Chapter 3

3

Sophie took up her new situation the next morning, and carried her modest possessions to Brook Street in a hackney. The previous companion had already left, it seemed, and her services were required immediately. And a day after that, Sophie travelled to Buckinghamshire with Lady Wyverne’s upper servants, who were civil enough to her throughout the tedious journey but engaged her in little conversation and asked her no personal questions, which suited her perfectly. They didn’t seem a particularly cheerful group of people, nor did they appear eager to reach their destination – but that was no concern of hers.

As the only newcomer, she found it hard to restrain herself from leaning forward and staring as the heavy coach passed through tall gateposts topped with dragons – wyverns, she supposed – and made its way down a long, long carriage drive and across an ornamental bridge. It rumbled slowly up a rise and then the house – the palace, it was nothing less – came into view. She could not repress a gasp at the sheer size of it, the height of the soaring stone columns and the length of the curving frontage – and some of her companions chuckled a little at her reaction. ‘You’ll get used to it, miss,’ one of them said drily.

‘She will if she’s here long enough,’ another muttered. And then it was time to descend, and if she’d been inclined to ask what was meant by that, there was no time. It was late, dusk was falling, and after a snatched meal in the housekeeper’s cosy room she was conducted up to her mean little attic chamber and left alone to unpack. The next day, she knew, she’d be settling into her new situation, meeting the woman with whom she’d spend most of her waking hours, the Dowager Marchioness of Wyverne.

In other circumstances, in her other, lost life, Sophie would have been fascinated to make her acquaintance. The old lady was a survivor, a French aristocrat of the real Ancien régime, close on a hundred years old now, and had been in her youth, it was whispered, the mistress of King Louis XV. It must be said that this was a distinction she had shared with very many women, of high birth and low, including Sophie’s own great-grandmother. They were practically related; they probably were related, somewhere back in their tangled aristocratic family trees. Sophie, without a close relative left alive in the world, no longer had access to that sort of information. Who could she ask, if she’d genuinely wanted to know? And there was no point to it. All that was far behind her now.

The Dowager Marchioness, her daughter-in-law had explained during that first interview, was more or less confined to her rooms, saw few people, and had forgotten, or did not care to remember, most of the English she had ever known. This must make communication between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law almost impossible, but perhaps they had little to say to each other; perhaps it was in fact a fortunate circumstance. The old lady’s chief recreation was to converse in French and to be read to – novels, naturally also in her native language. She had exacting requirements as to the voice and accent of the reader. And yet the material she desired to be read… it was a little awkward. Previous companions had either not met her standards, and been summarily dismissed, or objected strongly to the nature of the material and left of their own volition in a cloud of moral indignation. Lady Wyverne was not without a certain pungently amusing turn of phrase, and as she listened to her description of the problem Sophie was obliged to bite the inside of her cheek in order to keep from laughing. She had murmured placidly that she would endeavour to give satisfaction; when she’d told Nate later exactly what she’d been employed to do, he’d let out a sudden crack of laughter. He rarely laughed, and though she was aware that it was weak of her, she’d felt a glow of pleasure when she’d heard it. ‘Dirty books – they’re employing you to read dirty books…’

‘ French books, remember,’ she’d said, eyes sparkling, a wicked smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

‘Dirty books, in French, to a hundred-year-old woman!’

‘Apparently.’

‘And paying you forty pounds a year for it, board wages. Not bad!’

It wasn’t bad; high pay, for a woman who could claim no particular formal education or skills. It wasn’t, she imagined, quite as much as Lord Wyverne’s valet was making, but it was almost certainly more than his wife’s abigail received, women’s work being generally cheap.

Even setting aside the peculiar circumstances of what Sophie would be called on to do, it was well known in London that the Marchioness had a certain amount of difficulty retaining servants, and had to pay somewhat over the odds for decent ones. Rosanna Wyverne had a very bad reputation, and while many noble ladies were just as notorious, they were of high lineage, and she’d been on the stage, and exhibited her manifold charms in other, even less respectable places, before Lord Wyverne had taken up the crazy notion of making her his third wife. It wasn’t the immorality that society objected to so much – it was the low birth. Respectable servants were obliged to take such matters into consideration, too, and if Sophie had really been what she appeared to be, she’d have been unwise to enter Lady Wyverne’s service, despite the healthy salary being offered her. How long could the Dowager be expected to live, a year or two at the most, surely, and what would happen to Sophie afterwards? She couldn’t expect any proper lady to employ her next, if she spent at all long in the Marchioness’s household. A couple of months might be excused – after all, a girl had a living to make. To take up such a position and then leave it quickly, that was one thing. One could imagine a lady saying to an intimate friend, ‘An excellent young woman, my dear, I assure you. She was employed by that dreadful Wyverne creature, to be companion to the poor Dowager, naturally, but only very briefly. I did not ask for details, of course, and she is too discreet to say, but her face told the whole story. Of course she could not stay there, for she is a decent little thing. She was employed only in Brook Street, and when the move to Wyverne Hall was proposed, she took fright at the thought, and no wonder. My dear, have you heard the perfectly scandalous stories of what goes on there?’

