Chapter 4

C HAPTER 4

Three days after her first panic-filled awakening, Doom appeared on Hester's doorstep, in the shape of a woman.

Doom was tall and slender, with the sort of figure that poets described as willowy. She had shining dark chestnut hair and large blue eyes in a fragile, heart-shaped face, and she held the Squire's arm as if she were too delicate to stand unassisted.

Hester noted dispassionately that Doom was beautiful. Hester was not envious, but beauty was a weapon that she did not wield herself, and it was not an insignificant one in the arsenal. Her brother was particularly susceptible to it, and even more susceptible to fragility.

"My sister, Hester," the Squire was saying, gesturing to her. "Hester, love, meet our guest, Miss Evangeline."

"Oh no," said Doom. "It's Lady, I'm afraid." When the Squire tensed, she added artlessly, "Not that there has been a Lord Evangeline for a long time, I fear."

Hester's brother relaxed and patted the hand tucked into his arm. Hester did not roll her eyes, but she considered it.

"Your brother was kind enough to help me," said Lady Evangeline, turning a brilliant smile on Hester. She lost the next few words as the sense of overwhelming dread clutched at her throat. "… quite overwhelmed. The city seems so much larger than when I was there last, and I fear I became quite turned around."

"Mmm, yes," said Hester noncommittally. I get it. I see her. You can let go now. Was her throat working? It seemed to be, although there was a definite rasp to it. "It's grown a great deal in the last few years."

"Exactly. I went looking for the dressmakers that I remembered, and they've quite vanished."

"Asked her to stay for dinner," said the Squire, in jolly tones. Hester suppressed a sigh. Her brother was smitten. This was a common enough occurrence, but generally by normal women, not those with dread and horror spread behind them like wings.

She would have liked to plead a headache and escape dinner, but that would mean leaving her brother alone with Doom, and that was a terrible idea. Hester wasn't certain yet what Lady Evangeline intended, whether she was looking for marriage or money or something more straightforward, like human flesh. Regardless of which it was, her brother would be useless to deal with it. If the woman turned out to be a hag and suddenly ripped her skin off and flung herself, red and bloody, across the table to devour the Squire, the best that Hester could hope for was that one of the footmen might drown her in the soup course while the Squire was still gaping and waving his hands. And of course the footmen could do nothing about marriage at all.

You require a butler for that, thought Hester, and smothered her laugh in a snort.

"Beg pardon, my lady?" asked Doom, a line forming for just an instant between her china-blue eyes.

"Nothing," said Hester. Steady on, old girl, you'll laugh yourself into an early grave with this creature about. "Dinner, you say? I'll tell Cook to prepare an extra place."

It was astonishing that she had any appetite at all that night, with Doom seated across from her. Her brother sat at the head of the table, with Evangeline at his left hand and Hester at his right. "Just a cozy family meal," the Squire assured their guest. "No need to stand on ceremony."

Ceremony might have been nice, since it meant that Hester would not be expected to speak across the table at Evangeline. On the other hand, that means that I won't be able to head Samuel off before he says anything truly dangerous. Not that he's going to propose over the soup course. Probably. He likes beautiful women and he likes flattery, but he's never shown any interest in marriage.

There had been several quite attractive ladies in her brother's life over the years, including at least one that Hester would not have minded as a sister-in-law, but the Squire had always expressed disdain for "the parson's mousetrap" as he called it. Like many men not overly encumbered by intelligence, he had a great deal of cunning in avoiding personal unpleasantness.

On the other hand, none of those other women had woken such a premonition of dread in Hester's soul.

"So you are in town to visit a dressmaker?" she asked, when she felt that the flirtation going on between her brother and the widow had gone far enough.

"To make an appointment for a fitting, rather," said Evangeline. "My daughter needs an entirely new wardrobe, I fear."

"Your daughter?" This was an interesting new wrinkle.

"Oh yes. You know how it is with children," said Evangeline, smiling at Hester. "They stay the same size for so long, and then they shoot up six inches overnight and positively nothing fits. She is seventeen, old enough to make her coming-out to society and I had planned around that, and then suddenly…" She made swooshing gestures with her hands and laughed aloud. "I swear that she looks like a servant now, wearing castoffs, but they are the only things that fit."

"Indeed," said Hester. "Why, I remember when Samuel was young, and my parents despaired of him. He would have a suit fitted, and then by the time he went to pick it up at the store, his ankles and wrists would be hanging out of it. In fact, one time…"

It was a timeworn anecdote, and she did not need to turn much of her mind to relating it. Instead she studied Evangeline.

Her manners were perfect, of course. Naturally, Doom would have exquisite manners. The only flaw, if you could even call it that, was that she was clearly not used to servants waiting on her. Occasionally she would catch herself just slightly as a footman replaced a dish, and she had reached out as if to pull out her own chair upon entering the room. But she recovered from these missteps instantly and with a great deal of poise, so much so that Hester was not entirely certain that they were missteps, or part of a carefully woven image of herself as a genteel but impoverished widow.

She could not escape the feeling that there was something very artificial about Evangeline. A physical artificiality, not merely her mannerisms. It had nothing to do with face paint or curling papers, either. Hester considered such things perfectly natural, even if she no longer bothered to use much beyond a little powder herself. No, it was something deeper and more fundamental. Hester could not escape the odd feeling that if she peered closely at the woman's scalp, she would see hundreds of tiny holes where all that chestnut hair had been glued in, like a porcelain doll. She remembered her earlier flippant thought about the woman ripping her skin off during dinner. Suddenly it seemed much less amusing.

