Diamonds & Deceit (11 page)

Charlotte gazed down from the window of her dressing room into sun-dappled Milborough Square. In her hands was an envelope, and inside the envelope was a stiff little piece of gilded card. Charlotte had a drawer full of such cards, all inscribed with the names of the best hostesses. Each one held memories collected over three seasons of dancing and flirtation and more. But this one was different. This was a dance card for Mrs. Verulam’s costume ball. It would take place on the last night of the official London season. The last night of Charlotte’s third season. Charlotte had known the season would end, of course, but somehow the invitation made it real. She had been out for three seasons and she was still not engaged. Not yet.

“Ward,” she said, turning from the window.

Stella, who was folding clothes quietly in a corner of the room, looked up.

“I’d like you to take a little note over to the Duke of Huntleigh for me.”

The pause before Ward replied, “Yes, miss,” was just long enough to be insolent. Charlotte noted it, for future reference. For now, she simply drew out her writing case. It had simply never occurred to her that the duke might not know of Rose’s disgraceful history. But the man had been out of society for so long it was hardly surprising. She began the letter.

Dear Alexander—

When we know each other so well, it seems silly to address you
as Duke!

I wanted to thank you for your invitation, which we received this morning. I have been simply longing to see the
Rite
ever since I first heard of it. I am so excited I can barely
sleep for thinking of it.

So kind of you to invite my stepsister Rose as well. The dear girl deserves every opportunity she can get to improve herself. As you might imagine, the season is rather overwhelming for a former housemaid, but I think she has been handling it all with admirable humility.

Now I’m going to be shockingly unconventional and extend my own invitation to you. I propose that we visit an exhibition together. There is an exhibition of Futurist art on
Heddon Street. As you know London is so far behind the European capitals in terms of art, it would be a crime to miss it, don’t you think?

She signed her name, placed the letter in the envelope, and sealed it before handing it to Ward.

One could, if one was organized, kill several birds with one stone.

The afternoon spread golden wings over London, over the rattle of the carts and the impatient blare of motor horns, the stench of horse manure, and the stink of petrol. The Underground Railway, like an imprisoned dragon, roared and rushed through the earth, disgorging sooty, shaken passengers from its grasp. From South Kensington to Aldgate, it surged to the surface like lava.

Yes, Stella thought as she closed the back door of Milborough House behind her and walked out onto the street, her yellowand-black best dress—one of Lady Charlotte’s cast-offs—swaying with her movement, her parasol twirling as elegantly as that of any lady of fashion, all the action was under the surface. Nursemaids strolled past her, pushing baby carriages, but Stella saw past the demure caps and ribbons to the watching footmen at the railings, the whispers they exchanged, the quick, guilty kisses.

The smart set of London lived within a few square miles, and Stella didn’t have far to walk to reach the Duke of Huntleigh’s London residence. She crossed Milborough Square, Lanchester Gardens, Grosvenor Square—each one lined with Georgian mansions, formal and white-clad as vestal virgins—and reached the airy space known as Park Square.

She paused to laugh at a Punch and Judy show that had drawn a small crowd to the shade beneath a plane tree. The puppets jabbered and danced about.

If you kept all the strings at your fingers’ ends, Stella thought, if you knew when to pull each one—you could make sweat break out on a marquise’s brow. You could cause a duchess to wince, a debutante to blush. Who wanted to be a lady when you could be a puppeteer? It was very easy to steam open letters, and she had chuckled before she left at Miss Charlotte’s clever strategy to shake the duke loose from Rose. But—she paused to inhale the scent of the deep-red roses that grew in the square—she had her own strategies.

Just before she left, Ellen the tweeny had come up to her holding a few scraps of red silk petals. Exactly like the torn silk rose from her mistress’s dress that Stella currently kept hidden in her top drawer. “Please, miss,” she had said, with a nervous curtsy. “I wondered if you knew where these belonged.”

Stella had taken the silk petals and refrained from squealing with joy. She had known that they would turn up. Things always did. “Now, tell me, Ellen,” she had said, turning the petals this way and that so the vivid color caught the light like drops of blood, “where exactly did you find these?”

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Cliffe,” Georgiana exclaimed as she entered the drawing room, out of breath from hurrying. “I had to see Cook about the dinner menu for tonight.”

Mrs. Cliffe jumped and looked up. She quickly slid the notebook she had been scribbling in under her papers.

“No, please go on with your work.” Georgiana came across the room, feet sinking into the thick Persian carpets, and took the chair next to her. “I suppose you’re noting questions to ask her?” She reached for the letter that lay on the occasional table, the thick yellow paper covered in firm, neat writing. “Mrs. McRory, isn’t it? I see she worked for the Prime Minister. How interesting.” She glanced at Mrs. Cliffe’s flushed face. “Are you hot? It is rather too late in the year for a fire.”

