Song for Sophia (2 page)

Every day she dusted books she dare not be seen reading, polished a magnificent piano she was not allowed to play, and listened to elegant dinner conversation she pretended not to understand. Sophia rubbed corn husk oil into the cracked skin over her knuckles and chanted the creed that kept her afloat these past months:
I am not vain, I am not vain
… .

Chapter 2

On Scrutinizing Underclothing

Sophia placed stacks of folded linen in the master suite wardrobe. Emboldened by her solitude, she shook out a pair of Lord Devon’s silk drawers, dyed a rich pearl-gray sheen. Frivolous. Not nearly the size of the corpulent man in the portrait. Had he decreased with an illness recently? Sophia had only seen him in oil on canvas despite being three months in his employ.

On the table next to an austere mahogany bed lay a stack of books. Sophia squinted at the titles and noted Dostoyevsky, Jules Verne, Darwin, and oddly, Jeremy Bentham, the liberal egalitarian philosopher. Yesterday she remembered Homer and Gothic horror novels. No spectacles nearby, no bookmarks. Did he read every book or merely browse them?

More puzzling: the assortment of bottles stashed in bizarre hiding places around the room. Did Lord Devon fear a pirate raid on his cognac supply? Inside the clock, under pillows, atop a bookshelf. Enough spirits to pickle a regiment.

Just past seven in the morning, and the sheets were already cold. Even keeping country hours, what lord rose before noon? And she never saw more than one indentation on the mattress, meaning Lord Devon was either too old for bed sport or went elsewhere for it. Perhaps he was a deviant, according to the whispers about him.

Sophia placed pure white lawn shirts in symmetrical stacks on the shelf, careful to space them equally as Lord Devon demanded. Then she made his bed, the starched sheets wrinkle-free and corners tucked under the mattress at ninety-degree angles. The reason she had this position in the first place was because the previous chambermaid had failed to do so and was sent packing.

Sophia went to the writing desk, and the title on a manuscript caught her eye: a Gounod opera. Debuted only weeks ago, according to the newspapers she stole from the kitchen — fish wrappings. She studied Lord Devon’s elegant script, a flawless notation with an artistic flare to the beams and stems while every notehead maintained a perfect elliptical shape. Sophia thought her notation was better than most, but his was as precise as machine print, only prettier.

She scanned the notes and hummed the melody, an aria she didn’t recognize, because it was unpublished. Astounding — Lord Devon had transcribed the music from his head, supposedly after hearing the performance. She made a soundless scoff, wondering how it could be possible. Who had such a memory? Pages and pages of perfect script … . Half-mad with envy, she set the manuscript down and straightened it.

Despite Lord Devon’s reputed eccentricities and his dreadful disposition, Sophia wished, not for the first time, that she could make his acquaintance. She imagined cozy fireside arguments over brandy with a grizzled, fatherly gentleman who sparred with her about Parliament and Balzac as though she were a man. His intellectual equal.

A lovely vision, one that vanished as she toppled a bottle of fragrant sable ink onto a card. Sophia cursed, dabbing the ink first from the polished leather mat, then the ruined card. An unfinished letter, which Lord Devon had dated two weeks prior. That made sense when she saw that next he had penned,
Dearest Aunt Louisa,
then nothing else.

If the last maid was discharged over a creased bedsheet, then Sophia had just done far worse.
If
she were found out. She sighed, knowing it was
when
, not
if
. Better to discard the letter or forge a duplicate?

Sophia had fooled the eagle-eyed bankers in Zurich the past spring when she forged her father’s hand and stole three thousand pounds.

She studied Lord Devon’s penmanship upside down and sideways, memorizing the loops and slashes. He had to be left-handed. Sophia stifled a groan, then angled the pen the way she imagined he did. Her first attempt was obvious and too careful. But the second, more flamboyant and aggressive, looked identical. She compared the tell-tale S’s and E’s, pleased that she had successfully reproduced his hand. A small deception in the grander scheme of maintaining her disguise.