"Sister?" said the Squire.

"Eh?" Hester realized that her brother had been speaking. "What was that? You have to speak up, my hearing's not what it was." (This was entirely untrue, but she had found that it was a very good excuse when she had simply been ignoring a dull conversation.)

"I was saying that we must have Evangeline and her daughter down to stay with us, while they are waiting on the dressmakers."

"It's far too kind of you to offer," said Evangeline, looking up through her eyelashes. "I couldn't possibly impose."

"Nonsense," said the Squire. "What do you say, Hester, old girl?"

The old girl in question would have very much preferred to say no, but she did not. She knew that Doom would not be put off so easily. "Of course," she said instead, reaching for her wineglass. "I should very much like to make your daughter's acquaintance."

Cordelia woke because her mother was shaking her awake. It happened often enough, but it seemed early. When she looked groggily out the window, the sky was still dark. "Is it morning?"

"Close enough," said her mother. "Up, up!" She pulled back the blankets covering Cordelia.

"Today is the day we get out of this wretched town," her mother said. Her eyes were shining and her skin was flushed and she looked young. "At last! Small-minded people. I'll be glad to leave. Now pack your things and get in the carriage. We shan't be back here."

Cordelia blinked at her. It had just occurred to her that her bedroom door had been shut and her mother hadn't said a word about it. This was unprecedented in her experience. "We haven't got a carriage," she said, and then softened it so that her mother would not think she was arguing. "Have we?"

"It's a cabriolet," said her mother. "Or perhaps a sulky. I can never remember the name." She laughed carelessly. "Just big enough for two."

"Where are we going?"

"To the coast. To the home of Squire Samuel Chatham, a ridiculous old man who will fall over anything in skirts, but who is old-fashioned enough to offer marriage if he thinks he's thought of it first. I'll be wedding him, and we'll live in rather more comfort than we've managed here."

Cordelia bowed her head. "We're leaving now?" she asked.

"Not next week, silly child! The longer you dawdle, the longer this will take. We must arrive late enough that everyone is overwhelmed with pity for our long journey but not so late that everyone is asleep. Move!"

Cordelia obeyed. Her mother had provided a carpetbag and a bandbox. She packed her three dresses and two hats and her sewing kit and her daybook and pens, and the tiny carved wooden horse that Ellen had given her for her birthday years ago. It seemed unlikely that she would see Ellen again, and she wished there were some way to leave a note for her, but what would it say? Her etiquette primer said that letters of gratitude should be " simple, but strong, grateful, and graceful. Fancy that you are clasping the hand of the kind friend who has been generous or thoughtful for you, and then write, even as you would speak. " This advice did Cordelia no good at all, because she would have stammered awkwardly and probably said the wrong thing.

Thank you for talking to me and pretending I wasn't strange.

No, you couldn't write a note like that.

When she emerged with her bag, wearing her heavy coat against the cold, she saw the little two-wheeled carriage parked outside, Falada between the traces, and her heart sank. It was a cabriolet and she knew by the crest on the door that it belonged to Ellen's father.

"This is Mr. Parker's," she said, in her most neutral voice.

"It was much too good for him," her mother said. "We'll sell it in the city."

Cordelia swallowed. "Did he… did he give it to you?" She wanted to ask Did you steal it? but that would be an accusation and her mother did not respond well to accusations.

Her mother's eyes were cold and bright, like fragments of sky reflected in a mirror. "He's given me a great many things over the years. He didn't want to part with the carriage, though, and I may have had to use some force." She laughed and the sound was as cold and bright as her eyes. "Losing his carriage will be the least of his troubles now."

Her benefactor was Ellen's father? Cordelia's mouth was very dry. Ellen had been her only friend, since Falada had proved false. And Evangeline had threatened to have Falada trample him to death, and if she was so pleased with herself, that could only mean that she had done something worse.

Guilt struck Cordelia all over, a cold rush from the soles of her feet up to her hair, and she clutched the carpetbag to her chest and bent over it.

"Don't look so stricken," said her mother sharply. "If not for having him as a benefactor, we'd have starved long ago. The problem is that men get bored so easily. Your father certainly did."

It was all too much, too soon. "I thought my father was dead."

"He is, and he brought it on himself, just as Parker did." Her lips curved in a smile. She snapped her fingers and Cordelia knew that her mother's patience was at an end. She climbed into the carriage with her carpetbag at her feet. Being made obedient would not help Ellen's father, or expiate the sin that had, apparently, been going on for years.

I'm sorry, Ellen. I'm so sorry. Maybe I can write you a letter someday and tell you how sorry I am. She had written many letters in school, practicing her penmanship, though she had never sent one. Her mother had approved. Aristocratic ladies wrote letters to other ladies. It was a good skill to have, and so she had written out dozens of sample letters, thanking imaginary strangers for visits that had never occurred and gifts that did not exist.

None of the schoolbooks had a sample for when your mother had done something terrible to your friend's father. Cordelia bowed her head and stared at her hands in her threadbare gloves. Her mother flicked the reins and Falada set out, pulling the stolen carriage as if it weighed nothing at all.