Black Silk (7 page)

“Hello.” Rosalyn surveyed the widow a moment, then smiled. She began to provide introductions. Her hand fell away, then the widow’s. Graham put the box behind his back, into both his hands.

The just-arrived group congregated around Rosalyn and himself. She introduced him to a Member of Parliament he already knew, saying every word of his own full title as if printing it on a formal announcement card. “And you know, of course, the Right Honorable the Earl of Netham.”

Graham shifted his weight to his other foot as he fidgeted with the box behind his back. He was barely following the conversation when he saw Rosalyn duck around and between them, like a game of London Bridge. There was a tugging on the box at his back. His grip tightened.

He whispered beneath the conversation to her, “What are you doing?”

Though the M.P. was expounding on something, the whispering and Rosalyn began to draw interest.

She made a face and laughed. People turned. “What are you hiding?”

Even the M.P. was willing to concede to her change of topic.

“What is this?” Rosalyn had decided to make a show of it. “A present? Let me see.”

She pulled at the case while Graham attempted to maintain it without appearing too interested in doing so. A minor tug-of-war ensued. The more he defended, the more certainly she would have it.

“Rosalyn—” He tried to get a warning off to her as he gave up the box.

But she only answered by glancing first at him, then—making sure he saw—at the widow. She connected them with a mischievous look of mock jealousy. Graham was silently appalled. He stared steadfastly back at Rosalyn Schild, admonishing her in all seriousness not to open the box. He threw a look to the widow; it was her fault, so she might at least help. Then worse. When he looked back at Rosalyn, her smile had become silly—half cross, half baffled, pasted onto her face as if she had suddenly taken her own teasing too seriously.

She drew her lips together, not very attractively, and began to fiddle with the case’s latch.

He turned away and put his hands behind him again. He swallowed, took a breath, then took another. Breathing seemed to be something he had to do consciously or he was going to pass out. He became unsteady. Then he lost track of every idea, notion, and person around him: of all but the mortifying notion of being associated with
this box, the disaster that was about to open in his face again.

“Are you all right, Graham?” Rosalyn touched his arm.

He turned partly around, like a man coming out of a stupor or coma. In the space of what seemed like seconds, something important had changed.

Rosalyn was talking to the widow. “…you mustn’t,” she was saying, “muck out into the rain all the way to that godforsaken posting house. I have plenty of room.” She turned back to Graham. “Are you all right? You’re absolutely green.” In a softer voice, she added, “Lady Motmarche explained. I didn’t realize your guardian had died. I’m so sorry, dear.” She leaned closer to whisper, “I didn’t know it was his.”

Graham was at a complete loss. He looked at Submit Channing-Downes. She was unmoving, expressionless, and inexplicably in possession of the papier-mâché case again. It was closed, safely latched tight.

Rosalyn, he realized, had given up her pursuit of his hidden feelings, having settled on some others: shock and grief. She treaded lightly with him now, making herself a buffer again between him and everyone else. He could hear her, in hushed tones, quietly staking him out, hers to understand. “…since the loss of his cousin…has come so obviously close to the bone….”

She was trundling everyone out of the room, while moving the widow into the house. “Fipps, see that Lady Motmarche’s things are unloaded from the carriage.”

To this purpose, the double doors to the outside were swung open. A crisp gale swirled rain in, lifting all the ladies’ skirts about. Chaos. Submit Channing-Downes stood motionless in this, one hand held against her skirt, the other arm loosely wrapped around the retrieved box. She was faced away from Graham in profile, steady against the wind, the only fixed point in the commotion besides himself. It was at this moment that the night air suddenly
braced him with clarity. He understood something, a small reason for the peculiar affinity he felt for the widow. She, as only himself, had no curiosity for the contents of the box: As sure as there were plagues and troubles in the world, she had already opened it.

Submit awoke to the sound of laughter. Somewhere beyond her bed, a woman with a lovely voice was laughing uncontrollably. The sound was sweet and musical, like distant, pealing bells. She rolled over. The sheets felt coarse, stiff. They smelled like sun, the outdoors, flowers—lavender. She frowned and rose up on one elbow. She didn’t recognize the room.

