelia stopped trying to corral the sugar cubes. Her mother was staring at the ceiling, but Cordelia could hear the soft hiss of water suddenly boiling inside the teapot. "I didn't know that," she said.

Evangeline made a short, sharp gesture with one hand. The hissing stopped, and the sugar cubes fell inert on the floor. "He doesn't matter now. I made you. You belong to me, and you're not going to ruin my plans with some young puppy."

"Yes, Mother."

"If I suspect such a thing, I will have to deal with him, do you understand?"

"I won't, I swear," said Cordelia frantically, feeling horribly guilty even though she'd never met the young man. Dealing with him sounded so dreadfully final. The blood of Ellen's family is already on my hands, I can't let anything happen to anyone else if I can stop her.

"Mmm." Evangeline studied her face broodingly. "You don't know what young love is like," she said. "Comes over you like a fever. You'll tell yourself that no one else in the history of the world has ever felt this way before."

What do I say to that? Is there a right answer? "I'll be careful," promised Cordelia. "If I start to feel anything like that, I'll tell you."

Her mother nodded. "Good child. Now make yourself scarce. Go distract the Squire's sister, if she'll have you."

"Yes, Mother," said Cordelia, and fled, leaving scattered lumps of sugar behind her.

"Lady Hester?"

"Hmm?"

"What's a compromising position?"

Hester's hand jerked and she spilled tea into her lap. " What? "

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to—"

It took a few minutes to clean up both the spill and the apologies, but eventually Hester had dealt with both. "Now then," she said, fixing her gaze on Cordelia. "Why are you asking about compromising positions?"

Cordelia swallowed. "My m-mother told me to avoid them. But they never taught us in school what one was, and she was in a mood where I didn't want to ask."

"Yes, of course." Hester rubbed her forehead, wondering again how much she dared to say to Doom's daughter. "A compromising position is when you're… ah…" She looked at Cordelia's small, guileless face and tried to figure out how to phrase it. "When you're alone with a man that you aren't related to, with no witnesses, and something might happen."

"Like what?"

"That your… ah… virtue might be compromised."

Cordelia looked blank. Hester stared briefly at the ceiling and was intensely glad that she'd never had children. "Fornication, child. If you're alone with a man long enough that people think he's had a chance to bed you."

A squeak of horror was enough to tell her that she'd finally gotten through. Hester massaged her temples. She didn't have a headache but it felt as if she ought to.

"What would happen?" breathed Cordelia in fascinated horror.

"Well, if he's an honorable man, he marries you."

"What if he isn't?"

"Then if you're unlucky, he marries you anyway. Otherwise he gets away scot-free and you're ruined for polite society."

"But that's not fair!"

"Not remotely," Hester agreed. Privately she was rather pleased to see Cordelia flush with outrage. Fight back a little, child. Even a rabbit in a trap can bite. "Even worse, you don't have to have done a damn thing. Just being alone with a man for long enough without a chaperone is enough to condemn a woman in some people's eyes, even if all they did was sit and read the Bible together."

Cordelia's eyes were round with horror. " What? "

"I know. It's utterly ridiculous. It would almost be funny if so many girls didn't suffer for it."

"But why ?"

Hester lifted her shoulders in a vast shrug. "Men are terrified of being cuckolded."

"Of what?"

Hester gazed at the girl for a long moment, then reached into her housecoat's inner pocket and removed a flask. She tipped the contents into her tea, took a long sip, and felt it burn all the way down. For medicinal purposes only, but I believe this counts. How on earth did Doom send this girl out so completely unprepared?

In her heart, though, she knew. Evangeline thought of her daughter simply as an extension of herself. Not the first mother to do so, nor the last, I imagine, though she's taken it to an extraordinary degree. Since Evangeline knew all the intricacies of proper societal behavior, she simply assumed that her daughter must as well.

How did someone that utterly self-centered manage to raise a child at all? She must have had a nursemaid, but clearly not a tutor. Although the girl's never mentioned a nurse… Not that you've ever really asked. But how else would Doom have managed to keep a child alive—magic? Hester snorted at her own thoughts.

"All right," she said, putting the flask away. "Let's start at the beginning…"

Cordelia lay on the bed, staring at nothing in particular. Her head felt unpleasantly full.

I thought your father would have to marry me. But he didn't, and so I had to take steps.

The words might as well have been printed on the back of her eyelids. She couldn't stop thinking them.

Was my father her benefactor, the way Mr. Parker was? And Mother got pregnant with me, and my father refused to marry her?

She'd known how babies were made, of course. There was whispering and snickering about it at school, and a girl named Marion had told everyone in gleeful detail one morning before class. But Cordelia had never quite connected that with parentage and legitimate heirs and legal inheritance of property, which Hester had walked her through with great patience.

"But if they think that a girl might be pregnant because she was compromised, why not just wait a few months and see?" Cordelia had asked, baffled. "Then you'd know for certain and everything could go back to normal."

Hester had groaned. "Because it's not logical." She took another slug of her tea. "Believe me, if I ruled the world, we'd see a lot of things set right." She frowned. "On second thought, never mind. It seems like too much work, ruling the world."

The thought came to Cordelia that her mother would have been perfectly happy ruling the world, but she wouldn't have bothered doing the work. She would just have told Cordelia to do it. Or possibly Falada, for the bits that Cordelia couldn't be trusted with.

It occurred to her to wonder, suddenly, if Falada resented Evangeline as much as Cordelia did. Did he feel like a pawn in a game, too? Did he have any privacy, in his head or in his stall? Did he care?

Then she thought of that sly look, and the way that he had snorted with laughter when she had finally realized that he told her mother everything. No. No, he didn't care. Or he thought it was funny. Perhaps familiars were different that way. Anyway, it didn't matter, did it? Not compared to what she'd learned about her father.

… he didn't, and so I had to take steps…

Had Evangeline taken steps the way that she had with Mr. Parker?

Cordelia turned the thought over and over. She could no longer doubt that her mother was capable of something terrible, but surely not… surely not to the father of her child?

How would I even find out? Look for a newspaper from fourteen and a half years ago? I don't even know my father's name.

Cordelia closed her eyes and told herself, very firmly, that she was letting go of the thoughts. There's nothing I can do right now. I just have to make sure that she doesn't think I've been compromised.

She thought about getting into the wardrobe again, but the bedcurtains were closed, and they were almost as good as a door. If she pulled the blankets over her head, that was two doors and two layers of fabric between her and her mother, and that was almost enough to pretend that she felt safe.

It's not that she can't come in, it's that there will be a little bit of warning. That's all I need. Just a little bit of warning before I have to face her. That's all.