Cynthia Bailey Pratt (17 page)

The maid helped Mrs. Clively climb the stairs she had descended but moments before, in a hustle that seemed almost indecent in retrospect. There would be no need for hurry now, except for a too-loud voice quickly muffled or a sudden rush of uncontrollable tears.

Danita crossed to Berenice and helped her untie the strings of her bonnet. The beautiful face frowned in bewilderment, like a fretful baby’s. “We will go up to bed,” Danita said. “The unpacking can be left for the morning.”

“We’re not going to Roselands?” Berenice whispered.

“No, dear. As Simmins said, there is no point in traveling so far. There is nothing to be done, now. Shall I have Mrs. Figgs warm some milk for you?”

“Oh, no. I hate that.” She raised her voice a trifle in emphasis, then pressed two fingers to her lips in shock. “I mean, I’m sure that would be most soothing, Cousin.”

Turning to the servants, whispering excitedly behind her, Danita gave her orders firmly. “Warm some milk, if you please, Mrs. Figgs, for both Mrs. and Miss Clively.”

“Yes, Miss Wingrove. An’ I’ll put a good dollop of whiskey in it for the missus. Do her all the good in the world.”

“As you wish. If you wouldn’t mind, could one of the maids find the immediate necessities in the trunks? Leave the rest for the morning, but get them out of the hall. We’ll probably have callers tomorrow.”

Once in Berenice’s room, Danita knelt to make up the fire. The evening had been warm. She remembered, as if thinking of a half-forgotten dream, the breeze from the river pressing the silken gown against her lower limbs while she strolled with Sir Carleton. But the shock of the news they’d just heard cast a chill through the high-ceilinged rooms of the town house.

Berenice seemed to feel it also. She sat down in the shelter of her armchair, still enveloped in her traveling pelisse, a soft
robe de chambre
snatched from the bed over her knees. “I’m so glad we went to see the fireworks tonight They were splendid. We won’t be able to do anything like that again for weeks and weeks to come.” At Danita’s glance, she said, “I know I shouldn’t be thinking about my own pleasure now, but I can’t help it. It’s so unfair of Grandfather to ... to ... just when I was beginning to enjoy myself.”

“I feel I can assure you he did not do it to inconvenience you.” Danita stood up from her kneeling position and stretched. Seeing that Berenice’s lower lip quivered, she approached her and put an arm about her shoulders. The younger girl leaned into her cousin’s waist. “It’s natural, I suppose, for you to feel this way, dearest, but try to think of your grandmother. And, yes, your grandfather, too.”

Berenice began to sniffle. “But...but I shall have to wear black, and I look dreadful in it. You have no idea.”

“But you want to pay some respect to his memory,” Danita said. She could not be shocked by Berenice’s lack of proper feeling. The fact of death must be incredibly alien to someone who had been sheltered always from the unpleasant side to life. Danita remembered well how her tears after the death of her loving parents had not been at the news, for she had stared blank-eyed at the doctor, but at seeing herself in the blacks she would wear for a year. Such a pale, skinny stranger in a dyed crape dress from which half the color had run had looked out at her from the mirror.

Danita said, “Don’t worry about these things now. It’s late. You should go to bed.” She patted her cousin’s shoulder awkwardly.

The maids came in, clumsily respectful, one with the night-attire and hairbrushes taken from the trunks and the other with a glass of milk on a tray. Making many a face, Berenice drank down the soporific and then agreed to prepare for bed. Danita brushed the blond hair with long, gentle strokes until the smoky lashes fell heavily over the deep blue eyes.

Sometime later, the girl’s hand loosened and dropped from Danita’s hold. Exercising her cramped fingers, for Berenice had stirred every time she’d attempted to withdraw them, Danita straightened the coverlet over her cousin. Silently closing the door, Danita put her foot on the step to go up to her own room on the third floor. But a sudden catch at her side caught her unawares. She stopped to rub the painful spot where the wooden arm of the chair she’d drawn up beside Berenice’s bed had dug in.

From behind the door at the top of the landing, she heard a sharp exclamation. “Damn him! Damn him!”

The voice was that of Mrs. Clively. Danita all but ran up the stairs to her room, obscurely frightened and truly shocked, as no selfish expression of Berenice’s could have shocked her.