The laughter came again. “Oh, Graham,” someone said outside.

Submit realized why her surroundings were unfamiliar. She had only seen this room by lamplight, when Mrs. Schild’s housekeeper had escorted her here. And she’d been so tired, she hadn’t seen the bed at all. Last night she had just shrugged out of her dress into her nightclothes, then climbed in.

She tried to climb out now, but the bed was very high. She missed the stepstool as she slid down. Her nightgown rode all the way up the backs of her thighs. Her bare feet plunked onto a rough wood floor that hadn’t seen wax in an age. She padded across to her bag.

The portmanteau she had grabbed in haste as she had raced from the boardinghouse last night was now under a bench by the window. She’d dragged it across London to the earl of Netham’s house, only to find his house—an ancient monster of a building—locked and dark. It was by chance that a servant had happened to come from around the side to tell her that if it was important she could find the earl at a party another cab ride away. She had lugged the bag back into the cab, then left the driver waiting with it for more than an hour while she’d waited to speak with a man who, it
would eventually become clear, was not going to say anything of substance at all.

So much for immediate remedy, for satisfying concern and horror and incredulous curiosity all at once. This cousin of Henry’s raised more questions than he answered, leaving her rainy, nocturnal sojourn to yield only two certainties: Graham Wessit knew unquestionably what was in the box, and what was there bothered him as much, or more, than it did her. Submit remained baffled by the box, the man it was intended for, and Henry’s connection to any of this.

She had never witnessed a house so bright and full of people as this house last night. It was a planet away from the sedate gatherings in Cambridgeshire. People had carried on till well past two in the morning, the real diehards taking over then. Party Charlies. Ineffectual young upper-class men who distinguished themselves chiefly by being fashionably extroverted, exceedingly foolish, and generally loud. Several such young men had thrown two young women—equally enthusiastic, it seemed—into the fountain out back at about two-thirty this morning; she had heard them outside. Such high-toned friends Graham Wessit had.

Submit shoved the black lacquered case aside as she slid her bag out. She opened it and rummaged through, retrieving her hairbrush. After unweaving her hair from its haphazard braid, she rose and began walking around the room again, vigorously brushing thick hair that ran a foot past her waist.

The room, though small, was quite satisfactory. Submit knew from her climb up the stairs last night that it was near the attic, the last guest room before a ladder of stairs that led to the servants’ quarters. She looked around. There was a single bed, a narrow wardrobe, and a small table barely large enough to accommodate a chipped pitcher and basin.
Save the bench under the window, these were the room’s only furnishings. It didn’t surprise or disappoint her, however, that her accommodations were a little less than what she was used to. What surprised her was that she should have accommodations at all.

Submit bent over at the waist to brush her hair from the back. Its ends touched her toes. Each day it took half an hour to get a brush through this hair, to make it smooth enough to fix into a chignon. Her hair was not unattractive; it was thick and curly. But it had too much thickness and the wrong kind of curl for her tastes—she unleashed every morning an avalanche of wild springs. Relatively satisfied with her brushing, Submit threw her head back. She was standing, trying to tame her hair into a mass she could grasp with both hands, when another sound, one she couldn’t identify, came from outside.

The room had a single window over the bench. It was small and round and open a crack. Through this opening, she heard a crisp, irregular click. She listened for a moment, her hands in the air.

She wandered toward the window, then leaned on the bench with one knee as she looked out, nudging the window sash out with her elbow while she twisted her hair. The window let in bright sun, about nine inches in diameter of it, and a clear view. On a terrace, about forty feet below, Graham Wessit was having his hair cut.

She could only see the back of his head, but there was no mistaking who it was. The earl’s barber was trimming around the earl’s ears, trimming dark hair as glossy as lute-string silk—she owned ribbons that shiny. Submit managed to fix her own hair into a wad at the nape of her neck, then realized she had no pins.

