Of Moths and Butterflies (18 page)

As if he had read her mind, or perhaps it was the logical response—logic was not her closest ally these days—he replied, “Claire will raise you. I think you mean to let her.”

“A lady’s maid is still a servant, sir. Well beneath your notice.”

“Like now, do you mean?” His gaze swept over her frame, making a point of the gown that Claire had given her, and that she had been persuaded to wear.

Imogen had no answer for this. She moved again toward the centre of the room, and gazed red-faced upon the insect-strewn walls. How had she found herself in such an impossible predicament? Why had she come here, of all places? Here where her uncle’s name had been known? Here, where perhaps the only man on earth existed who could tempt her to regret what she had given up?

“I’m very grateful to her,” Imogen said eventually. “I have my doubts, however, in regard to what she will truly be able to do for me.”

“You underestimate her power of influence.”

She looked to him. “No. I believe in it wholeheartedly.”

“It’s yourself you doubt, then?”

She did not answer this, and found, as he persisted in examining her so, that she must look away.

“Miss Shaw,” he said, placing his hand on her arm, very near her wrist. “If there’s any way I can help you…”

What was he saying? How had her words, the words meant to discourage him, to remind him of his place—and hers—how had these drawn him on to this?

“Will you tell me, please, if there is any way I can be of service to you? If there is anything I might do to relieve you of your present distress?”

His hand met hers. For only an instant. She stepped away from him, her heart pounding hard and fast. “What are you saying?”

“I think it’s quite plain.”

“No. It isn’t plain at all. You have not thought.”

He did not answer, and she deemed from his silence the confession.

“Are you trying to tell me, Mr. Hamilton,” she asked him, her eyes flashing with the anger and confusion, with the shame and fear she felt, “that you would defy class barriers, defy your uncle, turn your back on everything for a common servant? Or are you suggesting something else, entirely?”

Still he had no answer, and so, interpreting from his silence his uncertainty, she sought for some further objection she might give. She had dared believe in others before and had been wholly disabused of her foolishness. It would not, could not be allowed to happen again. Ever again. She was truly angry now. Angry for allowing herself to feel anything for this man who could not want more from her than Mr. Lionel Osborn had ever wished to gain. Or that others (perhaps poor Charlie’s mother) had ever had any right to hope for.

“I have seen enough Betty Masons in my life to prevent me from being tempted to that fate. Excuse me,” she said at last and moved to the door.

She might have passed through it too, had Claire not blocked her way. The collision brought the package she was carrying crashing to the ground. Imogen stopped and looked.

“I’m so sorry!” she said. “Is it broken?”

Claire picked it up and laid it carefully on a table, where she began to unwrap it. “I think the paper will have protected it,” she said with a smile that was meant to comfort but made Imogen feel all the worse. She remained, trembling and uncertain, grateful for Claire’s intervention and yet desperate to be on her own where she could think.

The package was soon unwrapped, revealing yet another of Mr. Hamilton’s butterflies.

“A Blue Morpho,” he said in wonder, and moved to stand beside his cousin.

“From Brazil. And it took an age to get here.”

Hesitantly, Imogen approached, and peering through the space between them, she observed the insect. For all the excitement, it was rather unimpressive. A brown, drab thing with spotted wing.

“It is not blue?” she asked, confused.

Mr. Hamilton turned to examine her, once more too intently for her comfort. “Why should it be blue, Miss Shaw?” he asked her. “What one appears to be and what one is are very often different things entirely.”

She could not answer him just at first, but at last found it necessary to say something, to break the spell he seemed determined to cast. “Very well, Mr. Hamilton. I will believe you.” And she found it very easy to do. Too easy.

He took up the box, still half wrapped in paper, and placed it into her hands. The insect did not improve upon closer inspection, but there seemed to be a purpose to the gesture, or so she esteemed as she looked up to find him watching her, his grey-blue eyes searching her countenance for something. She handed the package back to him, but instead of taking it from her, he removed the rest of the wrappings and turned it over. It was a special box, this, with glass on both sides so that the wings could be seen from top and bottom. What she had seen before had been the underside. Revealed to her now were wings iridescent blue and framed with a black border. The exact colour of her dress.

“Extraordinary, is it not?” he said, and brushing his warm hands against her cold and trembling ones, he took the box from her before Claire could remark upon the long and ragged crack that ran the length of the glass. The butterfly, though otherwise unharmed, had suffered the loss of some dust from its wings, which now stuck to the ruined glass.

