All the way back to town on the bus, on the short walk from the High Street and past St Mary’s, Lou felt like a tiny rowing boat buffeted on a wide and endless ocean. Each piece of information, each fact she had learned that afternoon and over the last few days, became waves crashing over her bows. Years before, Elizabeth had captained her own little boat to deliver Mrs Hart from her loneliness, shaping her into the strong woman she had become.
Almost without noticing, Lou passed through the gates. Blinding snow whipped about her like ocean foam. Through the confusion of darkness and whiteout, soft smudges of colourful light glowed. Lady Mandeville’s Chinese lanterns. By their dim light, Lou wove an unsteady path up the drive. She pulled at the lapels of her coat and put her head down. Halfway up the drive and through the eerie quiet of the snow, a different sound came out of the darkness. Lou imagined it was the wind whistling through the branches of the trees in the woods. Its volume rose.
Louisa. Louisa!
It couldn’t be … She tried to see through the blizzard. Surely nobody would have ventured out of the house on foot in this storm. It was too early for any guests to have arrived. In any case, no guest would know her name.
Louisa. Louisa!
There it was again! She stopped and strained to hear.
We need you. We trust you!
She spun around. Her mind was playing tricks on her. There was nobody and nothing, apart from the dense white of the snow and the smudges of light.
Lou entered the house through the conservatory and paused to let the heat warm her cold bones. Trailing melting snow, she made her way through the billiard room. If she could get back to her room unnoticed, she might just be able to get a grip on her thoughts.
Out in the hall, the maids were so busy hurrying this way and that with trays of crockery and cutlery that they barely had time to dip a curtsey. Lou bobbed past a footman bearing a tray of glasses and made her way up the stairs with minimal fuss. She managed to get halfway along the landing when a door opened, and a maid flew out with a dress over her arm. Before she could close the door behind her, a voice called from within.
‘Louisa. Come in, do.’
The maid disappeared, leaving Lou before the gaping door of Emma’s bedroom.
‘I’m sure you’re busy getting ready,’ Lou said.
‘Nonsense.’ Emma was seated at the dressing table and spoke to Lou’s reflection in the mirror. ‘Fielding has gone to stitch the hem of my dress. Come and entertain me for a few minutes. You can spare that for me, can’t you?’
Lou checked along the corridor before stepping inside and closing the door behind her. This guest room was similar to hers but the feel of it was very different. Any number of dresses hung from the open wardrobe doors, while accessories for each had been laid out on the bed – gloves, necklaces, headbands and feathers. There wasn’t an inch of space on the dressing table between bottles and jars and potions and lotions.
Amidst this chaos sat Emma, surveying her face in the mirror, tweaking the corners of her eyes as though to tease out non-existent wrinkles. Her hair, not yet dressed, hung in a long, dark coil down her back. ‘My lord, where the devil have you been?’ she laughed. ‘You look as though you’ve been dragged through the proverbial hedge!’
Looking past Emma, Lou saw her own reflection; bedraggled hair, brown overcoat, heavy boots and skirt, all so ugly in this room of sequins, powder puffs and feathers. ‘I went for a walk,’ she said to her feet.
‘In this awful weather? What a funny thing you are. Sit down, won’t you?’
Lou lowered herself awkwardly on to the chaise beside the dressing table, her legs too long to sit comfortably on the seat too close to the floor. The instant she had settled, Emma spun around in her chair. Lou leant away, almost falling over the back of the sofa.
Emma threw her head back and laughed. ‘Oh, you really are a comical thing.’
The last thing on Lou’s mind was laughing. She was utterly absorbed by the sight before her. Emma wore a white silk robe edged in red, so sheer that it was almost transparent. The red ribbon of silk around Emma’s middle only just held the garment in place. It gaped at the top, exposing an expanse of pale, unblemished flesh from the swell of Emma’s cleavage all the way up to her elegant neck. Beneath the fabric, and filling Lou’s field of vision, were two dark circles topping off the mounds of Emma’s breasts. Lou tried not to stare as Emma crossed her legs, and the robe parted before settling so that her thighs were exposed.
Look at her face. For God’s sake, look at her face!
Emma took up a pink puff and in a haze of sweet powder, dusted her chest. She was as comfortable in her near-nakedness as Lou would have been in a fisherman’s cable knit, sou’wester and galoshes. Making no effort to readjust the fabric over her legs, Emma took a cigarette from a box on the dressing table. She offered Lou the box, but she shook her head.