She found new ones in her bag. The light, feminine laughter came through the window again. It belonged to Rosalyn Schild, who was also on the terrace below. Submit
rose, sticking pins in her hair, and looked out the window. Mrs. Schild was eating at a table set with what looked like cakes, sausage, and fruit. Another man sat with her, someone Submit didn’t know. He watched the lovely Mrs. Schild, while the woman didn’t give him so much as a glance.

Submit watched the stranger steal a piece of muffin; Mrs. Schild didn’t notice. This man, like the hostess and earl, was very well dressed. He was fair, a perfect example of Anglo-Saxon good looks. There these three beautiful people sat, a huge tree overhead waving spots of sunlight over them, the terrace, and the lawn. It was hard to have eyes and not enjoy them from a distance. Though judging by the glances and postures and stolen looks, not to mention the stolen bits of food—Rosalyn Schild poked the man’s hand with her fork when he went after another piece of cake—Submit was just as glad not to enjoy them up close. London society, with its pecking and pinching, just wasn’t her sort.

Submit bent to put her brush back, then a sound drew her up again. Graham Wessit was laughing. He had a deep, genuine laugh, the sort that made a person stand still and look at him. He lifted a plate she hadn’t seen and braced it on his knee. The other two smiled. Even the barber laughed at whatever Netham was saying, his scissors in the air, while the earl leaned forward to take a bite of something. Toast and jam. Uck. Submit made a face. How did he keep the cut bits of hair off the jam? She shook her head, smiling.

Submit scrubbed her face and put on a fresh dress, her only vanity being a great many buttons. Her black dress buttoned from her waist, up her throat, to her chin with small buttons made of cut jet. She looked in the mirror. Neat, clean, no foolishness; substantive. She felt perfectly prepared to go down and ask the earl if she might talk to him briefly alone. For one second more, she stared into the mirror.

What was it she wanted? There was a small, distressed
voice in her head now, growing stronger. It said Henry had hidden things from her. Yet she still could not believe he’d hidden a secret, salacious life, a life of onanism or worse. Some men were the sort to relish private vice. Others simply were not. What she wanted, she supposed, was to hear Graham Wessit say, yes, he himself had a small collection of boudoir art. (He would be a little embarrassed, a little uneasy about admitting this.) He was something of an erotologist, a very interesting area of study, this. (He wouldn’t admit to actually drooling over the pictures.) Henry, the earl would say, left these as a kindness to his former ward, knowing the earl had an interest in such things. These were especially good examples of the more graceful erotica, aimed at an audience with artistic sensibilities….

She longed to hear an intelligent reason for Henry’s keeping then bequeathing this box. It was more than mere convenience that had made her stay here last night; it was more than mere duty: She very much needed a good answer to the mystery of Henry’s—no, Netham’s—black box.

Down a corridor then around, Submit worked her way toward the center of the house. Mrs. Schild’s London residence was built for entertaining. The ballroom downstairs had such a high ceiling that for three floors nothing but corridors wrapped around it. Tiny guest rooms were tucked along these, so that Submit walked along the outside of the building looking out on neat, tended gardens, the terrace and fountain in back. The master living quarters lay over the dining room, entry room, and front parlor. This complicated the maze and slowly distracted Submit. As she wove her way through hallways and stairwells, she became more or less pleasantly involved in the process of trying to map the house.

On the last set of stairs, the sight of Graham Wessit coming into the central entry room below stopped her. He was walking backward, laughing, speaking to the people out
side, while his hands reached behind him for the knobs of the double terrace doors. For a moment, he stood in a wedge of sunlight, a kind of halo outlining him, casting his shadow backward into the room along the floor. Then he closed the doors, turned around, and stopped dead. Submit stood on the last step of the staircase. Over the banister she faced the same man as last night, ridiculously handsome, conspicuously decorated to emphasize the fact. Something about him set her teeth on edge. There was an aggression to the way he dresseds if he wanted not merely to bowl a person over but knock her down with his good looks.

