Wherein Two Dozen Heads Are Made Festive
After twenty minutes of climbing around the great staircase of Castle Parr, winding evergreen branches around the stair rail and each baluster, Estella understood the look on Lord Dudley’s face. I’m exhausted, said every line of his wrinkle-wreathed expression, but I cannot admit it, because this was my idea.
Estella accepted a length of juniper from her host’s thin hand, then shoved the garland untidily around the last baluster. She rubbed her hands together; they smelled like a gin distillery.
Or a warm, resinous evergreen scent, if one preferred to think of things in that sentimental way.
“I think you’ve earned a rest, Dudley.” As she straightened, a stitch in her side reminded her that she was no longer as flexible as she’d been in the eighteenth century.
“Oh, no,” Lord Dudley insisted. “No, no. I’m quite all right, dear lady. I’m sure there’s not enough greenery in the drawing room, and we haven’t decorated the antique passage yet.”
“There’s a passage? Is it a secret passage?” Richard Rutherford sounded delighted even as he scrabbled on the landing for dropped needles and twigs.
“No, it’s not a secret passage,” barked Estella. “Good Lord, Rutherford. Let the servants pick that up. You were married to an aristocrat. You should know better.”
“Know better than to make myself useful when I can?” Rutherford smiled, handing the gleaned decorations into the arms of the footman following them about. “No, I don’t suppose I do.”
Estella narrowed her eyes, which only made him smile more brightly. He had a troublesome habit of putting her in her place when she meant the opposite to happen.
A very troublesome habit. She was beginning to forget her place—and his.
When she turned back to Lord Dudley, her voice was all sugar. “Lord Dudley, at a house party hosted by my nephew-in-law, Lord Xavier, I learned a trick that serves wily gentlemen well.”
“You serviced gentlemen at a house party?” Lady Dudley had wandered back up the stairs and into the edge of their conversation. “Are you short of funds?”
Estella wanted to snort with laughter and cover her face at the same time. She settled for a harsh “No” and turned back to the viscount. “The trick is that there’s a type of brandy just the shade of brewed tea. You can have it served out any time of day and Sophy will never know the difference.”
“I would know,” said Lady Dudley.
“Know what, my dear?” The viscount’s heavy white brows lifted.
“That Lady Irving serviced men at a house party.”
A strange heat suffused Estella’s cheeks. Embarrassed? Surely not. Though she couldn’t quite look at Rutherford as he spoke. “Let’s get you settled with some . . . tea, Lord Dudley. And you, my lady—would you like the dogs brought in from the stables?”
“Yes, it’s time.” The viscountess tucked her long hair behind her ears, looking pleased. “Yes. Good. They can have biscuits when Dudley has tea.”
Lord Dudley directed them to a chamber he called the “yellow parlor,” which Estella approved as being bright enough to chase away despondency. It was almost the same shade as her yolk-yellow turban, though the turban had the undeniable advantage of being spangled with paste gems in fiery colors. Once tea was ordered—and brandy, to be served to the viscount in a teacup—Estella was satisfied that her host and hostess would ease themselves before the fire for a while.
“Rest here, and don’t worry about anything,” she said. “If you do, I’ll find out and I’ll be monstrously annoyed.”
Lord Dudley laughed, closing his eyes as he sank back onto a long sofa. In repose, his face turned toward his wife, and a smile lingered on his worn features. Lady Dudley perched, eager, on the edge of a chair seat, awaiting the arrival of her dogs.
Tired, but together. Though they were in their twilight years, they sought means of keeping their lives bright.
When Estella exited the yellow parlor a few steps behind Rutherford, she felt as though the sun were eclipsed.
“What are we left with, Lady Irving?” Rutherford’s straight brows were furrowed as he nudged the remaining pile of trimmed branches with one black boot.
Estella blinked at him through watery eyes. What, indeed? A fortune and a solitary mansion? Put in that way, her life sounded like that of Lord and Lady Dudley, though she hadn’t even an ailing spouse or a bluestocking daughter-in-law to keep her company. “I—” She could say no more before her throat closed.
Richard waved his hand at the pile of greenery. “Here. For use in the house. What do you fancy?”
Oh. Again, her cheeks went hot. As though her face thought that this was the year 1780 once more, that she was a maiden in her first Season hoping to catch the eye of an earl.
Idiotic face. Idiotic maiden, too, for that matter.
“No holly or ivy until Christmas Eve.” Her voice came out more harshly than she intended. “That’s bad luck.”
“Is it really?” Rutherford tilted his head, appearing fascinated. “What do you think would happen if you hung it sooner?”