It was fortunate, then, that Sophie had not the least intention of seeking other employment after she left the Marchioness. Apart from anything else, even disregarding the lady’s terrible reputation, it was highly unlikely that she would be writing her any sort of recommendation. On the contrary. Once the truth came out, Lady Wyverne would be frantic, setting the Bow Street Runners on her trail, but they wouldn’t find anything, because Sophie Delavallois would have disappeared without a trace.

But in the meantime, she had her duties. Lady Wyverne didn’t conduct her to the Dowager’s chambers – this was a pity, because Sophie had a wicked desire to hear her speaking French – entrusting that duty instead to the Dowager’s maid, Marchand, a Frenchwoman who was herself not young, and who regarded Sophie with a level, weary gaze that seemed to say, Enfin , another one! Let’s see how long this one lasts.

She followed Marchand’s straight-backed, prim figure into the spacious room, and curtsied as she was introduced, trying to keep her gaze low and not to look about her in too obvious a fashion as she did so. Under her demurely lowered lashes she saw a beautiful silk-hung chamber full of lovely, fragile pieces of French furniture, and she was obliged to stifle a gasp as the memories it evoked threatened to overset her. It was similar, so very similar, to her grandmother’s room in Paris; even the light, elusive scent of the place seemed almost the same, and she was pulled back into her childhood, she was six or seven years old again, not long before her family’s world fell apart for the first time but not the last… She blinked, and pushed away the unwelcome memories.

She knew that only French would be spoken here, the aristocratic language of her childhood, and she must bear it, however difficult it turned out to be. A low, musical voice – and she would not dwell on how much that too reminded her of her grandmother, dead at the hands of Robespierre and his ruffians these many years – said, ‘Come closer, child, sit by me, and let me look at you. My eyes are not what they were.’

Sophie, still shaken, obeyed. She moved closer to the sofa where her mistress lay, and sank into a chair at her side, and they regarded each other with varying degrees of composure but equal amounts of interest.

Delphine Wyverne was tiny, and looked every one of her hundred years. It seemed she disdained the face-paint and wigs of her youth, but showed herself bravely as the ancient creature she was. There was little colour in her face, and none in her hair. Her thin hands on the richly embroidered shawl that covered her were almost transparent. But her eyes were full of life and intelligence, and Sophie found them uncomfortably sharp. ‘Delavallois: a name from Brittany, of course, and Lorraine,’ she said now.

‘My parents had a small estate in Picardy, madame la marquise,’ Sophie responded with tolerable poise.

‘I did not know the family. But of course, I have lived in England for so long now, and it is many years since I was in France. It could scarcely be otherwise.’

‘Yes, madame.’

The old lady shifted a little, as if she were in pain and sought some momentary relief from a change of position. ‘You fled the Terror, of course.’

‘My parents did. I was a tiny child, an infant at the time.’

Perhaps Sophie imagined the spark of disbelief in Lady Wyverne’s eyes, but in any case if she had doubts of her true age she did not voice them. ‘Your parents still live?’

‘No, madame. Things were… difficult after they came to England; they were able to bring little with them, they fell ill… they are both gone now.’ Unlike anything else she’d said so far, this was true, at least in part. It had been difficult – so much more difficult because of the actions of this woman’s son – and now her parents were indeed dead. Again she pushed away the unwelcome memories, the sight of the disorder, the blood, her mother’s frantic screams.

The quiet voice was gentle, and Sophie blinked away tears. ‘You have experienced much suffering, I perceive. But you are strong. You have survived it.’

She took a breath. ‘Yes, madame.’ She had. She would do more; she would triumph.

‘I think perhaps now is not the time for you to commence reading to me. Later today, or tomorrow perhaps, you shall read. Silly novels, but they amuse me, and I understand you do not object to the nature of what you shall read. It has been explained to you? I am fatigued almost to the point of extinction by the thought of all your predecessors, to whom it was not adequately explained, evidently, or who did not listen to the explanation, or who, it transpired, could not read in a pleasing manner.’

She could not keep saying, Yes, madame. She said, ‘I do not object, madame. I hope you will find that I am able to read to your satisfaction. It is a little while since I have had the opportunity of speaking French each day, but I am sure it will swiftly come back to me.’

‘I am sure it will,’ said the old lady. ‘It was evident that you were a little overset at first, and understandably so, but one’s mother tongue, one does not forget. Is that not correct, Rafael?’

A deep voice, from a winged armchair over by the fireplace, also speaking French. ‘Of course, Grand-mère. I am sure that Mademoiselle Delavallois will… perform admirably. I look forward with great eagerness to hearing her myself, I must confess.’