Mr. and Mrs. Clively had been married for at least forty years. Danita had heard a complete description of their wedding, down to the clothes they wore and the flavoring of the cake. Though she had known that Mrs. Clively held dominion over her husband, there had been no thought in her mind of hatred. But the voice had been sharper with anger than pain.

Seating herself on the narrow bed, she felt a stiffness in the pocket of her simple dress. Reaching in, she drew out the letter William Etter had delivered to her, only an hour or two before. The salutation seemed to leap out at her. “My dear niece...”

The feeling slowly grew in her that of all Lemuel Clively’s relations, perhaps excepting his distant son, she was the only one who would miss him. Though she hardly knew him, there had been a tenuous bond between them. He had been kind and generous, without forcing upon her a sense of suffocating obligation. He had claimed her as niece, as his wife was reluctant to do. He had sent her gifts and spoken of a common future, as if she were truly a part of his family.

When she’d left school to begin an institution of her own, she had written to him to inform him of her plans. There had never been a reply. Assuming that Mr. Clively was not interested in her welfare, and far too busy to think hardly of him, Danita had not written again until her situation demanded succor. She’d carried no great hopes of an invitation. When it came, Danita did not question that it was from Mrs. Clively though she’d written to the gentleman.

Now, Danita wondered if Mr. Clively had ever seen her letter after she began her school, rhapsodizing about the possibility of success. The few letters he’d written to her after the death of her parents...had her replies ever reached him? Had they been intercepted, so that he lost interest in writing to someone who never seemed to answer?

It was late. Danita knew she was theorizing without evidence, merely putting together incidents and suspicions in a way that told more about her sleepiness than her intelligence. Lemuel Clively’s death meant only that she was once more alone in a wide and uncaring world. She hoped it would not be long before the requested references came from the parents of her former pupils. Mrs. Clively had not her husband’s gift for generosity. The sooner Danita found a new position, the better.

However, she could not in good conscience abandon Mrs. Clively so soon after her bereavement. By custom, they had eight days to find mourning appurtenances before publicly showing their grief. The afternoon following Simmins’s alarming arrival, notes were dispatched to milliners and dressmakers to come at once, bringing good quality mourning apparel. The town house was alive with the rustling of fabrics and the inadequate tiptoeing of tradespeople.

Berenice had been right. In black, she looked like nothing on earth. Though it was impossible to spoil the shape of her face or her eyes, the inky silk tossed over her shoulder washed all the pink from her cheeks and turned her hair from pure gold into tarnished brass.

Mrs. Clively agreed. She herself looked like a sooty statue with a length of crinkled Norwich crape draped over her bosom. Peering at Berenice, she said, “That’s dreadful. Don’t you have anything else?”

The sepulchral young man, who usually charmed newly widowed ladies with his sympathetic display of crepe and wreaths, was surprised. “No, madam. For such a new bereavement, I brought only the usual shades. Perhaps the young lady would prefer ‘Smoke of Coal’ to ‘Cyprus Black’?” He held up another gown length to entice her.

“I can’t see any difference between them. Can you, Danita?”

Danita looked closely. “Perhaps one is a trifle shinier than the other, Mrs. Clively.” As a great-niece only mourned a maximum of six weeks for a great-uncle, she had refused any new clothing. The brown dresses that had been provided to her at the beginning of their Bath sojourn would suffice.

“Well, they look precisely the same to me. I won’t have Berenice looking like that; I don’t care what people say. She’s eighteen, you know, not a matron of fifty. It’s bad enough that I must dress this way for two years. I won’t inflict black on my granddaughter for any length of time at all.”

“Yes, madam. Shall I send to...?”

“No thank you,” Mrs. Clively said, cutting the man off. “Danita! You should know by now what colors flatter Berenice. Go to the drapers. Bring back a selection of half-mourning. Mauve, perhaps. Lavender, if sufficiently pale in hue.”

Berenice thrust the black silk into the young man’s arms. “I saw the prettiest violet satin with crystal spots in Callendar’s, Grandmamma. Just the thing for a new ball dress.”

“We shan’t go quite that far, sweetheart. Pure white will have to do for your new evening dresses.” Seeing Berenice’s brow, Mrs. Clively relented. “Oh, very well. Danita, have them send that around. She can always wait and wear it in a few weeks. Now, let me see those black gloves.”