“I am so very sorry,” Imogen said. “I have ruined it.”

“There is no harm done, Miss Shaw.” And with an earnest look, he placed the butterfly, blue side facing, on the mantle just beneath the great moth.

Imogen took a last glimpse around the room. The insects were quite fascinating, beautiful, she could not argue that. And though she could appreciate them now as Mr. Hamilton saw them, still, her eyes could not quite see past the hundreds of pins that held each winged creature to its fixed place within a box made of fragile glass. What was it about these insects that disturbed her so? Why did she feel so threatened by their presence—here?

“Excuse me,” she said again, and without another word, she left the room for the solace of her own.

She gazed upon the insect-strewn walls.

OULD YOU MIND
telling me what that was about?” Claire demanded of Archer, breaking the silence left in the wake of Gina’s hasty departure.

“We should bring the other specimens up, I think. Before Sir Edmund returns home.” He moved to the door.

Claire stopped him. “Archer?”

“Nothing, Claire.”

“Nothing? Are you quite sure? She’ll tell me, you know, if you won’t.”

He stopped and drew in a breath. “I asked her if there was anything I might do for her.”

“Meaning?”

“I’m not sure I know even now.”

“You were not asking her to marry you.”

“I don’t know that I wasn’t.”

“But it’s impossible.”

“Is it?”

“You made her an offer of marriage? You said those words?”

“No. No, my question was not so plainly put as that.”

“Then you left it open to interpretation. Did you think how such an ill thought out request was likely to sound to her? Considering the disparity in your stations?”

“But think what you might do for her, Claire.”

“That has nothing to do with the present circumstances. And even I cannot make a poor woman wealthy. Think, Archer, for once, before you act. Do you understand what she was likely to have thought?”

Archer drew a hand through his hair. “I have a good idea, yes.”

“Do you?”

“She told me so herself.”

Claire was surprised, but only for a moment. “She has put you in your place again, I hope.”

“Or taken me out of it.”

“What does that mean?”

“What’s begun, Claire…” He shook his head and looked, for the moment, like a helpless child. “I’m not sure I have the power to end it.”

“What was her reply? Tell me, Archer.”

“She said she was not prepared to be another Bess Mason.”

“She knows?”

“She can’t understand it correctly.”

“Neither do I, if you want to know. Charlie belongs to someone. He cannot belong to you.”

“She has reason, or so she believes, to suspect it’s so. She saw me in a rather heated discussion with Bess after church a few weeks ago.”

“Archer, don’t you see what you must do?”

“I’m beginning to,” he said with a resolve she had never before seen in him.

“Are you?”

“Claire, something in her words, perhaps it was in her manner, I don’t know. It gave me hope. I cannot believe it’s impossible. I won’t believe it.” And then, tentatively, he added, “Were I to make myself independent…”

This was precisely what she had hoped most to hear. “Archer, you understand, don’t you, that my helping her was not meant to help you.”

“Yes, of course,” he said and looked down, betraying the fact that he had nevertheless counted on the possibility.

It had not been her plan. At least not originally. But it had not taken much effort to see what this woman was capable of. “If, however, you mean what you say, and you can persuade her to place her trust in you, I will do nothing to prevent it.”

“You’ll help me?” His eyes were suddenly on her.

“I didn’t say that. If my helping her helps you… So long as you are truly in earnest.”

Archer kissed Claire on the cheek.

“But I’m warning you, Archer. It isn’t going to be easy. You’ll have to prove yourself, and Sir Edmund is not your only obstacle.”

“Yes, of course,” he said, but she wasn’t sure he was still listening.

As he left to see to the removal of the remainder of his collection from the dining room to the upstairs library, she almost regretted what she had agreed to. She was not sure, after all, that Archer had it in him to repair all the years of damage done, both to Gina Shaw and to himself. And there were other sacrifices too, which she was not yet prepared to consider.

*   *   *

Claire knocked on Gina’s door. At last, and tentatively, it opened.

“So this is your room?” Claire said as she entered it. “How do you stand it?”

“It’s not so bad, really.”

“It’s freezing in here. All your things are in my room, you know. You needn’t stay here.”

“I just needed a place of my own for a bit.”

With a great sigh, Claire sat down on the bed beside Gina.

“My cousin has spoken to you?”

Gina blushed but did not answer.

“Were he to break from his uncle, he would take little with him. He’d have to make his own way.”

“What has that to do with me?”

