The Duke of Snow and Apples (2 page)

Chapter Two

What a silly chit I am
, thought Charlotte, as the carriage jangled and bumped toward Charmant Park. She’d spent the last several days clutching anger to her heart, letting its prickles and sharp edges scratch and tear at her with every movement. Anger was sharper than defeat, harder than despair. Anger had its uses, whereas misery only left her as damp and wrinkled as her wretched handkerchief.

And in the span of only a few minutes, an upstart footman had stolen her anger away.

What foolishness
. Throwing an apple at a servant. Thank goodness no one of consequence had seen her. What might they have thought?

She hefted the rock he’d left in her lap. She shouldn’t have hit him, but she hadn’t been able to help herself. She’d been sitting in that inn, stewing over how her life was falling apart, as all her ordered plans dissolved into hopeless dreams, and in had walked that
footman
. Tall and professional and collected, as if nothing in his life ever strayed beyond the expected. In truth, it had galled her to think a servant had an easier time of it than her.

He had an odd face for a footman. So…
distinctive.
What a ridiculous thought. All footmen had faces—she’d just never had an opportunity to truly look a footman in the face before. From a distance, he looked fit and sleek in his bright livery, identical to every footman in existence. In the confines of the carriage, a stone in his hand, she’d noticed his dark, inky eyebrows that contrasted sharply with the powdered paleness of his wig, a strong, slightly crooked nose, and eyes…

What sort of a footman has eyes like that?
Sudden warmth rose to her face, and she shifted her feet away from the salamander-bottle. Eyes of a clear, flawless azure like a lake in summer, rimmed with lush, dark lashes. For one moment in that carriage, they’d even seemed to glow. Beautiful eyes. Such an utter waste they should be found in a footman’s face.

But such was life. Nothing went as it should.

Reminded again of her troubles and what she would have to do to set her life to rights, she looked out the window, searching for the first signs they were approaching Charmant Park. She hadn’t visited her great-aunt since she was ten years old. She dimly remembered great stands of cherry trees flashing past the carriage in bursts of fragrant pink froth, and a mansion that had seemed like a Fey palace. Doubtless now that she was a grown woman of twenty, the estate would seem much smaller.

The carriage topped the rise and rumbled along a road guarded by black-barked trees clawing the air with dark, empty branches. Even bereft of foliage, those trees drew Charlotte back into memories of her girlhood, and as she caught sight of Charmant Park, unexpected joy rose in her chest like a puff of warm steam.

Thanks to generations of renovation-minded owners, Charmant Park represented a battle between six or seven architectural styles, frozen in time in honey-brown stone, red brick, pink stucco, and white marble. Turrets warred with flying buttresses, pediments sneered at porticos, chimneys dueled with jagged spires, and columns sprouted everywhere, oblivious to the chaos.

The carriage pulled up at the entrance, in front of a full regiment of male servants standing at attention in blue and gold livery. A heartwarmingly familiar woman stood at their head. She wore her snow-white hair teased into youthful curls beneath a massive yellow turban sprouting feathers from at least half a dozen birds.

Refusing to wait for a footman or a stool, Charlotte leapt out of the carriage, stumbled a bit as she landed, and ran toward Aunt Hildegarde, Viscountess Balrumple, her arms opened wide. The viscountess let out a whoop, hitched up her tangerine-colored skirts, and dashed to cover the gap. The two women met in a concussive embrace, jarring one of Lady Balrumple’s feathers askew.

“Aunt Hildy!”

“Charlotte, my darling, where have you been?” Aunt Hildy pulled away to regard her grandniece in more detail. “You’ve grown taller in my absence. How inconsiderate of you. How is your dear papa? And Sylvia?”

“As fine as one could wish,” Charlotte said, evasively
.

Aunt Hildy’s green eyes, as well as the warmth in her voice, chilled a few degrees. “And your stepmother? In good health?”

“Tolerably so.” Charlotte laughed, too loudly. She had counted on her stepmama’s past experiences with Lady Balrumple to facilitate her own escape to Charmant Park, the one place where Stepmama—and hopefully Sylvia—wouldn’t follow her.

Aunt Hildy linked her arm through Charlotte’s and drew her inside, into the warmth and grandeur of a black-and-white marble foyer, where more servants waited in two orderly lines. Two footmen took her bonnet and pelisse.