“Not at all.” Mrs. Cliffe said. She was breathing rather quickly, and glanced down at her notebook again. Composing herself, she went on, “Shall we ask the lady to come up?”

Georgiana rang the bell. As she waited for Cooper, she hoped fervently that this interview would be the last one. So far not a single applicant had been suitable. The agency shrugged its shoulders and apologized; more interesting work in town, service was no longer as desirable as it once was, a national crisis. Georgiana sighed. She had enough to worry about with local crises. Priya was unwell again, Annie had handed in her notice—so strange, she had seemed such a reliable girl—Sir William had gone on a weeklong binge after his latest argument with her father, and Lady Edith had engaged a Russian spiritualist to purge her soul. All she had succeeded in doing was purging her wallet.

“Mrs. McRory,” Cooper announced, holding open the door. Georgiana sat forward with a welcoming smile.

The woman who bounced through the door was as unlike Mrs. Cliffe as could be imagined. She was so short that for a moment Georgiana thought there had been a mistake and a child had been sent instead. But it took her the barest instant to see the stern, furrowed brow, the hairy chin and the determinedly pinched mouth. Mrs. McRory was small, but only in the way that a bullet is small.

“Ma’am,” she said, dipping a brief curtsy to Georgiana. Georgiana had never been on the receiving end of quite such a dismissive curtsy. Without waiting to be invited, the woman strode across the floor—if such a small woman could stride; it was more the action of a tightly wound spring unleashed—and seated herself in the chair Georgiana had intended to graciously invite her to sit in. Her legs dangled, swinging in her rusty black skirts. “Shall we begin?
I
usually commence
my
interviews exactly on time.”

“Er—of course. Yes, certainly.” Georgiana sat back, flustered, and cast a nervous glance at Mrs. Cliffe, who was watching with raised eyebrows.

“You will no doubt want to know about my previous employers,” Mrs. McRory began. She had a slight Scottish accent. “My last employer was Lord Malmesbury, but I found it impossible to continue once he had engaged a French chef. Neither my morals nor my temper could allow it. I hope, my lady, that you do not intend employing any such person.”

“I think there is very little chance of that,” Georgiana said, thinking of the accounts.

“My chief motivation is bringing order to the disorderly,” Mrs. McRory announced. “Order to the disorderly,” she repeated, rather as if savoring the thought. “I cannot abide waste. I abhor indolence. Under my guidance, servants discover in themselves heretofore untapped reserves of energy, resolution, and moral fiber. Before I rose to my present elevated position”—at this Georgiana had to bite her cheeks to stifle a smile—“I was a Good Plain Cook. Some cooks pride themselves on their ability to make a fowl last three days.
I
made a fowl last a week and then served him up as consommé to our late, lamented monarch.” She smiled with a look of deep inward satisfaction. “Who honored me by saying I had produced an Unparalleled Confection of Delicacy.”

Georgiana found herself speechless. She glanced at Mrs. Cliffe.

“You would be expected to arrange large country events such as weddings, shooting parties, and balls,” Mrs. Cliffe said. “Does your experience in London—”

“Done it,” Mrs. McRory snapped. “Maharajah of Petampore. Foreign gentleman. Required a season for his eldest daughter. Butler died. Heart attack. Ordered the entire thing myself,
including
male staff.”

Georgiana rustled through the references, feeling she ought to regain the initiative. “References all in order,” Mrs. McRory said. “I looked in on the laundry room on my way up and ordered the linen. Very disorderly.”

“Yes, we’ve lost our first housemaid, Annie,” Mrs. Cliffe murmured. “Well, I…can’t think of anything more to ask, Mrs. McRory. We’ll be in touch.”

Mrs. McRory bounded to her feet with such energy that Georgiana was afraid she felt insulted. But as the woman jerked her abrupt curtsy and surged to the door, she realized that it was just the speed and decisiveness with which she moved. James arrived only just in time to open the door for her. Mrs. McRory, who came approximately to his waist height, looked up at him through narrowed eyes, then reached up to tap him on his shirt front.

“Stain. Disorderly.
I
always have
my
footmen wash their linen in Patchcock’s Peculiar Granules. Stains vanish with Patchcock’s.”

She disappeared through the door, and James, looking flabbergasted, hurried after her. Georgiana managed to hold her giggles back until the door had closed behind her. “Did you ever see such a person?” Georgiana was half laughing, half admiring. “
My
footmen! I wonder what Cooper will have to say about that?”

“I should think it would shake him up a bit, and no bad thing, my lady.” Mrs. Cliffe was smiling too. “He has been letting things slide while His Lordship was in London.”

“You’re right.” Georgiana was sobered again. Making the disorderly orderly. Well, they certainly were a disorderly household. Perhaps Mrs. McRory was just what they needed.