“Well,” he said. Conversation chattered on the other side of lace curtains and glass doors. Inside, the room had grown shady and still. “Aren’t you the quiet one.”

“May I speak to you for a moment?”

He came toward her, his watch chains jangling against buttons and fobs, his heels marking this sound off like measures of music, a little symphony of rococo taste. Without breaking rhythm, he said, “I have to get something. They’re waiting for me outside.” He made a kind of graceful pivot as he went past her, walking backward again. “I’m sorry.”

His contrition lasted for less than a second, the space of a quick, brilliant smile. He turned around and kept going.

“Wait.”

He glanced over his shoulder.

“I want to talk to you about the box.”

“Ah, the box.” He nodded soberly but didn’t break stride.

“It will only take a second.”

The smile over his shoulder this time seemed wry. “All right. You have a second.” He hesitated for exactly that much time, then headed into the dining room.

Submit followed, trying to hold the distance he was putting between them. Her hooped skirt had begun to swing and wobble. She grabbed up the sides of her dress in handfuls.

The dinner tables from the night before had been stripped and pushed into the center of the room, while chairs had been stacked along the walls. “I—ah—” She frowned. With a push of his arm, he leaped a table, while she was having to thread and steer her way through them. He headed toward a passageway that would lead to the servants’ hall downstairs.

At the doorway, he paused. “Sorry.” He held out his hands, a man helpless against demanding, impatient friends. “They really are waiting for me.” For an instant more, he looked at her. Again she faced his smile, aware of how charming, social, and practiced it was. Then, surprisingly, she faced something else. There seemed a nuance to this smile, a faint irony, as if there were a subtext to this whole silly chase. Submit felt a warm fluster rise into her face as she watched him disappear from sight.

What in the world? she thought. She was left standing among the tables, feeling blank and stupid and, as she looked around, trapped. Her skirts were pressed into a contorted shape. From all sides, she was at least three tables away from any straight path back. With a deep sigh, she began to work her way out of the dining room’s network of furniture. She would wait with the others outside.

On the terrace, two men and another woman had joined Mrs. Schild and the gentleman. A great many people from the evening before had spent the night. Submit became a quiet part of the group as they congregated at one end of the terrace. She gravitated to their periphery, looking down over a railing to a lawn and fountain, the fountain graced by a few too many cherubs. Otherwise, the back garden was pleasantly simple, green grass partitioned by borders of flowers, colorfully geometric. Submit was enjoying this view, the warmth of sun filtering through sparse branches overhead, and the generally undemanding company, when she heard Graham
Wessit come out again. He had a distinctive way of moving, she realized, a quick, athletic gait that seemed at odds with a man so tall.

A half dozen more people followed him. He had brought with him a small chunk of silvery metal and a file. As he squatted in the middle of the terrace, Submit too was drawn. Everyone clustered around.

Graham Wessit was filing powdery shavings onto the terrace’s marble floor. Submit bent over, observing, pressing her hands onto her knees.

“What is it?” she asked.

Others murmured answers, but nothing very specific. Rosalyn was giggly. “It’s stuff, he says, that explodes if you make it powdery and set a match to it.”

Submit was a little alarmed, though everyone else seemed enthralled. The rasp of metal on metal held each person’s attention.

“Where did you get it?” someone asked.

“A chemist.” The earl teased the American woman. “A ‘pharmacist’ if you speak Philadelphia English.”

Submit straightened up. “It’s magnesium.”

Fireworks. The publication of Mortimer’s
Manual of Pyrotechny
had been greeted with great interest a year and a half ago. It was a study of the ancient Chinese secrets of exploding light displays, which London society—the queen herself—considered high entertainment.

The earl looked at her a moment, putting a brief pause in the rhythm of his task.

She frowned. “You’ll hardly see it in the sunlight. And it’s dangerous. It pops.”

He tilted his head at her again, seeming more amused than forewarned by her pertinent information. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a box of matches.

Submit stepped back. “That’s not very smart,” she warned.