Sophia sorted the papers, pens, and wax on the desk then noticed a smudge of film on the full-length dressing mirror, the mark only visible from a sideways angle. She wiped it clean, sighing in relief for noticing the discrepancy, then double-checked the walls for scuff marks before leaving Lord Devon’s wonderland of brilliant madness. She polished the door handle for good luck on her way out.

Next on her list of tasks was the dreaded tray service from the kitchen. Sophia bumped the swinging half-door with her hip and gave the flirtatious French chef Msr. Girard a wan smile as she passed through the scullery, cutting off his greeting. She loaded the tray with wrapped silverware and propped it against her waist to keep the sudden surge of male passersby at bay, but it failed. Botts the coachman whistled low as he passed and made a rude gesture. At least he didn’t touch her, but David, an irritating handsome groomsman, palmed her thigh through her skirts and attempted worse before she darted aside.

Imbeciles. Years of fending off advances like these, and she was beyond tired and angry. She wanted to
do
something about it. A man could beat the stuffing out of his opponent in the boxing ring and earn a pat on the back afterward. Where was her vindication? She wore a skirt, therefore her lot had to be forbearance?

It seemed she had been marked for persecution, and the men grew more brazen by the day. She refused to stand by while the groping escalated to rape — perhaps the time had come to leave Rougemont. But she had nowhere else to go.

• • •

Houseguests for Lord Devon’s aunt arrived, keeping Sophia occupied until midnight. When she finally returned to her attic quarters, she startled to find David the groomsman waiting across the hall from her door. She ignored his silent threat as she fetched the key from her skirt pocket and unlocked the door. If he meant to attack her, he would have done so already.

She turned and shot him a glare infused with all her pent-up fury. She lowered her voice in warning, “Touch me again, David Prescott, and I’ll break your fingers. Now go away.”

His face registered surprise, she stared him down until he shrugged and walked off. She retreated inside her room and bolted the door with shaking hands.

Hours later she woke with an indefinable sense of dread. Nightmares lurked close when she dozed, so she tried to stay awake. She didn’t remember surrendering to fatigue.

Face shoved down, his fist yanking her hair by the roots. Blood dripping onto shapes of jagged glass. The eerie burn-chill of flayed flesh, the searing shock of glass cutting her skin. Her shoulders shaking from the rhythmic force of the blows on her back, her vision blurred and sideways. Snarled curses
—
You ungrateful whore!

Sophia sat up in bed, a metallic tang in her mouth; she had bitten the inside of her cheek. If she had not awakened just now, she would have relived the moment her father burst through the door of the hothouse and shot her dog in the head. He had died in her arms, his blood cooling on her hands. Killed for rescuing her from being brutally raped by Lowdry, her father’s sycophant. She had been punished for defying him.

The scars across her back and forearms itched and burned, a reminder of what awaited her should she fail in her disguise.

How had she come to this — living in fear?

She clenched her jaw and rekindled her anger — that she could manage. Anger forged her onward but grief was debilitating. She allowed herself to succumb to it only a few times per year, and she had already spent her allotments for 1867.

• • •

Wilhelm took this way every morning at daybreak. Nine years in the army, rising with the cock’s crow, had beaten the decadence out of him. Today the eastward trade wind brought clean, briny smells from the sea. He walked along the trail and noticed fresh pine and blossoms on the breeze — good, the last frost had passed then. The birds were restless, but they didn’t cry in alarm. No danger, but someone else was in the forest. His forest.

Ahead on the trail Wilhelm heard a woman’s clear soprano rising and falling in a familiar Spanish melody. The purity of tone and grace of inflection made his chest constrict, an odd feeling. He slipped into the brush, circled the trail, and saw her.

The woman sat against a fallen log on the side of the footpath. Her hat lay discarded on the ground, and her waist-length hair hung free, twirling in the breeze as she sang. His own dog lay in her lap, as though she was his owner.

Wilhelm was held in place by a force he could not oppose, alternately praying the siren would stop luring him and hoping she never would.
Who is she? Why do I know this music? And why the hell am I spying on a lady?

The woman either forgot the rest or lost interest, absently humming the melody. She wound endless waves of glossy jet hair into a tight knot, the strands glinting blue and red in the sunlight until a disappointing gray felt hat covered her head. His eyes followed every movement as she fastened the buttons of her plain cotton blouse, hiding the pleated lace edging of what appeared to be very fine Parisian lingerie, dyed the color of a ripe peach.