“Her references are certainly excellent.” Mrs. Cliffe was glancing through them again. “I must write to check them, of course, but really…”

“She’s the best we have seen so far,” Georgiana said, finishing the sentence.

They looked at each other and shared a thoughtful nod.

The Theatre Royal on Drury Lane was crammed with people who had heard of the dramatic reception of
The Rite of Spring
in Paris and were eager to see it repeated in London. Rose strained to hear the overture above the chatter of voices as she followed the others to the duke’s box.

“I heard it was unlistenable—primitive—Nijinsky has gone too far.”

“A moral scandal—unspeakably shocking—”

“Stamping and banging and not a tune to be heard!”

She squeezed between perfumed dowagers, feathers from expensive hats tickling her nose. Alexander was nowhere to be seen, though she felt her heart beating rapidly, expecting to see him at every moment.

“I am so glad the duke offered us his box,” the countess said loudly as they went through the crowd. “It would be insufferable to sit in this crush.”

“And speaking of the duke,” Charlotte murmured behind her fan, “where is he?”

The attendant bowed as he showed them through the velvet curtain into the box.

“Has the duke yet arrived?” the countess demanded of him.

“I could not say, my lady.” The attendant bowed and backed out.

“Or has been instructed not to say.” Charlotte sighed and seated herself.

Rose and Ada exchanged glances as they sat down.

“I don’t know what to expect,” Ada said. “I suppose it will be interesting. I adored
The Firebird
and Fokine’s choreography, but the
Rite
has had such a violent reaction in Paris.…”

“I’m sure there is something to it.” Rose sat forward, her chin on her hands. She wondered where Alexander was. She longed to see him, to smile at him and have the chance to apologize for her rudeness. He must have known the countess would never have taken her to the performance without his invitation, and she was touched that he had remembered their conversation on the subject—even though she had been so unpardonably rude about his paintings.

Before they could speak of it further the lights dimmed, the curtain rose, and
The Rite of Spring
began.

Rose realized in an instant why the reaction in Paris had been so violent. This was not the voluptuous, breathtaking beauty of
The Firebird
or
Scheherazade
. A bare and wintry scene filled the stage, the dancers moving in violent spasms. The gorgeous embroidery of fairy tale was ripped away to leave the clean bones of the story within: the merciless sacrifice of youth and beauty in an eternal, powerful rite as rhythmic as the changing seasons, or the pumping of blood through the human body. Rose couldn’t repress a feeling of rising, heady, drunken excitement, as if she were hearing and seeing the future rushing toward her at the speed of the fastest motorcar.

“Rite of Spring!”
The countess sniffed. “It’s the ugliest thing I have ever seen. Spring is flowers, beauty, elegance.…”

And new life, thought Rose, and the savage pain of throwing off the past. But the only person who would understand that was Alexander. She was dying to hear what he thought about it, dying to tell him that she thought she understood better now, what he was trying to paint, thought she could see a way now, to make music that didn’t ring as false as the laughter of the audience.…

The audience fidgeted, laughed, catcalled. Rose thought, angrily, that they had made up their minds before it had even begun. They had come to see a riot, not a ballet.

When the interval bell rang, the countess rose at once.

“Worse than I expected. And the wretched Huntleigh isn’t even here!”

Rose jumped to her feet as the door of the box opened and a man entered—but it was not Alexander. It was Sebastian, and she saw at once the tension and strain on his face, although he spoke lightly. “Good evening, everyone. I heard you were here, so I thought I’d make an appearance.”

“About time too! Where on earth have you been for the past few days? Everyone has been asking about you.”

“Are you all right?” Rose scanned Sebastian’s face. She could see he looked tired and troubled.

“Not really. I’ve just heard that Oliver’s pleading guilty.”

“No!” Ada sounded shocked. “But why?”

“Oh goodness, not more of this penny dreadful,” Charlotte groaned.

“I’ve been called as a witness and he wants to save me from going to court,” Sebastian said, ignoring his sister and speaking directly to Rose.

Rose’s eyes widened. Of course, if Sebastian ended up in court, the newspapers would see him as fair game. And then…everything might come out.

“How feudal!” Charlotte said with a laugh. “I can’t imagine Ward doing as much for me.”

“Well, I’m delighted that someone at least considers our feelings!” The countess sounded furious, but Rose could see that beneath her sharp voice she was scared. “You don’t seem to consider what people may say—”

“I don’t care what people say!” Sebastian snapped. Rose flinched, and the people around them turned in surprise.

“Hush!” the countess hissed. “Keep your voice down. Journalists are everywhere.”

“Good, perhaps one of them will report the truth for once.”

“Be careful what you wish for.” The countess’s voice was icy, but Rose heard the fear underneath the ice. She remembered what Sebastian had said at the exhibition. She had never believed she could feel sorry for the countess, but she found she did.