“Come, then, everything’s already been arranged,” Aunt Hildy said. “Most of the other guests are resting before dinner. Your room has been prepared, and I believe you said you were not bringing a maid?” At Charlotte’s nod, Aunt Hildy snapped her fingers and said something in Selencian.

A woman stepped out of the line of amassed servants—an incredibly beautiful, expensively dressed woman with an abundance of black hair. She wore a haughty expression that softened only slightly as she approached Lady Balrumple.

“This is Lamonte,” Aunt Hildy said. “My lady’s maid, and an artistic genius, but since she works for me that goes without saying. She will attend to you during your stay.”

Lamonte held out a soft, gloved hand. The woman wore a tiny, frilled, and entirely impractical muslin apron over her fashionable gown as a token nod to status.

“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Lamonte murmured. Charlotte started at the maid’s thick Selencian accent. The Blight had swallowed Selencia and all of its inhabitants nearly twenty years ago. Charlotte was used to hearing such an accent from cooks, modistes, and elderly expats, but never from a woman as young as herself. Doubtless the accent was an affectation, made in incredibly poor taste.

“The footmen are already bringing up your luggage,” Aunt Hildy said. “Lamonte, go and make sure her clothes are properly aired.”

Lamonte nodded, and dipped into the shallowest curtsy Charlotte had ever seen, her face a neutral mask. She departed with the air of a Pure Blooded peeress leaving a dull party to pursue her own pleasures. Charlotte wondered how her great-aunt could tolerate such an ungracious servant.

Charlotte turned the conversation back to Aunt Hildy, the better to deflect questions away from herself, questions she wasn’t ready to answer yet. “So what is this I’ve been hearing about this
salon
you’ve started? The Seven Dowagers?”

“Dowagers?” Aunt Hildy stiffened, the feathers on her turban quivering with offence. “We are the Seven
Diamonds
. Society prefers to think of us as older ladies past our usefulness, and call us what they please, but they still turn their heads to avoid our sparkle. Come, let me introduce you before you dress for dinner.”

Charlotte followed Aunt Hildy through the house, passing rooms whose colors and styles varied wildly, no two the same, a mirror image of the aesthetic chaos of the building’s exterior. Green carpet and pink-striped damask. Gilt furniture gleaming against blue silk. Hand-painted Fionese wallpaper and elegant mahogany. Eventually, they found a drawing-room, its less flamboyant decorating scheme of pastel shades identifying it as one of the more private rooms at Charmant Park.

Two older women looked up from their work at Charlotte’s entrance. One sat at the pianoforte, a neat row of dog-eared sheet music before her and a considerably less neat pile crumpled at her feet. Due to her tiny stature, her feet didn’t reach the floor but rather swung to and fro in childish distraction. She had a sweet, soft, grandmother’s face, weathered with lines and dusted with light powder. Her hair remained a burnished gold, minimally mingled with strands of silver.

The second woman sat closer to the fire, her iron-gray hair tucked into a mobcap. As they entered, she lowered the book she’d been reading into her lap, the pages marred with extensive handwritten notes and marginalia. She had a hard, lean face, relatively smooth for her obvious age, as if her years and experience had stretched her tighter. Her intimidating appearance was somewhat undermined by the blob of ink darkening the corner of her mouth from chewing a much-maligned quill.

“My Diamonds, I have someone I would love you to meet,” Aunt Hildy said, feathers bobbing as she came forward.

“I thought we were the Dowagers,” said the woman at the pianoforte in a breathy, musical voice.

Aunt Hildy’s smile slipped a fraction. “I
believe
we eventually settled on calling ourselves the Seven
Diamonds
.”

“Oh,” said the woman. “I must have forgotten.”

“You didn’t,” the hard-faced lady by the fire corrected. “We took a vote and decided on the Seven Dowagers.”

“But
afterward
, I thought we’d all agreed that
diamonds
are so much more romantic than
dowagers
,” Aunt Hildy continued, voice chilling with every word. “And besides, we are
not
all dowagers.”

“But we’re not a romantic group, all things considered,” said the hard-faced lady, unapologetic.

“I am not a dowager, I am a diamond!” Aunt Hildy reddened.

“You can be both,” said the woman at the pianoforte.

Aunt Hildy released a loud sigh of tolerant suffering. She gestured toward Charlotte. “May I introduce my grandniece, Miss Charlotte Erlwood?”