I would find myself so desperate for company that I’d take up with two Americans and my oldest friend’s lost child.
I would find myself looking at a man—really looking—for the first time in decades.
I would want him to look back at me and like what he saw.
She gave her turban a steadying pat. “I don’t know, but it’s not done. It’s a tradition. Do Americans have traditions?”
“Of course we do. If we can’t hang holly or ivy, what may we use instead?” The footman—Lord Alleyneham’s servant, who had stated his name was Jory—had carried off the fallen leaves and tiny sprigs left after decorating the staircase. Rutherford crouched to sift through the remaining stock of evergreen.
Looking down on him, she saw silver and dark brown threading equally in his hair. At his temples, he had gone entirely gray, but seen from above he looked a bit younger. He still had a nice form, the build of a man who kept himself active. Good shoulders within that bottle-green coat.
“How old are you?” she asked.
Rutherford picked up a branch and held it to his nose, breathing deeply. “Fifty-five.” He stood and extended the branch to Estella. “Rosemary. I like the scent. Is this acceptable, or is it bad luck, too? Will the roof fall in if we hang it?”
“Don’t you want to ask how old I am?”
He grinned, refusing to be withered by her most withering tone. “Even in the wilds of America, that would be impolite.”
“Well, I’m fifty-eight,” she muttered. “And I can’t answer for the state of the roof. But if it falls in, it won’t be the rosemary’s fault.”
“All right. As long as we won’t be blamed for any destruction.” Rutherford scooped up the pile of cut branches. The armful was large enough to hide most of his face as needles and leaves and sprigs crushed, fragrant, against one another. “Do you know the passage Lord Dudley mentioned? The one you were quite sure wasn’t a secret passage?”
“He gestured in this direction.” Rapping on Rutherford’s arm to indicate the way, she led him back down the stairs to the entry hall. Around its echoing width were scattered several doorways, two of which she knew led to the drawing and dining rooms. At the northeast corner, a pointed arch led to what she had presumed was the family wing. “Worth a look.”
“I can’t see, so you’ll have to look for me.” Rutherford’s voice was muffled behind his burden.
Estella swept through the archway, then stopped short. “Yes. Yes, I think we’ve found the antique passage.”
A corridor of pale golden stone stretched several dozen yards before pausing at a stained-glass window and making a turn. Pointed arches lifted the passage’s ceiling into vaults, and many-paned windows sliced the weighty walls. Between each window, framed in a recess by stone pillars, was a head.
A stone head on a plinth. And another, and another, all the way down the passage. In all, Estella guessed that there were two dozen stern-faced Romans and Greeks lopped off at the shoulders, the neck, or—in some unlucky cases—the chin. A gauntlet of blank eyes and stern jaws. An entire corridor set aside for being glared at.
It was so cold that the stone floor chilled Estella’s feet through her slippers.
“My, my.” Rutherford crouched to lay down the branches, then stepped to Estella’s side. “Who do you suppose this fellow is to our right? He must have been someone significant to have his head carved in stone and kept around for a thousand years.”
The stone bust stared with vacant eyes, its nostrils a haughty flare and its hair chipped and cracked.
“Maybe he was once,” said Estella. “But what good does it do him now to be looked at? No one remembers him. No one knows who he is or what he did. He’s no better off than if he’d blinked out before someone chiseled his face in marble.”
“You are a philosopher, my lady.”
“Nonsense. Philosophers are men with long hair and tight trousers who beg money from their relatives.” She sighed. “I’m just . . .”
No, it would be stupid to finish that sentence in any honest way. Rutherford would only give her one of his patient smiles, and she would start looking at his eyes and wondering whether they had a ring of blue or of gray about the dark center of the iris. Which was not the sort of information she usually cared to collect.
“I’m just ready for a brandy,” she finished.
“Brandy sounds marvelous, but we have to earn it.” With a sideways scoot of his foot, he shoved some of the branches before Estella. “Go on, your ladyship. Give these poor forgotten folk a laurel crown.”
“We only have bay and juniper.”
“Juniper should amuse them.” Rutherford seated himself on the floor as easily as though it were a silk pillow. “They can distill gin from the berries and have a wild bacchanal tonight, when we’re all asleep and they’re left alone on their plinths.”
“Nonsense.” Yet it was difficult not to smile at all, and impossible not to fall into a crouch at Rutherford’s side and begin twisting the spice-sharp branches into crowns.
“Yew,” she murmured. The needles were short, the berries starting to shrivel but still red. “Rather poisonous.”
“Well, then you mustn’t eat it.” Rutherford gave a finishing twist to a wreath of bay leaves.