‘What a stroke of luck you passing-by like that,’ Emma said, biting the end of the cigarette. With a click, she lit the tip from the flame of a large crystal desk lighter and blew a stream of smoke towards the ceiling. ‘I’ve been hoping to bump into you to see how you’ve got on with the little challenge I set you.’
‘Challenge?’ Lou echoed, her gaze fixed on the bristles of the hairbrush beside Emma’s elbow.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘The little matter of a man called Tom?’
Lou’s boat, already rocking wildly, hit a wave as hard as a wall. Abandoning the oars, she gripped the sides, desperately fighting the surge threatening to tip her overboard.
‘Well?’
‘Well, what?’
‘What on Earth has happened to you, Louisa? Has the walk outside frozen your mind? I thought women like you were always as sharp as a needle.’
Lou’s eyes snapped to Emma’s face. Women like you. What was that supposed to mean? Was Emma trying to belittle her, dressing up her dressing down as friendship? If she was, then it was the kind of friendship a little boy might have with a spider, just before pulling off its legs. Christ, she had even made her sit on a low seat so she could look down on her. And Emma was clearly getting a kick out of being naked. She exuded sex, it slid down her soft thighs, slipped from the folds of her nearly-there robe and sprang from her firm nipples, while flat-soled, dowdy, feminism clung to the creases of Lou’s matronly tweed and hung about her dishevelled hair like the ripe fug of a cowshed.
‘Louisa?’
That’s my name, don’t wear it out. While you’re at it, you might want to put some knickers on.
‘Louisa,’ Emma repeated, grinding out the cigarette in an ashtray, ‘are you all right?’
‘I’m fine. Thank you.’
‘Well, you don’t look it. Are you ill? Aunt Leo said you’ve been a bit under the weather. I’ll ring for some hot beef tea. My nanny used to swear by it when –’
‘I said I’m fine.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Emma turned her back on Lou. ‘There’s no call to stay on my account. At any rate, Fielding will be back soon with my dress.’ She picked up the puff and slammed it against her chest, unleashing a dense shower of powder. Lou saw something unfamiliar in Emma’s eyes in the mirror as she tried to avoid looking at her own reflection. It was a sadness, a softness almost. Beneath the devil-may-care attitude, the poise and performance, Emma was just a woman in love with a man. A woman who had been counting on Lou to scatter rose petals across the path to her beau.
A bag of rocks sank in Lou’s stomach, cutting her insides on the way down. Her feelings for that man – Emma’s man – ran as deep as if their roots had been planted in soil for a lifetime. But this was Emma’s reality, not hers. One day soon, she would leave. This bashing of heads was a waste of time and energy. Even if this were her reality, Tom would choose the woman at the dressing table, angrily rearranging the coil of her hair.
‘You should hit me over the head with that enormous lighter of yours.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Emma said.
‘It might knock some sense into me.’
Emma turned to face Lou. A wicked grin played on her lips. ‘Do you know, I really like you, Louisa. You’re so different from the run-of-the-mill women one finds out here in the sticks. And the boring ones in town. There’s something about you. Something I can’t quite put my finger on. Not many women have the wherewithal to stand up to me. We might be friends, you and I. So, come on, then,’ Emma leant forward in anticipation. ‘Tell me all. I’ve seen you and Tom huddled in corners. Were you speaking about me? Tell me you were.’
‘We were … we have … on more than one occasion.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘I told him he should marry you.’
‘As bluntly as that!’
‘Perhaps not quite.’
‘Tell me exactly what you said.’
‘I can’t really remember.’
‘Try. I must know what hand I am playing with him.’
‘I suggested that a marriage between two great families would be good for the Mandevilles.’
‘And what did Tom say?’
Lou wouldn’t put words in Tom’s mouth that he might be held to. But neither did she have to quote him verbatim. ‘He said that he would only marry for love.’
‘And?’
‘And, what?’
‘My God, Louisa. It’s like getting blood from a stone! And … did he say that he loves me?’
‘Not in so many words.’
‘Oh.’ Emma slumped back in her chair.
‘But he was receptive to the prospect of love,’ Lou said. ‘He knows that a good marriage will help his family. He’s well aware of the obligations that his position and title brings.’
‘I’d say that’s great progress,’ Emma said. ‘If he understands that, then he must realise that there are not many – if any – other women in our circle who would afford him the position that I could. Anything else?’
He asked me whether I thought he should marry you, and I didn’t answer. ‘No, nothing.’
‘But he was receptive which is good. Oh, Louisa. You can’t know how happy you’ve made me. Tonight feels like the night. I’m sure something will happen. And if it does, then it’s in no small part thanks to you.’