Danita had not been out of the house in two days. Perhaps that accounted for the strange feeling that people were staring at her. She hurried to perform her commission, but choosing fabrics for another person is not something that can be rushed. And then, sorry though she was to admit this lapse of character, she quite enjoyed running her fingers over the thin silks, stouter silks, and thicker bombazets of cotton and worsted. She ordered the colors Mrs. Clively had suggested, and added a few choices of her own. The shop had just received a shipment of white crepe trimmings for hems and bonnets. Danita did not think Mrs. Clively could object to this subtle reference to Berenice’s supposedly grief-stricken state.

As she left, drawing on her gloves, the doorway was shadowed by a tall figure who opened the door for her. She nodded her thanks absently, only to have her elbow seized. “I am sorry for your loss. Miss Wingrove,” Sir Carleton said.

Danita knew he could not mistake her reaction to this unexpected meeting. Her smile would have told a far duller man how much seeing him pleased her. “Thank you. Are you on your way to purchase another handkerchief?” she asked with a glance at the draper’s sign over their heads.

“No, Miss Wingrove. I saw a lady I knew walking this way and so I followed her, hoping for a chance to speak to her.”

“Then I shall not detain you.” Danita dipped him a small curtsy and turned away. He kept step with her.

“From what I understand,” he said, “you heard of Mr. Clively’s demise immediately upon returning home after the other evening. Were there any awkward questions asked?”

“None. They were far too busy to think of me.”

“I wish that I could say the same.” Sir Carleton circled in front of her and stopped in the shade of an old colonnade. “I have been thinking of you, Miss Wingrove. Often.”

Danita’s heart, usually so calm and clocklike an article, began to behave in the most bizarre fashion. She could almost feel it looping about in her breast to a dance played absurdly fast. Her voice, however, she was pleased to note, stayed calm. “I am sorry you were troubled, sir.”

Disregarding this, he said, “I suppose Mrs. Clively will retire with you and her granddaughter into the country?”

“I do not know her plans.”

“But you can make some surmise. I know you are clever, Danita.”

“I ... I have just been choosing some pale mourning for Berenice. Mrs. Clively said something about perhaps she’ll permit her to wear an elegant evening dress in a few weeks. Perhaps ...”

“I am glad to hear it. I cannot reconcile myself to surrendering my luck so soon. Let me walk with you?”

Danita was tempted. His nearness did strange things to her interior. To walk in the sun with the notable figure of Sir Carleton Blacklock at her side would be an occasion to cherish always, whether she retired into the country or took up a position as governess to some as yet unknown family. But she had to think of her reputation, what remained of it, and the saddened state of Mrs. Clively’s household. “Thank you. Sir Carleton, but I don’t think it proper for me to be seen with a single gentleman, especially as we are about to begin mourning.”

“Of course.” He bowed and said with a rakish smile, “That is my greatest fault, I fear. I forget the proprieties when I should remember them, and remember them when I should forget.”

Danita stared up into his strong, dark face. Was he referring to those moments in his house when his lips had so tenderly touched her own? She did not know what she said when she parted from him.

Happy over her appearance in the new dresses, Berenice nevertheless bemoaned the end of her riding privileges. The house was besieged by mournful callers, coming to offer condolences. The girl could not steal an instant to escape into the Gardens for a furious gallop on her favorite steed.

Danita could not help with the stream of callers. She was kept in attendance on Mrs. Clively, who was exhausted after contriving the elegancies of mourning. The maid, Simmins, watched by night. Danita read her way through the entire tome of sermons in the hope of lulling her great-aunt to sleep. But whenever Danita looked up from the huge book, it was to find Mrs. Clively’s narrowed eyes fixed upon her.

More and more, Danita felt afraid at the speculative gleam in the depths of those eyes. She could not help but notice that the handkerchief Mrs. Clively raised to her face whenever any reference was made to husbands or married life came away absolutely dry.

Mr. Clively’s solicitor came down from London, one week to the day from Simmins’s arrival at Bath. Mr. Kitson prided himself on not resembling the popular conception of a solicitor in the least. He handed his caped coat and curly-brimmed hat to the bobbing maid and, retaining a large leather bag, followed the portly figure of the butler into the morning room.