“I know what I want, Mother. I know for the first time what truly matters. And I am not ashamed of it. On the contrary, I’m proud.”

Sebastian turned and stormed away, pushing through the crowd until he disappeared in the direction of the exit. Slowly, like water filling a footprint at the edge of the sea, the conversation flowed back. But Rose could feel the piercing glances and hear the murmurs, as if the sea were whispering rumors to curious ears.

“I’ve had enough of this cacophony.” The countess’s voice was brittle.

“Oh, no,” Rose exclaimed. “You can’t wish to go now—not without seeing the second half.”

“I don’t expect it gets any better,” Charlotte sighed, following her mother out of the box.

“Better! It was wonderful.” Rose turned to Ada, who was hanging back, silent. “Ada, you agree with me, don’t you? The power of the rite, that poor girl dancing herself to death, sacrificing herself—”

“Excuse me.” Ada’s voice sounded strangled, and she rose to her feet. She pushed her way out of the box. Rose, startled and anxious, followed her. Ada moved like a sleepwalker, feeling her way to the wall, and steadied herself against it.

“Are you faint?” the countess demanded. She beckoned to a steward. “Some iced water for Lady Ada.” The steward bowed and hurried away at once.

“Ada, do you feel unwell?” Rose fanned her with the program.

“I’m sorry.” Ada drew a deep breath. “It was a little hot in there.”

“Of course, it was.”

“Just a few moments to compose myself, and I shall be able to leave.”

The iced water arrived and Ada drank gratefully.

“Let’s go,” the countess said impatiently.

Rose could do nothing but follow her to the exit. As they made their way through the crowd its movement pushed her sideways and a strong hand steadied her. She looked up to see Alexander. She couldn’t stop the smile of happiness that broke over her face. But to her surprise he seemed determined not to meet her eyes and swiftly let go of her arm. She looked into his face, searching and surprised. He was blushing.

“Your Grace!” came the countess’s voice, ringing over her shoulder. Rose started and turned around. The countess and Charlotte were heading toward them.

The countess spoke first. “Where have you been? So naughty of you to invite us and then not be there.” Her words were playful, but Rose could see she was irritated.

Alexander cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable. “I must apologize, I meant to join you in the second half.” Rose wondered if he was telling the truth.

“I am so grateful for your invitation,” Charlotte said. “It’s a wonderful piece—so new, so fresh, so modern.”

Rose stared at her in astonishment.

Alexander smiled, looking relieved to see Charlotte. “I’m glad you enjoyed it. I saw it in rehearsal and it was a marvelous experience. So few people seem to have understood it properly.”

“Oh, I adore anything by Stravinsky,” Charlotte said firmly. “Which is your favorite piece?”

“If I had to choose, I would say
The Firebird
.”

“Ah yes.” Charlotte breathed, a hand playing with the carnelian pendant at her neck. “The thrill of the chase… Eastern decadence…the passion of the music…”

Alexander smiled, looking half embarrassed and half amused. He glanced at Rose, but then looked back at Charlotte, as she said, “So you’ll join us for the second half of the program?”

“In fact, I’m afraid I’ve been called away—urgent business.” He didn’t look back at Rose. “I do hope you enjoy it, though.”

He made a movement as if to leave, but Charlotte spoke again. “I’ve been working on that little self-portrait you saw, and it is so much improved. I want to thank you for your help.”

“You’re welcome,” he replied. “I’m sure it’s down to your talent and not my advice.”

He turned to go. Charlotte darted away from her mother and placed a hand on his arm. In a voice so low that only Rose heard, she asked, “Did you receive my note about the exhibition?”

“I did,” he answered in the same low voice. “I would certainly be interested in seeing it—”

Charlotte gave him a dazzling smile as she stepped back. “Tomorrow,” she mouthed at him. “Send your car.”

Alexander made them an awkward bow and hurried away. The crowd swallowed him up.

Rose didn’t realize she was staring after him until she heard Ada’s sympathetic voice in her ear. “Come on, Rose. Let’s go.”

“I don’t understand—” Rose was still looking after him, though he had long vanished into the crowd. She felt too shocked even to weep. Was it her rudeness about his art? But no—why would he then have made a special effort to invite her to the
Rite
?

“What is there to understand? The man is clearly a cad.” Ada’s voice trembled, and Rose knew she was furious with Alexander. But there had to be some explanation, some reason. She began to follow in the direction he had gone, but Ada drew her back. Rose turned to her, confused. On Ada’s face she saw her own pain mirrored.

“Rose, don’t make a spectacle of yourself.” Ada spoke clearly and with quiet authority.

“But—”

“Don’t give him the satisfaction of seeing you’re hurt. Walk away without looking back.”

For an instant Ada was the mistress again, and Rose the maid. Rose allowed Ada to lead her away, one hand resting protectively on her arm. She glanced back once, but Alexander had disappeared into the crowd.