He seemed to radiate joy, but it was a cold light that reminded Estella of what she didn’t feel. “Thank you,” she grumbled. “For turning Lady Dudley away from the subject of my prostitution. Alleged prostitution.”
“I assumed you didn’t want to talk about your scandalous past.” When she huffed, he shot her a wink.
“You have a dangerous sense of humor, Rutherford.”
“Do you think so? I think it’s more dangerous to have none.” He sprang to his feet and plopped the crown onto the head of the Emperor of Chipped Hair.
Estella sank back onto her heels—oh, this cold made her ankles ache—and shoved a dangling bit of yew into the crown she’d fashioned. “Here. You can stick that on the head of one of the other gargoyles.” Struggling to her feet, a hand pressed to a chilly wall, she added, “What the point is of decorating someone else’s house, I can’t imagine. We probably won’t even be here at Christmas.”
“The Dudleys like it. And it’s not so easy for them to climb around this castle anymore. We’re doing them a favor.”
He tried the yew wreath on the head of Chipped Hair’s neighbor, then laid it instead over the diadem of a grim-faced woman. The green transformed her expression from I hate being a marble bust to I think this crown is ridiculous but I will wear it to please you.
“I don’t do favors unless I’ll get a favor in return,” said Estella.
“Why not?”
“Why should I?”
Rutherford shrugged. Estella had seen him make this gesture often enough to understand its meaning. I disagree, but it wouldn’t be polite of me to say so. “We are getting some return. Lord and Lady Dudley are granting us houseroom, and Sophy has turned over the himitsu-bako to Giles. He’ll uncover its secrets.”
“Why are you so sure?”
“Because the last thing my wife told me before she died,” he said, “was that I must go to England and find the puzzle box. She said it was her inheritance for her family.”
“Oh.” Estella’s hand drifted to her turban, trailing over the false gems.
“I know, it sounds unlikely. Giles thinks so, too. Beatrix had been ill for so long, eased with laudanum and hardly talking sense, that it seemed like a fever dream. But she left England with nothing. What happened to her jewels? A diamond parure given to her, irrevocably, when she made her debut. I saw it myself, for we met when she had it valued by the jeweler with whom I apprenticed.”
His face fell into the soft expression of a pleasant memory, and he chucked the grim-faced woman under her stone chin. “Thousands of pounds’ worth of gemstones, and it vanished.”
“I’m surprised no one was imprisoned for theft. Or transported.”
“Well—we were transported, in a way.” He walked back to the pile of greenery and picked it up, then marched down the passage laying branches on each plinth. “We had to leave England after we married. Though it was a relief, Lady Irving, not to have a fortune weighing on us.”
“Bosh. A fortune never weighs on a couple. Only poverty does that.”
“A fortune shared, maybe. But if she married me with wealth and had to fit into the straitened life I could give her?” He distributed the last of the branches, then turned back to Estella with a shake of his head. “If she sat in a silk gown before a chipped brick hearth, rocking in a handmade chair—she’d grow unhappy with me. Instead, though, we started with nothing but a small family mill and a willingness to work. We were even, if that makes sense.”
It did, yes. But just as a pretty face and a biddable nature had caught Estella an earl forty years before, she had nothing but a fortune to recommend her now. When would she ever have the chance to be evenly matched?
“No,” she said crossly. “And I’m still in disbelief over your statement that a fortune wouldn’t benefit a pair.”
He shrugged. That you’re wrong but I’m not going to argue about it gesture again. “It probably depends on the pair.”
“And what if the inheritance was a fever dream after all? Because it’s obvious the box is empty.”
“Just because it’s empty,” said Rutherford, “doesn’t mean there’s no message inside.”
“Your sister will not be joining us today?” The Duke of Walpole frowned. “She usually does, for the sake of propriety.”
Charissa Bradleigh, third daughter of the Earl and Countess of Alleyneham, curtsied to her betrothed before retaking her seat in Alleyneham House’s fashionable Egyptian parlor. She always met the duke here, at the front of the house, where the gentle noises of Mayfair traffic rang through the silk-draped windows. The hoofbeats and whickers of carriage horses; the call of a master to a footman. It was impossible in such a space not to recall one’s proper place in society.
“Not today, Your Grace. Lady Audrina is”—Charissa fumbled for the excuse her mother had given her—“accompanying my mother’s friend, Lady Irving, on a Christmas visit to friends in York.”
That’s all you’ll need to know, so don’t ask any questions, Lady Alleyneham had said, a worried expression on her gentle round face. Think happy thoughts, child! You’ll be a duchess soon.