Heaven help him, her bare legs! Such delicate lines, long and willowy. Hypnotizing, the iridescent sheen of her skin where the sunlight reflected on it. He must have crept closer but didn’t recall doing so. He swallowed to avoid echoing her sigh as she rolled stockings up her thighs and tied the garter ribbons. He saw the hem of her translucent peach shift. Very short. Edged in rose-shaped lace that teased over her legs, flaying him alive with an
almost
view of the skin beneath. His mouth went dry.

She turned in his direction to scan the trail, and his breath stalled as her gaze passed over his hiding place. She was quite possibly the most exquisite woman he had ever seen. Not because of the near-perfect symmetry of her features, but the
fire
burning in her eyes: intelligence, sorrow, secrets, strength. And oh, how he detested the longing it gave him.

Over her naughty underwear, she was dressed like a domestic, but she betrayed a straight, proud posture bred through generations of nobility, and she moved with the grace of a dancer. Flamenco in wool.

Ridiculous, what he was doing. Inexcusable. Wilhelm Montegue, Earl of Devon, crouched in the bushes and peering out like a satyr. He hated this familiar wash of loathing for himself; it followed every instance of shattered self-control. Still he watched.

He knew he was a slave to the unnatural forces in his brain. He was insane, more or less, but most mad people didn’t know it, while he was entirely aware of his lunacy.

The doctors called it a disorder, the poets called it obsession, but he was helpless when provoked. An ivory-obsidian chess set, the scent of ancient parchment, the facets of a crystal: all his captors for hours on end, enslaving him to fascination. It was what made him memorize texts, invent formulaic equations, compose music … . Never before had a human caused it. This was very bad.

She walked away down the trail, and it seemed she took the forces of nature with her. He watched until she disappeared, leaving him bereft and feeling every bit the damned fool.

At any rate, he was
not
a cad, lusting after whatever woman crossed his path. Just now he had been sidetracked by an uncommon specimen, as he would be interested in a rare species of bright-plumed bird. It was merely scientific interest. He went straight for the library to clear his head with a tedious book on politics and a strong mix of drink.

Chapter 3

Why One Must Always Remember One’s Lamp At Night

Wilhelm watched from the shadow of a velvet drapery, peering over the railing one floor above her. He was stunned to recognize her, the siren woman with the golden voice and French underwear who made him so angry. Here she was, polishing his baseboards. He stood transfixed, heart hammering as he warred with himself, abhorring the power a strange woman had over him.

She paused as she reached a doorway, looked down the endless line of scuffed and dusty baseboard, and bowed her head as she sighed. She still had over a hundred yards of trim to clean, not counting the fluting around the seven remaining doorways. That meant one-hundred-ninety-seven more yards. And that was only one side of the passageway. She would be at it all week.

She tried to uncurl her hands from the handle of the brush, and he wanted to groan, watching her wince and straighten her stiff fingers. Elegant, slender fingers, not gnarled and callused. Clearly she was not accustomed to manual labor.

He hated seeing her on her knees. He could see straight down her bodice, for one thing. Wilhelm gripped the railing, unable to look away, on the verge of charging down the stairs.

Would he toss her out the door or carry her upstairs to his bed?

He was halfway down the first staircase when a footman passed the woman, and with a muttered taunting, yanked her cap off, grabbing her hair with it. Hairpins clattered to the floor and her chignon unraveled. The force knocked her against the doorway. She hissed an oath at the man, which Wilhelm could not make out because he was running.

Wilhelm became aware of the pair of hands around the footman’s neck. He recognized the scars and the pattern of tawny hair across the wrists and could not deny they belonged to himself. Watery blue eyes stared back at him in a face flushing from red to violet. A tug on his sleeve and the distressed chiming of a treble voice pierced the haze in his mind.

He was strangling his footman. He eased his grip and lowered the fainting man to the floor. He concentrated on breathing in and out. His blood pumped hot, his heart pounded a war chant. With great effort he cleared his head, convincing himself temperance, not vengeance, was the order of the day.