Claire gave her a sidelong glance. She had eyes. She understood well enough what was going on. “You have no interest in Mr. Hamilton, then?”

“How can you ask such a question?” Gina answered. “He’s a gentleman. I’m a servant. There’s no point in even thinking of it.”

“But if I were to raise you, dear Gina…and it would not take much, I think… Were we to display you in the right circles, much might be done. It’s not an unconquerable obstacle. Not in your case.”

“Is that what you want of me, Claire? Is that your purpose? Are you doing this for him?”

“Certainly not. I’m doing this for you. Because it would comfort me to know that something good might be made of the tragedy that has been your life so far.”

“I can’t understand how it is you can have met me and in the same day decided we are to be companions, friends, that you are to rescue me. It is beyond my comprehension.”

“I suppose,” Claire said, placing a hand over hers, “that, in some ways, you remind me of myself. Our stories are not as different as you may think. I’ll tell you one day. Now’s not the time.”

“Yes it is. Certainly it is. You are asking me to trust you. I see that I must. I see that I cannot stay here. But I chose this life, the life of a servant for a reason. I’m trying to avoid drawing undue attention to myself. I have no wish to place myself on display. Certainly not to place myself in a position where I might be discovered. I would be much happier knowing I come to you as your hired companion, a lady’s maid, and nothing more. Not ever to aspire to more.”

Claire sighed. “And what of Archer?”

“I do not want to think of him, Claire. Truly.”

“You have no feelings for him?”

“No. Of course not.”

“I may tell him so?”

Gina stared at her blindly for a moment or two. “Yes,” she said at last. “Yes, do. I think that would be for the best.”

So she was that stubborn, was she?

“You will not come back down to my room?”

“Not today. If you don’t mind, that is. I would like some time to sort out my thoughts.”

“Of course,” Claire said and arose to leave. “I’ll have your things sent up to you.”

“Thank you, Claire. Truly.”

*   *   *

Sir Edmund returned from London that evening to find his nephew sitting before the fire in the library. The book Archer had been reading a moment before lay open in his lap, his gaze focused on some imaginary object before him.

“Is it a thought-provoking story, Archer, or is there something in the wallpaper you find particularly intriguing?”

Archer suddenly awoke. “You’re home,” he said.

“Yes. I’m home.” He threw his portmanteau onto the desk, and crossed to where Archer was sitting. He lowered the book to see for himself what his nephew was reading. “Keats?”

“Yes.”

Sir Edmund laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. “Cupid’s namesake is not reading
Ode to Psyche
, I hope.”

“Of course not!” Archer lied, closing the book with a snap.

“I always thought it a ridiculous name your mother gave you. And all because she hoped you would have more luck in love than she did. Well, she ought to have left you independent to have that liberty!”

A long, tense silence followed this. Sir Edmund rarely mentioned her, and when he did, it was in no very pleasant terms.

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” he went on, “those rooms would be wasted on Mrs. Barton. Truly I have no wish to change my circumstances. Were it not for the money…”

Archer laid the book aside and slowly looked up.

“I spent a pretty penny on those rooms, and I think it’s time I see a return on my investments.”

“It’s assuming a great deal, sir, to presume I’ll make that return for you.”

“You don’t have much of a choice, you know? Not if you want the Abbey. Not if you have any proper feeling at all for what’s been done for you.”

“You don’t have...?” he began, his anxiety apparent. He did not finish.

“No, I’ve got nothing fixed just yet.”

The relief that washed over Archer with this declaration was both immediate and transitory. The idea so often before suggested was a distasteful one to him. Were his uncle to choose his bride… Archer shuddered to think, for there was only one vital quality necessary in Sir Edmund’s mind, and it had nothing at all to do with compatibility or sentiment.

He closed his eyes against the thought and heard Claire’s petition, impossible now to dismiss. But could he do it? And what would it cost him? Without a penny to his name that was not tied up in the Abbey or in his uncle’s ventures, how could he possibly recommend himself? He would simply have to find a way. But it was possible, quite likely in fact, that there was not the time necessary to do it.

“I should say,” Sir Edmund continued, “I have someone in mind, but the terms are not yet fixed.”

Archer grew rigid. His eyes flashed to meet those of his uncle.

“Terms?”

“Yes. I’ve discovered an heiress whom I think would suit, and whose relations are quite happy to be rid of, but the price, at present, is too high.”

At the word “price” Archer was up and out the door. This could not be happening. Not now. It was impossible.