That was indeed a happy thought. Charissa smiled, but Walpole didn’t smile back.
“I never heard Lady Audrina mention friends in York.” Walpole swung his ivory-handled malacca cane, a neat parabola of impatience.
The Duke of Walpole was of no more than middling height, but his face was as handsome and neatly carved as a Roman bust. He was the perfect gentleman in dress and elegance. The black waves of his hair would dare not fall over his brow; his cravat would not dream of wilting from its intricate arrangement.
Charissa knew she was of no more than middling looks. Despite auburn hair, her gray eyes and colorless cheeks inclined her complexion to the insipid. Her teeth were good, though, and the habit of smiling a great deal and talking even more had served her well. A generous dowry made her more attractive, too: her hair more gilded, her laugh more silvery.
“They are Lady Irving’s friends.” Charissa recovered a bit of her usual chatter. “You know how her ladyship feels about Christmas, Your Grace. She cannot bring herself to stay in London unless she has family to stay with her. So this year, when she chose to travel, she asked if she could bring one of us. Lady Irving has always been fond of us.”
“That is quite a compliment to you.” The duke seated himself facing Charissa; the arms of his chair were tipped by Sphinx faces. “I was not aware Lady Irving was fond of anyone.”
“Oh—well, she is. Maybe because she never had daughters of her own. Or maybe because she was glad never to have daughters of her own? But that is why Mother said Audrina could go. I mean, I could not because of our marriage. Clearly.”
“Clearly.” The stern line of his mouth turned up at one corner. Charissa could hardly imagine it pressed to hers for a kiss, much less crying out with passion.
But it would, wouldn’t it? And soon.
She wished it were sooner. These brief calls with the duke were her favorite time of day; his face, her favorite sight. He regarded their match, she knew, as a logical alliance, and she must strive not to reveal how much more it meant to her.
She looked down at her hands, neatly gloved from fingertip to the blond lace cuffs of her sleeve. She was every bit the proper bride on the surface, and her London family was equally appropriate. Just as long as her future husband did not inquire too deeply into her thoughts—or into the nature of Lady Audrina’s departure.
“I do hope Lady Audrina will return in time for our wedding,” the duke said. “It would be most irregular should the bride’s sister fail to be present.”
Charissa bit her lip. “Perhaps, but my two older sisters might not be in attendance. That is—I’ve not heard whether they intend to return to London. If they are absent, it will not be to give offense, but because they do not feel at ease.”
Romula and Theodosia, Lady Alleyneham had put about, had suffered from a lung ailment the previous year. In truth, they had caught smallpox. Though their health had returned after a long convalescence in Littlehampton, their pale complexions had been pocked and scarred. Too badly to catch a titled husband, their mother said—which was quite all right with them, as Romula had fallen in love with her physician and Theodosia with a country squire.
The two oldest sisters had resigned themselves to a quiet life in the country, one with which they professed themselves happy. They did not even express much enthusiasm for the fashion plates Charissa sent to them every season, or the bolts of satin and the plumes for new bonnet trimmings.
And then there was Petra, the fourth sister. Dreamy and solitary, she had been in Italy for a year since the urge to study art had seized her with sudden violence. No one expected her to return for the wedding. Such a notion had not even been considered.
“Your two elder sisters,” the duke said as he seated himself facing Charissa, “have chosen a retiring sort of life. If they do not wish to return to the bosom of society, that is their right. But until Lady Audrina marries, she lives under your parents’ roof and should abide by their wishes.”
“She should,” murmured Charissa. She never had, though. Charissa herself had always accepted her parents’ wishes: to mix in society, to become a young lady of fashion, and to marry a duke.
“I am glad we are in accord.” His Grace hesitated. “Lady Charissa, I have been considering a matter of great consequence. Since we are to be married in little more than a fortnight, I wonder—but no, perhaps it would be asking too much.”
“No, please—Your Grace, ask me anything you wish. I am sure it will not be improper.”
“I hope not.” He folded his hands over the ebony head of his cane. “I was thinking that, since we are to be wed soon, you might call me Walpole instead of ‘Your Grace.’” His head tilted. “If you mind, you must tell me at once.”
His first name, she knew, was Roderick. Roderick Francis Matthew Elder, Duke of Walpole, Earl of Carbury, Baron Winterset.
So many names. Soon some of them would be hers.
“Mind? Oh, no—Walpole. Not at all. I should be very glad.”
His smile matched hers, soft and bright, and her heart gave a quick, flustered flutter.
She should be glad as the future Duchess of Walpole. And if only she knew where her youngest sister and her father truly were, she would be very glad indeed.