As Charlotte came forward, the two women rose to their feet. The hard-faced lady bobbed a curtsey and extended her hand.

“Charlotte, this is Lady Margaret Helverston, Marchioness of Alderley.”

“How do you d-do?” Charlotte asked, blushing. In the caricatures of the
Trinidon Eyeglass
and the
Allmarch Journal
Lady Alderley was a ludicrous figure, exaggeratedly tall and thin like a piece of stretched taffy, with a hooked nose and clawed fingers that loved nothing better than to pinch the bottoms of upstanding male politicians.

Charlotte was hard-pressed to decide which figure was more terrifying. “I read your article about the ‘Righteous Responsibilities of Woman’.” She neglected to add,
Right before Stepmama set it on fire.

“Excellent!” Lady Alderley cried, her face brightening with girlish pleasure. “I love meeting a fellow Lady Warrior.”

“Oh, y-yes,” said Charlotte. The
Trinidon Eyeglass
depicted the Lady Warrior Who Fought for the Rights of Womanhood with a saucepan in one hand and a feather duster in the other.

“It’s simply ridiculous that Pure Blooded women can own titles and land but have no voice in government! We’re just as much descended from the Fey as our brothers and fathers. We’re not underfolk.”

“Indeed.” Charlotte fiddled with the pinkie finger of her glove.

“And now the House of Blooded would disallow women to become peeresses in their own right! They would have us become Selencia—and we all know what happened to Selencia!”

“Um…”

“The Blight! That’s what happened! They—”

“I beg your pardon,” Aunt Hildy interrupted with a smooth smile. “Really, Margaret, control yourself. You’ll have nothing left to crusade about at dinner, and you know how I loathe empty dinner conversation.”

Lady Alderley grinned crookedly. “I’m only testing the girl, Hildegarde. If she doesn’t run screaming back to her papa now, she should manage for the rest of the week.” Eying Charlotte, she winked.

The tiny, grandmotherly lady came forward and took Charlotte’s hand, pressing it between her own. She smelled of violets.

“May I introduce you to Lady Edwina Colton, Dowager Countess of Enshaw.”

“Lady
Enshaw
?” Charlotte blurted. “The lady composer?”

“The very same, the very same,” said Lady Enshaw. She laughed, a high tinkle like the sound of a wind chime. “It’s a pleasure, a very great pleasure indeed. Lady Balrumple has told me so much about you. I love the glamour you cast on your hair.”

“I haven’t cast a glamour.”

“Oh no?” Lady Enshaw’s features drooped in confusion. “Aren’t you normally golden-haired?”

“Perhaps you are thinking of my sister Sylvia.”

“You’re not Sylvia?”

“No, this is
Charlotte
,” Aunt Hildy said.

“Oh!” Lady Enshaw blushed a dusty shade of rose. “I must beg your pardon. I tend to forget things sometimes.”

“
Some
times?” said Lady Alderley. “You’d forget your hands were your own if you didn’t need them to play the pianoforte.”

Aunt Hildy turned to Charlotte. “As you can see, we Diamonds are a formidable group, and you’ve only met a few of us.” She gestured at Charlotte and the two other Dowagers to sit and then rang for tea.

“Who else is a member?” Charlotte asked, settling down in a chair.

“Lady Alice Marchester is one, but she is currently staying with her son and daughter-in-law in Panneth. She says the waters are good for her health.”

Charlotte stared blankly.

Lady Alderley sniffed in disapproval. “She’s Alistair Marshford.”

“The novelist? But I
love
his novels!
Her
novels,” Charlotte corrected herself.

“I suppose they are diverting enough, if one wants to read something purely fanciful and isn’t looking for anything in the way of mental improvement,” said Lady Alderley coldly.

“We also count Lady Amelia Dor, Viscountess Noxley among our number,” Aunt Hildy cut in. “The glamourist. She’s in hiding,” she added.

“From whom?”

“Her son,” said Lady Alderley, “and his debts.”

Before Charlotte could let this soak in, a deep, shuddering blast echoed from the southwest corner of the house, causing the windows to rattle delicately in their frames. “What was that?”

“Lady Anne Oswald, Dowager Countess of Leighwood,” Aunt Hildy replied. “Sounds like another failure, poor woman. She’s been working on that potion formula for weeks.”

Charlotte uncurled her fingers from the arms of her chair. “And this is normal?”